#and my just like. constant state of exhaustion

[summertimesadnessirl]

You just impaled yourself on the point. And then opened the mouth of your undead head and came to the wrong conclusion.

The Republican party is the controlled opposition party to the democratic party. For most of your lifetime, it's worked like this

The Republican party proposes something way, way over the top.

It's usually something that makes it easy to fire up the radical religious segment of their base somewhat, but as long as it isn't directly in opposition to capital or to the personal agendas of maybe a dozen specific very wealthy and powerful people in the US, it doesn't matter what. They can literally promise a bunch of horny lonely guys on the internet that they're going to make anime real. But the religious right in the USA has been carefully kind of crossbred with the interests of big businesses for a few hundred years and that's been the basis for tons and tons of media that has been produced in the United States since before everyone currently alive was born, so typically they have tons of stuff that is easier to promise them. Often the messaging is double speak in some way that is designed to create a specific type of lifestyle for most people, but while making it seem like an accidental side effect of something else that they want to do.

A lot of time and energy is spent trying to stop the thing from happening. The democrats then raise a ton of money and campaign primarily on stopping their opponents from doing the thing. They get paid. Billions of dollars. They get elected a decent amount of the time. But stopping their opponents from doing the thing is a full time job, and it requires a bunch of political sacrifice. It means sometimes they have to compromise and make a smaller cut to a popular service that the Republicans want to get rid of, or roll back just a few rights from a minority group the Republicans hate. And this is spun as being justified because otherwise they couldn't remain in power. The democrats claim that the hard line religious faction in the country represents half of all voters, when actually many of the policies that the religious right support are not favored by the majority of voters and most of the policies the religious faction are against or are trying to weaken or overturn are popular with the majority of voters in polls. They then conveniently exhaust all their funding and resources in a constant battle with the controlled opposition and never have resources left to accomplish anything that the majority of voters would be in favor of or that would help people but be against the interests of powerful, wealthy donors.

They've been doing it all my life.

It's literally just good cop, bad cop.

Sure, people want to split the left. There are definitely activists out there doing that. Encouraging factions to develop along different ideological and identity lines in order to get people to fight so they don't come together.

But in the case of this specific instance, it works as a tactic because it's TRUE.

Things are not going to change or improve unless we manage to get rid of political parties completely. We can do ranked choice voting and it would help, the same way changing the electoral college could help, but if we keep the current system of allowing large groups that exist solely to raise funds for various candidates year round, it's not ever really going to get better.

I was a student at UC Berkeley during the 2000 presidential election. The propaganda at that time was that Al Gore and George W. Bush were exactly the same candidate wearing different ties. There was no difference between them, so you should vote for Ralph Nader.

In 2016 the propaganda was Bernie Bros—and going both ways ("Hillary is an establishment candidate! You're not a real liberal if you don't vote for Bernie!" and also "Bernie will never win! If you EVER supported Bernie you're not a real liberal!").

This time the propaganda was Gaza. "How can you vote for a candidate that is a part of an administration responsible for GENOCIDE?!"

The thing with propaganda is it's always true—kind of. You can go right down the list and see the truth in all of these things:

Both Al Gore and George W. Bush were establishment candidates. Al Gore was the sitting vice president and a career politician and George W. Bush was the son of former president and vice president George Bush, who himself was vice president to Ronald Reagan.

HIllary Clinton was an establishment politican, the wife of a former president, and the sitting secretary of state. Bernie Sanders didn't have the party support to become the Democratic Party candidate on account of his history of independence.

Biden and Harris were in office during the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023, and the US government has offered continued support to Israel in its couteroffensive.

Those things are true. But the true things were being used to distract the distractible from other arguably more important true things, e.g. that Al Gore's actual policies were more liberal than George W. Bush's; Hillary Clinton's policies were more liberal than Donald Trump's; and a Kamala Harris-led government was going to be better for Palestine than a Donald Trump-led government.

The goal with the propaganda each time was exaclty the same. It wasn't to get votes for a third party candidate or change policy or help Gaza.

