#americans who are actively anti voting are the same ones who are too scared to introduce themselves to their neighbors

[lightyaoigami]

americans only others look away this doesn't apply to you: i shouldn't be surprised that the most braindead political takes really catch flight on the website where white american suburban ex-evangelical shut-ins who use their queerness as a cudgel against other marginalized identities hang out lmao

[matan4il]

I'm gonna put it as simply and blatantly as possible.

Russia in 2022 attacked another Eurovision participant and made a whole bunch of other contestant countries scared of being attacked next, after already having attacked a fellow competitor in 2008 -> Russia got banned from Eurovision

Ukraine in 2022 got attacked, had its civilians targeted intentionally, did not choose to start the war, has no record of past attacks against ESC contestants, and is not currently posing a threat to any other Eurovision participating country -> Ukraine did not get banned

Israel in 2023 got attacked, had its civilians targeted intentionally, did not choose to start the war, has no record of past attacks against ESC contestants, and is not currently posing a threat to any other Eurovision participating country -> Israel did not get banned

There isn't a double standard, except for people who insist on not following the geopolitical logic. Same ones who didn't use Ukraine's retaliation activities against Russia as justification to get Ukraine banned, but are doing that to Israel, usually with a side dish of false, hyperbolic accusations that have nothing to do with reality.

Also...

The only flags allowed are of participating countries and the pride flag. The American flag is therefore banned. The Mexican flag. The Japanese, the Korean, the Nigerian flags. The world doesn't actually revolve around Palestinians, they're not actually the ultimate victims, and honestly, it's offensive they're cast that way when there are conflicts far worse and bloodier than the current war in Gaza, not to mention it takes away attention and help from them, to make everything constantly about the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, this is supposed to be the rule. Outside the performance hall, but within the borders of the Eurovision village, a visiting Israeli comedian called Guy Hochman was assaulted for walking around with the Israeli flag. Swedish police intervened, but they didn't act against the anti-Israel protesters who attacked and spat on Guy, they stopped him from openly carrying the Israeli flag. He asked why are they not allowing it, even though the flag is of a participating country, in accordance with the rules. He was told it's too dangerous. He then asked why are Palestinian flags not being removed, if they're banned according to contest rules, and was told that in Sweden, freedom of speech is above anything else. He was also grilled about whether he's Jewish by the Swedish policemen. Why was his flag denied, then? Why was his freedom of speech not protected, why was his Jewish identity a matter for questioning?

Another thing, the Swedish singer who ended up in third place in 2011 Eric Khaled Saade went on a childish rant crying over the Palestinian flag being banned (again, as if it's the only one), and as he was invited to perform this year, he got on stage live with a kaffiyeh tied to his left hand, even though he knew that was considered political, and therefore not allowed. Once more, he whined about it as if this is specifically against Palestinians, but you know what? The dress designers wanted to have a Star of David on the dress of the Israeli singer. She's a Jewish woman, that's a Jewish symbol, so why not represent her identity? But they were told that's "political." And you know what the Israeli delegation did? Followed the rules. You won't see the Star of David on Eden's dress. When they were told not to wear the hostage pin, because that's "political"? They followed the rules. When the Israeli song writers were told that their song, expressing Israeli pain, is "too political," what did they do? Followed the rules, they changed the lyrics. And you don't hear them crying about it all over social media and the news.

Not to mention, Eric Saade had no problem kissing the ass of Israeli fans back in 2011, when he competed and needed their votes. Was his dad less Palestinian back then? By the way, Israeli fans didn't hold his identity against him, they didn't demand he be questioned about Palestinian terrorists, or what his stance is on Hamas, they didn't drag politics into it, they focused on music and culture connecting people across borders and identities (as the ESC is supposed to do), and Israel gave its 12 points in both the semi and the final to Eric Saade that year. How did he repay those fans? Campaigning to ban Israel (and therefore them) from the contest, because he's incapable of seeing them as people first, and political rivals second, or maybe even (God forbid!) not at all...

It all smells like hypocrisy to me. But we all know this post won't get anywhere near the exposure (through likes and reblogs) that the lying, self-centered, hypocritical anti-Israel posts do. Doesn't matter. I'll still be here, speaking the truth.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[eowyntheavenger]

Hi! I saw your post on telling Americans to vote, and I was wondering what you think of posts from people from other parts of the world who are calling Americans evil for voting for Biden because of his support for Israel. I've seen a few already. They seem to be completely convinced that Americans deliberately voted for Biden specifically to side against Palestine and no other reason, and spread the general (pretty ignorant and hateful) message of "Americans are evil because of the actions of their government and because they collectively refuse to vote for a president who is good and not simply 'the lesser of two evils'". It frustrates me because they seem to think they're experts on US politics, culture, and society and have all the answers, but it also makes me concerned because it reminds me of the whole Russian bot thing from last time. Like, I'm 99% sure the people reblogging these posts aren't Russian bots (don't know about the OPs though), and they unquestioningly believe this. What do you think of this and how would you go about addressing this issue? Do you think it's possible to get them to understand how little they actually know about the US and how they're actually promoting a message that makes things worse for everyone? I've also seen less scathing posts that are just disheartened and don't seem to believe the democrats are truly better to vote for than the republicans and so it's just two sides of the same coin. To be fair, I think that sort of feeling is only further encouraged because there didn't really seem to be much if any progress made with Biden, not even back to square one after Trump moved the country so far backwards. I think most Americans really wish the elections actually had good candidates and they could pick the best of two goods, but are frustrated and stuck with the current system and don't know how to actually get to the point where there are good candidates. (Though personally I think voting for the one who isn't actively trying to make themselves a king with unlimited terms is a decent start. I can understand the frustration though.)

Hi! Thanks for the ask. This stuff worries me too. I've gotten comments on my posts like that too, telling me/other Americans that we're evil for voting for Biden.

But I've seen a much larger number of comments and posts from people outside the United States BEGGING us to vote for Biden. I literally get tags like that on my posts EVERY DAY urging Americans to vote blue. So I think that's valuable context, even if it doesn't solve the problem of the "I hate everybody who votes for Biden" crowd.

And yes, it's definitely a shitty argument on their part to claim that people voting for Biden are specifically siding against Palestine. Literally every single person I know in real life and online who plans to vote for Biden has been criticizing and protesting his policies on Palestine.

In terms of convincing the anti-voters that they're wrong, honestly, I don't know. They don't listen to reason and they seem intent on spreading despair. Some of Biden's policies have been terrible (Willow oil-drilling project), some of them have been downright evil (military aid to Israel), but I'm a rational person and I know that Trump is worse in every respect.

I've tried debating them. It's been pointless every time. They genuinely don't know how the government works, which scares me. Common takes include: 1) a genuine lack of awareness of how pro-Israel Trump and the right wing are, combined with magical thinking that a virtually unknown third party candidate can win the presidential election, 2) truly impressive mental gymnastics blaming Biden for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and 3) continuing the mental gymnastics to blame Biden and the Democrats for anti-trans policies...

I guess my advice is to either ignore them and move on, or debunk things when you have time/energy? It's easier said than done, I know. There's nothing more annoying than someone being stupid on the internet, especially when they accuse you of stuff that just isn't true, and especially when they're spreading dangerous misinformation or voter-suppression rhetoric.

Like you, I'm highly suspicious of anyone who advocates AGAINST voting, or against voting blue. And I agree, many of these people are not bots, like you said, but I call them useful idiots, because they're doing the bots' work for them.

The one thing you said that I'm going to push back on is "there didn't really seem to be much if any progress made with Biden." Biden's actually made lots of progress on a variety of issues, and reversed some of Trump’s damage, it just doesn't get a lot of fanfare and it’s unfortunately happening at the same time as Republican gains in state legislatures and while they control the Supreme Court. But Biden and his administration have:

• invested billions in green architecture and clean energy, including making sure federal investments benefit low-income communities

• introduced new fines for companies' methane emissions

• introduced a plan to cut the federal government's greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2030 (that includes the military, which is a huge emitter)

• passed a huge bill for improving the country's infrastructure, including bridges, roads, broadband and more

• introduced first-ever national strategy on gender equality and equity and pushed Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment

• fought for women's reproductive rights after the overturn of Roe v. Wade

• put more women, people of color, and women of color on the federal bench than any of his predecessors combined

• nominated Kentaji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court

• boosted funding to historically Black colleges

• ordered the DOJ to end the use of private prisons by the federal government

• pardoned thousands of people convicted on federal marijuana charges

• created a White House office of gun violence prevention

• passed the Respect for Marriage Act, guaranteeing federal rights and benefits for same-sex couples

• rolled out a series of actions to protect the rights and safety of the LGBTQ+ community, including protecting queer and trans foster youth, improving access to mental health services, and addressing the rise in hate crimes

• challenged discriminatory state bans against gender-affirming care and trans athletes

• called to support trans youth in State of the Union address and restored the White House tradition of recognizing Pride Month

• changed passport rules so that people can obtain a passport with no gender marker

• examined efforts by each federal agency to advance LGBTQ+ rights around the world

• reversed Trump's transgender military ban

• protected the rights of incarcerated trans people

• forgave billions in student debt, repeatedly, and introduced penalties for college programs that trap students in debt

• slashed bank overdraft fees

• expanded guaranteed overtime pay for millions of people

• made union-busting harder

• prevented discriminatory mortgage lending

• made efforts to expand the child tax credit, which could lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty

• cracked down on agriculture monopolies to support farmers and small businesses

• made it so the government is going to start taking drug companies' patents away if they don't make affordable drugs

• made over-the-counter birth control pills available for the first time

• lowered the cost of hearing aids and expanded access to them

• spent millions of dollars on students' mental health

• reversed discriminatory healthcare rules

• reinvigorated cancer research

• announced plans to replace all leaded pipes in the next ten years as well as combatting lead exposure abroad

• changed rules for how people can get aid after disasters so they can get more protection and immediate payments more easily

• introduced new data privacy rules protecting people from tech companies

• pushed the federal government to monitor AI risks

• maintained steadfast support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression

• maintained steadfast support for Taiwan in the face of Chinese intimidation

• strengthened ties with allies in Asia and the Pacific Islands

• pledged climate change assistance to low-lying Pacific Island countries

• literally IMMEDIATELY after being elected, Biden fortified DACA, rejoined the Paris Agreement, and ended Trump's discriminatory "Muslim ban", ended the Keystone XL Pipeline and fossil duel development in wildlife monuments, (same as last link) rejoined the WHO, strengthened COVID-19 response measures on a variety of fronts, re-included non-citizens in the U.S. census, and passed executives orders on racial equity in the federal government

And I'm sure there's more I left out.

There are also things Biden does that literally don’t make the news, but matter a lot, like funding the Postal Service, and continuing to have a State Department so we can conduct overseas diplomacy (Trump tried to defund the USPS and wants to purge the State Department and fill it with loyalists).

[nerdygaymormon]

America’s Pre-Stonewall  Queer Rights Movement

We talk like the 1969 Stonewall Riots came out of nowhere, and in some important ways it did as it upended the gay rights movement that had existed. It rejected the respectability politics of prior efforts. We were no longer trying to say we’re just like you, please treat us nicely. Post-Stonewall we were radical and demanding rights, legal reforms and power. However, the steps prior to Stonewall were important as it showed LGBTQ people exist and helped people start getting organized, building networks and methods of communication that could be used after Stonewall

———————————————————————

A lot of queer people lived in small towns and farming communities and felt like they were the only one. Then they were drafted into the military and fought in World War II and found each other. 

Upon returning home from war, they were under a great deal of pressure to marry and conform to a conservative lifestyle. Most did but they still looked for opportunities to meet others and many upstanding men in their communities would go to certain bathrooms or parks to cruise (finding other men for sex) and then return home to their respectable life afterwards. They were out to satisfy a need and if the cops ran a sting, they slinked out shamefully, and feared their name being reported in the newspaper for that could destroy their life. 

The United States government was scared of the Communists and called that threat the Red Scare. Related to this is the Lavender Scare, which is the belief that queer people would be susceptible to being blackmailed and so it was important to remove them from positions in government, business, & society. Many cities passed laws that further marginalized queer people. But not everyone took this meekly, they started organizing to try to fight back. 

———————————————————————

1945 - World War II ends

1947 - Vice Versa, the first American lesbian publication, is written and self-published by Lisa Ben (real name Edith Eyde) in Los Angeles. Lisa Ben is an anagram of “lesbian.” It survived 8 months and published 9 issues. Vice Versa's mix of editorials, short stories, poetry, book and film reviews and a letters column, a pattern subsequently followed by many queer publications. 

1950 - The Mattachine Society is the first national gay rights organization formed after WWII. They coined the term homophile (to be used instead of homosexual which feels so clinical and often used as a diagnosis of a disorder), and when asked to speak about what is a homophile, they talked about love instead of sex. At the time, LGBT people were regularly described as deviants and having mental issues, frequently portrayed as villains in the movies, often were homeless & sex workers as a result of being kicked out of their homes. The Mattachine Society fought to change that perception by portraying LGBT people as respectable citizens. The society went into decline in the mid-1960′s and disappeared after Stonewall for seeming too stuffy and unwilling to be confrontational.

1952 - "Spring Fire," the first lesbian paperback novel, was published and sold 1.5 million copies. It was written by lesbian Marijane Meaker under the false name Vin Packer.

1952 - Christine Jorgensen becomes the first widely-publicized person to have sex reassignment surgery, in this case, male to female, creating a world-wide sensation. This was performed in Denmark, and upon arriving in the USA, her transition was the subject of a New York Daily News front-page story, making her a celebrity. She published an autobiography in 1967

1952 - Several members of the Mattachine Society formed a separate society called One, Inc. They published ONE magazine, a monthly magazine and the first U.S. pro-gay publication. The US Post Office declared it obscene and refused to deliver, but it was sold at newstands in LA. ONE existed until 1965.

1953 - The Diana Foundation was created in Houston and is still in existence, making it the oldest continuously active gay organization in the United States. The Diana Foundation is focused on assisting and supporting the needs of the gay community, by distributing funds to organizations that are dedicated to providing services that enhance the lives of individuals in the community.

1953 - President Eisenhower signs an Executive Order banning anyone identified as threats to national security--including those with criminal records, alcoholics, and “sex perverts”--to be excluded or terminated from federal employment. It's estimated 5000 employees were let go, and this number does not include the many who were not hired as questions about their sexual orientation were found during background checks. This ban extended to all subcontractors who want to do business with the federal government, like Boeing, IBM, and many other businesses.  1955 - Dissatisfied at the lack of women voices in the Mattachine Society, the first lesbian rights organization in the US, The Daughters of Bilitis, was founded. It was originally meant to be a social alternative to lesbian bars, which were subject to raids and police harassment. As the Daughters of Bilitis gained members, they shifted their focus to supporting women who were afraid to come out by educating them about their rights and about gay history. They held national conventions in Los Angeles every 2 years from 1960 to 1968. Their 1962 convention was covered by local TV channel WTTV, making it the first  American broadcast that specifically covered lesbians.

1956 – The Ladder, the first nationally distributed lesbian publication in the United States, began publication. It was published monthly from 1956 to 1970, and every other month in 1971 and 1972. It was the primary publication and method of communication for the Daughters of Bilitis. A big part of it’s end was debate over whether to remain aligned with other homophile groups or to join the National Organization for Women and their fight for women’s rights. 

