#and the way you GET those elected leaders is you vote for them

[stil-lindigo]

"Kamala Harris has earned an eleventh-hour show of support from Palestinian, Arab and Muslim community leaders."

On October 24th, a collective statement titled "Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Progressive Democrats and Community Leaders Statement on Presidential Election" was published.

The 100+ signees include current or former leaders of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim organisations, the leader of Phoenix, AZ's largest mosque, Jewish activists and other elected officials. All of them have been listed at the bottom of this post.

You can read the whole statement here but I've also copy-pasted it's entire contents below.

Read. The Whole. Thing.

It is concise and will only take you a few minutes. While you read, recognise that these words are not representative of every single person belonging to these demographics. Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are not a monolith, and have a right to feel any way they do about this election. To those who do not belong to these groups - refrain from adding your personal commentary in the tags, and understand how excruciating of a place this statement must have come from for both the authors, signees and the communities they represent.

---

Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Progressive Democrats and Community Leaders Statement on Presidential Election

As Democrats and leaders in the Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Progressive communities in Arizona, we the undersigned make the following statement, published on 10/24/2024:

This past year has been very difficult for all of us. With over 42,000 Palestinians killed by Israel using American-supplied weapons and no end in sight despite all our struggle for a ceasefire, we approach the presidential election heartbroken and outraged.

We know that many in our communities are resistant to vote for Kamala Harris because of the Biden administration’s complicity in the genocide. We understand this sentiment. Many of us have felt that way ourselves, even until very recently. Some of us have lost many family members in Gaza and Lebanon. We respect those who feel they simply can’t vote for a member of the administration that sent the bombs that may have killed their loved ones.

As we consider the full situation carefully, however, we conclude that voting for Kamala Harris is the best option for the Palestinian cause and all of our communities. We know that some will strongly disagree. We only ask that you consider our case with an open mind and heart, respecting that we are doing what we believe is right in an awful situation where only flawed choices are available.

In our view, it is crystal clear that allowing the fascist Donald Trump to become President again would be the worst possible outcome for the Palestinian people. A Trump win would be an extreme danger to Muslims in our country, all immigrants, and the American pro-Palestine movement. It would be an existential threat to our democracy and our whole planet.

When we think of Trump in power again, we recall that even a genocide can get much worse. Trump just said that Netanhahu must “go further” in Gaza while criticizing Biden for “trying to hold him back.” His biggest donor, Miriam Adelson, who demanded in 2016 that Trump move the US embassy to Jerusalem if elected –– which he then did –– is now telling Trump to allow Israel to annex the entire West Bank. Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and the entire far right in Israel want Trump to win and grant Israel total free reign. We cannot give them what they want.

Trump must be defeated. The only way to defeat him is to elect Kamala Harris.

Voting for Harris is not a personal endorsement of her or of the policy decisions of the administration in which she served. It’s an assessment of the best possible option to continue fighting for an end to the genocide, a free Palestine, and all else that we hold dear.

We are deeply frustrated that Harris has not yet met our movement’s demand that she break with Biden, defy the powerful extremists enforcing the status quo, stand with the majority of Americans, and pledge to uphold US law and international law and condition aid to Israel. Still we believe there are clear reasons to hope that we can win positive policy change with a Harris administration and a Democratic Congress.

Multiple media reports state that Harris’s national security advisors are open to re-evaluating policy and conditioning aid to Israel. On October 13th, the same day the administration threatened to re-evaluate military support if Israel did not improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza and reduce civilian casualties in the next 30 days, Harris tweeted: “Israel must urgently do more to facilitate the flow of aid to those in need. Civilians must be protected and have access to food, water, and medicine. International humanitarian law must be respected.” In Michigan the other day, Harris expressed clear empathy for the suffering of the people of Palestine and Lebanon and the impact of this devastation on Arab Americans. She pledged to do “everything in her power” as President to end the war in Gaza, end the suffering of Palestinians there, and achieve “a future of security and dignity for all people in the region.”

Beyond Harris’s statements, we know that her decisions as President will be shaped by the larger Democratic Party coalition that includes a growing force pushing for Palestinian human rights. Our Arizona Democratic Party passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in January. Every single member of Congress who has publicly called for a ceasefire in Gaza or for an arms embargo is a Democrat. The major national unions, civil rights groups, and progressive organizations that have called for a halt to military aid to Israel are all working to elect Harris.

On the other hand, the Republican Party coalition offers zero opposition to unconditional support for Israel and zero support for Palestinian human rights. Instead Republicans urge the US to join Israel in bombing Iran, call to “bounce the rubble in Gaza” and “kill ‘em all,” and would likely support the Israeli far right’s drive to annex Gaza and the West Bank.

What about a third party? Many in our communities believe this is our best option. Unfortunately, there is not a single third party member of Congress or even state legislator in America. In our electoral system, no third party candidate can win this election. But voting for them could make Trump president.

The polls show the presidential election is extremely close and that it will be decided by 7 swing states, including Arizona. While voting 3rd party may be strategic in non-swing states as a protest of the current US Israel/Palestine policy or as a step to qualifying the Green Party for public funding in future elections by winning at least 5% of the national vote, doing it in Arizona or other swing states in such a close election could bring disaster.

