#and even the people that voted that way should be treated fairly

[lary-the-lizard]

It’d just be really nice if some prevalent figures died, preferably if they were killed but I’ll take anything at this point

[redbuddi]

okay but fr americans.... vote. like obv it is not and should not be the only vehicle through which to enact change, but it is still a way to move the needle a little bit. im genuinely concerned how many ppl are writing off the idea of voting entirely, not only specifically because of this election, but also because just philosophically speaking its not good to completely forego a tool for change just because it isnt as powerful as it should be. and thats what it is: a tool, and one of many.

if kamala gets into office a lot of people will still be hurt, but if trump gets into office even more people will be hurt on top of that! "oh so youll vote for someone who causes hurt?" well what else am I supposed to do? vote for the brain worms guy? not voting isnt going to help anybody, itll just hurt more people than could have been. obviously its a bad system. obviously it should be better. and obviously it should not be the only vehicle one considers to make an impact. but it still matters. kamala might not be perfect but for gods sake dont forget about project 2025 and the people who will be caught up in that! me and my friends and my family will all be affected. queer people, people of color, disabled people, and every other possible kind of marginalized group will be caught up in that. the system is broken and needs to change and we should continue to fight to change it, but until we get to that day when everyone is treated fairly we cant just forfeit our ability to enact change, no matter how small and incremental. i cannot emphasize enough that you have everything to lose by choosing to not vote.

and for those who still dont agree, those who think there's something up with my encouraging people to vote, i get it. i get why youre angry and you have every right to be. but i need you to ask yourself this: "will choosing not to vote do any good?" because if it doesnt matter either way people might as well vote just in case. a 0.000001 chance of changing anything is still better than complete zero, after all. and with so many lives on the line, why would you want people to give up that chance?

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

How Star Wars led to Reaganism

Found some interesting articles from historian Rick Perlstein about how movies like SW, Superman and Rocky helped push America to right wing politics. While Lucas did include some left wing, anti Vietnam war themes and aesthetics in his movies, that wasn’t how most Americans interpreted them. Americans identified with the rebels as the underdog. It being a black and white whimsical fairy tale with a lack of moral nuance during a decade of morally grey films that came after Vietnam and Watergate appealed to those who would vote for Reagan. It would have an affect on pop culture and the movies that were made after. Movies of the 80s like Back to the Future and Indiana Jones continued the trend of whimsical, special effects filled movies during the Reagan era. Should people really be surprised at the news of Spielberg being a Zionist when a lot of his films are conservative?

I feel like people shouldn’t be surprised at this or why there’s a lot of conservatism in the SW fandom as it’s there in the story too. There’s a lot of sexist and racist tropes in the franchise from the Tusken raiders, The Bad Batch and how Han and Anakin treat their love interests. Most of the villains are just evil for the evulz with even the more sympathetic villains being made out to have done it to themselves. Contrary to what some say, Lucas intended the Jedi to be entirely in the right and puts the blame entirely on Anakin for his fall. That’s a fairly conservative way of thinking that puts all the blame on the individual for being tempted or “lazy” as opposed to looking at systemic, psychological and child rearing issues and how they influence people. Star Wars is a very moralistic religious story. It has some left wing themes but is very conservative with its black and white morality and people shouldn’t be as shocked by the existence of right wing fans as they are.

[princelylove]

I think it’s fairly obvious that mafiosi would have at least some sexism going on. It’s just shown differently, and it's hard to put them all in the same category because their psychology is different. For my freaks who happen to be into a little misogyny/sexism:

Call Guido old fashioned, but he thinks it’s wrong to be rough with a girl. It rubs him the wrong way. Yeah, of course girls can do whatever we can, he’s all for them working and voting and all the good stuff, but you just shouldn’t treat a girl like that. He tends to say ‘girl’ instead of ‘woman,’ even when he’s referring to someone that’s implied to be older than he is. 

When Guido interrogates Scolippi in the english dub, he says “I should end you for killing a girl,” and “You killed an innocent girl, psycho,” which could just be intentionally guilt tripping Scolippi, but Guido isn’t the guilt type. He’s an immediate physical punishment type. He hates men that harm women, no matter the degree. 

If he ends up having a crush on someone who is masculine, you might not notice at all (unless you pick up on his hesitation). Guido’s always been fairly handsy, he’ll put his arm around Pannacotta (who normally shoves him off), he picks up Narancia and won’t let him down until he gets his good morning cheek kiss, he’ll bother Giorno until he gets a little smoochie-woochie (said like that because he knows Giorno hates that sort of talk), and he sits way too close to his darling. He’s microdosing physical contact until he gets the nerve to actually touch you like he does Panna and Nara… Guys can play around, too, you know. But it’s different with his darling! He psyches himself out most times until he can find excuses to get handsy- like, he was just hugging Panna, he’s not gonna leave you out. Come on, man, you know you want one. 

With a feminine darling, he tries to be touchy and affectionate in the friend stage too, but he’s a little scared. You may notice his hands trembling as he picks you up, or that when he puts his arm around your waist, his hand hovers instead of resting on you. He’s strong enough to hold you up for quite a while, he’s just nervous. Poor guy. He gets rather panicky when he sees a girl in distress, if he ever scared you off, he doesn't even know what he'd do.

Narancia copies Bruno, but less in a ‘Chivalry is important’ sense and more of a ‘Masculine men don’t do certain shit’ sense. Which is missing the point of Bruno’s philosophy entirely. He doesn’t really have any women in his life, besides from Trish and she is not a role model for him or a spokesperson for all of womankind, so his only experience with women are the old ladies that pinch his cheeks and girl mags. 

