#and if we aren’t supposed to vote Trump and we aren’t supposed to vote Biden than where are the names we should be voting

[murdertrashbabyrat]

Here’s my very genuine question:

[porcelaintoybox23]

In 2020 I was a “vote blue, no matter who” person because Trump was actively making the US worse. It was only for that election as the democrats had at least “we won’t make your lives worse” as a strategy. It is 2024. Life is worse. The “progressive” president is actively funding a genocide, has reneged on several campaign promises, has increased drilling, etc. there’s a whole host of things.

Roe v Wade was gutted, Covid is still a problem, anti queer bills are passing all over the country, cops still suck and Biden has no qualms about it.

The “lesser of two evils” schtick only works if there is a lesser evil and at this point, 100% Hitler vs 99% Hitler is not a significant enough difference.

A line must be drawn somewhere. The dems need to get their shit together and many of you need to seek help. You cannot hand waive a fucking genocide. The shit you claim Trump will do is happening under Biden. Saying a Biden genocide is better than a Trump genocide…fucking deranged. Do you realize how fucking insane you sound.

Biden & the dems are going to fuck themselves over for Israel. They have lied about crimes the IDF has committed. Biden is using OUR money to kill children. You cannot ask people to vote for that. You cannot ask people watching people that look like them and their families to vote for 99% Hitler because 100% Hitler will build a hotel while the former will just leave the land decimated.

Actions have consequences and the dems clearly need some. If Biden loses this year, it is entirely his fault.

Edit: some reblogs proving my point. All I said was you can’t be surprised people aren’t going to vote for Biden. You can’t insult or guilt people who have a right to be pissed. Instead, you fucking weirdos choose to insult me. Ad hominem isn’t an argument and I promise I know how the federal government works, that’s why I’m mad. Biden has power, he’s not a state senator. He has chosen to use that power for literal evil.

Like, am I supposed to change my opinion because you called me weird? I’ll correct one thing. If Biden loses, it will be 98% his fault. The other 2% will be you fucking assholes attacking people with legitimate grievances. Your apathy is disgusting. Something has to give

[dicapiito]

Not sure why all this buyers remorse is happening now. If y’all didn’t want Trump; you would’ve voted for Kamala Harris but between wanting to stick it to Black People because of ‘ Free Palestine’ and vote 3rd party. Same applies for those people just being extremely stupid and splitting the ticket via the voting booth… I mean..? Three branches of government now lost because you fuckers just would not listen to Black People.

Wanting Biden to do something when he told you to vote for Harris after y’all called for him to step down is some extremely wild shit. “ do something” was supposed to be done November 5th. If you had truly cared about Gaza: you would’ve voted for Harris.

This buyers remorse shit literally days afterwards after being very smug about wanting to “ stick it to the liberals” and now look. Some of you are still being dumb as fuck as reblogging obvious scammer donation posts from people who aren’t even Palestinian so it makes sense you guys think Biden can do whatever he wants when he did what he could. Maybe next time listen to Black People since we saw through the media and their bullshit on how they were covering Biden and Harris. It wasn’t hard to figure out the media loves chaos and yet; y’all still chose to waste your votes voting third party and fucked yourselves and the rest of us.

Of course dark days are ahead and frankly when you’re suffering because of your lack of voting for Harris; I hope you feel the despair you helped usher in because you wanted to “ own the libs” because some podcaster who doesn’t wash his ass told you to do it. Black People said the media wasn’t going to be fair to Harris and y’all still kept tuning in and didn’t give a shit. So why cry now when ya could’ve fixed this November 5th? Enjoy seeing so many overturns in the SCOTUS! Pricks

Black People tried to tell ya

[fiyerotigelar]

I’m not American so you can tell me to shut up if you’d like, but honestly the way some leftist Americans who reek of privilege and don’t seem to be living in reality at all, can still advocate for Joe Biden with their whole chests make me sick. How can anyone with a conscience stand to support that man? He just went on television and proudly claimed he was a Zionist, and in the same breath told the world that America is not a safe place for Jewish people. He is the fucking President and he can’t seem to make his own country safe for citizens, so he has to believe that an occupying force has to exist so that Jewish people can have somewhere safe. YOU ARE THE LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD AND YOUR COUNTRY IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE LAND OF THE FREE.

Donald Trump is a horrible person and we can safely assume he would be doing the exact same thing, only if he were the democrats would be condemning him for it. Meanwhile they are so blinded by their loyalty to being the opposite of MAGAs and republicans that they will blindly follow any leader despite them funding genocide of tens of thousands of innocent lives?? How does that President make anyone feel safe or represented. How does using your hard earned tax dollars to shed so much blood make anyone feel confident in a leader???? Your own money is contributing to this slaughtering and there’s nothing you can do about it. Except not vote for the man giving the all clear. And some people can’t even do that. Because people are under the illusion that this election is identical to the last one. It’s not. The Biden administration thinks they can win with the exact same “we aren’t trump” tactic. But supporting him this time around means you’re choosing to ignore the moral thing to do, which is not support genocide, which then comes with people attacking you because what the republicans have planned for their own country is sinister too.