1956 - Dr. Evelyn Hooker presented her work that disproved the diagnosis that being gay is a mental illness. She conducted psychological tests of gay individuals who were not incarcerated and also were not psychological patients. Her work was met with incredulity, but she continued her work and published several additional studies over the coming years.  

1957 - The word “transsexual” is coined by U.S. physician Harry Benjamin to refer to people who have a gender identity inconsistent with their assigned sex and desire to permanently transition to the sex or gender with which they identify, usually through medical means (hormones & surgery) 

1958 - The US Supreme Court ruled against the US Post Office for refusing to allow ONE magazine to be delivered by mail simply for having stories and poems about lesbian and gay characters. This is the first US Supreme Court ruling to deal with homosexuality

1958 - The first gay leather bar in the United States, the Gold Coast, opened in Chicago

1961 - in San Francisco, José Sarria became the first openly gay candidate in the United States to run for public office, running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Sarria almost won by default as there were fewer than 5 candidates for the 5 open seats, but city officials recognized this and on the final day had gotten more than 30 candidates registered. Sarria lost but won enough votes to create the idea that a gay voting bloc could wield real power in city politics

1961 - the Tay-Bush raid, the largest raid on a gay bar in San Francisco, resulted in the arrests of 103 people. It is considered a pivotal event in the history of LGBT rights in San Francisco.

1962 – Illinois becomes the first U.S. state to remove sodomy law from its criminal code, but it criminalized acts of "Open Lewdness,” such as open displays of affection between people of the same sex

1962 - The Janus Society was founded in Philadelphia. It is notable as the publisher of Drum magazine, one of the earliest gay publications in the United States and the one most widely circulated in the 1960s. The Janus Society focused on a strategy of seeking respect by showing the public gay individuals conforming to hetero-normative standards of dress at protests.

1962 - In San Francisco the Tavern Guild, the first gay business association in the United States, was created by gay bar owners as a response to the Tay-Bush raid and continued police harassment and closing of gay bars 

1962 - A panel of 8 gay men had 90 minutes on a New York radio station to talk about what it was like to be gay. They talked about their difficulties in maintaining careers, the problems of police harassment, and the social responsibility of gays and straights alike. 

1964 - the first organized protest against gay discrimination took place in New York City. 10 people picketed in New York City to protest the armed forces’ anti-gay discrimination and the army’s failure to keep gay men’s draft records confidential. These brave people stood up and spoke out at a time when very few were willing to do so because they did not want to be identified for fear of their family's reaction and the likely loss of their job and housing.

1964 - Life magazine published the article "Homosexuality In America" which was the first time a national publication reported on gay issues. The article described San Francisco as "The Gay Capital of America." This resulted in a big migration of gays to the city.

1964 - the Council on Religion and the Homosexual was the first group in the U.S. to use the word "homosexual" in its name. It was a San Francisco-based organization founded for the purpose of joining homosexual activists and religious leaders. It held an event where local politicians could be questioned about issues concerning gay and lesbian people, including police intimidation. The event marks the first known instance of "the gay vote" being sought.

1965 - Frank Kameny & Jack Nichols led the first “homosexual rights” protest at the White House. They wanted equal treatment of gay employees in the federal government, the repeal of sodomy laws, and the removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s manual of mental disorders. 10 men & 3 women bravely picketed, and were covered by ABC, UPI, AP, Reuters, and other news organizations. 

1965 - Inspired by the picket at the White House, on July 4th 39 conservatively-dressed people were part of a protest called “Reminder Day” held in Philadelphia at the Liberty Bell to point out that gay people are denied the rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. This picket was done on July 4th for 5 years in a row. The last time just a week after the Stonewall Riots.

1965 - Vanguard was created, an organization of LGBT youth in a low-income San Francisco district. It is considered the first Gay Liberation organization in the U.S. which encouraged gays & lesbians to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride, such as by coming out to family & friends

1966 - The New York Mattachine Society stages a "Sip-In" at Julius Bar in New York City. New York liquor laws prohibited serving alcohol to gays. While unsuccessful that day in getting served, the publicity helped get the law changed.  1966 - Riot at Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco - Compton’s became a regular hangout for drag queens, trans individuals, and young gay street hustlers, including many who belonged to Vanguard, much to the chagrin of it’s owners. The gay bars didn’t allow them in due to transphobic policies. One night management was fed-up by the noisy crowd at one table and called the police. When a cop attempted to arrest a transgender woman (cross-dressing was illegal), she resisted by throwing coffee at the police officer. It was followed by drag queens pouring into the streets, fighting back with their high heels and heavy bags. In the aftermath of this, the city of San Francisco began treating trans people as a community of citizens with legitimate needs instead of simply as a problem to get rid of.

1966 - In Los Angeles a coalition of Homosexual organizations organized demonstrations for Armed Forces Day to protest the exclusion of LGBT from the U.S. armed services. The 15-car motorcade is sometimes called the nation's first gay pride parade

1966 - National Transsexual Counseling Unit was formed in San Francisco, the first transgender organization ever, this is one action taken due to the Compton’s Cafeteria riot.

1966 - The Society for Individual Rights opened America’s first gay and lesbian community center in San Francisco

1967 - On New Years Day at the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles, the balloons dropped at midnight, auld lang syne was sung and some bar patrons kissed, then at five minutes after midnight, 12 plainclothes policemen began swinging clubs and pool cues, dragging patrons out the door and into the street. Sixteen people were arrested that night—six of them charged with lewd conduct (otherwise known as kissing). The raid prompted a series of protests that began on 5 January 1967, organized by P.R.I.D.E. (Personal Rights in Defense and Education). It's the first use of the term "Pride" that came to be associated with LGBT rights.

1967 - The Advocate, an American LGBT-interest magazine, was first published as a local newsletter by the activist group Personal Rights in Defense and Education (PRIDE) in Los Angeles. It began as a way to alert gay men to police raids in Los Angeles gay bars.

1967 - Craig Rodwell opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in New York City, the first bookstore in the country focused on literature by gay and lesbian authors. Rodwell was also vice president of the Mattachine Society and the bookstore doubled as a community center. 

1967 - The Student Homophile League at Columbia University is the first institutionally recognized gay student group in the United States.

1969 - Stonewall Riots

[qqueenofhades]

So, it’s Friday evening, and it turns out I have more thoughts about things that happened this week. I almost never do Discourse on this blog, on whatever subject, but sometimes even your friendly local depressed historian gotta say things. If you’re not in the mood for a long-ass meta-y text post, just keep on scrolling, no hard feelings.

In the wake of the Notre Dame fire, which obviously a lot of us were upset about, and profoundly relieved that it did not end up being completely catastrophic, the usual spate of posts began to pop up, alleging that people only cared about Notre Dame because of the loss to Western/European/Christian history, that nobody had been this upset about the National Museum of Brazil or the outbreak of arson at three black churches in Louisiana in the same week, and so on. I don’t blame anyone for making those posts, because I know they cared about those issues and wanted to ensure that their importance was communicated, especially when something major like Notre Dame was getting all the airtime. However, I couldn’t help but notice how that followed the same pattern as all Woke Tumblr Discourse (tm). An event happens, people express reactions to it, and are then attacked or indirectly shamed for not expressing reactions to another event. Or there’s the usual cycle of “nobody will care about this because it’s not happening in America”-style posts, or passive-aggressive insinuations that “you don’t care if you don’t reblog this.” And -- I say this with the greatest kindness possible, because I know, I know you guys care -- it’s... not helpful.

The culture of Tumblr and other left-wing sections of social media often rests on enacting performative wokeness, on showing that you care about the most Progressive (tm) issues, or that you have thoroughly scrutinized your fandom tastes or political beliefs for anything Problematic and/or can prove yourself to an imagined moral standard (and there have been some great metas written on how this essentially replicates conservative evangelical purity culture, with the goalposts switched). This is why we keep having to circulate (and doubtless will have to do so with increasing frequency) those posts reminding the left not to eat its young and flame all prospective Democratic challengers to Trump in 2020 to a crisp before the right wing, which is only too happy to let us do the work of sabotaging ourselves, even gets a chance. This is also why you see the posts responding to said angry “nobody cares about this!” posts, in which people mention the fact that not visibly reacting to all the (vast and terrible) injustice in the world does not mean they don’t care. The world is a big place. So is the internet. I can guarantee you that people do care, and just because you didn’t see immediate evidence and response to it when you opened up your Tumblr dash is not proof of a collective nefarious conspiracy.

Take me, for example. I am a thirty-ish academic and historian who considers myself well-informed and literate in current events. I read national and international news every day to find out what’s going on (because I live in England, the answer is Brexit, and the status is Failed). And yet, there are plenty of things that I only hear about for the first time on Tumblr, often attached to one of those “nobody cares about this!” posts. And you know what? I do care. I care a lot. And I’m guessing that most other people do as well, because no matter how it may feel, the majority of individuals are fundamentally decent people with basic empathy for others, even if our whole system is a nightmare. But the urge to demand why nobody is Discoursing about this issue (again, among a vast and exhausting sea of them) needs to take a few fundamental things into account. 

First, the American media (as a large portion of readers are relying on) simply does not report this stuff. Look at what’s happening in that godforsaken country right now; does it really seem like the kind of place that’s eager to tell you about Brazilian museum fires or black-church arson? I’m someone who makes a conscious effort to read the news no matter how depressed it makes me, and I still miss tons of stuff, because it’s not there. The Western media reported on Notre Dame, people knew about it, and were upset. But when those of them who did not know about the National Museum of Brazil learned about it, they were also upset. We can definitively say now that the National Museum was a bigger and more irreplaceable tragedy in terms of what burned. But we were also apparently 15-30 minutes away from losing all of Notre Dame. You can be upset about both these things. You can express empathy for the history lost in both cases. There is not a greater moral value attached, and you’re not racist for caring about Notre Dame if you heard about it first (unless you’re only upset about Notre Dame for reasons related to race or perceived cultural superiority and are peddling vile conspiracy theories about Jews and Muslims intentionally burning it down, in which case you are a racist). Almost everyone who learned about the National Museum fire was just as horrified.

2019 is a hard and monstrously unfair and tremendously difficult place to live. The internet has made exposure to both all the information and no real information at all simultaneously possible. Not everyone can display active engagement and empathy with every tragedy everywhere. People have jobs, lives, kids, work, school, other commitments, mental and physical health to look after and even when they read the damn news, there’s no guarantee whatsoever the news is going to report it. If they haven’t made the conscious effort to search out every scrap of terribleness that exists in this hellworld, they.... really should not be shamed for that. If they don’t care even after they learn, that’s another debate. But again, in my experience, most people do. But if they are first exposed to it by someone claiming they won’t care, that makes them less likely to engage with it, and to want to enact meaningful change. Firing wittily sarcastic takedowns at easy targets on echo-chamber liberal Twitter is one thing. We all enjoy a good roast and venting our frustration at times. But as a long-term engagement strategy, it’s going to actively backfire.

I talk a lot about being a teacher, and my experiences with my students, but it’s relevant again, so here goes. The kids in my classes come in believing some pretty strange things, or they flat out don’t have a clue even about what I consider basic historical knowledge. If my reaction was to shame them for not knowing, when they have expressly come to me to learn better, I’m pretty sure I’d be a bad teacher. My strategy, whenever a student can actually be nudged to answer a question, is to pick out whatever correct thing they said. Even if the rest of the answer is wrong and we need to work through it, I start by highlighting the part of it that was right, and to build their confidence that I’m not just going to tear them down when they respond. Freshmen are scared of not knowing things and to be made to look like an idiot, so I try to assure them that I’m not going to do that and I will constructively engage with their contribution and treat it seriously. You can then move to dealing with the other parts of it that may not be right, or even Mmm Whatcha Say side-eye. It is a long and often frustrating process and sometimes after reading their essays, you wonder how much of an impression you made. But if you actually want to get people to care about things, you can’t mistake Ultimate Wokeness or Look How Progressive/Anti-establishment/Enlightened I Personally Am for the simple requirement of being a decent person. You can have the greatest and most necessary beliefs or value systems in the world, but if your response to people is to lash out at them even before they begin the conversation, you’re setting yourself back. And I know that’s not really what you want to do.

This should not be interpreted as some wishy-washy “everyone just needs to be nice to each other!!!” kindergarten-playground-rule. I frankly think the whole system could use a good nefarious dismantle, and you sure as hell don’t get there by mistaking insipid moral equivalence for necessary action. But accepting the existence of people different from you, and considering how you want to engage with them, and understanding that issues are complicated and people are flawed, is a fundamental part of being a mature adult (and this has nothing to do with chronological age; there are 15-year-olds who are plenty more mature adults than 50-year-olds). I honestly do love the desperate desire to make people care, and that, for the most part, is why people who identify as liberal or left-wing do so, because they want to (and they do) care. But it’s also why they can be bad at winning elections and getting into meaningful positions to enact this change. The right wing stays on message and sticks together. Even if they absolutely hated Trump, plenty of Republicans held their noses and voted for him anyway. The left did not do that. The greatest virtue of liberal thought, i.e. its determination to include multiple perspectives, has increasingly reduced it to smaller and smaller camps where only the purest survive, like some kind of ideological Hunger Games. It might be great for making yourself look good to your hall of mirrors, but.... not so good for actually doing something long-term.

Once again, this is not to blame anyone for being upset and worried about things, for wanting people to know about them, and so forth. But I am gently-but-firmly suggesting, in my capacity as old, salty, queer spinster academic aunt, that perhaps you consider how you start the conversation. Once again, it’s my experience that most people want to know and want to care, but there are countless factors that mean not every bad thing in the world will be acknowledged everywhere by everyone at all times. You can care about different things for different reasons. That is okay. You can care about something because you have a personal connection to it. That is also okay. You can not care about something because you just don’t have the capacity and are emotionally exhausted and there’s so much shit in this world that you have to compartmentalize and set boundaries. That is also okay.

For example, I was obviously very upset about Notre Dame, and still am, though I’m relieved it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Am I happy it’s going to be restored? Yes. Am I unbelievably angry that a half-dozen of the elite uber-rich could just suddenly throw billions of euros at it for its restoration, when it had to struggle for years to get funding for crucial renovations? Yes. Do I feel as if that if the vaults have suddenly been opened to restore one major European Christian landmark, it’s incredibly heartbreaking that that level of instant capital just won’t be addressed to actual endemic, long-term issues like global warming and social inequality and the Flint water crisis and whatever else, and that this is a sad and troubling message for our society in many ways? Yes.  All of these things exist together. And I imagine most people feel the same way.

In short: I realize this is the internet, and therefore just is not designed to do that, but maybe we can give each other a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt, and think about how we would like to educate and engage those we come in contact with, whether virtually or in reality. We can do it wherever and whoever we are, with anyone that we meet, and I wonder what it would be like if we did.

[tessatechaitea]

Wonder Twins #7

I didn't realize the Wonder Twins were Gen X.

Oh yeah! Zan had just saved the world by stopping a plot that was going to save the world.