The goal was to get liberals not to vote.

And it worked. Every time.

It'll work again, too, if we don't teach voters how to recognize this. It's pretty obvious though. If it's near an election and it's a wedge issue between liberal voters and ultra-liberal voters, that's the propaganda.

And it is 100% active and alive here on Tumblr.

[fairymischief]

I've been thinking about how often I heard men say that "women are crazy" and that's supposedly why their relationships never worked out. My ex used to use me and betray me so often that I was in a nearly constant state of distress and anger for years, and to his male friends I will always just be the "crazy ex that he's well rid of." This is all men see: just an upset woman who must therefore be the problem. I could have explained to them in painstaking detail everything that he did to me and it wouldn't have mattered. It made me think about ALL of my friends and lovers who claimed their ex-girlfriends were "crazy," and now I wonder what kind of hell those men put them through.

ARE we crazy, or are we being kept on the verge of a mental breakdown at all times because of how we're being treated?

ARE we crazy, or is it distress at being told that our natural bodies (both functionally and aesthetically) are disgusting and need to be painted over, waxed, douched, dyed, tanned, whitened, tucked, injected, implanted, and otherwise tortured to be acceptable to the same people who claim to love us - and that the disparity between "I love you" and "I hate everything about you" is both painful and incomprehensible?

ARE we crazy, or could it be that we are exhausted from putting in 110% effort while the person who is supposed to be our partner puts in 0.1% and acts like even that is more than we have a right to expect?

ARE we crazy, or are we never able to heal from the fucking ENDLESS ways we're disrespected and degraded, none of which ever have a proper apology or even explanation beyond, "I don't know, I'm just an idiot, okay!" And after which the onus is on us to just get over it, otherwise we're gaslit into believing that WE broke up a relationship over "one little thing" - when it's actually a neverending stream of actions that convey very clearly that our man isn't a true partner, never intended to be, and couldn't care less about us?

ARE we crazy...or is trying to force a relationship to work with someone who HATES US while claiming to love us enough to drive anyone into such despair and distress that it looks like insanity to ignorant and indifferent outsiders?

[camelspit]

grrr hate art

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

the artblock be hitteth Harder than normal, for tis not normal artblock. woe. Wally be upon ye

[rubiesintherough]

.

[orcelito]

for songs that have to be listened to 5 months after a loss, rather than 5 days after a loss,

no wonder it didnt stick back then. this is a song for now.

[xamaxenta]

chemically i feel like i should be allowed to equalise ive suffered enough

[spinspoon]

me when i keep considering taking a break from Online

[the-kipsabian]

my sleep schedule is so utterly fucked hurray

[sailforvalinor]

.

[alcohol-eyes]

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[swordsoprano]

ok yeah but. some schools don't do a good job teaching it.

“we need to teach media literacy in schools” guys was i really the only person paying attention in english class bffr

[never-quite-buried]

Bless the overnight emts & er staff who communicated with me, a psych patient presenting with panic attacks verging on fear of a heart attack or stroke and delusions of surveillance, as if i was a human fucking being. So not used to that but wow it was a change of pace. Being offered an ACTUAL benzo to stop the spiraling instead of a fucking benadryl was so refreshing. My mind is quiet right now and I’m so fucking grateful. I feel like a different, far more coherent and pleasant to be around, person.

Extra shoutout to my mom who sliced me up some cheese and an apple to snack on cause everything else sounded awful. I love you mommy😭

[jackalbitten]

im so tired of constantly being the one to reach out why do i always have to be the first to message the first to send posts that remind me of other people the first to start stuff the first to give recommendations if i don't carry a conversation than it won't happen. if i went completely radio silent right now until someone spoke to me first i would be silent for months. maybe years even. i'm so tired of it.

[the-fog-system]

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[quinoariver]

came out to my coworker the other week and she was supportive about it but also gave me the Oh That's So Interesting treatment so i am absolutely fucking dreading going back to work on monday