Some argue that if Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim voters and our allies vote for a 3rd party candidate and intentionally throw the election to Trump, taking credit for defeating Harris, it will prove our power to decide a close election and “punish Democrats” for complicity in genocide. Unfortunately, this is not how power, politics, or change works in our country. When Ralph Nader helped throw the election to Bush in 2000, he was rejected by millions for whom he was once a hero, banished ever since to the political margins. When Jill Stein helped throw the election to Trump in 2016, she remained relegated to the political fringe, becoming less powerful not more. If our communities ally with the Green Party to defeat Harris, we risk marginalizing ourselves as they did by alienating the tens of millions of voters who support the cause of Palestinian freedom and are fighting to defeat Trump by electing her.

Instead, by helping to elect Kamala Harris, we can say, “Despite it all, we gave you another chance and helped put you in office to defend democracy and uphold our highest American values. Now uphold them: end the genocide and secure Palestinian self-determination. We will fight every day to hold you to it.” If Harris and Democrats win, we will wage that fight with more allies among the American people, Congress, and the White House than ever before. If they don’t deliver, we will have a mandate and mass support to hold them accountable through every nonviolent tool of democracy, including protests, resignations, civil disobedience, primary election challenges, and even potential mass noncooperation. It’s a difficult path, but the one that offers the most hope.

The first step –– and our best choice in this horrible situation –– is defeating Trump by electing Harris. We urge you to join us.

Signers (affiliations listed for identification purposes only):

Maher Arekat, Founder, Palestine Community Center of Arizona

Usama Shami, President, Islamic Community Center of Phoenix

Fadi Zanayed, Vice President, American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine - Arizona

Shams AbdusSamad, Secretary, Maricopa County Dem Party; ADP Exec Cmte Mmbr - At Large & SCM

Samir Mufarreh, Palestinian American Christian Community Leader

Jordan Harb, Lebanese American Youth Leader

Stephen Mufarreh, Attorney, Palestinian American Christian Community Leader

Misaal Irfan, Pakistani American Community Leader

Samara Hamideh, Palestinian Youth Organizer

Mohamed El-Sharkawy, Palestinian American and a Muslim leader

Ala Rumah, Syrian American Activist

Dina Hamideh, Coordinator, Arizona Palestine Film Festival

Salauddin Choudhury, Bangladeshi Community Leader; DNC Delegate CD 5; LD 14 SCM

Hani Hani, President, American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine - Arizona

Dr. Navid Khan, Pakistani American Community Leader

Deena Mufarreh, Chair, American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine - Arizona

Syed Nasir Raza, Progressive Pakistani-American Community Leader; AZ Progressives

Ashraf Elgamal, President, Arab American Organization

Salina Imam, Charity Program Leader

Sawsan Tannous, Chair, American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine - Arizona

Saher Afzal, Pakistani American, Arizona Education Association member, and Exec board AEA local

Nathan Mufara, Chair, American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine - Arizona

Dr. Jaffrey Khazi, Community Leader

Hashim Hamid , Palestinian American Community Elder and Retired Businessman

​​Ameena Arekat, Palestinian American Health Care Worker

Mo Al Hwan Bahu, Palestinian American Christian

Deanna Dabbah, Former President, Arab American Anti-Discrimination Cmte, Fountain Hills, AZ

Dr. Hazem Jabr, Palestinian American Dentist

Jack Saba, Syrian American Entertainer & Democratic Voter

Ramzi Arikat, Palestinian American Business Owner in Phoenix

Shaikh F Shams, LD13 PC & State Cmte Member, Bangladeshi American Community Leader

Hussein Jabr, Palestinian American Doctor

Md Ibrahim Faisal, Bangladeshi American Progressive Democrats

Dean Dabbah, Community Activist, Fountain Hills, AZ

Mazen Arekat, Palestinian American Business Owner

Sujat Jamil, Bangladeshi American Progressive Democrats

Rocky Francis, Iraqi American Businessman

Hazem Arekat, Palestinian American Businessman

Arif Mahmud, Volunteer

Qumrul Ahsan, Precinct committee member LD13

Shahriar Anwar, LD13

Menassa Abinader, Lebanese American; Owner, Mejana Restaurant

Charlotte Hosseini, Sedona Resident ; Concerned citizen and voter

Tan Jakwani, Muslim Community Leader

William Havel, Iraqi Refugee

Jennifer Loewenstein, Jewish Voice for Peace - Tucson ; Arizona Palestine Network (AZ PAL)

Jessica Burke, Jewish Community Member & Progressive Activist

Bob Lord, Former Arizona Congressional Candidate, Jewish Community Member

Rachel Port, Jewish Voice for Peace -  Tucson

Laurie Melrood, Jewish Voice for Peace - Tucson; LD 20

Rep. Mariana Sandoval, LD 23

Rep. Quantá Crews, LD 26 ; State and Precinct Committee Person

Martín J. Quezada, Former State Senator

School Board Member Patti Serrano, PC and State Committee Member LD 13, 2020 Delegate

Kai Newkirk, Co-Chair, Arizona Democratic Party Progressive Council

Erika Andiola, Immigrant Rights Leader & Bernie 2016 Latino Outreach Press Secretary

Mikkel Jordahl, Attorney

Belén Sisa, Former Latino Press Secretary for Bernie 2020 and DACA Recipient

Salil Deshpande, LD18 State Committee Member; DNC Standing Committee Member

Dan O’Neal, Progressive Democrats of America - Arizona State Coordinator

Armonee D. Jackson, President, Young Democrats of Arizona

Eva Putzova, Former City of Flagstaff Councilmember

Emily Kirkland, PC LD 8; Former Executive Director, Progress Arizona

Melissa Galarza, Chair, LD12 Democrats

Cameron Bautista, Youth Organizer & School Board Coordinator, KeepAZBlue Student Coalition