I just realized I hadn't scanned the cover yet and as I did, I noticed the Wonder Twins fist/star emblem marks a striking resemblance to a goat.se riff. Zan and Jayna get taken off of monitor duty at the Hall of Justice now that they've stopped the League of Annoyance. You'd think that doing a good job would get you a promotion but those of use who have always done spectacularly good jobs know better. While everybody else works down to the lowest common denominator (because who wants to do more work than the next guy?! A fool, that's who!), good workers just put on blinders and do the job they were hired for until the time they're being paid for is up. Sure, that sounds like I'm describing a sucker who's been completely manipulated by the man! But I'm also describing a person who fulfills their end of whatever bargain they've agreed to! So when I say Zan and Jayna wind up giving tours at the Hall of Justice because they were too good at catching criminals, you'll understand why I went into the previous digression. Maybe? I don't know. Have you seen what state the U.S. is in?! Why are you picking apart my writing style?! Mark Russell takes a few pages to shit all over hockey fans and now I hate Mark Russell with a burning passion. Even though I'd hardly call myself a hockey fan. I mean, I loved NHL '93 (unless it was '92 (or maybe '94?)) and I loved going to San Jose Sharks games when I was still living in the Bay Area (plus my friend worked equipment for the Sharks and would get us free tickets). But it's not like I follow it much anymore. I just like the feeling of being angry at somebody for writing a satirical critique of sports fans rioting because they're so happy that their team won. Although why would I be angry when I've never done that nor think Russell's wrong in his pointed and humorous critique?! Oh, who cares why! Being angry is just more fun! Oh shit! I finally understand people's attraction to Fox News! I just watched a YouTube clip of somebody's Jeremy Roenick highlights from NHL '94 set to the song "More Than a Feeling" and it was pretty awesome. Also, that was definitely the one we played nonstop back in 1993 and 94 and maybe even into 95. Roenick unstoppable down with the puck while Sharks players lay splayed out on their back all across the ice. To stop the riot, Superman calls in Repulso! He's a guy whose super power is super stink and he's kept in a locked room with a bare table and a microwave and nobody wants to be his friend because he smells like a garbage dumb that vomited on top of the diarrhea it shit out while standing on its head so the stanky muck ran down his body absorbing all of his body odor and then somebody cut up a durian and tossed it in the mix.

Superman is a dick. Get this guy some friends with no sense of smell. Or at the very least, an Xbox Gold account.

After the hockey riots, some "the end of the world" riots take place because Zan and Jayna screw up something or other. Basically what that means is that Repulso gets to be let out of his airtight containment unit again! He's a pretty optimistic guy for being sealed away by Superman (which is just Superman's way! Is somebody a problem? No problem! Put them in the Phantom Zone!). He's so happy and not bitter about his living arrangements that I feel like Zan and Jayna had better figure out a way to give him a better life before this issue ends. Because if Mark Russell fails this character he created before this issue is over and I have to face reality after snot crying about a fictional person, I'm going to be pretty upset when I continue to buy Mark Russell comic books because what other choice do I have? Am I going to stop reading DC's best written comic books because Mark Russell betrayed poor Repulso? Of course not! What am I? A person with integrity?! Repulso winds up getting his ass beat by rioters as Repulso's handlers flee the chaotic "end of the world" downtown riot scene. Luckily the Wonder Twins are headed downtown to save his life and maybe become his friend or something? Please? After Zan and Jayna save Repulso, Jayna goes to Superman to tell him everything sucks. He gives her a big speech about how being a hero is lonely work because you don't always get to fuck the hot chick at your secret identity's workplace and also fuck an Amazon warrior while also getting to fuck anybody at all whose initials are "L.L." and also have a best friend who is the coolest guy in the world with a butler who makes the best pancakes. Sometimes you're a fat jerk who smells who even Superman won't fucking give the time of day because Superman has this speech about how being a hero is lonely and that's a good thing so you should embrace your loneliness because who wants to put up with your super stink, fatty?

Jayna is a way better hero than Superman. At least in this comic book that's all about her and not Superman so of course she's going to outshine him!

Oh yeah, the ant in the above picture is Jayna. It can't smell. Wonder Twins #7 Rating: A+. I should probably be less cynical when reading Mark Russell comic books because he's as earnest and serious as he can be while also providing lots of jokes. He takes writing seriously because what else is there? If your message isn't going to matter, why bother? (is his philosophy. I think. It's not my philosophy! I don't think? Maybe it is! I just write things that matter in a much different way than Mark Russell writes things that matter.) I should probably read Superman's speech and be inspired by the idea that you don't do good because you want adulation; you do good because it's the right thing to do, even if the entire world thinks you're an asshole for doing it. Even if all of the other superheroes think you're a stinky fuck and only keep you around to use as a tool to oppress and manipulate the masses without having to use logic and reason on them (because, let's face it, the people doing terrible things don't understand logic and reason. Or they're do but they're just selfish and greedy so nothing is going to reach them anyway (which maybe is part of Superman's message?)), you're still a hero at the end of the day. You can still be proud of your stinky self. And even if the life is lonely, you should remain positive and upbeat because Superman really doesn't want to be reminded that you exist every time you complain about the lack of reasonable living conditions. Being a hero is a state of mind, says the guy who also looks great and is invulnerable and has the best wife and a cool son and doesn't have to fear death! So inspiring!

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

This month, American unemployment dropped to its lowest rate in seventeen years — but wages haven’t caught up. It’s not difficult to divine the meaning of this disparity. Productivity has soared since the seventies, as has the wealth of the top 1 percent, while the income of average workers has stalled out. That means that despite producing more surplus value than ever, American workers are taking home a smaller share of the proceeds. The trend is not driven simply by abstract economic forces but by politics, as the capitalist class successfully pushes for policies that disempower workers and redistribute wealth to the top.

It’s no coincidence that this trend in wage stagnation has occurred over the same period that neoliberal government and corporate policies have frontally attacked unions. Unions are agents of collective bargaining, a way for individually weak workers to exert power together that they wouldn’t have on their own, and they’re effective: on average union employees’ paychecks (or market wages) are 27 percent higher than nonunion employees, and they get better benefits (or social wages) too. The bipartisan neoliberal attack on unions, which began in earnest in the 1970s, has been enormously effective in undermining the power of the United States labor movement. As a result, the percentage of US workers who currently belong to a union is about 10 percent, down from its peak of nearly 28 percent in 1970.

Again this problem is fundamentally political, stemming from the balance of power in our society and not from a natural or inevitable economic process. The solution, too, has to be political — and it’s in that spirit that Bernie Sanders has introduced a new bill called the Workplace Democracy Act, which aims to clear obstacles to the labor movement’s growth, and ultimately increase collective worker control over the economy. The chances of such a bill passing in a GOP-controlled legislature (or even in a Democrat-controlled legislature; a weaker bill was opposed by moderate Democrats during the Obama administration) are basically nil, but Sanders’s bill is a strong political move anyway. It signals an uncompromising commitment to unions and invites other politicians to support an ambitious vision of a revitalized movement for worker power — or oppose that vision at their own risk.

The Workplace Democracy Act makes three crucial interventions. First, it would overturn a provision in the 1947 Taft-Hartley law that replaced card check — a system where employers have to recognize a union if more than 50 percent of employees in a particular bargaining unit say they want one — with an elaborate secret-ballot election process overseen by the National Labor Relations Board. The election process is extremely vulnerable to corporate interference and delay, with big companies often hiring expensive consultants to run protracted anti-union campaigns that use scare tactics and disingenuous smears to dissuade workers out of voting for a union — as well as outright harassment and intimidation. As Sanders writes in his summary of the bill: “92 percent of private-sector employers force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.” A national card check system would allow workers to unionize by simple majority, avoiding the messy electioneering process that’s tilted in favor of employers, who inevitably have more resources.

Second, Sanders’s bill would repeal so-called “right to work.” Also a legacy of the Taft-Hartley Act, right to work prevents unions from negotiating contracts with employers that require all employees to join or pay a bargaining fee to the union. Martin Luther King, Jr recognized right to work for what it is: “It is an anti-union law. Its purpose is to destroy the labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which the unions have improved the wages and working conditions of everyone,” he wrote. “It is a whip to preserve the sharecropper wages and poverty system that has been used to ‘keep working people in their place’ for so many years.” A majority of states now have right-to-work laws, many enacted in just the last decade. Unsurprisingly, right-to-work states also have chronically low wages.

Third, according to some reports, Sanders will seek to increase financial penalties on employers who fire workers for union organizing, a practice that is illegal but ubiquitous, due in part to the lack of consequences. The Center for Economic and Policy Research estimates that “one-in-five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign.” The share of union drives that saw illegal firings of workplace activists rose steadily from the mid-seventies to the mid-2000s. The paper’s authors note that employers “are unlikely to fire workers randomly, or simply for expressing pro-union views. Employers maximize the return to illegal firing by focusing on union activists.” The result is a climate of fear and a chilling effect on union activism, especially organic leadership among the rank-and-file, who are the least likely to take risks regarding their job security. Corporations are not currently forced to pay penalties when they’re caught retaliating against labor activists — all they need to do is make up lost income, which is not sufficient to distance them from the practice.

(Continue Reading)

[patriotsnet]

When Did The Democrats And Republicans Switch Platforms

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/when-did-the-democrats-and-republicans-switch-platforms/

When Did The Democrats And Republicans Switch Platforms

Why Did Parties Switch Platforms And Members

Why Did the Democratic and Republican Parties Switch Platforms?

The common thread of each major switch, aside from war, was civil rights. Or maybe we could more fairly say, state-enforced social and economic justice versus individual liberty;as is illustrated by;the charts on this page.

Civil rights aside, since before the first party was formed, our founding fathers have fought each other tooth and nail over the direction of the country. The biggest issues have been:;big business versus small business, big government;versus small government , big government versus small government , whether or not to have;a central bank, and;how much;local and foreign credit and debt was the right amount.

We can see how some of the above;values are consistent for a given quadrant of the political sphere, but not for a specific party in a two party system or even a faction or member of a party at a given time!;We can also see how specific groups have shifted their interpretation of these things over time, and how some groups simply pay lip-service to the overarching ideals.

The;planks and platforms of each opposing group have;changed over time, as specific stances on these issues were taken, and as public opinion changed with the times.

Y Switching In The United States

e

In the politics of the United States, party switching is any change in party affiliation of a partisan public figure, usually one who is currently holding elected office. Use of the term “party switch” can also connote a transfer of holding power in an elected governmental body from one party to another.

Better Understanding The Changes In American Politics

Above we summarized the switching of ideologies and platforms;between the parties by looking at the party systems and Presidents.

Below we explore;details, clarify semantics, answer questions, present curated videos, and illustrate some of the key telling moments regarding the changes described above.

Please consider sharing your insight below, our summing up of the history of American politics is an ongoing effort, see the videos for supplemental content from other authors.

For deeper reading:

Also, see a breakdown of each party and President and how they would be placed on the left and right.

You May Like: Republican Candidates For President

A General Summary Of The Party Switching And Party Systems

Above I offered summaries in the for of bullet; pointed lists. Below Ill try to weave everything together into a story to offer another perspective:

As America became increasingly progressive over time, from 1776 forward, different socially conservative and socially liberal movements banded together to create the parties of each of the 6-7;Party Systems;.

This caused different;social-minded factions to align with different business-minded factions over time , and this changed the parties .

Oddly enough, this resulted in the previously Small Government Populist Democratic Party becoming the party of Big Government, Neoliberalism, Progressivism, Globalization, and Social Liberalism, and the previously Big Government Aristocratic party Republican Party becoming the party of;Small Government , Nativism, and Social Conservatism. Oddly again, despite the changes the Republicans have always been Protectionist, Nationalist, and Stricter on immigration . On that note, it is very important to understand that immigration changed the Democratic Party as they embraced new non-Anglo Protestant immigrants over time.

The tricky thing to grasp is that some conservatives want to conserve back to a time that they feel they had more freedom and that progressive social liberalism requires Big Government to implement.

How the Republican Party went from Lincoln to Trump.

The Fifth Party System And The The New Deal And Conservative Coalitions

Now that we have clearly illustrated the above factions and ideologies, we can move on to the last round of changes which happened from roughly the 1930s, to WWII, to the 1960s, to the 1990s as the FDR supporting Progressive Social Liberal New Deal Coalition faced off against the Socially Conservative anti-New Deal Conservative Coalition .

From the 1930s to the 1990s, from Hoover to Goldwater, to Nixon, to Reagan, to Bush, the Conservative Coalition;drew southern solid southDixiecrat conservative Democrats out of the Democratic Party via their southern strategy. By the 1990s, this resulted in the modern American social conservative and sometimes classical liberal;Republican party. Likewise,;the New Deal coalition,;which opposed the conservative coalition, drew progressives into the Democratic Party and out of the Republican party under FDRs New Deal, LBJs Great Society program, and Clintons New Democrats. This resulted in;the modern American social liberal, and thus necessarily traditionally classically conservative in terms of authority;party during the same time.

Although the tension between these two factions starts in the 1930s with the New Deal, it comes to a boiling point over issues like States Rights, the Second Red Scare, and;Brown v. the Board of Education following WWII in the late 40s and 50s.

We have undertaken a new order of things; yet we progress to it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American Constitution. FDR

Also Check: William Oberndorf Net Worth

President Truman Integrates The Troops: 1948

Fast forward about sixty shitty years. Black people are still living in segregation under Jim Crow. Nonetheless, African Americans agree to serve in World War II.

At wars end, President Harry Truman, a Democrat, used an Executive Order to integrate the troops.

These racist Southern Democrats got so mad that their chief goblin, Senator Strom Thurmond, decided to run for President against Truman. They called themselves the Dixiecrats.

Of course, he lost. Thurmond remained a Democrat until 1964. He continued to oppose civil rights as a Democrat. He gave the longest filibuster in Senate history speaking for 24 hours against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

Choosing Who To Vote For

Douglas was right. As citizens we must vote righteously. And by the way, this first assumes that we are voting. This responsibility to vote and to vote righteously has been made clear from generation to generation.

Once such a voice heralding this responsibility was that of Charles Finney. Finney was a famous American revivalist, a leader in the American revival movement called the Second Great Awakening.

He was also the president of a college that even decades before the Civil War admitted both black and white students as equals. In fact, the students from the college where Reverend Finney was president not only became some of the most active conductors of the underground railroad but also started several of Americas black colleges and universities.

Reverend Finney wisely admonished, The time has come that Christians must vote for honest men and take consistent ground in politics. Christians have been exceedingly guilty in this manner but the time has come when they must act differently. Christians seem to act as if they think God does not see what they do in politics but I tell you, he does see it. And he will bless or curse this nation according to the course Christians take in politics.

Recommended Reading: Why Do Republicans Want To Get Rid Of The Epa

Hold Firmly To Righteousness

Leaders for generations have wisely recognized that the quality of our government depends more upon the quality and character of our leaders than about any other factor. And they also understood that we were responsible for choosing leaders of character and righteousness. Just as Frederick Douglass reminded voters of this truth based on Proverbs 14:34, so too did the Rev. Francis Grimke.

Francis Grimke was born to a slave mother in 1850 in South Carolina and served as a valet in the Confederate army until Emancipation. After the war he attended Lincoln University, Howard University, and Princeton Theological Seminary, then became minister of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., the same church earlier pastored by the Reverend Henry Allen Garnett.

Grimke was also one of the forces behind the formation of the NAACP. And in a sermon delivered on Sunday, March 7, 1909, Reverend Grimke admonished his hearers on their civic responsibilities based on Gods righteousness.

The Claim: The Democratic Party Started The Civil War To Preserve Slavery And Later The Kkk

Did the Republicans and Democrats switch Platforms?

As America marks a month of protests against systemic racism and many people;draw comparisons between current events and the;Civil Rights Movement, an oversimplified trope about the Democratic Partys racist past has been resurrected;online.