I am sending so much love to those of you who have no fucking idea what you’re going to do in this election cycle, because what the fuck America? What the actual fuck are you meant to do? Evil is everywhere and I’m so sick of these (mostly) white rich liberals acting like if you don’t vote blue then you’re a maga antisemite or whatever the fuck else they’re saying rn.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, Christian:

If you listen to Donald Trump’s diehard supporters, we aren’t supposed to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. That’s about the only conclusion you can draw from their reaction to Trump being shot at during a rally this past Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania. With the notable exception of a staffer for Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi who either resigned or was fired after telling the shooter, “don’t miss next time,” Democrats have risen with one voice to condemn this for the abomination that it is. As I write this, a little over 50 hours have passed since the shooting. In that time, the Democrats have extended more grace to Trump than he ever has extended to them in the eight-plus years since he came down the Trump Tower escalator. The same people whom Trump attacked as enemies of the American people and targeted with degrading and sometimes blatantly racist language showed Trump a concept that he hasn’t even begun to understand—mercy and compassion. As the messages from Democrats poured in, I was reminded of passages in Scripture that liken showing compassion for your foes to pouring “hot coals,” “burning coals,” or “coals of fire” (depending on the translation) on their heads.

[...] While digging into this, I learned that the reference to coals came from an old Egyptian custom in which penitent men carried bowls of burning coals on their heads as a sign of repentance. Supposedly, showing kindness and compassion to an enemy could lead to shame and repentance. Unfortunately, any hopes of Trump showing any sense of shame were put to rest on Monday when he named Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate. Vance is part of a long list of never-Trumpers who have morphed into full-on Trump diehards since 2016. If Vance’s morph isn’t the most opportunistic, it’s pretty close. In 2016, he told PBS Newshour that from where he was sitting, part of Trump’s appeal was based on racist tropes.

[...] But that doesn’t go far enough for a number of Republicans. A number of them have claimed that Democrats from President Biden on down bear responsibility for this tragedy for spending the last three-plus years attacking Trump for his not-so-veiled authoritarian inclinations. That rings extremely hollow from a party with a smorgasbord of elected officials who openly traffic in violence. But on a more practical level, Trump’s diehards expect Democrats to ignore the facts. They expect us to ignore the mountain of evidence from the published record that shows Trump was ranting about the election being stolen from him when he knew or reasonably should have known that he had lost. Specifically, it has been amply demonstrated that as early as a week after the election, Trump had to have known he had lost. Specifically, Trump campaign lawyer Steffan Passantino told The New York Times that his colleagues had known by then that talk of Dominion-powered voting machines in Georgia switching votes—the very basis for the Big Lie—was complete, unadulterated bullshit. He certainly knew by November 20, when the Republican leaders of Michigan’s Republican-controlled state legislature told him that they had no information that could overturn Biden’s lead there. The lawmakers later told The Washington Post that they believed at that moment, they believed Trump’s “blinders had fallen off.” This is critical, because Trump absolutely, positively, could not win without holding Michigan. They also expect us to ignore people like Roger Stone. In the Danish documentary “A Storm Foretold,” a film that figured very prominently in the January 6 hearings, Stone was caught on tape admitting that he knew Trump had lost. 

Darrell Lucus wrote a solid Substack post on why it’s imperative to both call out Donald Trump for the bad he’s done while still extending grace to him in the wake of the assassination attempt against him Saturday.

[eowynstwin]

i’m sorry if this isn’t the right place to ask but it’s my first year voting and idk who to talk to,, abt that voting thing you reblogged,, is it still worth voting even if i don’t vote for typical red or blue parties? the candidate i want to vote for runs for the green party which is literally almost unheard of in the us but with how strictly red vs. blue politics seem to be here i’m not sure if it’s even worth voting for the person i actually want to have my vote bc i know they won’t compete with the blue party. as much as i hate both the blue and red leading options i would much rather contribute to the blue party winning than the red, but i don’t actually want to vote for b***n. but i just don’t want to waste my vote on a party that can’t compete and contribute to t***p getting elected, like im not sure what to do. i know who i actually want to vote for but i feel like actually voting for them is a wasted vote and it’ll do more harm then good even though the other options aren’t great either

again i’m sorry if this is like a completely inappropriate question, feel free to just delete this, but this two-party-only thing is so fkn frustrating. i want to give my vote to the person i feel actually deserves it but most people i know don’t even realise that there are other political parties aside from red v blue so instead of creating a situation where people can vote for who they want it’s people have to vote for option A even though they suck because option B is SO MUCH WORSE and option C isn’t even viable because A needs as many votes to beat B as possible like …..what is the average person even supposed to do?? does this even count as democracy???

So I don't understand why you censored Biden or Trump, first of all, because they're not slurs. I find the asterisks infantilizing.

To put it to you simply, no, it is not worth voting third party. That is an emotional vote and I'm sorry, but your feelings do not matter. I don't care how bad you feel voting for Biden. You know your third party candidate is not going to win. I still blame every single blue voter who wrote in Bernie for Hillary's loss in 2016.

Splitting the blue vote means red win. That is just how it works in this country and you need to learn that now. You need to stop treating your vote like an endorsement of Biden's policy and start treating it like the only scrap of power you have in this fucking country, because other than voicing your complaints to your representatives, that really is it.

Oh, and speaking of Biden--the House rejected the $17.6bn aid bill to Israel after Biden threatened to veto it. I strongly recommend you start getting your political news somewhere other than Tumblr or TikTok. Constant public pressure on Biden and his administration is working. Do you think Trump would give a rat's ass about what the public wanted him to do? Do you think Republicans would for a second consider pulling back on a war they are desperate to escalate?