He probably has a harder time with a masculine darling. He isn’t gay ‘cause he thinks you’re pretty, or whatever… You’re just, like… pretty, he guesses. Narancia tries to justify it- you’re pretty feminine for a dude! You have, like, soft hands. And soft hair. And… something else that justifies his crush. Oh! Oh! How you talk! Some people just sound feminine, you know? The words they use, and like, their tone. Like- Like Giorno! He’s a feminine guy, but he’s still a guy! Yeah, that justifies it for sure. Never mind the fact that you are not feminine in the slightest, Narancia will find some way to throw it on you so his crush is ‘ok.’

Leone surprisingly has nothing going on in the sexism department. Lucky him. He might speak a bit softer to a fem darling, but other than that, the experience is roughly the same.

Pannacotta’s distrust of women isn’t inherently sexist. It’s not like he thinks less of them, it’s just that it takes a significant amount of time for him to trust one. He gets along with men at the ‘normal, appropriate’ speed, he’d say. Never mind the fact that he’s distrusting in general and having a crush on a stranger is eating him alive. Strangers are never to be trusted- you just don’t know what they’re thinking about or what their intentions are. They could be perverse, or… just generally ill-willed. It’s unnerving. 

Trish is allergic to going fifty-fifty. It’s not that she’s super into gender roles or anything, it’s just that, she’s a girl, come on. Really? You’re gonna make her split the bill with you? She could be spending that money on, like, anything else. 

She has these expectations of you no matter your gender, don’t make her pay, give her your jacket when she’s cold, carry her shopping bags, get her flowers on valentine’s day, things like that. It’s less ‘I’m the girl in our relationship’ and more ‘I’m spoiled and won’t be bending anytime soon,’ but you could argue she has some internalized sexism going on. In fact I am making that argument.  Trish doesn’t have ‘boy’ hobbies, she’s vehemently opposed to doing masculine work. It isn’t sexist to have preferences, but it is sexist to scoff at your partner who is struggling with carrying something and go “You’re supposed to be stronger than that, you’re a guy.” Poor darling. You don’t get out of it if you’re feminine, either. She’s the girl, you’re her not-man. Perfect! When she eventually matures, she’ll help out a bit more, but it’s probably never equal.

[sunder-the-gold]

Listen, please understand that people like me are doing our best to see things from your perspective. You are a cis white male living in a deep-red flyover state. I get that you don't exactly have a lot of motivation to support BIPOC or 2SLGBTQ+ people. But you also need to see that we aren't asking you to support us, but at least you could stop helping people who want us dead?

I think the part that confuses me the most is that this shouldn't even be a hard choice. If you want to broadcast what a hardcore rad-trad right-wing ultra conservative you are… Then OKAY I guess?? You do you. But how exactly does reblogging R-slur filled posts from Bronys like r4cs0 and takashi0 help you do that? I would think that reblogging from people who jerk off to clop porn would be the opposite of what a conservative would do!

So all we are asking is that you unfollow and block a group of people who sexually objectify characters from a children's cartoon show. And then you can go back to bragging about how hard you are going to vote for Trump in November. This seems like a win-win to me.

Hey, @r4cs0, @takashi0, you've got cowardly anonymous character-assassins making the rounds.

I haven't even seen or registered r4cs0's name in forever, and I'm fairly sure I haven't reblogged anyone saying the word "retarded".

But God save us from mean words, because the Far Left sure don't restrain themselves from wishing death and rape on anyone who opposes them.

Really hilarious how Anon wrings their hands about other people disapproving of their life-style while turning around and trying to shame you for what they claim is yours.

(It sure wasn't Bronys who made a mockery of the Last Supper at the Paris Olympics. Exchanging Jesus Christ's message of self-sacrifice and forgiveness for Dionysius' debauchery and hedonism.)

Yet I'm supposed to be the conservatively religious bigot, according to Anon! As though what I'm trying to conserve isn't the American tradition of freedom, as laid out in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution.

The same document that Frederick Douglas was also told (by Marxists) was written by rich white slavers to keep the black man down, until Fred actually read the document and spent the rest of his life championing it as the best model by which all men could enjoy legal equality, liberty, and peace.

Anon also doesn't want me to treat non-'white' people poorly, but they want to make absolutely sure that I know that they see me as 'white' and that I should see myself as 'white', too. Who's the racist?

Which 'white'? I've got no Anglo-Saxon or Germanic heritage in my Irish/Italian mix. And that's setting aside how much the Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans hated each other before I came to be, as a fourth-generation unhyphenated American of the USA.

Anon, I only give a shit about my skin color because I biologically cannot gain a tan for any protection from the sun... and because your political cult think I ought to be shamed and punished for the accident of my birth.

I think Europeans demonstrated great capability by conquering the majority of the planet, and if God's not real and there's no truth but Power, then "might-makes-right" is as legitimate a morality as any other.

But God is real so thankfully He used the imperialism of mere mortals to spread His message of mercy and love so far and deep into the anglosphere that appealing to such virtues seems to Anon like a good way to convince people to do what Anon wants.

Those arguments certainly proved good enough in the anglosphere to bring an end to the Western slave trade, while the Islamic slave trade continues to this day in open-air markets in Libya.

Anon should try appealing to those virtues in Islamic nations and see how far it gets them. Maybe as far as the roof and then the short trip back down to ground-level.

How about in China? Try asking the people of Tibet or the Uyghur Muslims about Communist mercy. Ask the people of India and Pakistan how China respects their dependence on the water of the rivers flowing into their borders from China.

[boreal-sea]

It's actually almost impossible to be in a position to want to openly call out Israel, call it wrong for the way it has treated Palestinians for almost the whole time it's existed, without calling for Israel to be destroyed, and to be against American antisemitism because it feels like that category doesn't exist?