Nick Collins, LD 12 State Cmte Member, Progressive Council Interim Steering Committee

Ken Kenegos, LD 18 PC, member Progressive Democrats of America

Michael Bradley, Arizona Palestine Network, LD 4 PC

David Higgins, Co-Founder, Arizona Palestine Network (AZ PAL)

Natacha Chavez, Precinct committee person LD 22

Sarah León, Community organizer

Elizabeth Hourican, CODEPINK Phoenix

Emily Verdugo, Community Leader

Kyle Nitschke, LD 6 State Committee Member

Barbara J. Taft, Leadership Team, WILPF US Middle East Peace and Justice Action Committee

Nicole Gutiérrez Miller, State and Precinct Committee Person, LD 12

Dianne Post, International Human Rights Attorney

Lindsay Love, Owner & therapist at TherapyLuv, PLLC ; former CUSD school board member

Joan Etude Arrow, Founder, Arizona Progressive Action Community (AZPAC)

Elizabeth Ogren, LD5 PC and State Committee Member

Jenise Porter, PC and State Committeeperson AZ LD18

Dave Wells, United Campus Workers of AZ, PC LD9

Andreas Clayton La Grow, Community Organizer

Robert Flamida, Palestine Community Center of Arizona, Member

Dr. Marannagan, Autistics for Peace

Bonnie L Lynn, State Committee Member

Frederic Artus, LD 5

Isabel O’Neal, State Committee, PC LD 14, CD 5 Immigration Advocate

Deborah Arekat, Democratic Voter

Asfandyar Khalid, Na

Kathy F. Yontz, PC LD12

Pardis Baradar, LD 12 PC

Grace Wagner Democrat LD8

Laiken Jordahl, Community organizer/advocate

Kathryn Soderquist, Constituent, AZ LD 9

Jana Rose Ochs, Progressive Democrats of America, Progressive Activist

Victoria Eloisa Ramos, Community Leader

Aaron J Essif, LD17 PC & SCM, PDA, Indivisibles

Judith Hilton Coburn, Member, CodePink Phoenix, PDA, Phoenix Anti War Coalition

Dev Gautam Dogra, Progressive social democratic student from The University of Arizona

Peggy Thomas, Progressive Democrats of America activist

Anne Khoury, Concerned citizen and voter 

Emily Williams, Democrat LD 12

Molly Donnelly, PC LD 12

[mostlysignssomeportents]

General Strike 2028

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/11/rip-jane-mcalevey/#organize

Trump is a scab.

https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/2/shawn_fain_2024_election

Trump is a scab and the Dems need unions. While working class votes were all over the place – lotsa turkeys voting for Christmas – union voters voted against Trump with near-unanimity.

Trump is a scab, the Dems need unions, and the Dems are not faithful friends to unions. Harris campaign advisor – her brother-in-law Tony West – is Uber's chief legal officer and the architect of Prop 22, California's scab law that formalized "gig work" labor violations. The fact that when the eminently guillotineable union-buster Howard Schultz tries to win a presidential nomination he does so in the Democratic party speaks volumes. If your political party has room for Michael Bloomberg, it doesn't have room for workers. Seriously, fuck that guy.

Trump is a scab, the Dems need unions, Dems are not faithful friends to unions, and unions keep the Dems honest. The #RedForEd teachers' strikes of 2018 kicked off a wave of public support for unions – and worker interest in unionization – that has only grown in the years since:

https://theweek.com/articles/764828/teacher-strikes-could-future-alt-labor

Trump is a scab, Dems need unions, Dems are not faithful to unions, unions make the Dems better, workers want unions, the public loves unions, and union membership is falling.

It's falling! This one is on the union leadership. Unions are sitting on gigantic warchests that they are resolutely not spending organizing the workers who are clamoring to join unions:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/ten-times-this

Unions have historic high cash reserves and are doing historically low organizing. This part is the unions' fault:

https://www.radishresearch.org/_files/ugd/2357dd_135794f88aa140f2962ee5c71ac31ff0.pdf

Or rather, it's the union bosses' fault. Union leadership in America, broadly speaking, sucks. Bosses love shitty unions, and the biggest unions obliged bosses for decades, with leaders who established suicidal practices like "two-tier contracts." That's a union where all the workers have to pay dues, but only the senior workers get protection from the union those dues fund:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/20/a-common-foe/#the-multinational-playbook

If you sat down and said, "Let's design a union contract that will ensure that every worker hired from this day forward hates unions," this is the contract you'd come up with.

Those shitty union bosses? They're on the way out. In 2023, the UAW held its first honest elections for generations, and radicals, led by Shawn Fain, swept the board. How did workers win their union back? They unionized more workers! Specifically, the UAW organized the brutally exploited Harvard grad students, and the Harvard kids memorized the union by-laws, and every time the corrupt old guard tried the steal the leadership election, one or another of them popped to their feet, reciting chapter-and-verse from the union's own rules and keeping the vote going:

https://theintercept.com/2023/04/07/deconstructed-union-dhl-teamsters-uaw/

Fain led the UAW to an historic strike: the UAW took on all three of the Big Three automakers, and cleaned their clocks. UAW workers walked away with three new contracts, all set to expire in 2028. Fain then called upon every union to bargain for contracts that run out in 2028, because if every union contract expires in 2028, we've got the makings of a general strike.