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm not saying it isn't a shitty situation. I AM saying that your favorite candidate is not going to win, and I'm even saying that your favorite candidate will put us at risk for a Trump victory. We have a two viable parties because that is the reality of our socioeconomic political system. Rs and Ds are the only choices available because they are the only parties with significant financial power. Investors back Rs and Ds because they know Rs and Ds will give them a return on their investment. Green party candidates, and any other third party candidates, will not win because they do not stand to benefit investors.

It's shitty. It's unfair. It's unethical and immoral. But it's the world we live in. It's the world YOU live in. You have to play the political game whether you like it or not.

So play it smart.

[weevil-mastermind]

You’re right. We should look at things in their proper context. What follows is very important context for what the moderator said:

J. D. Vance has spent months railing against “illegal” immigrants from Haiti in Springfield, Ohio. Recently, he claimed that they’re eating people’s pets. (They are not, and even after he learned the story was false he continued to spread it. The best proof his team could come up with was the police report of a woman who found her cat alive and conspicuously not eaten by Haitians a few days later.) He claimed they were “dumped” in the community by Joe Biden, when in reality the large influx of Haitians in the town is because a bunch were recruited by local companies and news of available jobs spread by word of mouth. He claimed that the Haitians were spreading disease and increasing disease rates in the county. The disease rate in this county is actually decreasing. (“Vance has also added to his claims about Haitians, saying on social media that communicable diseases have been on the rise in Springfield because of the Haitian migration… Information from the county health department, however, shows a decrease in infectious disease cases countywide, with 1,370 reported in 2023—the lowest since 2015.” https://www.wsj.com/us-news/springfield-ohio-pet-eating-claims-haitian-migrants-04598d48 The Wall Street Journal is a conservative paper too!)

He claimed that a Haitian immigrants murdered a child named Aiden Clark. In reality, the boy died in a car crash. One of the drivers was from Haiti, but most people would consider leaving out the fact that he died in a car crash to be dishonest. As you say, we shouldn’t omit key details to twist the narrative, but that is exactly what Vance did. Aiden Clark’s grieving father has begged Vance to stop exploiting his son’s death just to demonize Haitians, yet Vance continues to do so.

The Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, may not be voting citizens yet, but they are still residents of Ohio, and this means they are Vance’s constituents. They are the constituents he is supposed to serve and he is lying about them for political gain. To achieve power. Since Trump and Vance started lying about Springfield, the community has had to deal with many bomb threats. Haitians describe living in fear in interviews. These are his constituents, his own fellow human beings, and he made their lives hell in the name of power.

All of this is very important context for these screenshots.

The moderators pointing out that the Haitian illegal immigrants that J. D. Vance has spent months lying about aren’t actually here illegally is the bare minimum. They should be going much farther to set the record straight.

There was a time when I was willing to engage in good faith with J. D. Vance, even if I strongly disagreed with nearly everything he believes. (I actually read his book several years ago.) After this debacle with the Haitians, I can no longer do so. It is clear that J. D. Vance is not acting in good faith. He is a serial liar like his boss and should be treated as such.

However, I am willing to engage with you in good faith, so if there are longer video clips than the ones I saw on social media, and you believe those change the meaning of this exchange, please share them with me. (Alternatively, the timestamp in the full debate where this exchange occurred.) You claim the moderators were spewing lies and J. D. Vance corrected them. What lies are you referring to?

[bllsbailey]

CNN's Harry Enten Reveals Something That Has to Horrify Dems

The Democrats had their moment with Barack Obama, and Republicans are having it with Donald J. Trump. It must horrify Democrats. They’re looking at it on a surface level—we know Trump derangement syndrome exists. Politically, Trump could be the GOP’s Obama moment in that the 2024 election did end up being one that realigned the country.

It blew apart the last vestiges of the Obama coalition that’s become either right-leaning or full-blown MAGA. Voters under 30 swung to the GOP by 20 points between 2020-2024. Union voters are now flowing into the Trump camp at healthy rates; 60 percent of the Teamsters rank-and-file voted for Trump in 2024. The numbers do not lie, with CNN’s Harry Enten noting that the electorate has changed under Trump, which now has a plus-two Republican advantage. It was plus-five Democratic in 2017 and then plus-six in 2021. 

“They’ve remade the electorate,” added Enten. “He’s [Trump] copying Frank Sinatra ‘doing it my way.’” 

Republicans couldn’t beat Obama. Democrats cannot beat Trump, and 2020, which was riddled with funny business, only made MAGA’s return stronger. Biden thought the MAGA moment had died with his supposed win in November 2020. It only brought it back stronger than ever, with a popular mandate. Democrats have no message to counter Trump 2.0. They don’t control anything; even a lie-and-wait strategy will likely be complicated because they stand for nothing. They don’t like Trump, which is puerile. 

What they still do harp on is race stuff, transgender insanity, and other niche weirdo issues that have now turned off normal voters, the vast majority of whom aren’t down with the authoritarian and illiberal ethos that oozes from these overwhelmingly white, wealthy, over-educated, and all-around degenerate progressives that have taken over the Democratic Party.

It's Trump’s agenda to lose at this point.

Trending on Townhall Videos

[jodilin65]

Welcome to the United States of Fucktards where women love men and men love men. *eyeroll* Although, I’m guessing there wasn’t as much of a turnout which would be Biden’s fault because he did such a shitty job.