I think:

Zionism is the belief that Jews are native to the Levant and deserve self-determination in their homeland

Israel deserves to exist just like any other country

Israel has been abusing Palestinians for decades and should be held responsible for this abuse

Israel is the one with power between Israel and Palestine

Hamas is a violent antisemitic terrorist group and benefits no one

American leftists have become violently antisemitic since Oct 7th

Israel has lived in fear of the surrounding Arab states since its founding while also abusing its Palestinian neighbors, which further fuels hatred against Israelis, and fans the flames of their fear. All of these statements are true. Israeli fear is valid, and Palestinian anger is valid, too. The antisemitism of the surrounding countries isn't valid, and they're a big player in this conflict too.

So I guess, if that's your belief set too, let's be friends?

Reblogs are on for now, unless people start to get antisemitic...

Israel is wrong about a lot of things. It needs major reform as a country. It owes Palestinians reparations. Netanyahu needs to be removed from office along with all of his right-wing friends. Settlements in the West Bank need to cease, Israeli military presence needs to be withdrawn, and a long-term land-back initiative needs to be enacted, one that doesn't involve kicking people out of their homes right now, but rather returning that land and property to Palestinians after the Israelis currently living there move out. Israel could absolutely incentivize Israelis to move back into Israeli territory if they wanted to, just like they incentivized them to move into Palestine in the first place. I also think Israel's forced draft is wrong and should stop. The Kahanists and extremist settlers need to be dealt with. The current government of Israel does not want to do any of the above. This is a problem.

Hamas is wrong. Their only goal is the eradication of Jews and Israel; they currently do not have an ideology that contributes to peace in the region. They refuse to cooperate with other Palestinians trying to form an actual government. They got elected on the anger of abused Gazans and then stole that power and have never given it back. They treat the citizens of Gaza like pawns, they put them in harm's way because they know every Palestinian death at the hands of the IDF makes them support Hamas more. Gazans deserve freedom from Israel AND from Hamas.

Palestine deserves the 1967 borders back. It deserves a strong, unified government that represents its people fairly. They can't do that with organizations like Hamas undermining them at every turn. Netanyahu is partially to blame for this! He didn't create Hamas but he has admitted to supporting them, another reason he needs to be gone from power.

There is hate on both sides. Personally, a lot of Palestinian hate is understandable given how they've been abused since the Nakba. I get it. I get why Gazans voted for Hamas for the same reason I get why Americans voted for Trump. I empathize with Gazans; Israel has been undeniably abusing them for decades, even after "withdrawing". Gazans just want to be free. West Bank Palestinians just want to be free, to have their land back. Palestinians deserve freedom.

On the other hand, it's unfair to ignore that a lot of the hate aimed at Israelis is specifically antisemitism and that many groups and countries in the area are using antisemitism to inflame Palestinian anger. Hamas is one such group. So is Hezbollah. Both are funded by the surrounding Arab states, which are also fueled by antisemitism. These countries didn't want Israel established in the first place - not because it was colonialism, but because it would be Jewish.

And on the subject of colonialism, no, I don't think a Jewish state in the Levant is inherently colonialism. I DO think that the modern state of Israel was established through the mechanisms and violence of settler colonialism though, and the settlements in the West Bank absolutely ARE settler expansionism. They are immoral. They are stealing from Palestinians. There is a lot of harm Israel has committed, period.

I hold Israel responsible for its treatment of Palestinians. For treating Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza like second-class citizens. For occupying their land, for allowing "legal" and illegal settlements on their land. I hold Israel responsible for the anger of Palestinians, too. Organizations like Hamas probably would have come into existence regardless of how Israel treated Palestinians, because Hamas is founded on antisemitism, however, I think you do have to place at least a little blame on Israel.

I hold the surrounding states responsible for their antisemitic treatment of Israel. For funding the endless rockets of Hamas and Hezbollah. For encouraging their suicide bombers and terrorism. For keeping the region destabilized so Israelis never know a single moment of peace. There is a reason Israel forces its citizens to join the military, even though I think that is in and of itself an immoral thing to do to your people.

[misfitwashere]

The Polling Cave

And the Voting World

TIMOTHY SNYDER

NOV 5

In Plato's famous parable, we are all prisoners in a cave, believing that our shadowy surroundings are reality, but needing to break out into a sunnier, airier, more lively world.  

During our American election cycles, polling is the cave.

Very early on, polls establish some baseline of expectation. Then newspapers can report when some poll says something surprising -- which just means different from other polls.  In the cave, we get used to the overlap of shadow, and confuse this with light.

Polls ask people to judge between two candidates.  They rarely ask about policy.  We are looking only at what is placed right in front of us.  Out in the world, though, beyond the polling cave, it is differences of policy that matter in our lives.  And so our polling obsession gets in the way of the knowledge we would actually need to make judgements.

The polling cave is where we pass the time.  And we come to think that our shadowy media domicile is just nature.  The media treat the polls as normative, as describing the world as it should be.  Our own behavior, when election day comes, will then be characterized as a "polling error."

In Plato's story of the cave, we are all driven from this emotion to that by those who manipulate us.  They walk behind us, holding objects that cast frightening shadows on the wall in front of us.  And so it is in our polling cave.  We are told that the polls are close, and that therefore the election will be close.  And so the cave is full of tension. 

This is, of course, a convenient situation.  The candidates can tell their supporters that they must vote.  The media can hover at the edge of two dramatically different scenarios.  But we have to remember that this is just a game of shadows. It is not the reality that we will live in after election day.

And the game, it must be said, has not been played fairly.  Since the story of a close race was established early one, the people who accumulate and judge the polls have been dismissing individual polls that tell another story.

And even were that not the case, even were all the polling perfect, it would not mean what we tend to think.  If all the polls were adjudged to predict a very close race, that just means, quite literally, than anything is possible: it could be close, or it could be a landslide for Harris, or it could be a landslide for Trump.

So don't be surprised if this election is not close.  Even the pollsters, if you listen carefully, are telling you that a clear victory by one candidate or the other is more likely than a narrow result.  