Friendly reminder that if you support the Democrat Party, you support the party that founded the KKK and start a civil war to keep their slaves, claims an;image of a tweet;Instagram user @snowflake.tears shared June 19.

Many Instagram users read between the lines for the tweets implication about the modern Democratic and Republican parties. Some argued this past action discredited current liberal policies, while others said it did not matter.

Historians agree that although factions of the Democratic Party did majorly contribute to the Civil Wars start and the KKKs founding, it is inaccurate to say the party is;responsible for either.

Read Also: How Many Seats Do Republicans Need To Keep The House

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The Fourth Party Progressive Era

The aptly named;Progressive Era or;Fourth Party System;can then be understood best by examining the events leading up to the;1912 elections. Here we can compare;the;northeastern social liberal Republican Teddy Roosevelts New Nationalism plan; to;Woodrow;Wilsons progressive southern Democrat mixed-market;New Freedom plan;.

Ending the;progressive era in the 1920s, with Teddys progressives now largely absent from the Republican party, we we can see a changing Republican party under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover . The changes can be seen both in their favoring of classical liberal Cleveland-like Gilded Age economics to big government social justice, and in;their related reaction to;the Red Scare;which had resulted in anti-Communism becoming;a major voting issue for a growing base of Republican conservatives;in post-WWI and;Prohibition era;America.

Notable American Politicians Who Switched Parties

When a prominent public figure switches parties today, it becomes a national affair. In most cases, renowned;people switched political parties before becoming famous.

Party switch became more frequent after the Republicans displaced the Whigs in 1856.; Here are ten politicians;that switched political parties at some point in their lives.

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The Tension Between Rural Regions And City Regions Is As Old As The Federalists And Anti

With the above covered,;there is a reason the Northern Coasts and Cities are in one party and the Rural South and Mid-West are;in the other party in almost any era , with this being;true even when the parties switch.

This;is because a;major divide is between the political, economic, and social interests of rural regions;and citied regions .

Learn more about How the Tension Between City Interests and Rural Interests Affects Politics, not just on a national level, but on a state and regional level;too .

The better you understand this tension, the better youll understand that age-old Federalists / Anti-Federalist, Republican / Democrat, or North / South split in any era .

We are all Democrats, we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists, and we all love liberty.

We are all Americans.

We simply;disagree on specifics , and thus we form factions and voting blocs around those differences .

The changing factions responding to newly arising voter issues is;the main thing that changed the parties.

Still, not everything changed . That is explained in excessive detail below.

Now that you know about the rural vs. city split, and the big changes like those of Lincolns time, those of Teddys time, and the shifting Solid South ,;take a look at the;time-lapse video below which shows the U.S. Presidential election results map, both by state and by county, from 1789 to 2016.

History Of The Democratic And Republican Parties

The Democratic Party was founded in 1828, while the Republican Party was founded in 1854.;

;You can trace the historical backgrounds of these two parties back to their Founding Fathers.

The United States founding fathers had different political beliefs. The contrasting political views eventually led to the formation of two parties.;

The political view of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams was to have a powerful government. Therefore, they wanted a government with a national bank and a central banking system. Hence, their unique banking system ideas birthed the Federalists party.;

In contrast, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had different political ideologies. They wanted a political system where they can advocate for a minimal, more decentralized approach. With their decentralized government views, they founded the Democratic-Republicans party.

Also Check: What If The Republicans Win Everything Again

James A Haught Says Teddy Roosevelt Was The Last Republican Liberal And Was Shifting By The Time His Democratic Nephew

Strangely, over a century, America’s two major political parties gradually reversed identities, like the magnetic poles of Planet Earth switching direction.

When the Republican Party was formed in 1856, it was fiercely liberal, opposing the expansion of slavery, calling for more spending on public education, seeking more open immigration and the like. Compassionate Abraham Lincoln suited the new party’s progressive agenda.

In that era, Democrats were conservatives, partly dominated by the slave-holding South. Those old-style Democrats generally opposed any government action to create jobs or help underdogs.

Through the latter half of the 19th century, the pattern of Republicans as liberals, Democrats as conservatives, generally held true. In 1888, the GOP elected President Benjamin Harrison on a liberal platform seeking more social services.

Then in 1896, a reversal began when Democrats nominated populist firebrand William Jennings Bryan , “the Great Commoner.”

“He was the first liberal to win the Democratic Party presidential nomination,” political scholar Rich Rubino wrote. “This represented a radical departure from the conservative roots of the Democratic Party.”

The Progressive platform attacked big-money influence in politics, vowing “to destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics.”

Did The American Political Parties Switch Clarifying The Semantics

People often ask,;did the American political parties switch?, but this question is semantically wrong, and thus we should address it before moving on.

People can switch parties;.

Parties can switch general platforms and ideologies .

Voters can switch parties .

However,;the parties themselves only switch when they hang-up their hat to become a new party;.

Where US Politics Came From: Crash Course US History #9. This is one of many videos from CrashCourse. American history is long and complex; if you want to really understand things, I suggest watching the CrashCourse series on U.S. politics.

Recommended Reading: Why Do Republicans Want To Impeach Obama

An Overview Of The Platform Switching By Party System And President From The Founders To Eisenhower

The First and Second Party Systems included some important changes and debates. Examples included the argument;over the Federalist favored Constitution, and the Anti-Federalist favored Articles of Confederation;and Bill of Rights;and debates over slavery, modernization, and;banking.;Major;changes began;at the end of the Second Party System.

The Second Party system ended with the;Whig Party dissolving;in 1854. They were critically divided by the;Kansas-Nebraska Act;and the related debate over;manifest destiny and popular sovereignty;. The heated battle;over whether;Kansas should be a slave state, and the debate over whether the south could keep expanding southward creating slave states,;resulted in the country being split.;This had happened in the Mexican-American war.;One;faction became the Northern Republicans and their;allies the Union, who wanted to hold together the Union under a strong central government. The other became the Southern ex-Democrats and their allies the Confederacy, who wanted independence;and wanted to expand southward, to for instance Cuba, creating new slave states. By the time;Lincoln took;office in 1861, the division was inescapable

FACT: The tension was so great the Democratic party ceased to exist from 1861 1865 as the Confederacy rejected the;concept of party systems; which is why we refer to;them ex-Democrats above.

The Bottom Line On The Party Switch

DID THE REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC PARTIES SWITCH PLATFORMS?

The parties changed over time as platform planks, party leaders, factions, and voter bases essentially switched between parties.

Third parties aside, the Democratic Party used to be favored in the rural south and had a small government platform , and the Republican party used to be favored in the citied north and had a big government platform .

You can see evidence of it by looking at;the electoral map over time;. Or, you can see it by comparing which congressional seats were controlled by which parties over time . Or, you can see the big switch specifically by looking at the electoral map of the solid south over time. Or, you can dig through;the historic party platforms.

With that in mind, we can sum up the history of the switches that created the modern party system as:

The old southern conservative Democrats, a big faction of voters called the solid south who were in Jeffersons anti-Federalist coalition, have essentially today changed parties and teamed up with the old Republican party of Lincoln .

Meanwhile, Teddys progressive faction essentially switched as well starting after Teddys run as a Bull Moose in 1912.

Generally then, the Democratic party started moving toward progressivism and the Republican party starting shifting more toward the conservative right from Harding forward, and this in turn changed the parties .

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Looking To The Classics And Factions For Proof

One good and not-so-divisive way to explain history is to look at the classics, especially those who focus on state-based political factions over political parties.

Classic works of this sort of political history, like V.O. Keys Southern Politics in State and Nation , make it very clear that the Solid South had historically always voted lock-step for the Democratic Party . Of course, the voting map over time, actual recorded history, and so much else tell this story too, but a well respected book like this is a great secondary source!

Today the Solid South is with the Republican Party and today old Socially Progressive Republicans like Teddy arent in the party .

This isnt to say that some of the more progressive Dixies, Bryan followers, and even economically minded Southern;Bourbons arent in the Democratic Party, they obviously are, just look at Carter, Clinton, Gore, and Bernie .

Likewise, the GOP have their constants. The;conservative Federalist pro-business faction, the neocons be they switched Bourbons, Gilded Age post-Reconstruction Republicans, or traditional Federalists, and the Federalist War Hawks are still in the Republican Party, as are the nativists;of the north Know-Nothings.

However, despite what didnt change, a ton did, including the party platforms, key factions, and a large swath of the voter base.

Modern Democrats know this well, they lost the 2016;election and didnt get one state in the Southern Bloc for Hillary .

[ramrodd]

What do you think of the following statement:  If Trump said chickens could plow they would be out in the field hitching them up?

COMMENTARY:

Of course, they’d hitch up the hens and put the rooster in the lead position and tell’em “Giddy-UP” and gee and haw their way around their trailer park flower beds until the chickens either learnet to enjoy plowing in trace or dropped dead.

You are dealing with really stupid people who have the right to vote because they have birth cirtificates that assures the republican authorities that they are eligible by species to vote. And the really clever pick of the litter in every generation Newt Gingrich has gone out of his way to recruit as glorified telemarketers elected to promote Steve Bannon’s Free Market Fascism and to blow up America like John Galt and/or Earl Turner. These are the same stupid people who put their hearts and souls into the southern rebellion led by the same greedy people who were making too much money from slavery to kick the habit. They are still running things in all the Red States as Jeff Davis in Richmond VA.

There is no question in my mind that Trump said exactly what he said about the military. He is typical of the Copperhead wing of the GOP. They really don’t belong to anybody except as honary members of Galt’s Gang, alleged libertarians who devise a personal system of values based on an infinitely small point of law or western ethics that justifiees their avarice, selfishness and, in the case of the Copperheads, political treachery. These are the people Newt Gingrich recruited as pawns in his political strategy to make him Speaker of the House and, currently, to re-elect Trump.

Every Republican but Mitt Romney in Congress falls into this category. Tim Scott is like J.C. Watts, Herman Caine, Ben Carson and Clarence Thomas, an equal opportunity bigot and actually belongs in the adult leadership of the GOP with Mitt Romney: they are authentic Conservatives in close to the Juan Williams mold of Conservative: Juan Williams has always been a BLM Conservative, which is why the Koch bothers threatened to withhold their grants to PBS unless Diane Rehm fired his ass from WAMU for being uppity.

In Indiana, when I was growing up, there were Lugar-Will Rogers Repubicans and Lee Hamilton-Walter Ruether Democrats and Dan Burton-Henry Cabot Lodge-KKK-Copperheads, the people who vetoed the League of Nations and largely had other priorites than military service during WWII, which might have been avoided if the League of Nations had been ratified. Dan Burton Copperheads are all in for the Military Industrial Complex and, like Marxist, consider lethal conflict to be a natural feature of capitalism. They all believe, like Trump, that people are suckers and losers to enlist in the US military and that a military career is like being a counselor in a summer camp that you do before you grow up and get a real job.

And that’s who Newty recruited to fill up the Republican Study Group and the House Freedom Caucus in order to advance his agenda of political treason and economic coup. Gingrich’s axiomatic discription of his political strategy, “Politics is the continuation of war” is Trotsky’s formular for violent revolution he, Trotsky, was teaching in Mexico when he was killed. Castro’s Cuba was one legacy of Trotsky’s evangelism and Newty has been using this formula to gain power since he went into poltics during the 70s.

Newty claims he adopted the political strategy of the anti-war movement, which is partially true, as the model for his political strategy. Newty and I are both Army brats and, at the time we were growing up, Counter-Insurgency was the sexy career path for West Point graduates, especially before JKF was killed. I had read Petreaus’s core bibliography for his CO-IN manual before I graduated from high school and I had a ring side seat to the cultural revolution on campus without belonging to either the liberal fascism of the anti-war draft dodgers or the conservative fascism of the pro-war draft dodgers (who were, essentially, the rising generation of Dan Burton Copperheads).

And they are all, basically, the paradox of the very clever and dumber than a box of rocks small town white businessman and/or politician. Like Mike Pence. People who avoided the draft during the 60s and were the corporate gate keepers when combat vets came looking for work after killing the Viet Cong for Christ.

Their attitude, the people Newty recurited, was that, if you were too stupid to avoid military service, it didn’t make much sense to put you on the pay roll unless you were a rabid ammosexual and/or a Tom Cotton wannabe (Tom Cotton isn’t anything new, either: I was scared out of a military career by a senior officer my dad’s age and rank with the same crypto-Nazi cognitive organization as Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo and represent another catogory of Conservative Copperhead.

Trump is just like all these guys. As I say, they are a paradox: they usually have very strong practical talents in business and management and not necessarily authoritarian, but their horizons generally stop at the end of their peckers in predictable ways. Trump’s attitude about the military is one typical variation. They didn’t want to be held accountable by the League of Nations and they were perfectly happy becoming filthy rich and locally powerful from equiping the sacrifice of American citizen soldiers and feeling nobel in the process: the Arsenal of Democracy and all the rest. Trump really believes he’s a patriot in spite of the fact that he committed treason with his Moscow partners in the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant to get elected and hopes to do it again.

Putin has nothing to do with it. For Trump, business is business and treason is just another tool in his lie, cheat and steal “Art of the Deal” crime family business model. And, by and large, the Dan Burton Copperheads don’t have any problem with the practice: it’s nothing personal, Uncle Sam: it’s just business.

And all these Dan Burton Copperheads are the people who supply the harnesses for chicken plowing, partially because they don’t know any better, themselves, but recognize an emerging market when it surfaces.

For various reasons, the military has been content to allow themselves to be pulled around by their collective peckers by these people, the Dan Burton Copperheads, because they, the military, sustain the misapprehension that what “Honor” means to them means the same to crime family businessmen, like Don Corleone. And it doesn’t. And they, the active military, have been voting for Don Corleone “Honor” since at least the Democrats failed to finance the last death throes of the Republic of Vietnam on basically they same justification that Moscow Mitch is holding up Speaker Pelois’s $3.5 trillion capital budget for stopping COVID-19 in its tracks in 90 days and bringing the Green New Deal up to speed in 18 months.

Because, in the final analysis, as clever as the Dan Burton Copperheads like Moscow Mitch are in running a family bucket shop, they are dumber than dog shit when it comes to plowing with chickens.