So I get up after midnight, take a quick glance at the headlines, and see everything played out just as I knew it would. That’s the shitty part of being psychic: you know right away when things aren’t going to work out and you have no room for hope. It isn’t just a psychic thing, though, it’s common sense. I've seen how twisted Americans are becoming. They hate women and gays and they love Trump so much that the little bastard could kill babies right in front of the country's noses, and they would still vote for him. So, like I said, I get up, and I see Trump wins this state, Trump wins that state. Trump wins. Trump wins. Trump wins. But again, I knew he would and I also knew most Floridians were anti-abortion. It’s a twisted trend we've been on where more and more people are brainwashed to believe it's murder. *sighs* At least there are still pills, DIY, and other states for the few that want it.

So Andy and the scum I live with and wish to desperately escape will be thrilled. At least the little closet case will pick on the illegals and staunch the flow of outsiders a bit.

People are getting more and more delusional that the next thing I know, I'm not going to be able to get the CPAP back (since I likely can't get the mouthguard I want), saying that I’m way God made me, and it would be a sin to try to change it. I'd say I hope the next bullet finds its mark, but if it weren’t Trump, it would just be some other Refucklican.

Very tired, first due to the long stretch and then broken-up sleep. I just can't win either way. Either I'm tired because I'm low on thyroid, or I'm tired because I'm not low on thyroid and up forever. Because whatever is cursing my sleep has no traffic to use against it, it has to use my own body. First, I did that snorting sound that is supposed to be a sign of sleep apnea and septum issues, along with that erratic hissing-like sound that the first pulmonologist demonstrated as a sign of sleep apnea, and then my shoulder hurt like a motherfucker.

Also, there’s no point in continuing with the snot spray because when I woke up and took off the breathing strip, my nose was barely breathable—it was so fucking stuffy.

I have never been so anxious to get the fuck out of Florida, and not because of politics. Unless I really do have septum issues, my nose definitely does NOT like this climate just because I do. If I have to go colder to get my nose back, then yeah, I'll make the trade-off.

I hate this park in general, the people, owning and renting at the same time, and being made to feel like a kid all over by being told what to do. I love the idea of eventually being able to save twice as much money, and maybe the state will have better healthcare, whatever it ends up being. Hurricane season is still a big concern, too. We're already into November and there's another one entering the Gulf, though it won't affect Florida.

He and I were talking yesterday, and while I will always hate cold and snow, I realize there are some benefits to those climates. As long as it doesn't get humid in the summer like the Northeast, it keeps things quieter outdoors and is better for sleeping and things like that. I wish I was climate-oblivious like he is. I don't remember a single motorcycle in Oregon. I'm willing to keep my mind open to all possibilities at this point. If it weren't so humid and expensive, Massachusetts would probably be the best state for us with its universal healthcare.

In other news, we went to Denny's yesterday and I got chicken strips and fries. He got an omelet.

[gentlefxlk]

WAIT hold on I’ve cracked it….i think the “if you vote you’re stupid” crowd a) thinks that voting once every 4 years is the extent of most people’s civic duty (it’s not) and b) does not actually understand how people are put up as candidates and voted in/how the stupid bureaucracy works. Which is not their fault obvi, it’s supposed to be dense for the layman. But I do promise you, strangers on tumblr.com are not the people who really control anything here

Although I’m glad we were able to get rid of Joe Biden, it really was not because of us, it was because of donors realizing that the MEDIAN voter (remember, the people who aren’t sure if they wanted Trump or Biden) was not going to “vote blue”. You really need to be talking to your aunt who owns a small business or your cousin who’s an electrician or your racist grandma more so than 17 year old gay fandom blog who equally doesn’t understand how the government works

[beesandwasps]

Let’s go through these claims, shall we?

Any and all performative stuff Biden did about Covid was more than negated by his later total dismissal of it and pressure on groups like the CDC to declare the pandemic “over” despite the weekly numbers actually increasing year-over-year repeatedly during his administration. He has furthermore discontinued the Covid state of emergency (while extending the 9/11 one, because Zombie Osama Bin Laden is a bigger threat than something that’s killing many times as many people, per year, than 9/11 did) and discontinued monitoring and mandatory reporting. (But you’d better believe that if you are in Biden’s personal presence, you will be masked and tested!)

See #1

See #1

…which he then let lapse without doing anything about the underlying causes.

Collection, but not accrual of interest (which is a central problem) or the debts themselves (of which he has, in total, canceled <2%)

…while approving a record amount — more than Reagan, either Bush, or Trump — of fossil fuel extraction on public land, and increasing US emissions (largely through unnecessary wars, such as the genocide in Israel), so that it is immaterial whether we are in the Paris Accords or not, because we aren’t obeying them

But permitting more fossil fuel extraction overall than Trump, including a project in Alaska which is considered to be one of the top 2% worst-polluting fossil fuel projects in US history

After they had issued their report, which was the point of the commission.

…which means that red states will get more extra representation in the House than blue states. Well done!

So, in other words, this one already negated itself. Credit for putting up the political theater, though. (No, seriously, one of the reasons the Democrats keep failing in elections is that they don’t usually make the attempt if they think it won’t work, which translates into doing nothing, so people don’t bother voting. If you actually want to increase turnout, you need to make even the doomed pushes for improvement.)

But expanded drone bombing in Muslim countries, like Obama did. If you’re actually killing more Muslims, I think it’s kind of moot whether you’re letting more of them enter the country, don’t you?

Again, this was a performative act which he later contradicted pretty directly.

…which he subsequently continued; Trump’s wall is being funded and built by the federal government even now.

Well, kudos for doing it, I guess, but this was not even in the top 100 items on the platform in 2020. (It’s like the way that we’re supposed to cheer that the Biden administration has permitted trans people to openly serve in the military — I suppose it’s best to be egalitarian, but I don’t know of a single trans person who really wanted that, and the administration keeps bowing to the right on every other trans issue.)