That means that when the next presidential election rolls around, it's going to be in the middle of the most militant moment in a century of US labor history. That is an opportunity.

Labor movements fight fascists. They always have. Trump and the GOP are not on the side of workers, notwithstanding all that bullshit about supporting workers by fighting immigration. Sure, when the number of workers goes up, wages can go down – if you're not in a union. Conservatives have never supported unions. They hate solidarity. Conservatives want workers to believe that they can get paid more if labor is scarcer, and there's some truth to that, but solidarity endures in good times and bad, and scarcity ends any time bosses figure out how to offshore, outsource, or automate your job. Scarcity is brittle.

"Law-and-order" candidates want to throw millions of our neighbors in jail. By the way, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, except for prisoners. American imprisons more people than any other country in the history of the world. We make Stalin's gulags and Chinese Cultural Revolution "re-education camps" look unambitious. American prisoners produce $9b worth of services and $2b worth of goods every year. The average US prison wage is $0.53/hour, but six states ban prison wages altogether and North Carolina caps them at $1/day:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

If you think immigrants are bad for American workers' wages, wait'll you see what legions of newly imprisoned slave laborers earning $0.53/hour do to those wages. Also: Californians just voted down a ballot measure to abolish prison slavery:

https://www.kqed.org/news/12013392/californians-voted-against-outlawing-slavery-why-is-prop-6-failing

The GOP are not on workers' side, and workers will not earn more under Trump's policies. Workers will earn more if they join a union, which they will only do if union leaders focus on organizing, which will only happen if we get rid of shitty union bosses. Start with this asshole, who belongs on the scrapheap of history:

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/16/nx-s1-5041345/teamsters-president-sean-obrien-addresses-the-republican-national-convention

With the GOP running the country for the next four years, it's tempting to look for hope in social movements. Maybe Trump will be so terrible that people will band together in informal solidarity networks and #Resist. History teaches us otherwise. The people who need the most help under Trump will be too embroiled in the fight for their own survival to put together the kind of movement that can make a difference.

As Astra Taylor reminded us on the Know Your Enemy podcast, Occupy and Black Lives Matter formed under Obama, when things were eleven kinds of fucked up, but at least ICE wasn't raiding our neighbors' homes:

https://know-your-enemy-1682b684.simplecast.com/episodes/voting-what-is-it-good-for-w-astra-taylor-olufmi-taiwo-malcolm-harris-teaser

Occupy and BLM arose in a moment when people had just enough breathing room to think beyond their immediate survival. Even deeply flawed progressive administrations provide that breathing room.

By contrast, the #RedForEd teachers' strikes were a creature of the Trump years. Even if social movements struggle to find their power under authoritarian, far-right regimes, these are the conditions in which organized labor movements are renewed:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/to-unfuck-politics-create-more-union

Trump won the election because white men, especially young white men, voted for him, but he couldn't have done it without the votes of white women, and Black and Latino men. These voters may even conceive of themselves as being in favor of women's rights and of the rights of racial minorities, but they still voted for Trump, because some facet of their identity - their maleness, their whiteness - mattered more to them than everything else.

Bosses have always excelled at this game, bringing in Irish scabs to break strikes of German workers, or Polish scabs to break Irish workers' pickets. The Pinkertons relied on Black workers who were excluded from the lily white unions.

Our identities are complex and ever-shifting, and men who worry that women's power comes at their own expense, or whites who worry that this is true of Black and Latino power aren't entirely wrong. As the saying goes, "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."

But there's one part of your identity that is inherently solidaristic: whether you are a worker or an owner. If you own the business, you make more money when your workers earn less. If you work at the business, every dollar you earn is a dollar your boss doesn't get. Workers' gains are bosses' losses.

That's why they want us to "vote with our wallets." It's not just that those votes are rigged for the people with the fattest wallets. By tricking you into thinking of yourself as a "consumer" who benefits from low prices, they get you to stop thinking of yourself as a worker who suffers from low wages.

This remains true even after decades of "market based pensions" that forced workers to flush their savings into the stock market casino, to be the perennial suckers at the table in a game where their bosses had an unbeatable house advantage:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

Even after generations of this, the share of the stock market owned by workers is a negligible crumb. This is how GDP can rise, the stock market can surge, and you stay poor. Workers' fortunes don't rise and fall with the stock market. They're not owners.

You're a worker even if you're well-paid. Tech workers are just figuring this out, after a generation-long con in which bosses convinced techies that they were temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs who definitely didn't need a union:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/16/narrative-capitalism/#sell-job

Tech workers' power came from scarcity, and scarcity is brittle. Tech fired 260,000 workers in 2023, and another 100,000 in the first six months of 2024. Tech bosses have smashed their workers' power, and we know what comes next.

We know what comes next because we know how tech bosses treat workers they can replace. Amazon warehouse workers piss in bottles and get maimed on the job at a rate that outstrips any other warehouse worker in America. Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy didn't welcome coders with pink mohawks, facial piercings and black t-shirts with incomprehensible slogans because they liked tech workers and hated warehouse workers. Amazon coders owed the privilege to pee whenever they felt like it to their bosses' fear that they couldn't be replaced. Now that coders are replaceable, their kidneys are on the firing line.