[filipfatalattractionrblog]

First off: Donald Trump is a moron. No matter how much time and effort pundits and democratic party officials try to gin him up as some conniving mastermind so they can convince themselves their candidate didn’t get beaten by a man who thinks health insurance is dirt cheap because he sees life insurance for babies advertised on Fox News, he is an ignorant dipshit of the highest order. His attention span is nil and his ideas can be changed by whoever talked to him last, or whoever just butters him up enough to play to his ego. He is not a clever man, or a consistent one. He’ll say anything, then change it in the next minute. The few things he sticks consistently to are his ego, his bigotry, and his predatorial behavior towards women. Steve, on the other hand, is portrayed as a very clever man. Not just historically as Captain America, but here in the modern Secret Empire arc and everything leading up to it. How he plays people against each other, manipulates connections and government power to get what he wants, putting together all sorts of tricky plots to end up deposing the Red Skull and also taking over America. The way Donald Trump rose to power was heavily pinned on old fashioned bigotry. Not just his personal bigotry either, which he’d use to fire up overt and latent racists, but how the GOP has spent decades suppressing minority vote, especially black vote. And when keeping them from getting to the ballot isn’t enough, just straight up purging votes, or them ending up getting ‘lost’. Manipulation of the right to vote itself, and also, fostering state level power via gerrymandering and more, continuing to play to bigoted ends, to prop up their own power and also continue to use racism and other forms of bigotry to solidify their base. We did not put some too-clever-for-us genius in power. We elected a short-sighted moron who was willing to tear all the dogwhistles off on standard southern strategy GOP campaign racism, whose power was solidified from a local to national level with a GOP who stand behind his actual policies and decisions 100 percent even if they may dislike how erratic he is as a person. Which leads nicely into the next way Steve is a poor fit as a representative for Trump: Steve isn’t racist. Steve isn’t even secretly racist, as Spencer will tell us over and over again, and that Hydra is actually the wokest fascists in the world and more socially progressive than the standard democrat. Steve is so much not-a-racist that even while using Inhumans being shoved into concentration camps as minority metaphors, and mutants being exiled to their own nation as another set of minority metaphors, none of the writing will take the leap to say that Steve is bigoted against these minority metaphors. Even while using them as symbols of the damage bigotry does, Steve himself, fascist in charge of it all, gets to stay clean, gets to be “I don’t personally have anything against mutants and Inhumans…” Trump, on the other hand, is a racist in the extreme. Not a secret racist, not a dogwhistle “welfare queens” and “urban youth” racist, he is very publicly a racist. He has been for decades. He called for the death of the Central Park 5, even took out ads for it, no matter how thoroughly their innocence was proven. He got a federal investigation into the fact that he wouldn’t allow properties to be rented out to black people. Before he started his 2016 campaign, he had spent years and years railing against Obama, calling for his birth certificate, believing and inflaming a racist conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t an actual American citizen. A racist conspiracy theory that even “mainstream” GOP members found themselves having trouble explicitly denouncing. He kicks off his campaign early calling Mexicans rapists and criminals. He casually puts out the idea of Muslims having to be registered in America. And that’s not even getting into his sexism, either, which modern Steve Rogers would be painted as being totally devoid of. Trump preys on women, talks about them like objects, sexually assaults them, and when one of them infuriates him, his misogyny is constant, even against conservatives who would be believed to be on his “side”. And even all that wasn’t enough to stop him from getting the majority of the white women vote, which shows a hell of a lot of the power of explicit racism. The stunning reality of how much people will tolerate or even cheer for. Then there’s the fact that while both Hydra Steve and Trump are fascists, Steve was a secret fascist the whole time, and Trump was very much publicly so. So much so that there was whole debates on “should we call him a fascist?” while the campaign was still going, and if there was any foolish doubt left before he got elected, the time inbetween certainly removed it. America did not elect someone who hid his true, fascist intentions, relying on their belief in him as a good, moral, and certainly not bigoted man; we elected someone who publicly called for reporters and protesters to be assaulted, that said he’d pay for the legal troubles of anyone who beat up people at his campaign stops he didn’t like. We elected someone whose racist behavior was publicly documented daily and decades ago in legal courts. We elected someone who talked about registering Muslims, who talked about building a wall to block out Mexico and forcing them to pay for it to boot. We elected someone who did absolutely nothing to hide his beliefs, or his intentions. He shouted them out, and loved the attention it got him. He did not go through backdoors, and he did not use socially acceptable dogwhistles the way types like Paul Ryan might have. He just threw it all out in the open. He was what he showed us to be. He called for his own opponent to be thrown in jail while he was campaigning. His fascism was naked. Which leaves the other thing. Steve wasn’t elected, he was appointed. The way Trump takes power is far more banal than Steve’s byzantine plot and use of Hydra soldiers to take the country by force. Trump was elected, and despite the fact that yes, there was meddling from various Russian interests, that cannot, and does not, explain the whole situation. If GOP hadn’t been suppressing black vote year after year after year, this wouldn’t have been a contest. You can blame hacking on political interests from another country, but you’re going to have a hell of a time trying to blame GOP racism which has been in action for longer than I’ve been alive on Russia. Trump didn’t need soldiers on the ground either, though there was plenty of random racist civilians trying to intimidate people at voting booths. People tend to imagine fascism can only come into power by sheer military force, but here it is, through vote suppression of various flavors, through rallying of bigoted interests all across America, from a fucking presidential campaign that was allowed to do whatever the hell it liked, and given infinite coverage by networks because it was too good for their ratings. Hell, even extends to social networks like twitter, which could’ve cut off his influence forever ago because of his racist and abusive comments breaking the TOS, but twitter never wants to rock the boat there, and is constantly scared of ‘losing’ users, no matter how much people like Trump and his followers drive others off. There are people who actively collaborated in Trump’s win, and there are people and corps who enabled it, and there’s even liberals like Spencer who tsk-tsked protesters who shut down a Trump rally because it was “bad optics” and “giving Trump what he wants”, instead insisting on some meaningless silent protest that would’ve been ignored by CNN anyway. It’s not hard, either - news networks ignored the massive anti-war rallies when Bush was pushing it. Whether protesters did anything or not, Trump was still getting that media attention, cuz media wanted to give it to him. Trump didn’t need a bunch of costumed goons with guns to take America for him. All he needed was the fact that America can and does vote for racist fascists, and even supposed liberal, progressive people and groups will sit back and let him do and say what he likes because they fear disrupting order and comfort more than they fear the damage of what Trump and his followers were doing and still are. If you wanted to tell a story about American style fascism, you’d be better off talking about elections and how much bullshit America is actually willing to tolerate, or even enthusiastically vote for. Hell, you can look back at the original Secret Empire. The guy in charge of that entire plot was already in office. America doesn’t need to be tricked into fascism, we vote for it. We vote for it regularly, and often, enthusiastically. In all these ways, Steve Rogers is a terrible fit as an analog for Trump. But the racism, the bigotry, sticks out a lot. Intentionally avoiding grappling with bigotry in Steve Rogers’ Hydra, his ascent to power, and his rule over America means what you have to say about America? About American fascism? About fascism at all? Is fundamentally dishonest. It omits some of the most important things. You cannot have effective fascism without bigotry of some form. It just doesn’t happen. No bigotry? You’re not taking the throne, that’s for sure. If Trump wasn’t as racist as he was? If Trump was, in some bizarre alternate universe, not racist at all the same way Steve is portrayed as? He never would’ve stood a chance at getting elected.He would’ve never been allowed to get anywhere near power in America. His racism did not fell him, it empowered him, because we, as a country, are racist as hell. Our history is racist, our government is racist, our present reality is racist.

Colin Spacetwinks, Comics and Cowardice

[loudlytransparenttrash]

Not gonna lie... I'm scared of sjw. I got some in my school, and they're pretty crazy. So the question is, do I keep silent or do I stand up and say something?

Hi :) You’re right, they can be terrifying, not so much physically but their morals and ideals are fucking haunting. Remaining silent is the last thing you want to do, this is giving them a victory, one they go to the most extreme lengths to achieve. If there is a time to start speaking out and to send a broomstick through their bullshit, it’s now. 

A turning point is underway in the battle over American universities. The social justice politics are losing both the argument and they’re losing their sympathizers. Dismayed by their wild-eyed radicalism and anti-intellectual demands, college faculties, administrators, and much of the media are turning their backs on the regressives. 

These left-wing morons have been running rampant on college campuses for years. In 2014, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) found that the number of speakers being disinvited on campus, prompted by the allegedly “offensive” views of a visiting speaker, had more than tripled over ten years. And if the speakers aren’t disinvited? Well this happens, and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this perfectly sums up American campus debate. 

Activist crusades against cultural appropriation, sexism and racism have led to the banning of an eclectic range of items on campus, from Charlie Hebdo to mini-sombreros. Halloween costumes are banned, gender is banned, laws have been banned from being taught to law students, clapping is banned, the word ‘man’ is banned, statues are banned, burritos are banned, white bands are banned, plays are banned, innocent males are being banned for looking like a rapist, yoga is banned, student groups talking about men’s issues are banned, conservative student groups are banned, white men are banned. 

In one low point, student leaders at the University of Minnesota even blocked a proposed annual moment of remembrance for 9/11 on the grounds that it could promote “Islamophobia.” 

There is a shining light to all this craziness as you say though. Previously quick to take the side of students demanding “safety” from offensive speech, it now seems that colleges administrators have had enough.

The President of Oberlin, an infamously liberal college, recently rebuffed a list of demands from left-wing activists on campus, the University of Missouri has been uncompromising in its decision to fire radical assistant professor Melissa Click over her attempted physical intimidation of a student reporter, and a growing number of professors are now speaking out against the culture of safe spaces and censorship on campus.

Of course, these efforts feel a little like Pandora trying to close her box, campus faculties trying to contain campus crazies they themselves helped create. But it’s a start, we need to continue it. 

The campus crazies are still winning some victories, like Princeton and Harvard’s removal of the academic title “Master” over complaints that it conjured memories of slavery. But the flames of resistance are quickly flickering to life. Sympathizers of the left have become harder to find, while new opponents appear every day. After all, these kids manufacture a new enemy every time they decide that an “ally” isn’t ideologically pure enough for them. They are booting out people and waking people up much faster than they are able to recruit. They’re doing our job for us, they’re exposing themselves every time they become hysterical and censor, ban, scream and attack anything and anyone that poses a challenge. 

At the University of Rutgers, activists smeared red paint on their faces and chanted “Black Lives Matter” in an effort to disrupt the event. Similar events occurred at the University of Minnesota, where a Milo talk was interrupted by protesters wielding airhorns. The left-wing students came together afterwards in a therapy session to talk about how he made them feel “hurt” and “unsafe.” One student even reported being brought to tears by Milo’s presence. I’m not denying Milo can say some stupid shit, but come on, let’s not forget these are adults crying over words they disagree with. 

For the educational establishment, these emotionally incontinent reactions serve as further proof that the left is out of control. It is now almost impossible to deny that their activism on campus breeds a climate of intellectual and political intolerance, masked by manipulative paper-thin concern for mental health. As conservatives have been saying for some time, the left is made up of crybullies - seamlessly switching between aggressors and victims depending on the circumstances.

From another perspective, these universities are failing at their basic task of creating intellectually robust young people capable of rational thought, discourse and debate. If their entire world shatters when presented with opposing views, how will they survive the stress and daily challenges of the jobs market? Even burger-flippers have to occasionally handle rude customers. McDonalds won’t be installing a safe space for their employees anytime soon. So consider it a favor you’re doing them by challenging their deluded view of the world. 

You aren’t alone anymore. Faculties, professors and thousands of students seem to have realized that something has to change, and have cautiously used “controversial” speakers to challenge student activists for once. The same administrations that once embraced campus speech codes are now releasing robust statements defending free speech. The President of Rutgers University put out a statement defending the right of students to invite “offensive” speakers to campus, defending the “right to speak freely” as “fundamental to our university, our society, and our nation.” 

A senior faculty committee at the University of Minnesota the same campus that saw bans on Charlie Hebdo and 9/11 remembrances voted 7-2 in favour of a statement backing freedom of speech as the university’s “paramount value.”

DePaul University’s president Dennis H. Holtschneider condemned student protesters, saying “Yesterday’s speaker was invited to speak at DePaul, and those who interrupted the speech were wrong to do so. Universities welcome speakers, give their ideas a respectful hearing, and then respond with additional speech countering the ideas. I was ashamed for DePaul University when I saw a student rip the microphone from the hands of the conference moderator and wave it in the face of our speaker,” he wrote. He also apologized to College Republicans, writing that, “they deserved an opportunity to hear their speaker uninterrupted, and were denied it.” Sadly he was harassed and bullied by lefty professors and students until he apologized and resigned. Still, the initial fight for free speech was there. 

Many academics have realized the threat posed by the left to the intellectual life of American campuses is too great to ignore any longer. Even before the events of these controversial speakers, they were taking cautious steps to fight the left. For example, a growing number of colleges have embraced the Chicago Principles. Published by the University of Chicago in 2012, the principles call for discussion of “offensive” ideas, and affirm that “without a vibrant commitment to free and open inquiry, a university ceases to be a university.”

Even the most ardently left-wing academics are getting cold feet. A liberal professor came out to expose his own liberal students “terrified” him, and condemned a “simplistic, unworkable, and ultimately stifling conception of social justice” for the problem. 

Even Rani Neutill, who on paper represents the ideal academic of the regressive left - woman, feminist, ethnic minority, film studies lecturer - published an account of her disastrous run-ins with students’ demands for “trigger warnings” on potentially offensive content, which forced her to abandon a course on sex and cinema. “Colleges are the new helicopter parents, places where the quest for emotional safety and psychic healing leads not to learning, but regression” wrote Neutill. What hope is there for the left on campus, if they can’t even rely on a feminist film studies lecturer who writes for Salon?

Mainstream media is losing it’s coziness with social justice students too. While conservative media has always opposed activist antics on campus, now liberal publications are doing so as well. It was The Atlantic, a stalwart of the liberal establishment, that published Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s marathon analysis of the “coddling” of students in America, and it is no longer uncommon to see condemnations of student censorship in liberal publications like The Guardian, The New York Times and The Daily Beast.

Even Obama as an apologist for identity politics - most notably Black Lives Matter - turned against college activists. Speaking at an educational town hall event, he said: “I’ve heard of some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative, or they don’t want to read a book if it had language that is offensive to African Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. I’ve got to tell you, I don’t agree with that either - that when you become students at colleges, you have to be coddled and protected from different points of view.”

As for students themselves, the left no longer has a monopoly on campus activism. Their radicalism, unchecked for so many years, has led to a backlash from moderates, libertarians and conservatives on campus. They may be quieter than the social justice warriors, but they have shown in the past year that if they’re feeling brave enough to speak out, they far outnumber their left-wing counterparts. Both in physical numbers and in brain cells. 

There is a growing realization among all sides of the establishment that student censorship on campus has gone too far. Left-wing activists now face hostility from the left, the centre, and the right as well as the media. While their opponents have yet to agree on a plan of action against the campus left, there is now clear agreement that something must be done. From now the left is on the defensive so there’s no need to be afraid of them anymore, you asked me if you should stand up and say something - yes, you absolutely should. If you use cold hard facts, you will win every time. 

[joeygoespolitical]

Hillary Clinton Has Become The Biggest Loser Ever

Hillary Clinton has redefined what it means to be the biggest loser. 

The two-time presidential candidate had yet another sit-down since her shocking defeat in November and she reiterated her blame game. Yes, she said she “accepts personal responsibly”, but she went on to blame FBI Director James Comey for sending that letter to Congress, WikiLeaks for exposing dirty laundry from the DNC and Clinton Campaign chairman John Podesta, misogyny, and even blamed the media who she thought was “too soft” on Trump during the election. She insists that she was “on her way to winning” and had the election be held on October 27th, she’d be our president today. 

Her arrogance and frankly her derangement are mind-boggling.  

Whether it’s her or The New York Times, there is absolutely no way they can prove that any of those factors (Comey, WikiLeaks, etc.) changed the outcome of the election. Could they have? Maybe, but to say “Yes they did” is foolish and not based on any evidence. On the contrary, a recent ABC/Washington Post poll shows that if the election were held today, Trump would still beat Clinton... and win the popular vote (and this poll had Dems at a 7-point advantage). 

Never has a losing candidate tried so hard to stay in the public eye. Mitt Romney, John McCain, John Kerry, and Al Gore all disappeared after their defeats (McCain to a lesser extent because he’s a sitting senator) and rightfully so. After the country rejects you, you basically become irrelevant... unless of course you become Secretary of State. 