And above all, get out of the polling cave and into the real world.  Vote, and relish that you can vote. 

There is a world out there, one that is not driven by our anxieties and their profiteers, one that, every once in a while, can be changed by our actions.

We have been held for months in the polling cave. But today you can escape that shadowy delusion and help create a better world outside.

So get out there and be part of the big surprise.

[triviareads]

A Rose Blooms in Brooklyn by Ginny Moore does a pretty damn good job of portraying first-wave feminism in a fairly intersectional way that we rarely see in HR.

It also goes beyond the surface-level "Oh women should be allowed to vote" which is how a lot of HR authors treat the subject (cough Evie Dunmore cough)— it gives you a tangible "why" that holds good across class, race, and sexuality. In this case, a lot of focus is on contraception and we SEE its impact in the Brooklyn slums in a way that even The Duke Gets Even by Joanna Shupe touches upon because both the hero and heroine only really socialize among the upper classes— contraception is not only illegal but getting it anyway is expensive! And the people who suffer the most from the lack are poor women, many of them immigrants, with unsupportive or abusive husbands and a job to hold down to feed the children they already have. They can't access healthcare easily and some providers turn them away because of their race. Older children are forced to work or watch over younger children, stopping them from going to school, and the cycle of poverty continues.

[allie-leth]

You do realize that the comment you made, "identify out of the role of the oppressor" treats genders like a monolith, as if all are the same, the exact issue that was being mentioned here, right? I'm 5'5 demisexual, I'm about as much threat to someone in that sort of space as a fucking leaf. I'm not part of your hypothetical monolith, I get followed to my car by creepy men, I have to carry pepper spray to be ready to defend myself anytime I'm out at night. I'm FAR more likely to be assaulted than your average cis person, and I lack the physical prowess to do anything about it. I'm the one all my cis friends go to talk to because I make them feel safe in vulnerable conversations, I'm the one that people ask for help, the one people trust and feel safe with. But, yeah, totally the oppressor, right? Definitely not me facing the same shit you do while ALSO having to deal with people like you trying to make it even harder for me, right? Oh wait.

Do you not realize what you're doing, that you're simply punching down to the next group in the same way you were? You have this straw man idea of who we are, that were the devil in your head, predators, opportunitists, waiting to strike. But we aren't, we're just trying to fucking survive. Every day. Every trans friend I have IRL has been sexually assaulted, they all have to carry protection because every single one of them has dealt with assault. You act like we're the monsters, but you're the one trying to punch down, to continue the fucking cycle of oppression to the next group, not us.

I have fought for my rights and I have fought for the rights of women, because it's the right thing to do. Because it's what should happen. I will fight for your reproductive rights every time, I will fight on your side every single time there is something raised to further hurt women, even ss you shit on me, and people like me, for having the audacity to try to survive and be able to live normal lives. I will do it because it's the right thing to do, I will do it because I love my friends, family, sisters, I will do it because I don't want anyone to experience pain, and I never want people to feel like I've felt. Can you say the same for me or am I just another monster in your eyes, another predator.

I don't even agree with the op, I don't actually think our society is ready for gender neutral everything, but I think part of that reason we are so far away is the monolithic thinking from people like you. People who are so convinced that all men are the image you think they are, and how that serves to reinforce the idea and enable systems that create more problems

It's disgusting. Yet, still, I will do everything I can to be at the next woman's march, I will vote against every single bill that negatively impacts cis women but wouldn't impact me. I will fight on your side, even as you spit on me, because you deserve rights, you deserve happiness, you deserve to be treated fairly, because it's the right fucking thing to do.

the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.

[arcticdementor]

Democrats and liberal pundits are already trying to figure out how the Trump campaign not only bested Kamala Harris in the “Blue Wall” states of the Midwest and the Rust Belt, but gained on her even in areas that should have been safe for a Democrat. Almost everywhere, Donald Trump expanded his coalition, and this time, unlike in 2016, he didn’t have to thread the needle of the Electoral College to win: He can claim the legitimacy of winning the popular vote.

…

But in the end, a majority of American voters chose Trump because they wanted what he was selling: a nonstop reality show of rage and resentment. Some Democrats, still gripped by the lure of wonkery, continue to scratch their heads over which policy proposals might have unlocked more votes, but that was always a mug’s game. Trump voters never cared about policies, and he rarely gave them any. (Choosing to be eaten by a shark rather than electrocuted might be a personal preference, but it’s not a policy.) His rallies involved long rants about the way he’s been treated, like a giant therapy session or a huge family gathering around a bellowing, impaired grandpa.

…

Americans who wish to stop Trump in this assault on the American constitutional order, then, should get it out of their heads that this election could have been won if only a better candidate had made a better pitch to a few thousand people in Pennsylvania. Biden, too old and tired to mount a proper campaign, likely would have lost worse than Harris; more to the point, there was nothing even a more invigorated Biden or a less, you know, femalealternative could have offered. Racial grievances, dissatisfaction with life’s travails (including substance addiction and lack of education), and resentment toward the villainous elites in faraway cities cannot be placated by housing policy or interest-rate cuts. No candidate can reason about facts and policies with voters who have no real interest in such things. They like the promises of social revenge that flow from Trump, the tough-guy rhetoric, the simplistic “I will fix it” solutions. And he’s interesting to them, because he supports and encourages their conspiracist beliefs. (I knew Harris was in trouble when I was in Pennsylvania last week for an event and a fairly well-off business owner, who was an ardent Trump supporter, told me that Michelle Obama had conspired with the Canadians to change the state’s vote tally in 2020. And that wasn’t even the weirdest part of the conversation.) As Jonathan Last, editor of The Bulwark, put it in a social-media post last night: The election went the way it did “because America wanted Trump. That’s it. People reaching to construct [policy] alibis for the public because they don’t want to grapple with this are whistling past the graveyard.” Last worries that we might now be in a transition to authoritarianism of the kind Russia went through in the 1990s, but I visited Russia often in those days, and much of the Russian democratic implosion was driven by genuinely brutal economic conditions and the rapid collapse of basic public services. Americans have done this to themselves during a time of peace, prosperity, and astonishingly high living standards. An affluent society that thinks it is living in a hellscape is ripe for gulling by dictators who are willing to play along with such delusions.