…in the federal government. And it was already supposedly illegal. I mean, I suppose it’s better that somebody occasionally make a show of enforcing the rules, but claiming this as an accomplishment is setting the bar extraordinarily low, practically on the ground.

It obviously didn’t stick, because the Biden administration has been caught lying repeatedly in order to provide a fig leaf for giving Israel weapons and money to sustain their genocide. Not to mention, of course, Biden’s role in the actual genocide itself, which pretty much destroys any notion that he has ethical rules at all.

The proposal apparently went through, because the higher speed appears to be permitted by the USDA. So the chicken thing was showboating that accomplished nothing lasting. As for firing squads: the real issue is that the federal government is ordering executions at all; the question of what method they use, as long as it isn’t deliberately slow and painful, is barely a question at all.

I really think people have forgotten just how bad things were under the Trump Administration. Literally every day there was news about some service being cut or someone terrible appointed somewhere they shouldn't be or what have you. He constantly flirted with WW3 and military dictatorship. It was such a blur of badness that there aren't big standouts for people to point to to make him "the XYZ president." it was everything. all the time. Why do we not remember this.

[odinsblog]

HOT TAKE: If Biden can cancel some federal student loan debt, then he can cancel all of it. It’s literally what he campaigned on and promised to do. (source) (source) (source)

It’s funny (read: disgusting) seeing all the Clinton/Biden/Reagan Democrats reaching across the aisle to join Republicans to scold people and condescendingly tell them they should be grateful, or they shouldn’t have taken out a loan if they couldn’t repay it.

Yes, some assistance is better than none, but we could literally have ALL federal student loan debt eliminated. I’m tired of crumbs and half ass measures. And I am super tired of centrist Democratic politicians always first being concerned with, “but what will Republicans think?” As if Republicans everrr worry about what Democrats care about when they do draconian things like repeal Roe, make guns easier for anyone to get, and gerrymander tf out of Black voting districts.

Look, Biden was enormously responsible for making student loan debt permanent, so he bears the responsibility for undoing it. All of it. Most of his presidency has been promising to undo all the horrible laws he worked for decades with Republicans to make in the first place—from criminalizing marijuana, to mass incarceration, to helping overturning Roe v Wade.

And before all of the fragile Blue MAGA sycophants who can’t stand hearing anything bad (aka, the truth) about their dear beloved leader, before they go absolutely apeshit, let me be very clear: I want to see every single Republican politician voted out of office in November. ALL OF THEM. I don’t wanna see a second term of Trump, or a first term for DeSantis or any Republican. And I wanna see Trump pay for his crimes, but that won’t ever happen if Republicans take control of Congress. So get out there and do what you need to do at the ballot box in November, okay?? Vote them all out. Periodt.

Now that that’s clear, I want to re-iterate something: our elected politicians are supposed to work for us. It is not a crime to demand better from our elected officials. If they’re slipping, or they aren’t doing the job we elected them to do, we have every right - no, we have a duty to say so and tell them. We are not helping by coddling Biden and lying, telling everyone that he’s the second coming of FDR or LBJ. JFC. If I hire a plumber to repair a leaky faucet, and it’s still leaking when he’s done, I TELL THEM THEY NEED TO DO THE JOB I PAID THEM FOR. This is no different.

Lastly, college should be free. And it was virtually free until Ronald Reagan came along and decided that he didn’t like college students voting against him. (source)

MOST COMPARABLE COUNTRIES have already figured this out, and understand that investing in a more educated citizenry is one of the best investments a country can make in itself.

All student loan debt should be forgiven, but the the root problem is that a college education is insanely and prohibitively expensive in America.

My student loans are all paid for. And I wouldn’t blink once at having my tax dollars diverted from militarizing more police, or from paying for yet another overpriced bomb for yet another war on Brown people.

[simonalkenmayer]

This is just so absurd I can’t not talk about it, so please read this short political analysis, even if you don’t usually read these, because this is…hilarious.

This election, almost 70% of the vote below the age of 21 went to democrats. Single women by a margin of 30 points voted Democratic. Minorities (particularly black women) broke for Dems overwhelmingly, black women mobilizing over 95% of their members in some constituencies.

The GOP is taking time to analyze this, running numbers, wondering how they can appeal to young people and women instead of only angry racist old white men…and these are their solutions so far as stated by multiple pundits on FOX, and why they are stupid:

Single women vote for Dems? Answer? Men, marry these women. Literally someone said “put a ring on it��. They said “it’s easy to see why single women vote Democratic—their policies keep women single”.

Why is this stupid? Well beyond the obvious misogyny of “we should just woo and marry women and then control them so they align with us politically”? There’s the fact that because women no longer need a man, to survive, men are now forced to bring character to the table, something many men (I’m thinking the alpha males of tiktok) never had to grow because of their privilege. You cannot just send men out into the world to literally conquer a woman’s heart. They’re not stupid. They can see when they’re not dating a decent guy. That’s why they stopped marrying them.

They’ve been, I kid you not,debating RAISING THE VOTING AGE TO 21.

Here is why that’s fucking idiotic, broken into many easy parts. 1. If they can’t vote, then they cannot be taxed, nor recruited for the military, nor jailed as adults. How’s that going to affect prisons, the military, taxes?

Well there’s over 600k active duty military below the age of 25 out of 1.35 million…you tell me.