But because Hillary Clinton refuses to go away, let’s talk about all the things she refuses to acknowledge.  

Hillary Clinton refuses to acknowledge the reality that she was the establishment, status quo candidate in a change election. Donald Trump beat out over a dozen former and sitting senators and governors in the Republican primaries and a 74-year-old socialist by the name of Bernie Sanders was nipping at her heals during the Democratic primaries. After eight years of Obama, people wanted big change in this country and Hillary Clinton did not represent any change whatsoever. 

Hillary Clinton refuses to acknowledge her terrible record in office. Just looking at her time as Secretary of State alone. Despite crediting herself numerous times for the takedown of Osama Bin Laden during the debates, she was best known for her Russian “reset button”, the destabilizing of Libya, and her handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack. Honestly, can any of her supporters name a country the Obama administration had strengthen relations with besides Iran and Cuba? 

Hillary Clinton refuses to acknowledge that she wasn’t trustworthy. Aside from numerous ghosts of Clinton’s past (Whitewater, Travelgate, Benghazi, etc), it was her email scandal that epitomized her lack of trustworthiness. Looking back at her initial press conference she gave at the UN, she had repeatedly lied to the American people about her use of a private server while holding public office and before handing over her server to the FBI, she wiped it clean. To this day, many believe she had the private server to hide pay for play activity between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation. If that wasn’t trustworthy enough, she didn’t do any interviews for three whole months since announcing her presidential bid and she avoided press conferences for over 260 days. You may have disliked Trump as a candidate, but at least he didn’t hide from the media, who was largely hostile to him, whereas Clinton avoided the media, despite the reality that they wanted her to win!

Hillary Clinton refuses to acknowledge that she ran a terrible campaign. Her slogan was “I’m With Her”, which Trump strategically responded by saying “I’m with you, the American people.” She had no inspiring message (I’m sorry, but “Stronger Together” isn’t as inspiring as “Make America Great Again”). Her campaign was completely dependent on anti-Trump scare tactics and identity politics, not economic prosperity or national security. She kept flip-flopping on key positions. She relied too much on famous celebrities to draw big crowd. She believed her gender alone would motivate Americans to the voting booth. She called half of Trump supporters, in other words millions of Americans, a “basket of deplorables.” And during the election, she barely campaigned in Michigan and didn’t step one foot in Wisconsin, two states that went to Bernie Sanders in the primaries and that Trump won. 

Finally, Hillary Clinton refuses to acknowledge that she was the worst presidential candidate in US history. Put aside everything I just listed off, the fact that she lost to Donald Trump proves she was the absolute worst. 

Sadly, many Democrats are on the same wavelength as Hillary Clinton. They are in complete denial that their party had no message and that their candidate was extremely flawed. It’s easier for them to blame Comey and Russia instead.

If the Democratic Party wants to win elections again, they need to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton is poison. The more she tries to stay relevant, the firmer Trump’s support gets. She simply reminds Americans of how awful she is and how out of touch the Democratic Party has become. Now that she considers herself to be part of “the resistance,” it’d be best for Democrats to resist her.

[deniscollins]

From Cosmetics to NASCAR, Calls for Racial Justice Are Spreading

Estée Lauder announced donating $1 million to support racial and social justice organizations in response to the George Floyd tragedy. But employees pinpointed Mr. Lauder’s political donations to President rump as being in conflict with the company’s stance on race, particularly since the president has tweeted conspiracy theories about injured protesters, and described demonstrators as “THUGS.” If you were Mr. Lauder would you increase your donation to social justice groups to match your donations to President Trump: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

The reckonings have been swift and dizzying.

On Monday, it was the dictionary, with Merriam-Webster saying it was revising its entry on racism to illustrate the ways in which it “can be systemic.”

On Tuesday, the University of Washington removed the coach of its dance team after the only two black members of the group were cut. The two women were invited to return.

On Wednesday, after a black racecar driver called on NASCAR to ban the Confederate battle flag from its events, the organization did just that.

On Thursday, Nike joined a wave of American companies that have made Juneteenth, which celebrates the end of slavery in America, an official paid holiday, “to better commemorate and celebrate Black history and culture.”

And on Friday, ABC Entertainment named the franchise’s first black man to star in “The Bachelor” in the show’s 18-year history, acceding to longstanding demands from fans.

In just under three weeks since the killing of George Floyd set off widespread protests, what started as a renewed demand for police reform has now roiled seemingly every sphere of American life, prompting institutions and individuals around the country to confront enduring forms of racial discrimination.

Many black Americans have been inundated with testaments and queries from white friends about fighting racism. And anti-racist activists have watched with some amazement as powerful white leaders and corporations acknowledge concepts like “structural racism’’ and pledge to make sweeping changes in personal and institutional behavior.

But those who have been in the trenches for decades fighting racism in America wonder how lasting the soul searching will be.

The flood of corporate statements denouncing racism “feels like a series of mea culpas written by the press folks and run by the top black folks” inside each organization, said Dream Hampton, a writer and filmmaker. “Show us a picture of your C-suite, who is on your board. Then we can have a conversation about diversity, equity and inclusion.”

“Stop sending positive vibes,’’ begged Chad Sanders, a writer, in a recent New York Times Op-Ed, directing his white friends to instead help protect black protesters, donate to black politicians and funds fighting racial injustice, and urge others to do the same.

The protests have so far yielded some tangible changes in policing itself. On Friday, New York banned the use of chokeholds by law enforcement and repealed a law that kept police disciplinary records secret.

But their power is also cultural. A run on books about racism has reordered best-seller lists, driving titles like “How to Be an Antiracist’’ and “White Fragility’’ to the top. And language about American racial dynamics that was once the purview of academia and activism appears to have gone mainstream.

In a video released June 5 apologizing for the N.F.L.’s previous failure to support players who protested police violence, Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the league, condemned the “systematic oppression” of black people, a term used to convey that racism is embedded in the policies of public and private institutions. The Denver Board of Education, in voting to end its contract with the city police department for school resource officers, cited a desire to avoid the “perpetuation of the school-to-prison pipeline,” a reference to how school policies can lay the groundwork for the incarceration of young black Americans.

“One of the exhilarating things about this moment is that black people are articulating to the world that this isn’t just an issue of the state literally killing us, it’s also about psychic death,’’ said Jeremy O. Harris, a playwright whose “Slave Play” addresses the failure of white liberals to admit their complicity in America’s ongoing racial inequities.

He added, “It’s exhilarating because for the first time, in a macro sense, people are saying names and showing up and showing receipts.’’

Sensing a rare, and perhaps fleeting, opportunity to be heard, many black Americans are sharing painful stories on social media about racism and mistreatment in the workplace, accounts that some said they were too scared to disclose before. They are using hashtags like #BlackInTheIvory or #WeSeeYouWAT, referring to bias in academia and “White American Theater.”

The feeling of a dam breaking has drawn analogies to the fall and winter of 2017, when sexual abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein triggered a deluge of disturbing accounts from women and provoked frank conversations in which friends, colleagues and neighbors confessed to one another: I’ve suffered in that manner as well. Or: I now realize I have wronged someone, and I’d like to do better.

Though racism is hardly a secret, “a huge awakening is just the awareness of people who don’t face the headwinds,” said Drew Dixon, a music producer, activist and subject of the documentary “On the Record,” about her decision to come forward with rape allegations against the music producer Russell Simmons, which he has denied. “Many people had no idea what women deal with every single day, and I think many non-black people had no idea what black people deal with every day.”

A shift in the making

While the outpouring may seem sudden, there have been signs that perceptions on race were already in flux.

Opinion polls over the last decade have shown a self-reported turn by Democrats toward a more sympathetic view of black Americans, with more attributing disparities in areas like income and education to discrimination rather than personal failure. By 2018, white liberals said they felt more positively about blacks, Latinos and Asians than they did about whites.

The reason for the shift is unclear — and those attitudes have so far not translated into desegregated schools or neighborhoods — but may help explain the cascade of responses to Mr. Floyd’s killing.

The outpouring is also related to the horrific nature of Mr. Floyd’s death — a white police officer kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes — captured in a stark video at a moment of rising national frustration with the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown.

The protests still surging through the streets of America’s cities, said the civil rights movement scholar Aldon Morris, are “unprecedented in terms of the high levels of white participation in a movement targeting black oppression and grievances.”

Younger Americans are also much more racially diverse than earlier generations. They tend to have different views on race. And their imprint on society is only growing.

Brands trying to appeal to younger consumers have in recent years increasingly proclaimed their belief in equality and justice. Two years ago, Nike featured in a major ad campaign the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who knelt during the national anthem to protest racism. The tagline for MAC, the cosmetics company, is “All Ages, All Races, All Genders.”

In the wake of the Floyd protests, everyone from Wall Street C.E.O.s and the sportswear giant Adidas to the fruit snack Gushers and a company that sells stun guns put out statements of support of diversity, flooding Instagram with vague messages.

These prompted cries of hypocrisy from those who said the companies don’t practice the values they’re espousing.

At several companies, what employees saw as an inadequate response to Mr. Floyd’s death seemed to serve as a catalyst for a long-simmering contention over questions of racial equity. At Adidas, dozens of employees stopped working to attend daily protests outside the company’s North American headquarters in Portland, Ore.

The tumult has been especially fraught at Estée Lauder, the beauty giant, stemming from the political donations of Ronald S. Lauder, a 76-year-old board member and a son of the company’s founders. He has also been a prominent supporter of President Trump.

On May 29, employees at Estée Lauder, like those in much of the rest of corporate America, began receiving emails from the company’s leadership addressing racial discrimination.

There was “considerable pain” in black communities, one missive noted. According to copies of the internal communications obtained by The New York Times, the company, whose vast portfolio includes Clinique, MAC, Bobbi Brown, La Mer and Aveda, encouraged employees to pause working on June 2 in honor of “Blackout Tuesday.”

At a video meeting on June 4 among an internal group called NOBLE, or Network of Black Leaders and Executives, company leaders said Estée Lauder was donating $1 million to support racial and social justice organizations. But employees pinpointed Mr. Lauder’s political donations to Mr. Trump as being in conflict with the company’s stance on race. The president has tweeted conspiracy theories about injured protesters, described demonstrators as “THUGS,” and praised most law enforcement officers as “great people.”

Employees left dissatisfied. Later that night, a petition appeared on Change.org.

The company’s donation did “not match, or exceed Ronald Lauder’s personal donations in support of state-sanctioned violence,” organizers of the petition, which has amassed more than 6,000 signatures, wrote. “Ronald Lauder’s involvement with the Estée Lauder Companies is damaging to our corporate values, our relationship with the Black community, our relationship with this company’s Black employees, and this company’s legacy.”

In his first public comment on the situation, Mr. Lauder told The Times in a statement Friday that he had spent decades “fighting anti-Semitism, hate and bigotry in all its forms in New York and around the world as president of the World Jewish Congress.”

“As a country, we must recommit ourselves to the fight against anti-Semitism and racism,” he said. “In this urgent moment of change, I am expanding the scope of my anti-Semitism campaign to include causes for racial justice, especially in the Black community, as well as other forms of dangerous ethnic and religious intolerance around the world.”

On Monday, Estée Lauder said it would donate $5 million in coming weeks to “support racial and social justice and to continue to support greater access to education,” and donate an additional $5 million over the following two years.

Other companies have also pledged money. On Thursday alone, PayPal, Apple and YouTube collectively pledged $730 million to racial justice and equity efforts.

Jobs on the line

As companies face restive employees, pressure has also grown to remove those who have made offensive statements. Others have had to apologize publicly. Adam Rapoport resigned as editor in chief of the magazine Bon Appétit on Monday after a 2004 photo showing him in an offensive costume resurfaced on social media.

And Greg Glassman, the founder and chief executive of CrossFit, stepped down on Tuesday following comments about race and racism on a Zoom call to gym owners.

“We’re not mourning for George Floyd, I don’t think me or any of my staff are,” said Mr. Glassman on the Zoom call, according to a recording of the call provided to The Times.

“Can you tell me why I should mourn for him?” he said. “Other than it’s the ‘white’ thing to do. I get that pressure, but give me another reason.”

NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast that includes the NBC broadcast network and cable channels like Bravo, has encountered fires on multiple fronts as the reckoning has swept the country.

For NBC, the problems started the morning after Mr. Floyd’s death, when Jimmy Fallon found himself under attack on Twitter for performing in blackface on “Saturday Night Live” in 2000. A video of the sketch had resurfaced online. Mr. Fallon, who has been an NBC star for 22 years, first at “SNL” and more recently leading the “Tonight” show, issued a written apology that afternoon. He apologized at length on camera the following day.

On June 2, a writer was fired from an upcoming NBC series, “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” after posting photos of himself on Facebook holding a weapon and threatening to “light up” looters.

Then came an explosion from NBCUniversal’s cable division. The hit reality series “Vanderpump Rules,” an anchor tenant on Bravo since 2013, fired four cast members for past racist behavior. Some of the incidents were already known. Others were disclosed on Instagram after Mr. Floyd’s death.

On June 8, Brian Roberts, Comcast’s chief executive, said in a memo to employees that the company would give $75 million to social justice organizations, along with $25 million worth of advertising inventory, including on Sky, its pay-television unit in Britain.

“We know that Comcast alone can’t remedy this complex issue,” Mr. Roberts wrote. “But you have my commitment that our company will try to play an integral role in driving lasting reform.”

LONG ARTICLE CONTINUES ...

[chaotic-weevil]

Judy Ahrens is NOT our friend

So, the May special election is here, and chances are you’re not too worried about it. Most candidates are unopposed, there’s just one or two measures on the ballot, and all the positions seem to be fairly harmless.

Well, this is sadly not the case. Everyone living in the Three Rivers School District area (most of Josephine County except Grants Pass, and parts of Jackson County) gets to vote in one of the most important races for our community.

Likely the only contested race on your ballot, TRSD Board position two has incumbent Danny York going up against a Judy Ahrens.

Mr. York has my vote, and I beg you to give him yours. 

I’m sure you’ll want to know why.... but first, TL;DR:

this is a long post. basically, the gist is that Judy Ahrens is a terrible person and we need to make sure she cannot win this election. If you don’t want to read all my analysis, go ahead and skip to part 4. If you don’t want to read any of it, just go check out her website yourself. Make sure to read her bio page.

With that out of the way, let’s delve in: 

At first glance, Danny York seems the lesser option. York has an extremely brief statement in the voters’ pamphlet, and no college education, while Ahrens boasts an Associates, and has a long, detailed statement. And of course, Ahrens is a woman, and the conventional knowledge is that women are better in leadership positions.

But some parts of Judy Ahrens’ statement rubbed me wrong, so I did some research. And what I found terrified me.

To start, let’s analyze her statement in the voters’ pamphlet. I’ll go section by section and address each of the points.

Dear Voters:

While living in Southern California, I was heavily involved with the PTA, the Eastwood Site Council, and many other activities related to children. Then nine years ago I moved to Josephine County. It’s gorgeous scenery and friendly people still awe me and my passion for providing the best education for our children continues right here.

So far, so good. We learn she has experience with education and leadership positions, and a love for this community. But wait ‘til she gets to her platform:

Why I’m running:

1. To guarantee that Parents’ Rights come first. Parents currently are fighting against a bill in Salem which forces vaccinations on all children attending Oregon public schools. I back these parents 100%.