( @mitigatedchaos)

[wolint]

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.

Psalm 103:19

 

Sovereignty! Such a small word for a big God! It is the supreme power or authority of God. God’s supremacy is the highest rank or authority in the universe. Yet, some would like to think that God is sitting up in heaven wringing His hands and spinning around in confusion over the state of the universe He created with added rhetorical exclamations of “Oh dear, what shall I do, how do I fix their mess,” and so many more. Nah! He is not!

God is the only and overall supreme ruler and authority.

Remember Daniel 4:17 and Psalm 47:8? Clearly stating that God rules and reigns in the nations and the affairs of humanity. God is the God of the nations! Even of the lawless and Godless nations. Nothing surprises Him. God rules over all things!

Psalm 22:27-29 illustrates God's universal righteous government. All the earth would eventually acknowledge Him as God.

God is always in charge. Every nation has a system of election, terms of election and length of service, each electoral candidate is voted for, and the majority wins the vote, but our text says that God rules sovereignty over the nations of the world.

In every election, whether, clean or rigged, you find those who don’t vote because they couldn’t make up their minds, those who vote for who they think is best and those who vote, just to vote, not caring who wins.

Sadly, when we don’t exercise our constitutional rights morally and appropriately, the wicked is elevated to power, a power that drives some to become political tyrants according to Proverbs 28:28.

Some may vote while others don’t but ultimately every government is put in place by God according to John 19:11 whilst Romans 13:1b tells us there is no authority except God-given, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

So, if God put the government in their places why are things the way they are and why won’t God do anything about the mess in the world? Simple! Man asked God to stay out of every sphere of society: schools, families, marriages, and the judicial system, all told God to hands-off what they’re doing. This is where we all need to be obedient to 1 Timothy 1:2-3 to realign the biblical order in the world.

We ought to pray for those who govern us to lead us aright and not to follow wherever they lead.

The Bible speaks clearly about the relationship between the believer and the government. We are to obey governmental authorities, and the government is to treat us justly and fairly.

It is also important to understand that only God is sovereign, and the role of human government is limited because God has ordained the government, the church and the family to participate in government as they have their authority structures, and the state should only interfere in exceptional circumstances to carry out justice.

No human government would ever fulfil the portrait of a ruler except Jesus who holds the unending government and rule of the world placed on His shoulders, He will eventually bring God’s rule of peace and righteous government to earth according to Isaiah 9:6-8.

Although God has ordained government and its purposes it does not have the solutions for all the problems and troubles in society. God alone is sovereign with the supreme power to do, undo, change and overturn every government.

Those who govern are fallible people, needing God’s wisdom to govern and have no supreme powers.

Be part of the governing body! Pray for them! God is sovereign but can't do anything if we do not pray.

PRAYER: Thank you, Lord, for being supreme. I honour you sovereign Lord and trust that you have all of humanity in your control. Glory be to you in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Shalom

WOMEN OF LIGHT INT PRAYER MIN.

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

In Defense of Vegans

I can’t believe I have to make this but after seeing how posts like the above still get thousands of notes I’m going to. While there are critiques of militant veganism I agree with as a former vegan, some people need to chill out. What’s aggravating about most people here is how much they hate vegans but less in the alt right conservative fashion and more under a guise of faux progressivism. All nuance is thrown out and people treat the vegan debate as a false binary of either eat local, humane meat or child slave soy.

I’ll start by saying I was a lot more anti vegan when I first got on this hellsite. Reblogging anti-vegan posts and picking occasional fights with vegans. I was a lot angrier and was letting off steam as someone who was a former vegan who had a hard time with it. Same with religion, I was a lot more anti religion when starting my blog due to anger at evangelicals. Being able to recognize how it just wasn’t my cup of tea has caused me to let go of a lot of that anger. I wasn’t happy doing it but that’s not a damnation of veganism or vegans.

What irritates me about how most treat vegans is that it’s often reacting to a stereotype or strawman of vegans rather than actually engaging with them. All these posts about how vegans are destroying the environment with their child slave quinoa, cashews and plastic leather, when being a vegan doesn’t require using that stuff. A lot of them are smarter than given credit for and do research what they buy. Many do eat local produce and use hand me down wool or leather. They aren’t just buying every hipster product labeled vegan. Vegans are forced to be put on the defensive and what should be a conversation about how no food is really ethical in this capitalist society turns into a shouting match and “no you” regarding who’s more “cruelty free”.

I can understand having beef with militants if you have faced bigotry such as racism or ableism from animal rights activists. But some people really are quick to hate vegans and justify it as woke or leftist. Sometimes, people won’t even check the source before reblogging it, like the video of that problematic new age hippie, appropriating Pacific Islander culture, claiming veganism is colonialism.

I think a lot of vegans get hate for being the wrong kind of neurodivergent in some peoples eyes. Many, including myself, do have hyper empathy and are swayed by emotional arguments such as documentaries such as Earthlings. They make one small mistake and everyone treats them as if they’re the worst even if they do apologize for it like @sobadpink here in the replies. Many of them do have trauma from the cruelty towards animals they’ve seen which is treated with little sensitivity by people who claim to be allies to those who are neurodivergent and/or have faced abuse or PTSD. While white PETA types need to be called out, many famous civil rights leaders have been vegan/vegetarian like Cesar Chavez or Corretta Scott King and people do a disservice by treating it as solely a white man’s ideology.