16% of our tax revenue comes from the under 25 bracket

Oh right and what are they supposed to do? They can’t go to college, since….how are they going to be able to sign contracts for student loans if they aren’t being fairly represented or given adult status? Are they going to raise the legal age of adulthood since adults age 18-21 can no longer do anything of their own accord, extend high school again to stockpile them while they’re not being busy or just recruit them straight into the terrible service jobs in which the GOP hopes they remain?

I’m telling you…there is nothing to offer but no climate, rich billionaires, more debt, less freedom, less rights, and bigotry in that party. They want to destroy education to keep people stupid. They want to use religion to control. That party is not a party. It’s an evil conspiracy. Meaning the kids and the ladies will shy away. They have nothing to offer. Nothing. So they have to cheat.

Make no mistake the the abortion ban idea was specifically to encumber these two groups with crippling debt and dependency. That party has nothing to offer. Especially with trump running it. And this they well know. Most of his candidates lost. Most. And the red wave that was expected was nonexistent. One of two things will now happen:

My predictions:

Expect lots and lots of redistributing debates to cheat, I.e. gerrymandering but that’s a given.

1. Trump is a malignant narcissist. He doesn’t care about party or the country. During this election he said “if they win I should get the credit and if they lose I shouldn’t be blamed” a “head I win, tails you lose” if ever there was one. He will run again in 2024 despite the overwhelming repudiation by voters. He will (not?) win the primary, but he will take so much of the GOP base vote with him that it splits the vote and hands Dems a second Biden presidency.

Or

2. If the house is taken by the GOP, they will bargain with him to shut down federal oversight of him (including J6 hearings) to convince him not to run. He will still likely screw them in meaningful ways.

Unless he ends up in prison because of other investigations they can’t control…so the first seems most likely.

TLDR:

The kids and women are alright. Death to the Boomers. Enjoy your avocado if you can afford it. Don’t get married. Keep voting for change and keep using these platforms to educate your peers.

[captainsway]

feel free to ignore if you just do NOT wanna bother, but i wanted to ask: are there like, ANY civil discussions/debates happening between pro-jedi and jedi-critical blogs on tumblr?

I ask this cuz my personal feelings kinda fall dead-center on the issue (currently slightly crit-leaning, but I've waffled multiple times), and I enjoy seeing how differing perspectives can shed light on how various issues in canon are interpreted.

Recently I unblocked someone (cuz I didn't remember what I'd blocked them for), liked a good chunk of their posts for offering some decent points... aaaaand then noticed they were being way too combative for what seemed like normal debate. Yep, I'd forgotten englishlady changed her username and had to reblock her.

So I wanted to see if there's any pro-jedi blogs (personal preference: ones that don't ship master/padawan ships) regularly interacting with jedi-crit blogs (ones that aren't... like that) in a more constructive fashion. But tbh I understand if that's like asking for the death star to blow up on its own. XD

Tbh a lot of people I know who are pro jedi aren't actively involved with debates with jedi critical people since the jedi critical people..... tend to just make shit up? Or just say shit that comes from a video game and all that isn't lucas canon. I know agoddamn has made a lot of good points and writerbuddha has brought a lot of Buddhism takes to the jedi (which are canon bc lucas was Buddhist at the time and took a lot of inspo from Buddhist monks). I think @short-wooloo and @starwarsaddiction and @hannagoldworthy will reblog some debates stuff but overall it's really fucking tiring seeing people drink the palps juice or force their Christian bullshit on the jedi when they're like. 5% Christian lmao meanwhile the other 95% are Buddhism, Taoism, Jewish, Muslim, etc. But Christians don't care and only focus on their western, and often white, viewpoints while talking over Asian people

I think the whole 'pro jedi' vs 'jedi critical' takes are pointless bc the 'jedi critical' stance is a fundamental misunderstanding of the actual movies. The jedi were never meant to be perfect but lucas wanted to show that helping people doesn't always mean you can be perfect. The jedi were supposed to be *good* and I think a lot of modern grimdark media has warped people's mentalities that 'there can never be good' or 'the good has something secretly bad'. I saw that a lot with politics and the whole 'don't vote for biden even if that means Trump wins' takes. Nobody voting for biden *liked* him but if it was a way to make life 10% better for 10% of the population who were suffering then its something that *needed* to be done. And I think a lot of 'jedi critical' people don't understand that the jedi were trying their best to BE GOOD even if their decisions weren't absolutely perfect. Because the plot was against them and they *had* to choose the lesser of two evils. Would they stand aside and refuse to fight for the republic because of their moral stance on the clones? That would mean the clones would STILL die and much MUCH more civilians would too. And let's not forget *palpatine was the chancellor* and already promoted propaganda against the jedi. Their downfall would've come much faster than if they acted like in canon. We know the jedi had moral issues with leading the clones but it's better they had the moral issues and treated the clones like people rather than some admiral like tarkin who saw them as fodder.

Overall I think a lot of 'jedi critical' people are disillusioned kids who watched tcw and took it as the sole truth. Like the whole point was 'the jedi at war' and they tried to make it palatable for kids with really shitty writing that differed between writers lmao. And modern society and politics has made people really wary of things that are supposed to be good. Which is unfortunate tbh. But star wars was always about having hope that good things can prevail?? The grimdark mentality is counter intuitive to the actual message of star wars - that even in the darkest of times there is still a light that can shine the way. And when people refuse that and take sith ideology (which was 100% based on nazi Germany and American imperialism) and start preaching that the jedi are bad its like. What hope do *they* have that there's any good in the world...?