“Parents’ Rights” is a term you see thrown around here and there. Usually, this means parents’ rights to control the curriculum or content their children are exposed to, or to have medical & bodily control over their kids. And usually it comes from the Christian Right, which I’m a little wary of (that’s the folks with the sin signs that like to go to local events and yell on megaphones about how queer people are going to hell).

In this case, Ahrens is taking the medical side of the Parents’ Rights issue, cleverly appealing to anti-vaxxers on both ends of the political spectrum (the religious my-body-is-my-temple folks and the no-chemicals-for-me hippies alike). However, as we’ll see shortly, she quickly extends this into the more morally concerning social arena.

2. To protect traditional family values which are currently under attack. All sex education materials and instructions should be scrutinized for age appropriateness and content by a committee that includes parents.

Nothing makes this bisexual pro-LGBT-rights guy uncomfortable quite like the phrase “traditional family values.” It might as well be code for “homosexuality is a sin,” and is usually accompanied by extreme bigotry. Needless to say, we don’t want bigots on the school board. And phraseology like “currently under attack” means she sees gender and sexuality diversity as an organization or movement trying to attack a way of life. That’s not who we are, and that’s an extremely toxic, harmful mindset.

But wait.... there’s more! I don’t know how Ahrens crammed so many red flags into one bullet point, but her take on sex ed is also disastrous. Sex ed is crucial, especially in low-income rural communities like ours. Kids need to know about consent and sexual abuse, safe sex practices, how to get birth control, healthy and unhealthy relationships, hygiene and sexual health, safe/unsafe masturbation, gender and sexuality, and so many other things. Current curriculum isn’t perfect, but schools are getting better at this, especially in Oregon.

Parents simply do not know better than professional educators what their kids need to know about sex. Surveys have shown that parents tend to think their kids are less sexually active/aware than they are, at pretty much every age and development level, so parents likely won’t think a lesson is age appropriate until it’s too late for some kids. And many parents who view sex, or pre-marital sex, or maybe just teen sex, as a bad thing might want abstinence-only sex ed, which is highly ineffective.

But the biggest problem is that this ties directly into Ahrens’ other problematic views. Having already pegged her as a likely member of the Christian Right, I can already guess what “sex-education materials” she’ll want to get rid of: anything having to do with LGBT+ issues, abortion, masturbation, sex for pleasure, or birth control. And these are arguably some of the most important roles sex-ed plays, giving marginalized students or students who cannot ask at home access to valuable, impartial and trusted information.

At this point, I’m getting pretty uncomfortable with Judy Ahrens, but the worst is yet to come.

3. To make sure academic achievement is the No. 1 priority above all other programs in the Three Rivers School District.

Okay, so this isn’t so much a social justice or moral issue; but why? Yes academics should be a priority, but school should also focus on the arts, physical activity, extracurriculars, and (personally I think this should be #1) students’ mental health. But this isn’t too big of an issue, I can easily let it slide.

Our current statistics show:

     - Third Grade English Proficiency 43%      - Eighth Grade Math Proficiency 35%      - 12th Grade Tracking for Graduation 68%

Yeah, that’s pretty concerning. We should probably address that. But check out her “solutions”:

My solutions for such low results:

A. Have only the best phonics-based reading instructions used in the early grades. Also have rigorous teaching programs for mastering spelling, grammar, and writing skills.

B. Re-examine Common Core, the dubious government standard for math instruction. We need to get “back to basics” and teach fundamentals if we want our students’ math scores to improve.

This is just beyond me. I don’t have a degree in it (tho I will in a few years!) but I know a fair amount about linguistics and pedagogy. I also went to elementary school in our district. “Phonics” is an extremely broad and vague category that generally means teaching letter sounds. My teachers did this. I’m pretty sure most teachers do this. But guess what; they’re trained but professionals who literally study how to teach kids to read and write. “Only the best phonics” sounds vaguely Trump-esque to me. In any case, it wouldn’t be a huge shift from the current policy, and kinda sounds like she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Which only seems more likely when you get to the second paragraph. Common Core is far from perfect, yes. But calling it the “dubious government standard” is too reminiscent of the Parents’ Rights philosophy. I guarantee you the average parent doesn’t know a better way to teach math. Additionally, Common Core literally is an attempt to go back to the basics. And it was implemented because math scores were abysmally low. People criticize Common Core because it’s not what they’re used to, but all it’s really doing is teaching kids to connect abstract ideas with concrete scenarios. Which is what math is all about.

C. Provide programs that instill strong patriotism in our students, including having all classes begin each day with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Uh-oh. Okay, so I have no problem with patriotism. But this sounds.....fascist? America-centrist? America First-ish? Nationalistic?

I’ve never liked the pledge of Allegience. For one thing it goes directly against the establishment clause (”under god”, seriously? I’m religious but that still bothers me), but also, we should be teaching our kids to think openly, to make their own decisions, and to be their own agents. And definitely not to just repeat-after-me and sign-on-the-dotted-line. If we want our kids to be patriotic, we should show them the true face of this country, encourage them to get involved, tell the good and bad sides to our history. Make them patriotic by giving them reasons to be, not by having them memorize a pledge they don’t even understand all the words to. Which brings me to...

D. We need to provide teachers with honest and accurate instructional materials in order to give students a solid background in American History and the U.S. Constitution. 

Okay, so I actually completely agree with this. However, I suspect that my and Judy Ahrens’ ideas on what is “honest and accurate” may be more than a little different. For me, I think the key here is making sure to teach the bad as well as the good, and be frank about the ways that the US has violated and still does violate the very rights and liberties we strive to protect. Only by recognizing one’s faults can one grow stronger, and the same can be said of a society or nation. Given her love of patriotism, I suspect Ahrens wants more of a whitewashed, postitive portrayal of our history. But she’s unclear (perhaps on purpose) so I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Let’s make our schools great again.

This is an *obvious* echo of MAGA. Which should scare you.

I would appreciate your support and vote on May 21, 2019. 

So that’s that for her pamphlet statement. But it got me concerned enough that I decided to do a little more research. And found out just how disastrous she really is.

Part Two: Under the Surface

So I went to her campaign website. It’s not very well designed, or secure, but you can check it out if you want.

Most of the content there is pretty much verbatim what’s in the pamphlet, but there’s a few noteworthy additions:

Following the daily pledge of allegiance, she calls for “a minute of silence.” I don’t know why.

The sex-ed clause has grown: “We need to protect traditional family values which are currently under attack. All sex education materials including classroom videos, textbooks, and discussions should be scrutinized for age appropriateness and content by a committee that includes parents. AND....parents must have the final say if they want to OPT OUT of any such activity/instruction they feel inappropriate for their child.” She definitely wants to make sure children don’t have to get subjected to educational, important information about sex (because sex is evil?). Curious how discussions can be scrutinized by parents, I’m assuming ahead of time.

She mentions participation in Vacation Bible School and Right To Life March (an anti-choice organization), confirming my suspicions that she’s firmly within the Christian Right. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s definitely cause for concern.

She has a list of “patriotic holidays” she wants to instill in students. One of them is Columbus Day, an extremely problematic and racist holiday.

Finally, there are two  aspects of her website that led me to dig deeper.

Part Three: Silencing Abuse Victims

So, in her bio on her website, Ahrens brags about banning a book:

Promoting traditional family values, helped to stop a certain controversial book (with heavy sexual content) form getting into Ocean View School District school libraries.

I was curious, so I investigated. Wanna know what the book was?

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Apparently her complaint was that it had sex scenes that were inappropriate for children. If you’re unfamiliar, the novel is semi-autobiographical, and includes descriptions of the sexual abuse Angelou faced as a child. It’s heavy stuff for sure, but also extremely important. It’s widely regarded as one of the most important pieces of feminist literature, and it tilts white male dominant America on its head. I read it when I was 12. It was disturbing. But it’s a book that is meant to disturb, and I’m very glad I read it when I did.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend that book to an eight year old. But this was in a middle school environment (read: kids aged 11-14). In fact, there was already a limitation: only eighth graders could check the book out. So we’re talking 13-14-year-olds. Now that may still seem young, but by age 12 most girls are already used to sexual harassment, and one in four will have been sexually assaulted by age 16. So reading the story of a survivor could be very helpful.

My biggest issue with this, though, is the way Judy Ahrens portrays it. “A certain controversial book”, she calls it, “with heavy sexual content.” It sounds meritless, obscene, pornographic. Instead, it is a renowned work of literature. Banning this book is not just removing some uncomfortable sex or disturbing abuse from the shelves; it is silencing the voices of victims and of women of color, voices which we should be raising.

This tale is a warning: Judy Ahrens favors censorship. This is scary. We already know she doesn’t like sex ed; will she fight to have educational books removed from libraries. Will she try to ban books that have gender and sexuality diverse characters? Given the next and final story in our saga, I’d not be at all surprised.

Part Four: Homophobic and Proud of It

It stands to reason that I, being a member of the LGBT+ community, would be most bothered by this. But I think, anyone would be bothered by this. Any decent, non-bigoted person, that is.

Right in the middle of her bio page, is this lovely gem:

I was elected in 2002 to the Westminster School Board with my continued theme of "Back to Basics." While in office, I, with the help of two other board members, lead the controversial fight against the homo-sexual issue.

WE WON ! [sic]

So, hopefully y’all can see exactly waht’s wrong with this, and I don’t have to say. But it’s obvious as can be. Blatant homophobic bigotry. “The controversial fight against the homo-sexual issue” is such a hurtful way to say that, too. So anyways, she’s shown herself to be a gross homophobe.

But I was curious, so I dug deeper, and boy did I find a story. In 1999, the State of California passed a law adding gender identity and sexuality to the list of things on the basis of which students could report discrimination. By 2004, every school district in California except Westminster had incorporated this new language into their policy. Westminster refused to modify their anti-discrimination policy language protecting trans students. Press at the time (and this became a national story) described Judy Ahrens as the board member most opposed to protections for trans kids. She was quoted as saying that the state law promotes homosexuality and that she’s “really sad that the moral compass isn’t out there” and “disappointed that economics is trying to outweigh morality and protecting our kids in this district.”

This was in 2004. It’s 2019 now. Much has changed. Maybe she could have changed; I would have been maybe willing to accept that. But she’s literally proud of this. She is using it as a campaign point.

If Judy Ahrens wins this election, it will send the message to lgbt+ kids in our district and everywhere that voters don’t care about them or their safety. If Ahrens wins, it will send the message that bigotry is a viable way to run a campaign. If Ahrens wins, it will send the message that hate wins.

So please, join me in voting AGAINST Judy Ahrens.

Vote for Danny York, who is neither particularly qualified nor severely unqualified, but is infinitely better than the hateful, bigoted, religious-extremest Ahrens. Keep our district welcoming and accepting of diversity.

And don’t only vote. This matters. Tell everybody. Make noise. Write letters to the editor. Share this, on facebook. We can defeat evil, but only if we join and rise to face it. So join, and rise. Please.

Ballots must be received by May 21. Probably for the best to return it by the 19th or 20th at least.

[wetrumpfeed]

Afternoon MAGAthread: YOUR WEEKLY PRESIDENTIAL RECAP!

HAPPY SUNDAY GUNDAY FOLKS!

This is u/ivaginaryfriend here and I'm back with everything spicy and dank from the past week! For those that missed any past recaps you can check those out here!

Sunday, February 10th:

🔥��TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Senator Richard Burr, The Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, just announced that after almost two years, more than two hundred interviews, and thousands of documents, they have found NO COLLUSION BETWEEN TRUMP AND RUSSIA! Is anybody really surprised by this?

African Americans are very angry at the double standard on full display in Virginia!

Gallup Poll: “Open Borders will potentially attract 42 million Latin Americans.” This would be a disaster for the U.S. We need the Wall now!

I don’t think the Dems on the Border Committee are being allowed by their leaders to make a deal. They are offering very little money for the desperately needed Border Wall & now, out of the blue, want a cap on convicted violent felons to be held in detention!

It was a very bad week for the Democrats, with the GREAT economic numbers, The Virginia disaster and the State of the Union address. Now, with the terrible offers being made by them to the Border Committee, I actually believe they want a Shutdown. They want a new subject!

The media was able to get my work schedule, something very easy to do, but it should have been reported as a positive, not negative. When the term Executive Time is used, I am generally working, not relaxing. In fact, I probably work more hours than almost any past President..... ... ....The fact is, when I took over as President, our Country was a mess. Depleted Military, Endless Wars, a potential War with North Korea, V.A., High Taxes & too many Regulations, Border, Immigration & HealthCare problems, & much more. I had no choice but to work very long hours!

“President is on sound legal ground to declare a National Emergency. There have been 58 National Emergencies declared since the law was enacted in 1976, and 31 right now that are currently active, so this is hardly unprecedented.” Congressman @tommcclintock

The Border Committee Democrats are behaving, all of a sudden, irrationally. Not only are they unwilling to give dollars for the obviously needed Wall (they overrode recommendations of Border Patrol experts), but they don’t even want to take muderers into custody! What’s going on?

Well, it happened again. Amy Klobuchar announced that she is running for President, talking proudly of fighting global warming while standing in a virtual blizzard of snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Bad timing. By the end of her speech she looked like a Snowman(woman)!

(Retweeting Club for Growth) Agreed! Senate needs to confirm @realDonaldTrump Admin appointees. #SOTU

The U.S. will soon control 100% of ISIS territory in Syria. @CNN (do you believe this?).

Working hard, thank you!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

(D)ouble Standards

god emperor trump

Obama built that...

Donald Trump Jr.: “Are we getting to the PC tipping point yet?”

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Pewdiepie knows what’s up!

The rise of Generation Z, the most conservative generation since "The Greatest Generation" in the 1950's, is scaring the bejeezus out of the Democrats

I never owned any slaves. You never picked any cotton. GET OVER IT.

They came so close to being self aware

Monday, February 11th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence

President Trump Meets with Sheriffs from Across the Country

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

“Fact checkers have become Fake News.” @JesseBWatters So True!

No president ever worked harder than me (cleaning up the mess I inherited)!

The Democrats do not want us to detain, or send back, criminal aliens! This is a brand new demand. Crazy!

The Democrats are so self righteous and ANGRY! Loosen up and have some fun. The Country is doing well!

Will be heading to El Paso very soon. Big speech on Border Security and much else tonight. Tremendous crowd! See you later!

(Screenshot)

40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure. The long-suffering Iranian people deserve a much brighter future.

۴۰ سال فساد. ۴۰ سال سرکوب. ۴۰ سال ترور. رژیم ایران فقط موجب #چهل_سال_شکست شده است. مردم ایران که مدتهاست در رنجند شایسته آینده روشن تری هستند

Coal is an important part of our electricity generation mix and @TVAnews should give serious consideration to all factors before voting to close viable power plants, like Paradise #3 in Kentucky!

(Retweeting Don Jr.) Beto trying to counter-program @realdonaldtrump in his hometown and only drawing a few hundred people to Trump’s 35,000 is a really bad look. Partial pic of the Trump overflow crowd below! #AnyQuestions

We are fighting for all Americans, from all backgrounds, of every age, race, religion, birthplace, color & creed. Our agenda is NOT a partisan agenda – it is the mainstream, common sense agenda of the American People. Thank you El Paso, Texas - I love you!