"The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." If you want to see the future of a replaceable Amazon coder, look at the working conditions of a replaceable Amazon delivery driver, monitored by a fucking AI that punishes them if they open their mouths while driving:

https://jalopnik.com/amazon-bans-its-drivers-from-moving-their-own-lips-too-1851639312

Remember lovely Tim Cook, the guy who took over Apple from its sainted juice-cleansing cofounder Steve Jobs? Cook's accomplishment, the one that earned him the CEOship and a personal net worth in excess of $2 billion, was to figure out how to offshore Apple's production to Chinese factories where the working conditions were so terrible that they needed to install suicide nets to catch workers who couldn't face another minute on the job:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract

That's how Tim Cook treats workers he's not afraid of. Apple workers, no matter how well paid, no matter how pampered, need a union, because the instant Tim Cook can treat you like a Chinese iPhone assembly-line worker, he will.

Tim Cook had some choice words for Donald Trump this week:

Congratulations President Trump on your victory! We look forward to engaging with you and your administration to help make sure the United States continues to lead with and be fueled by ingenuity, innovation, and creativity.

It wasn't just Cook. Every tech boss lined up to kiss Trump's ass: Bezos ("Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success"); Zuck ("Looking forward to working with you"); Pichai ("We are in a golden age of American innovation"); Nadella ("Congratulations President Trump"):

https://daringfireball.net/2024/11/i_wonder

You don't just deserve a tech union, you need one, now:

https://abookapart.com/products/you-deserve-a-tech-union.html

Organizing a 2028 general strike under Trump won't be easy. Workers won't be able to secure support from the courts or the NLRB, whose brilliant Biden-era leadership team is surely doomed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

But the NLRB only exists today because workers established unions when doing so was radioactively illegal and union organizers were beaten, jailed and murdered with impunity. The tactics those organizers used are not lost to the mists of time – they are a tradition that lives on to this day.

The standard-bearer for this older, militant, community-based union organizing was the great Jane McAlevey (rest in power). McAlevey ran organizing and strike drives as mass-movements; she wouldn't call for either without being sure of massive majorities, 70%-95%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

McAlevey understood union organizing as a source of worker power, but also as a source of community power. When she helped organize the LA #RedForEd Teachers' strike, the teachers didn't just demand better working conditions for themselves, but also green space for their students, and protection from ICE raids for their students' parents. They did this under Trump, and built a turnout organization that flipped key seats and delivered a House majority to the Democrats in 2020.

In her work, McAlevey excoriated the kind of shittyass Dem power-brokers who just lost an election to a convicted felon and rapist, condemning their technocratic conceit that the path to electoral victory was in winning over precisely 50.1% of the vote in each tactically significant precinct. McAlevey said that's how you get the nightmarish Manchin-Synematic Universe where Dems can't deliver and workers don't vote for Dems. To transform America, we need the kinds of majorities that McAlevey and her fellow organizers won in those strike votes – majorities that produced durable, anti-fascist power that turned into electoral victories, too.

McAlevey died last summer. But she left behind a legion of people she taught and inspired, and a playbook we all can follow:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/jane-mcalevey-strategy-organizing-obituary

We've got four years. Join a union. Take over its leadership. Create solidarity with your fellow workers and your community. Bargain for a contract. Make it expire in 2028. Get ready.

Because in 2028, we're having a general strike.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

This is one of the best articles I’ve seen yet on Trump, Trumpism, and the upcoming election. It’s directed at the right and centre-right (whereas most tumblr posts on this are directed at the left), but it’s saying – with detailed analysis and evidence – exactly what needs to be said, to everyone. This is not a normal election. How you vote this November determines whether you ever get the chance to vote in a democratic election again. This is not a game. Fascism is not a buzzword or a rhetorical device to hurl at anyone and everyone you disagree with. It is real, it is dangerous, and Trump is openly running on a fascist platform.

There are only two sides in this election: those who want the United States to be a fascist dictatorship and those who do not.

I live in Canada. I do not want to live next to a fascist state (especially since the Comservatives here are way ahead in the polls and their leader gives every sign of wanting to cozy up to Trump).

Please, stop this while you still have a chance.

Today we’re going to look at definitions of fascism and ask the question – you may have guessed – if Donald Trump is running for President as a fascist. Worry not, this isn’t me shifting to full-time political pundit, nor is this the formal end of the hiatus (which will happen on Nov 1, when I hope to have a post answering some history questions from the ACOUP Senate to start off on), but this was an essay I had in me that I had to get out, and working on the book I haven’t the time to get it out in any other forum but this one. And I’ll be frank, some of Donald Trump’s recent statements and promises have raised the urgency of writing this; the political science suggests that politicians do, broadly, attempt to do the things they promise to do – and the things Trump is promising are dark indeed.

Now I want to be clear what we’re doing here. I am not asking if the Republican Party is fascist (I think, broadly speaking, it isn’t) and certainly not if you are fascist (I certainly hope not). But I want to employ the concept of fascism as an ideology with more precision than its normal use (‘thing I don’t like’) and in that context ask if Donald Trump fits the definition of a fascist based on his own statements and if so, what does that mean. And I want to do it in a long-form context where we can get beyond slogans or tweet-length arguments and into some detail.

Now the response from some folks is going to be anger that I am even asking this question and demands for me to ‘stay in my lane.’ To which I must remind them that the purpose of history and historians is, as Thucydides put it, is to offer “an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human affairs must resemble if it does not reflect it” (Thuc. 1.22.4). This is my lane. Goodness knows, I’d much rather be discussing the historical implications of tax policy or long-term interstate strategy, but that isn’t the election we’re having. And if hearing about these things that happened is unpleasant, well, Polybius offers the solution: “men have no more ready corrective of conduct than knowledge of the past” (Plb. 1.1.1). We must correct our conduct.