Being a vegan isn’t easy and a lot of people’s anger here is fairly reasonable in my opinion. Many are ostracized by their families, can hardly find any food while on the go and struggle with people not understanding or refusing to understand them. Correcting misinformation from vegans is one thing and then there’s just being a jerk about it. A lot of anti vegan people here are the latter. You can say it’s self inflicted but many do think they’re doing a good thing, even if the meat industry is more complicated than just “vote with your dollar”. I would be a bit defensive myself if people treated me like a racist, ableist colonizer who hates migrant workers the moment I mentioned what I eat for lunch.

Call me a bleeding heart or ARA if you want but I think a lot of vegans here deserve more charity than they’ve been given. It’s like this site, when it comes to this issue, is stuck in 2015 as I’ve seen vegans try to explain their side, offer different perspectives and correct misconceptions but nope, another post about slave labor quinoa or plastic wool gets made every week and gets thousands of uncritical notes. People claim those posts aren’t about shaming vegans but that’s sure not how they come off as. Even a lot of the big “anti vegan” blogs here have admitted they went a bit too far and have mellowed out. I don’t agree with everything hardcore vegans have done or said and I can understand why some who’ve been hurt by them may dislike vegans but I think tumblr is way too harsh and intolerant of vegans despite claiming to be the leftist weirdo safe space.

[thelonkgeningof1692]

"In order to debunk my argument, you first have to demonstrate an understanding of it or be able to repeat it back to me, both of which you have failed to do." 🔴

First off, no, I don't have to do that to debunk your argument. To debunk is to prove the falseness of something. Someone can do that without understanding or repeating back anything. You're just making another false claim.

Second off, your argument was that the electoral college exists to prevent mob rule.

The electoral college was created to appease slave states and because the founding fathers thought the average voter was too uninformed to make a proper decision.

That's the entire reason it exists at all. To appease slave states which no longer exist and prevent us as the average voters from having the final say because we're apparently too stupid to vote correctly.

The electoral college doesn't prevent mob rule, it just replaces it with a tyranny of the minority which is the objectively worse form of tyranny since it results in the suffering of the majority.

"It prevents mob rule. Of both the majority and minority. If it creates "tyranny of the minority" how come places like California and New York, which, based on population size, have minority republican voters, always go blue every election? You just made a claim here and didn't provide any rationalization for it whatsoever. That's not debunking." 🔴

It creates a tyranny of the minority by putting immense value on the votes of a very small amount of people and by enabling a very small amount of people to invalidate the choices of a very large amount of people.

Under the electoral college, even if one candidate is winning by several millions or even tens of millions of votes, they can lose simply because a few thousand people in each swing state voted for the other candidate.

In 2020, the vote of one Wyomingite was 3.7 times more important than that of a Californian.

The vote of someone in a swing state is SIGNIFICANTLY more important than the vote of someone not in a swing state.

The votes of every single American should be equal in value.

To argue otherwise is to argue for inequality, which is morally evil.

"I'm not even going to go through this point by point because all of your attempts at "debunking" are you just saying "wrong" and then making an alternate claim that's not supported in any way, which, as I've already mentioned, is not debunking at all." 🔴

Every single point is me pointing out the falseness of an argument. That is what debunking means. To debase an argument by pointing out why it's wrong.

It's what I've been doing to you this whole time.

It's what you've been failing to do me this whole time.

All you've done is make false claims like "The electoral college exists to prevent mob rule" and "In order to debunk my argument, you first have to demonstrate an understanding of it or be able to repeat it back to me", and then claim I've failed in debunking you after I've literally explained to you exactly why you're wrong.

"Without the electoral college, smaller states would literally have no say in presidential elections at all. All states deserve representation and a voice in the election regardless of their size because they are part of the union." 🔴

Without the electoral college, every vote would be equal in importance.

As it currently stands under the electoral college, swing states, which are themselves smaller states, are grossly overvalued. To the point where candidates rarely campaign in other states.

Votes are one's say in presidential elections, and without the electoral college, small states still have votes, so they absolutely do have a say and representation, they just wouldn't be so grossly overvalued.

They wouldn't lose their say, their representation, or their voice.

They would just be treated fairly!

And even ignoring all that, STATES DO NOT VOTE, PEOPLE DO.

Stop acting like states are singular entities!

States don't matter as much as the people do!

"If California and Texas have their entire population voting it wouldn't matter what someone over in Wyoming voted because it would never make a difference in the outcome and large cities shouldn't get to dictate the needs of more rural states because they're very different." 🔴

Again states are not individuals! They do not vote! The people in them do! And they never vote entirely one way!

Your logic is based on a fundamentally wrong visualization of how people in states vote.

Abolishing the electoral college means every vote has the same value, which means every single vote has the chance to be the deciding one. Under the electoral college, only the swing states actually matter in that regard.

The urban and rural areas are not monolithic in their voting patterns!

And I've already debunked the claim about cities being the deciding factor.

If literally every American regardless of age or status voted, you would still need more than the top 100 largest cities in the country to all vote 100% the same way (every vote going to the same candidate) in order to have a majority of the votes.

It's a probabalistic impossibility for large cities to be the deciding factor in a presidential election.

"It does provide some protection to smaller states, even if you don't understand how." 🔴

I've already debunked this!

All the protection the small states receive isn't real. It can disappear in a moments notice.

Under the electoral college, the entire election already is decided by a handful of swing states, and a candidate would only need a slight majority of votes in the 11 largest states to become president. If every American voted, it would be possible for someone to win with only 27% of the votes.

The small states aren't actually protected!

You only think that because of the current electorate having small swing states!

If all the swing states were large states, your claim that the electoral college protect small states would disappear.