(Retweeting Dan Scavino) 🚨Happening Now: @realDonaldTrump overflow crowd in El Paso, Texas....

(Retweeting Laura Ingraham) It was 45 degrees outside and this was the overflow crowd. #ElPaso @realDonaldTrump

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Paramedic makes a valid point about the entitled $15/hr living wage. Red pills are flying.

High energy in El Paso today!

The case for Russia collusion … against the Democrats

Rasmussen: Presidential Approval At 52%

Donald Trump Jr. reacts to Nancy Pelosi and Democrats pressuring Ilhan Omar to apologize for her anti-Semitic remarks on Twitter: "The forthcoming non apology is going to be awesome."

"TIRED OF BEING A WAGE CUCK? WANT TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT BY NO LONGER DRIVING TO WORK? DECLARE YOURSELF UNWILLING TO WORK TODAY!"

PRESS BRIEFINGS, INTERVIEWS, RALLIES:

WATCH PARTY: PRESIDENT TRUMP EL PASO, TEXAS 2/11/2019

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Democrats Continue To Be Shocked By Obvious Things They Vote For

When I realize 75% of the anti-Trump outrage on Reddit is from people who aren't even in the US

Overflow crowd outside Trump's El Paso rally is ABSOLUTELY HUGE

The Emperor Protects

Thank you, Kanye. Very cool!

Tuesday, February 12th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Five Nominations and One Withdrawal Sent to the Senate

President Trump Hosts a Cabinet Meeting

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Beautiful evening in El Paso, Texas last night. God Bless the USA!

Was just presented the concept and parameters of the Border Security Deal by hard working Senator Richard Shelby. Looking over all aspects knowing that this will be hooked up with lots of money from other sources.... ... ....Will be getting almost $23 BILLION for Border Security. Regardless of Wall money, it is being built as we speak!

Thank you to @MSNBC!

(Retweeting Life On Earth) They are soooo beautiful and magnificent! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

(Retweeting The White House) Americans pay 180 percent of what Europeans, Canadians, and Japanese pay for the exact same drugs! Our seniors aren't going to foot the bill for free-riders abroad any longer, HHS Secretary Alex Azar says.

(Retweeting The White House) President Trump's commitment to improving the quality of life for all Americans has led to the largest single decline in drug prices in 46 YEARS.

I want to thank all Republicans for the work you have done in dealing with the Radical Left on Border Security. Not an easy task, but the Wall is being built and will be a great achievement and contributor toward life and safety within our Country!

(Retweeting Dan Bongino) I don’t feel an ounce of empathy for all of the imbeciles who bought into the Russian collusion hoax now that it’s been entirely debunked. You were warned for over a year about this scam & you fell for it anyway. You did this to yourself.

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

President Trump on the congressional deal: "I'm not happy about it. It's not doing the trick."

Ted Cruz wants to confiscate recently-convicted El Chapo’s property to pay for the wall, which means Mexico would pay for the wall.

Still No Collusion.

HAHAHAHAA AHAHAHAHAAAAA HAAAAAA HAHAHAAHAHAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

Dowd Nails It – Former Trump Attorney Outlines Insufferable Behavior of Mueller and Rosenstein in Perpetrating Political Russia Hoax…This is a must Read.

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Trump fence bad...my fence good

The Party of Life vs. Death

MFW 52% approval after 2 years of literal Nazi rule, "Russia collusion", peepee dossier, PEACH 45, Creepy Porn Lawyer, muh drumph's tax returns

Kamala Harris claims to have smoked pot in college while listening to Tupac and Snoop. She graduated college in 1986. Tupac's first album came out in 1991. Snoop's first album came out in 1993. Lying sac of shit.

MAGA

Wednesday, February 13th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate and Appoint Individuals to Key Administration Posts

President Trump Meets with the President of the Republic of Colombia and Mrs. Ruiz Sandoval

President Trump Speaks at the Major County Sheriffs and Cities Chiefs Association Joint Conference

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

The Senate Intelligence Committee: THERE IS NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND RUSSIA!

The Gallup Poll just announced that 69% of our great citizens expect their finances to improve next year, a 16 year high. Nice!

Today, it was my great honor to address the @MjrCitiesChiefs Association and @MCSheriffs Conference in Washington, D.C. We will never forget your service, and we will never, ever let you down! We love you, and we thank God for you each and every day.

"Every American in every community and from every walk of life has a right to live in security and to live in peace. That is my highest priority as President."

(Screenshot)

(Article)

(Retweeting Ted Cruz) Report: Texas crude oil production breaks 1970s record

California has been forced to cancel the massive bullet train project after having spent and wasted many billions of dollars. They owe the Federal Government three and a half billion dollars. We want that money back now. Whole project is a “green” disaster!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

BREAKING: Roger Stone Files Motion - Alleges Special Counsel Released Unsealed Indictment to CNN

Ilhan Omar calls for investigation into Trans discrimination by U.S.A. Powerlifting... quickly gets her A$$ handed to her.

California: $33 billion is ok for a train with two stops, but $6 billion is too much to defend our nation.

The Silver Fox, Mike Pence Calls For “Jihad Ilhan” To Be Removed From The Foreign Affairs Committee

Breaking: Convington high school students cleared of all wrongdoing by neutral third-party investigators

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

When you're a leftist and someone disagrees with you about literally anything.

“Signs of Life”

Thanks Guardian Pepe

Kek

"BORDER SECURITY IS SCARY!" [Crosspost from r/funny]

Thursday, February 14th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Individuals to Key Administration Posts

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

Disgraced FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe pretends to be a “poor little Angel” when in fact he was a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax - a puppet for Leakin’ James Comey. I.G. report on McCabe was devastating. Part of “insurance policy” in case I won.... ... ....Many of the top FBI brass were fired, forced to leave, or left. McCabe’s wife received BIG DOLLARS from Clinton people for her campaign - he gave Hillary a pass. McCabe is a disgrace to the FBI and a disgrace to our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

Reviewing the funding bill with my team at the @WhiteHouse!

One year ago today, a horrific act of violence took the lives of 14 students and 3 educators in Parkland, Florida. On this somber anniversary, we honor their memory and recommit to ensuring the safety of all Americans, especially our Nation’s children... https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/presidential-message-school-safety-remembering-parkland-tragedy/ …

“After The Flight 93 Election, The Vote That Saved America - And What We Still Have To Lose,” by very talented Michael Anton, is a terrific read. Check it out!

(Retweeting The White House) .@PressSec: President Trump will sign the government funding bill, and as he has stated before, he will also take other executive action—including a national emergency—to ensure we stop the national security and humanitarian crisis at the border.

“Trying to use the 25th Amendment to try and circumvent the Election is a despicable act of unconstitutional power grabbing...which happens in third world countries. You have to obey the law. This is an attack on our system & Constitution.” Alan Dershowitz. @TuckerCarlson

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

Trump Frees Up $8 Billion To Build The Wall

White House Statement on Government Funding Bill

Jussie Smollett has SCRUBBED his Twitter & Instagram accounts of ANY references of the hoax attack. Sorry buddy you can't make this go away that easily.

McCabe, Rosenstein must testify to explain claim that DOJ discussed removing Trump, GOP leaders say

EATING THEIR OWN! Gov Cuomo blames Donkey Face for Amazon leaving NY 😂

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

Got caught and now calling each other liars.

When you believe in a conspiracy with no proof for more than two years, are you a conspiracy theorist then?

HOLY HOAX ALERT. Two suspects arrested in Jussie Smollett case. African American FRIENDS of Smollett. Worked w. him on Empire. Sussie deleted their #s out of his log.

Just pointing out the obvious

Trump signs the Farm Bill making dog and cat meat illegal in the United States

Friday, February 15th:

TODAY'S ACTION:

Presidential Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States

President Donald J. Trump Signed H.J.Res. 31 into Law

President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Nominate Individuals to Key Administration Posts

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

(Retweeting The White House) President Trump Speaks on the National Security & Humanitarian Crisis on Our Southern Border

Great job by law enforcement in Aurora, Illinois. Heartfelt condolences to all of the victims and their families. America is with you!

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

China's REALLY mad now...

He did it! Trump declares emergency on border, eyes $8B for wall as he signs spending package

Thanks Everyone!! I am but a humble memesmith, without all of you enjoying and sharing my work I am nothing

AHAHAHHA TRUMP RETWEETED @CARTPEDONKTUM.. IM DYING... TROLL LEVEL 9999

Twitter took down u/carpedonktum's meme

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

I was the victim of a hate crime today and I don’t know where else to talk about it. I need support

Let's go Ted, We're building a Wall!

The Lying Left

Early morning shitpost by Jr:

Hello, Chicago PD? I'd like to report an ACTUAL murder this time.

Saturday, February 16th:

🔥🔥TRUMP TWEETS🔥🔥:

(Video)

BUILDING THE WALL!

Trade negotiators have just returned from China where the meetings on Trade were very productive. Now at meetings with me at Mar-a-Lago giving the details. In the meantime, Billions of Dollars are being paid to the United States by China in the form of Trade Tariffs!

The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial. The Caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them........ ... ....The U.S. does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go. We do so much, and spend so much - Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!

(Retweeting Real_Defender) Protecting America and putting Americans first. Thank you Mr. President!

THE GREATEST MEME EVER

SIGNIFICANT TWEETS AND NEWS:

THE MADMAN TWEETED MY NEW VERSION!

Twitter has censored POTUS.

Don Jr is shocked

How come Congress never introduces Hate Crime Hoax Legislation?

🐸 TOP SPICE OF THE DAY 🐸:

That's me in the corner

Aaaaand it’s gone...

R.E.M Meme War: It's the end of the World (TDS remake)

YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH!

WEW LAD!

Without further ado, some tunes to help you get through all this WINNING:

Raingurl

Tadow

Gold

Doin' it Right

Crazy

Talk Is Cheap

MAGA ON PATRIOTS!

submitted by /u/Ivaginaryfriend [link] [comments]

[tessatechaitea]

The Flintstones #5

This issue is about skullfucking T-Rexes.

Obviously it's not really about skullfucking T-Rexes! The skullfucking of the T-Rexes will be an analogy for some other modern day activity we engage in to the detriment of our animal friends around us. It'll probably be a commentary on the Westminster Dog Show. Is that a dog show? I think that's a dog show. This issue begins with a salty look at how the most intelligent of us are at the mercy of a population of stupid.

Betty Rubble probably holds the record for person I've had a crush on the longest.

This issue is called "Election Day" because I'm that far behind on my comic book reading. It'll probably be a scathing critique of Republican voters and how after they're done voting, they go back to their secret I Voted Room (which they all have in their houses) to crank some of Rush's early hits while while an Ayn Rand look-a-like beats their genitals with whip made of hundred dollar bills. Some readers might be thinking, "Tess! Why would you alienate conservative readers by expressing such horrible truths?!" Well, I feel the same way about Republican voters as I do about police. As long as the supposedly good police officers refuse to stand up themselves against the corrupt and racist and power mad authoritarian bastards in their ranks, I will never acknowledge any good police officers exist. And as long as conservative voters continue to simply vote Republican when the Republican Party has shown that they have no loyalty to any of their constituents who aren't wealthy or running a corporation, I'll refuse to believe there are any intelligent Republican voters. If you believe a country without government regulations or oversight is better than a country where corporations are allowed to do whatever they want, you're delusional. Because no matter how terrible the system is, at least with corrupt governments, you still have the comfort of possibly being able to vote them out. You can't do shit to a corporation except not buy their product which you're probably not buying already anyway. Although sometimes I think voting is about as useful as stating you're boycotting a company that doesn't even exist in your local area. I think that, when I'm at my most cynical, but at least voters have some kind of access to the people in power. Try getting a message to a corporation and see how fast they don't respond. I mean, I guess that happens instantly but you'll never know until years have gone by that they really don't intend to respond. I know the general response to the previous will be a loud squawking of "What about Hillary? What about Hillary? What about Hillary?" which isn't an argument at all. It's just proof of my point about the lack of intelligence on the conservative voter's side. At Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm's school, they're also holding elections. Some guy named Ralph's campaign slogan is "Vote for me or I'll punch you in the beef!" I like that he adds an exclamation point to it.

Clod is obviously the best pick for mayor. I don't even care about his message. He's just got great headgear!

Fred and Barney are concerned about the anger at the Lizard People because they remember years ago when the people of Bedrock let fear overtake them and they exterminated the Tree People. Back then, the people of Bedrock lived in fur tents and not the great civilization they have now. To get to that point, the trees needed to be cleared so that the construction companies could gain access to the granite to build the city. So Clod's father Mordok convinced the populace that the Tree People were terrible and evil and so fucking in the way. I mean, totally in the way! And not in a good way! They were sneakily in the way in totally selfish and evil ways. Fucking tree people! I'm getting angry just thinking about how in the way they were, just living their fucking lives and wishing to be left alone! Most of Fred and Barney's peers enlisted to wipe out the Tree People because of the cool headgear. Anybody who has ever looked dapper (and felt dapperer!) knows that's a valid reason for genocide. Actually, Fred is convinced to enlist because he has a new baby on the way. No better way to get people to fall in line than to make them feel like their children are threatened! No wait! There is a better way! Make them feel like their material possessions are being threatened and also the income that gets them those possessions and it really helps if you've already convinced them to buy a house so that they're sweating over losing the income that pays the mortgage on the place where they keep all of their material possessions and maybe some babies.

Barney and Betty are having trouble conceiving. Oh yeah! I just remembered Bamm-Bamm was a foundling! I bet he's one of those disgusting Tree People!

Fred and Barney continue to satirically remember their military training in preparation for the Tree People Slaughter (you probably remember it as the Vietnam War) while Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm try to deal with the impending election to class president of Ralph the Bully (you probably remember him as Donald Trump).

Pebbles' teacher is hot. I mean, she's intelligent with a great set of agencies.

Pebbles stands up after Portnoy withdraws from the race to tell her class that they probably deserve getting punched in the beef every day for the next year if they have no problem voting in Ralph. That seems a bit too on the nose, Russell! You're getting me depressed and I'm worried about my beef now! Because Pebbles voices her opposition to Ralph without being scared of him, everybody decides to vote for her. Plus she has protection!

How are we supposed to eliminate bullies from our culture when I audibly cackled at him punching that nerd in the beef?! Am I part of the problem?!

I would like to reiterate from previous commentaries: Steve Pugh is doing a wonderful job on this book. How can you not completely fall in love with Pebbles so joyfully doing the Nixon? Oh man. I just picked up the comic and glanced at the "Aaah! My beef!" panel again and sniggered like Muttley! Back to the hilarious send-up of the Vietnam War (or any other modern American war for that matter. Just fucking take your pick, really), Fred and Barney realize that they were lied to about the Tree People invading when they stumble upon the burnt out ruins of the Tree People's home. That's where Barney discovers a survivor: Bamm-Bamm. Instead of stomping on it with his boot heel like a real American...I mean Bedrockian would have done, he takes it home and cares for it and raises it as if it were a real human person. The Ranking! I absolutely love this comic book. I would give up all of the other comic books for just this comic book. I would marry this comic book and impregnate it with the Anti-Christ. But I'm still going to only put it at #2 on my All Time (if all the time started like last November or whatever) Comic Book Ranking List because I look smarter if I have the intelligent comic book, The Sheriff of Babylon, above the silly, goofy, satirical comic book. And the only thing I really care about is looking smarter than I really am.