The author, Bret Devereaux, lays out the history of the rise to power of Hitler and Mussolini and draws out the lessons

What I want to note here are two key commonalities: First, fascists were only able to take power because of the gullibility of those who thought they could ‘use’ the fascists against some other enemy (usually communists). Traditional conservative politicians (your Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham types) and conservative business leaders (your Elon Musks) fooled themselves into believing that, because the would-be tyrant seemed foolish, buffoonish, and uneducated that such an individual could be controlled to their ends, shaped in more productive, more ‘moderate,’ more ‘business friendly’ directions. They were wrong; many of them paid for their foolish error with their lives (Victor Emmanuel III paid for it with his crown). Mussolini and Hitler would not be ‘shaped,’ – they would be exactly the violent, tyrannical dictators they had promised to be – to the total and utter ruin of their countries.

Note that these men were not exactly subtle about what they wanted to do. Mein Kampf is not a subtle book. But they both knew how to promise violence to their followers while prevaricating to their temporary allies; be wary of the fascist who promises violence in his rally speeches but assures you that, if you just give him power, he won’t hurt anyone (except the people you don’t like) – because it is a lie, of course.

Second: once these fascist leaders were in power it was already too late to stop them. Precisely because fascists had no respect for democratic processes and the rule of law – things they had declared openly in seeking power – once in power, they were unconstrained by them and swiftly set about converting all of the powers of the government into a machine to keep them in power. And the conversion from democracy to dictatorship was remarkably swift, in Italy, Mussolini marched in October of ’22, rewrote the election rules in November of ’23 and by December of ’24 had effectively dropped even the pretense of democracy; just two years. Hitler was faster: appointed chancellor in January 1933, by March of that year he had suspended constitutional protections and ruled by fiat; just three months.

The time to stop an authoritarian takeover of a democratic system is before the authoritarian is in office, because once they are in power, they will use that power, to stay in power and it becomes almost impossible to remove them without considerable violence (and difficult to do even with considerable violence).

That, however, creates a tricky situation. With most political ideologies, voters can adopt a strategy of judging by outputs: “if you don’t like the current government’s policies, let these other fellows here have a go at it and see if they do better. If not, you can always vote them out next time.” But with fascists and other authoritarians there may not be a next time and this strategy fails: by the time the actions of the fascists make it clear they are dangerous, it is too late to vote them out.

This is why it is important to listen carefully to what fascists say and what they promise and most importantly to take their threats of political violence and authoritarianism seriously.

Which is not to say that everything on the right is fascism (just as not everything on the left is its own authoritarian variant, communism). Ronald Reagan was not a fascist, nor was George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush or John McCain or Mitt Romney. They were conservatives within the liberal tradition (again, ‘liberal’ here in the old Jefferson-Locke-and-Washington sense). Most Republicans today are not fascists, although a distressing number appear ready to repeat Franz von Papen’s mistake of assuming they can achieve their goals through an alliance with fascists. Only the devil wins such a devil’s bargain.

How is one to tell the difference? Listen to the things they promise to do and understand that they make speak out of both sides of their mouth: promising violence to one audience and then toning down their rhetoric to another. But politicians speaking from within the tradition of liberty don’t need to speak that way because they don’t promise violence in the first place.

Listen for the promises of violence, the promises to suspend press freedoms, the promises to persecute political adversaries and when you hear them believe them.

I strongly recommend reading the whole article, as the author goes on to lay out two of the more common definitions of fascism and analyze, point-by-point, how Trumpism fits them.

There is a reason why some Republicans, even some of the people who were in Trump’s inner circle in 2016-2020, have jumped ship now. The Republicans who are willing to vote for Kamala aren’t doing it because she’s conservative – they’re doing it because they’re anti-fascist. It would be deeply ironic if people on the left who have been calling themselves anti-fascists for the last eight years proved to be less so than those Republicans. This may be one of the most crucial moments in American history. Take it seriously.

[simonalkenmayer]

For those of you unaware of what is happening in USA politics right now, it’s absolutely historic. This is how the Republican Party began, and this time it’s them collapsing.

The Speaker of the House is third in line for the Presidency. It is an elected position within congress. Often it goes to the majority leader, but the majority leader is Kevin McCarthy. He’s being challenged right now from 20 house members of his own party. Which means that minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has 212 votes out of the 218 necessary, while McCarthy has only 202. If McCarthy cannot get 16 more votes, he cannot become speaker. Hakeem Jeffries is in line to be only the second black speaker in history. It looks as if those 20 will stand their ground. If they continue to hold the election hostage, we cannot place a speaker. Stable republicans might switch sides just to get it over with.

The last time this happened was 1856, when the government collapsed beneath Lincoln. And then yes…SC seceded of course, and but a bit later we began the civil war.

If Hakeem Jeffries flips just 6 republicans, he does something doubly historic and the country, in my opinion, will be much better off. If McCarthy gets 16, he does so at great cost. He’s fucked either way for the duration of his career.

Keep your eyes peeled. They voted 3 times today and adjourned to tomorrow. The record is over 133 votes.

Why am I telling you this?