[marxistlesbianist]

Voting for Biden also won’t save *checks notes* the Latin Americans who are still being brutalized at the southern border under a system virtually unchanged from the Trump era, the Native Americans whose sacred lands are still being desecrated to build the fucking border wall, the hundreds of citizens (especially, of course, people of color) who are being murdered by police at higher rates than under Trump, the impoverished folk whose student loans aren’t being forgiven, or even the land itself that is still being exsanguinated through the development of fossil fuel infrastructure! Like, how many cases can you point to where conditions here are materially better than they were four years ago specifically because of Biden’s administration?

And I don’t mean to discredit genuine electoral victories like abortion rights in Ohio—but then doesn’t that story show that we can get what we need without having to capitulate to the DNC in every case? Let’s campaign to actually enshrine gay marriage rather than just support any politician who says that they would maybe consider doing that at some point. What does the slogan “vote blue no matter who” signify beyond telling politicians that they don’t need to try to do anything for us so long as they are even slightly better than the other guy? What hope is there for actual left-wing victories if our strategy is to compromise with the party’s right-wing at every turn? The most fascistic conservatives have been succeeding for decades at pulling the Overton window of US politics to the right, and we are supposed to defeat them by . . . drifting further right ourselves?

And how the fuck are the people of Gaza not helped by the majority of Americans who oppose the war sending a clear message that if a politician wants our support, an antigenicidal stance is non-negotiable? This is not a foreign issue to us when it’s billions of tax dollars that we pay being spent on the extermination of the Palestinian race, instead of being spent to help anyone here; and it’s an issue that won’t get solved if we never make politicians feel the material consequences of not doing anything about it!

Some good news

[arcticdementor]

In a democracy, every vote is supposed to be equal. If about half the country supports one side and half the country supports another, you may expect major institutions to either be equally divided, or to try to stay politically neutral.

This is not what we find. If it takes a position on the hot button social issues around which our politics revolve, almost every major institution in America that is not explicitly conservative leans left. In a country where Republicans get around half the votes or something close to that in every election, why should this be the case?

This post started as an investigation into Woke Capital, one of the most important developments in the last decade or so of American politics. Although big business pressuring politicians is not new (the NFL moved the Super Bowl from Arizona over MLK day), the scope of the issues on which corporations feel the need to weigh in is certainly expanding, now including LGBT issues, abortion laws, voting rights, kneeling during the national anthem, and gun control.

…

As I started to research the topic, however, I realized there wasn’t much to explain. Asking why corporations are woke is like asking why Hispanics tend to have two arms, or why the Houston Rockets have increased their number of 3-point shots taken over the last few decades. All humans tend to have two arms, and all NBA teams shoot more 3-pointers than in the past, so focusing on one subset of the population that has the same characteristics as all others in the group misses the point.

I think one reason Woke Capital is getting so much attention is because we expect business to be more right-leaning, and corporations throwing in with the party of more taxes and regulation strikes us as odd. We are used to schools, non-profits, mainline religions, etc. taking liberal positions and feel like business should be different. But business is just being assimilated into a larger trend.

Corporations are woke, meaning left wing on social issues relative to the general population, because institutions are woke. So the question becomes why are institutions woke?

…

Through the lens of ordinal utility, in which people simply rank what they want to happen, we are about equal. I prefer Republicans to Democrats, while you have the opposite preference. But when we think in terms of cardinal utility – in layman’s terms, how bad people want something to happen – it’s no contest. You are going to be much more influential than me. Most people are relatively indifferent to politics and see it as a small part of their lives, yet a small percentage of the population takes it very seriously and makes it part of its identity. Those people will tend to punch above their weight in influence, and institutions will be more responsive to them.

Elections are a measure of ordinal preferences. As long as you care enough to vote, it doesn’t matter how much you care about the election outcome, as everyone’s voice is the same. But for everything else – who speaks up in a board meeting about whether a corporation should take a political position, who protests against a company taking a position one side or the other finds offensive, etc. – cardinal utility maters a lot. Only a small minority of the public ever bothers to try to influence a corporation, school, or non-profit to reflect certain values, whether from the inside or out.

In an evenly divided country, if one side simply cares more, it’s going to exert a disproportionate influence on all institutions, and be more likely to see its preferences enacted in the time between elections when most people aren’t paying much attention.

…

Here are two graphs that have been getting a lot of attention

What jumps out to me in these figures is not only how left leaning large institutions are, but how the same is true for most professions. Whether you are looking by institution or by individuals, there are more donations to Biden than Trump. Yet Republicans get close to half the votes! Where are the Trump supporters? What these graphs reveal is a larger story, in which more people give to liberal causes and candidates than to conservative ones, even if Americans are about equally divided in which party they support (and no, this isn’t the result of liberals being wealthier, the connections between income and ideology or party are pretty weak). Here are some graphs from late October showing Biden having more individual donors than Trump in every battleground state.

…

In the 2012 election, Obama raised $234 million from small individual contributors, compared to $80 million for Romney, while also winning among large contributors.