The electoral college doesn't protect small states.

The current structure of the electorate just gives more power to small states at this moment in time.

"True, smaller states don't have a lot of electoral votes so if the election isn't close, their electoral votes won't contribute much to the outcome but if it is a close election, 4 or 5 electoral votes can be the deciding factor over who reaches 270 first." 🔴

Again, the deciding votes of any election under the electoral college can only come from the swing states.

Under the electoral college, a republican in California will never cast the deciding vote in a presidential election, since California is overwhelming blue, but without it, the deciding vote can come from anyone.

"I don't have a problem with getting rid of faithless electors or fixing problems within it that exist, but abolishing it completely is a very bad idea, especially if the alternative is a national popular vote." 🔴

Without the electoral college, only the outcomes of 9% of histories presidential elections would be effected. 4 elections.

The only thing the electoral college has succeeded in is allowing 4 losers to win the presidency and cause inequality in the value of presidential votes.

I personally don't believe in popular votes, and support ranked choice voting.

There is no voting perfect voting method (https://youtu.be/qf7ws2DF-zk?si=knKNjapW1CMsZUxl), but the popular vote, winner take all system under the electoral college offers no actual benefits but many downsides.

But none of this actually matters. Because when the NPVIC eventually passes, which could even happen in the next 4 years or 8 years, the electoral college will be bypassed and have no power anymore.

https://youtu.be/tUX-frlNBJY?si=C7pXbZf9xhCouIzz

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

OKAY WAIT.

AS a Coloradan I think i have to say, COLORADO WAS RED. It was; when we (my family and i) were looking at the stats and scrolled in on Colorado, only Denver and Boulder were blue, okay? I just want that to be said, because people act like Colorado is a blue state when that is just. not the case

And that’s really how most blue states happen. They’re not blue because all areas of the state are majority democrat, they’re blue because they have 2 or 3 major metropolitan areas that vote blue and basically cancel out the rest of the state.

[rabbitindisguise]

I think I'm coming to the realization that "thanksgiving was created on a bedrock of racism" isn't like the point of the holiday

it's to eat food, have the day off, and encourage people to exist together who don't always exist together at the same time- like most holidays. A lot of the tumblr traditions, like posting donations links and the Adams gifset, that I was participating in for years . . . have started to feel like sort of empty sniggering at racist family members. And sniggering particularly because they weren't sad and miserable the day of, like I (the enlightened one) was. That feels like kind of shitty and more about my superiority than focusing on tribal issues. Being miserable isn't something to be proud of, for one thing, and for another it doesn't do anything productive to be mean to someone on a holiday and hope that I completely change their worldview in one angry conversation. That's something that has proven to not work (though setting boundaries and limiting contact in an otherwise healthy family situations because of repeated racism does often work fairly well from what I've heard, which people can see as "an argument").

Stuff that's missing for me now is the celebration of small and big wins for tribal nations, involvement with action groups and letter writing to government officials, voting literacy, awareness of growing concerns related to things that people can actually help instead of the helpless weight of all the bad things, and the hope that the united states can and should do better. Thanksgiving could still be fun because it's a day off. A structure might be a week of lead up covering the history, the current problems, calls to actions, and then ending with positive work towards a clear goal for the future, leaving the time when people are supposed to be relaxing doing something that can help alleviate stress and contribute socially just like volunteering at soup kitchens. These seem like very natural things to do in response to current tragedies, and happened with the coverage of the big pipeline building projects, but doesn't happen so often for small voting measures or things that can easily pass under the radar. The effects of past/current colonialism is an ongoing issue but treating it as a constant crisis led to burnout for me, and hijacking the holiday made to further entrench colonialism makes a lot of sense too.

I think it would be easy for a capitalist society to seize on unrest with the holiday by removing a national holiday with no replacement and contribute to more working days. That leads me to believe that the restorative answer to help fight back against the ongoing wrongs of thanksgiving, to change the narrative that silences native tribes by not even including their voice when discussing racism against them. Thanksgiving could be a day of mourning and the celebration can be focused on efforts to support tribal sovereignty, with of course eating and having the day off.

I think this is a good example of the way that activism I was doing rarely considered human psychology and even basic needs like "eating" and "resting." It was all theoretical- poor children relying on school lunch, amazon workers not having rest breaks. In order for me to help fight for human rights I often pressured myself to deprive myself of the very rights I was trying to protect, to both the detriment of myself and the people I was trying to help. It would also be more relaxing ways to spend fraught holidays for me to do this sort of thing because I don't really do the "activism" anymore yet still have the same values. Earth day, Christmas, and 4th of July of obvious choices, but I'm not sure what to do for Easter. Maybe Martin Luther King day but that already has a lot of that, plus ready made reading material and things. New Years, birthdays, Halloween, Julius Caesar stabbing day (March 15th), and other tumblr holidays are definitely just Days. I think it's important to have things that are just Days without the homework.

[yobaba30]

JUST SO WE ARE CLEAR ON THE TIMELINE:

Dec 18th - House Impeaches Trump.

Jan 8th - First CDC warning.

Jan 9th - Trump campaign rally.

Jan 14th - Trump campaign rally.

Jan 16h - House sends impeachment articles to Senate.

Jan 18th - Trump golfs.

Jan 19th - Trump golfs.

Jan 20th - First case of coronavirus in the US, Washington State.

Jan 22nd - "No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine."

Jan 24th - "It will all work out well."

Jan 28th - Trump campaign rally.

Jan 30th - Trump campaign rally.

Jan 30th - "We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully."

Feb 1st - Trump golfs.

Feb 2nd - "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China."

Feb 5th - Senate votes to acquit. Then takes a five-day weekend.

Feb 10th - Trump campaign rally.

Feb 10th - "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away."

Feb 12th - Dow Jones closes at an all time high of 29,551.42.