Narcissistic collapse. Remember I predicted a bit ago that we would begin to see infighting and the narcissism of small differences? Well…they’re all bitching and moaning at each other and bickering over the carving of the carcass and how much they’ll get. They aren’t thinking at all about people. MTG did nothing but bemoan her lack of committees. McCarthy bemoaned his results and claimed he was being unfairly squeezed and so on.

Watch it. See what patterns you notice

[agentnoun]

Let's Talk about Metaphor: ReFantazio's Politics

I think, primarily, Metaphor: ReFantazio is about fantasy, escapism, and utopia more than it wants to be about politics. But it does feature a political message, and one that feels especially poignant here in late 2024.

Full game spoilers beneath the cut!

Poltiically, Metaphor is about two things: the politics of fear, and the weaknesses of democracy.

Louis stokes the flames of populist fear, whipping that fear into anger and riding it like a wave to prominence. Louis himself is not a fascist--his actual goals are far more esoteric than that and don't really map to real-world political ideologies at all--but his rise to power strongly resembles how fascism rises in the real world. He preys on the people's fear of the unknown and of what lies beyond their walls (represented by the game's "human" monsters), promising that he is the only one who can protect them. He is their strong man, their great leader, the one who will deliver them from this monolithic, omnipresent danger.

And democracy can't do shit about it.

That's just the thing, right? Democracy has very limited defenses against fascism. If the people are afraid, angry, feel abandoned or ignored, it is easy for a charismatic fascist to build a movement, taking those justified feelings and turning them towards a destructive aim.

And that's a lot easier to sell than what Will is selling. It's notable that Will and his party can only really offer some fairly vague assurances that they will "help everyone in need" and make sure nobody is left behind, but how? How can they possibly prove that? Any explanation is long, boring, feels wishy-washy, while Louis is right over there offering a simple solution. Strength. Power. That's what matters.

Metaphor highlights the glaring weakness of democracy as a political system: when things get bad enough, bad actors can subvert the whole thing. It doesn't matter if what those bad actors are selling is destructive, wrong, based on lies. How will you prove that? It feels right.

At the same time--Metaphor finds hope. It's not saying "democracy bad." Notably, Will wins the election. If you check your rank while you're in the Tyrant's Star final dungeon, you're rank 1. You've won.

But by that point, whether you win the election or not is secondary. The election is almost just for show at that point (barring the last-minute power-up with kingly magic, of course). Will and his friends are not going to beat Louis by beating him in an election. They have to fight him directly.

And that's just it: you're not going to beat fascism just by voting. That doesn't mean you shouldn't vote, but it does mean you also need to be ready to actually fight them. Because ultimately, when fascists gain enough power, that becomes the only way to take them down.

That, I think, is Metaphor's politics. We should not abandon democracy. But we also can't sit back and accept that the will of the people will always steer us right. Evil doesn't become right just because people voted for it. Sometimes, evil grabs the wheel, and someone--no, a lot of someones need to go and grab it back.

[acquariusgb]

Hillary won the popular vote by just under 2.9 million votes, with narrow margins in New Hampshire and Minnesota, and losses of less than 1 percent in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and 1.2 percent in Florida, more than enough to cost her the Electoral College. We live in the only country in the world where you can win the election and still lose the job. Election night was like a death watch. I just tried to be there for Hillary, to help her get through it with Chelsea, Marc, Charlotte, and baby Aidan. I thought back over all the years we’d been together, how I quickly decided when we were in law school that she was as gifted a leader as I’d ever met. She inspired confidence in people and made them believe they could and should make a difference. In all the work she had done since, she devoutly followed the instruction of Methodism’s founder, John Wesley: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” She would have been a great president. I was heartsick for her and for our country. I knew she wouldn’t be broken by this. But the country might be. [...] This whole thing is hard for me to write. I couldn’t sleep for two years after the election. I was so angry, I wasn’t fit to be around. I apologize to all those who endured my outbursts of rage which lasted for years and bothered or bored people who thought it pointless to rehash things that couldn’t be changed. In this chapter, I’ve tried to calmly write about the darkest election possible in the United States, because it’s important to understand what happened. Our country had, and still has, the best prospects for a bright twenty-first century. I still want that future, and we can’t have it without a press that’s on the level. I don’t want 2016 to ever happen again.

Citizen - My Life after the White House - Bill Clinton

[impossibleprincess35]

Since you're an American, what are your thoughts on the comparisons of the Duchess and the Death Watch to the election? I read one of your stories and you compare them to alt-right politics in the U.S. Thx!

Heyoooooo, thanks for the ask! I'm going to go TL;DR, so please forgive me and feel free to wish you'd never asked. :)

So, I've never been a Trump voter. Never. It's been a major point of contention with close family and friends, and in the 8 years since his first campaign, it has been eye opening watching people blatantly fall for fascism in the guise of security and strength.

And so, during the pandemic, dealing with so much misinformation and seeing so many people subject others to danger to make a point about their "freedom," when I rewatched "The Clone Wars," the Mandalore storylines hit so much harder.

A lot of times, when people are hating on the Satine character and blaming her for Mandalore's fall, what I see is a lack of acknowledgement that Death Watch was so hell-bent on getting their way that they had to stage incidents to make her look weak and unfit as a ruler. They weren't starving. They weren't exiled from their system. They got a moon. They had political representation with a governor. They had resources. But instead of using everything at their disposal to do better and to evolve as a people, they used it to stage bombings, attacks, and incidents that only hurt their own people and undermined their own system.