…

In September 2009, at the height of the Tea Party movement, conservatives held the “Taxpayer March on Washington,” which drew something like 60,000-70,000 people, leading one newspaper to call it “the largest conservative protest ever to storm the Capitol.” Since that time, the annual anti-abortion March for Life rally in Washington has drawn massive crowds, with estimates for some years ranging widely from low six figures to mid-to-high six figures. March for Life is not to be confused with “March for Our Lives,” a pro-gun control rally that activists claim saw 800,000 people turn out in 2018. All these events were dwarfed by the Women’s March in opposition to Trump, which drew by one estimate “between 3,267,134 and 5,246,670 people in the United States (our best guess is 4,157,894). That translates into 1 percent to 1.6 percent of the U.S. population of 318,900,000 people (our best guess is 1.3 percent).” Even if the two left-wing academics who did this research are letting their bias infuse their work, there is no question that protesting is generally a left-wing activity, as conservatives themselves realize.

People who engage in protesting care more about politics than people who donate money, and people who donate money care more than people who simply vote. Imagine a pyramid with voters at the bottom and full-time activists on top, and as you move up the pyramid it gets much narrower and more left-wing. Multiple strands of evidence indicate this would basically be an accurate representation of society.

Another line of evidence showing that the left simply cares more about politics comes from Noah Carl, who has put together data showing liberals are in their personal lives more intolerant of conservatives than vice versa across numerous dimensions in the US and the UK. Those on the left are more likely to block someone on social media over their views, be upset if their child marries someone from the other side, and find it hard to be friends with or date someone they disagree with politically. Here are two graphs demonstrating the general point.

…

There’s a great irony here. Conservatives tend to be more skeptical of pure democracy, and believe in individuals coming together and forming civil society organizations away from government. Yet conservatives are extremely bad at gaining or maintaining control of institutions relative to liberals. It’s not because they are poorer or the party of the working class – again, I can’t stress enough how little economics predicts people’s political preferences – but because they are the party of those who simply care less about the future of their country.

Debates over voting rights make the opposite assumption, as conservatives tend to want more restrictions on voting, and liberals fewer, with National Review explicitly arguing against a purer form of democracy. Conservatives may be right that liberals are less likely to care enough to do basic things like bring a photo ID and correctly fill out a ballot. If this is true, Republicans are the party of people who care enough to vote when doing so is made slightly more difficult but not enough to do anything else, while Democrats are the party of both the most active and least active citizens. Yet while being the “care only enough to vote” party might be adequate for winning elections, the future belongs to those at the tail end of the distribution who really want to change the world.

The discussion here makes it hard to suggest reforms for conservatives. Do you want to give government more power over corporations? None of the regulators will be on your side. Leave corporations alone? Then you leave power to Woke Capital, though it must to a certain extent be disciplined and limited by the preferences of consumers. Start your own institutions? Good luck staffing them with competent people for normal NGO or media salaries, and if you’re not careful they’ll be captured by your enemies anyway, hence Conquest’s Second Law. And the media will be there every step of the way to declare any of your attempts at taking power to be pure fascism, and brush aside any resistance to your schemes as righteous anger, up to and including rioting and acts of violence.

…

From this perspective we might want to consider this passage from Scott Alexander, who writes the following in his review of a biography of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The normal course of politics is various coalitions of elites and populace, each drawing from their own power bases. A normal political party, like a normal anything else, has elite leaders, analysts, propagandists, and managers, plus populace foot soldiers. Then there's an election, and sometimes our elites get in, and sometimes your elites get in, but getting a political party that's against the elites is really hard and usually the sort of thing that gets claimed rather than accomplished, because elites naturally rise to the top of everything.

But sometimes political parties can run on an explicitly anti-elite platform. In theory this sounds good - nobody wants to be elitist. In practice, this gets really nasty quickly. Democracy is a pure numbers game, so it's hard for the elites to control - the populace can genuinely seize the reins of a democracy if it really wants. But if that happens, the government will be arrayed against every other institution in the nation. Elites naturally rise to the top of everything - media, academia, culture - so all of those institutions will hate the new government and be hated by it in turn. Since all natural organic processes favor elites, if the government wants to win, it will have to destroy everything natural and organic - for example, shut down the regular media and replace it with a government-controlled media run by its supporters.

When elites use the government to promote elite culture, this usually looks like giving grants to the most promising up-and-coming artists recommended by the art schools themselves, and having the local art critics praise their taste and acumen. When the populace uses the government to promote popular culture against elite culture, this usually looks like some hamfisted attempt to designate some kind of "official" style based on what popular stereotypes think is "real art from back in the day when art was good", which every art school and art critic attacks as clueless Philistinism. Every artist in the country will make groundbreaking exciting new art criticizing the government's poor judgment, while the government desperately looks for a few technicians willing to take their money and make, I don't know, pretty landscape paintings or big neoclassical buildings.

The important point is that elite government can govern with a light touch, because everything naturally tends towards what they want and they just need to shepherd it along. But popular/anti-elite government has a strong tendency toward dictatorship, because it won't get what it wants without crushing every normal organic process. Thus the stereotype of the "right-wing strongman", who gets busy with the crushing.

So the idea of "right-wing populism" might invoke this general concept of somebody who, because they have made themselves the champion of the populace against the elites, will probably end up incentivized to crush all the organic processes of civil society, and yoke culture and academia to the will of government in a heavy-handed manner.

To put it in a different way, to steelman the populist position, democracy does not reflect the will of the citizenry, it reflects the will of an activist class, which is not representative of the general population. Populists, in order to bring institutions more in line with what the majority of the people want, need to rely on a more centralized and heavy-handed government. The strongman is liberation from elites, who aren’t the best citizens, but those with the most desire to control people’s lives, often to enforce their idiosyncratic belief system on the rest of the public, and also a liberation from having to become like elites in order to fight them, so conservatives don’t have to give up on things like hobbies and starting families and devote their lives to activism.