Feb 15th - Trump golfs.

Feb 19th - Trump campaign rally.

Feb 19th - "I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along."

Feb 20th - Trump campaign rally.

Feb 21st - Trump campaign rally.

Feb 24th - "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"

Feb 25th - "CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus."

Feb 25th - "I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine."

Feb 26th - "Because of all we’ve done, the risk to the American people remains very low. … When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done."

Feb 26th - "We're going very substantially down, not up." Also "This is a flu. This is like a flu"; "Now, you treat this like a flu"; "It's a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we'll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner."

Feb 27th: "One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear."

Feb 28th - "We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical."

Feb 28th - Trump campaign rally.

Mar 2nd - "You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?"

Mar 2nd - "A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly."

Mar 4th: "If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better."

Mar 5th - "I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work."

Mar 5th - "The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!"

Mar 6th - "I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down."

Mar 6th - "There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been."

Mar 6th - "Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good."

Mar 6th - "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president."

Mar 6th - "I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault."

Mar 7th - Trump golfs.

Mar 8th - Trump golfs.

Mar 8th - "We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus."

Mar 9th - "This blindsided the world."

Mar 9th - "The Fake News Media & their partner, the Democratic Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power to inflame the Coronavirus situation."

Mar 10th - "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

Mar 13th - [Declared state of emergency].

Mar 13th - "No, I don't take responsibility at all."

Mar 15th - "This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over."

Mar 17th - "This is a pandemic," Mr. Trump told reporters. "I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."

Mar 18th - "I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning"

Mar 18th - "It’s not racist at all. No. Not at all. It comes from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate."

Mar 18th - "No, I’ve always viewed it as serious, there was no difference yesterday from days before. I feel the tone is similar but some people said it wasn’t."

Mar 23th - Dow Jones closes at 18,591.93 erasing whatever growth he took credit for during his tenure sup to this point.

Mar 25th - 3.3 million Americans file for unemployment.

Mar 30th - Dow Jones closes at 21,917.16.

Apr 1st - "Did you know I was number one on Facebook? I just found out I’m number one on Facebook. I thought that was very nice, for whatever it means." (Trump has 25 million likes, Obama has 55 million for comparison)

Apr 1st - "I don’t think I would have done any better had I not been impeached."

Apr 2nd - 6.6 million Americans file for unemployment.

Apr 2nd - More than 1000 Americans die from coronavirus in a single day. Over 5000 dead total.

Apr 3rd - “The models show hundreds of thousands of people are going to die and you know what I want to do? I want to come way under the model,” Trump said. “The professionals did the models and I was never involved in a model. At least this kind of a model.”

this is just a sample, of course.

[texasthegreatdestroyer]

Hot Take #666: Adults CAN’T be groomed.

Content Warning: Mentions of grooming and methods of grooming. For some context, I’m sure this is no secret by this point, but my interaction with communities are not limited to the Sims community. Sometimes I run my roots through the RWBY community, I run my own community in the Borderlands fandom. My tumblr account dates back to my interest in the Final Fantasy 10 community, and while there isn’t really much of one to begin with, I do partly exist within what little of a community exists behind an obscure anime known as Fairy Gone. But the community I tend to most find myself involved in, so much that it actually weirdly enough worked in my favor during the hilarious accusations that myself and Mack were the same person, I used to be so involved with the commentary community that I, back in 2019-2020, did commentaries myself before I subsequently stopped for a slue of reasons, mainly the inability to produce videos efficiently. So why does the commentary community matter in this particular case? Well not much, but not to name names, because I like this creator, and you can disagree with someone and not hate their guts (Foreign concept to the sims community, I know.) But a creator with 100k subs on YouTube that I follow fairly closely had the take that Adults, yes, Grown ass, legally able to vote adults, can be groomed. And here’s what I have to say to that. No. Just No. I’ve already put my view on this in this content creator’s comment section, but I mainly wanted to make this post because surprisingly, this is not the first time I’ve heard people with this take, and here’s why this take is hot garbage.  Adults can’t be groomed. It’s that simple. Here’s a copy paste of the comment I posted. Admittedly, don't really care much for the comment about adults being groomed. A statement like that takes agency and responsibility away from adults who have the choice to say yes or no as opposed to children who can't say yes to begin with. Does that mean adults in similar situations can't be victims? Of course not, but at that point, the most proper term for it would be manipulation because it doesn't infantize them nor does it conflate the level of power they have over the situation as adults to that of a child who has little to no power to make those decisions for themselves where as an adult can. I've seen too many times where adults claim to be "groomed" in accusations that are as simple as the adults having a terrible and toxic relationship that was consensual on both parts, but the party claiming to be groomed using that sort of accusation to absolve themselves of their decision to be in that relationship in the first place. Grooming in terms of allegations have always been used to describe the victims as children, and it should stay as such.

Would like to add onto this comment that wasn’t included is that for the aforementioned reasons stated in that comment, making statements of “Adults being groomed” is harmful towards Victims of Child Sexual Assault(CSA)/Child Sexual Harassment(CSH) because it takes the focus of humanity’s most vulnerable and puts the spot light on people who realistically should be held accountable for their own actions. It also downplays the severity of grooming and the implications behind it as well as misuses it and falsely accuses someone of being a predator who would otherwise just be at worst a garbage human being who treats their partners like garbage and who deserves to be called out for specifically what they did, or at best, just a relationship that gone real wrong, and an angry ex decided that ruining their former partner’s life with false predator accusations is the way to go and not at all petty or harmful to those who have or do experience real grooming. Ultimately what it comes down to, if you’re a grown ass adult who holds these beliefs and you even slightly care about victims of CSA/CSH, maybe don’t say this shit because it’s harmful and just blatantly wrong, uneducated, and ignorant.