But what Death Watch did so well was they spun a narrative that is so false that even FANS believe it.

Like, we're supposed to see that they're domestic terrorists.

But people are out here like, "Fuck Satine, she's the worst."

Oh, okay.

As an American, I've seen two viable, suitable female candidates who have lost to Donald Trump, a piece of shit grifter, a convicted felon, an impeached dirtbag of a human being, and BOTH of these women have lost.

The bar is so high for them, and it's so low for Trump.

And I see that with Satine Kryze and Pre Vizsla.

The damning theories about Satine committing genocide on her people and white-washing them of their history and culture are assumptions made from information given to us on the show by Almec, who turns out to be as corrupt as Pre Vizsla and Tal Merrik, and inferred from the animation choices made due to budget constraints; but those things are held over Satine's head and her reputation as though they are gospel. As though she herself confirmed them.

Meanwhile, Pre Vizsla is out here running an entire terrorist group that intends to destabilize Mandalore's peaceful government just to reassert themselves as strong warriors. He has shown us who he is. He shows us every time we see him on screen after his reveal as the leader of Death Watch. He commits himself to it. He has gaggles of lackeys behind him putting him up on a pedestal, enabling him.

But Satine's always the villain, and always to blame; nevermind the fact that she has proven herself to be a resilient leader who put her people above all else, including her own desires, and she fights to keep them out of the fray between the Republic and the Separatists. More than anything else, their stability and their independence is her top priority.

And I guess, for me, I see strength in Satine's diplomacy, strength in her kindness, strength in her restraint; so when I see people who only acknowledge strength in name calling, in divisiveness, in threats of violence, like Pre Vizsla and Death Watch, I'm instantly reminded of the crowd of American politics who believe that we must bully our way around the world.

The bar for women, especially women of color, is set so high that it's unattainable; but the bar for men is so low it's in hell.

And as an American who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, and who was genuinely thrilled to imagine a Harris/Walz administration, I've found myself annoyed by the remarks about her that I've read. The claims that she's not tough. That she couldn't hold her own with a room of world leaders. Because I don't see that. And I'm heartbroken to see that the popular vote wanted brute force and displays of bully behavior instead of a steady, calm hand to bring us together as a nation.

Worst of all, I fear the very possible outcome that, much like Mandalore, Americans are sacrificing their liberties for what they believe is security (ie. the xenophobic hate and the border talking points, lower grocery prices, etc.), but like Ben Franklin said, they'll lose both and deserve neither.

And in Mandalore's case, the people were scammed into believing that Satine failed them, when really, the attack on Sundari was an inside job - and when the flames of fear were stoked, the people turned on Satine, on peace, for the safety they believed Death Watch was going to bring them.

And then their asses got glassed by the Empire.

I look at what's going on around me, and I'm disappointed because I'm a dumb optimistic bitch who believed Americans were better than this. And there's a lot of blame to go around, but the vibe is off and things do not feel right. My gut tells me that the game was rigged - that Madam VP Harris was meant to fail from the word go, because the right aligned themselves to win at all costs, even at the costs of their own nation.

But Jyn Erso said it best: Rebellions are built on hope.

So, hopefully we don't get glassed..?

Jesus, how do I even end this post?

I'm sorry. I know you're wishing you'd never asked. <3

[eugenedebs1920]

Pennsylvania Lt. Governor, Austin Adam’s, “The election was free and fair in 2016 when he (Trump) won, it was free and fair in 2020 when he lost, and it will be free and fair in 2024.”

As a previous sports player I can tell you. You can’t just love the game when you win. You are not going to always win. Losses are part of the experience. They’re part of life. Sportsmanship is a life lesson. You win some, you lose some. Either way, you’ll be out on the field ready to go next chance you get.

That is where Trump fails as an adult, as a role model, a politician and a leader. Being gracious in defeat. Defeat is inevitable, doesn’t mean it has to be often, but it is inevitable. To do that takes humility. A trait Trump lacks.

You can’t just love your country when you win. You can’t just be the president of the people who voted for you. You can’t say you’re American, then do all you can to tear down the core of our nation.

This is why anyone with moderate knowledge of history and/or political science would call Donald Trump a fascist. He claims every news organization is “fake news”, except which ones? OAN, NewsMax, and a branch of his campaign, Fox News. That gives away the game right there! So the press is fine as long as they aren’t critical of you? Your policies and actions are fine to be covered, as long as they’re not controversial. That’s part of a fascist political stance. Ask any of those reporters Putin had thrown out a window!

If you have any background studying nineteenth century through twentieth century Europe and Asia it’s clear to see the similarities in the rhetoric, the perceived problems, and the way to fix them. For too long, centuries, fear has been used as a tool to subdue the masses. Whether that’s fear of a military or police state, fear of invasion from a foreign enemy, fear of higher taxes, fear of immigrants. Fear is a powerful emotion. It grips your chest to where it’s hard to breathe but you could jump over a small building at the same time. It’s a natural instinct. All things feel fear at one point or another. It’s a survival tactic. Fascists, and many politicians, use fear as a tool to sway their population or voters towards them. Using such a raw and visceral human instinct.

That fear is often about a thing, a movement or a group. Far too often in modern society this fear, which transmutes into anger, is directed at those different than the majority of the population. Mostly directed at immigrants. From WWII to the genocides in Africa. An enemy is created for the people to extrapolate their anger upon. Donald Trump is a master at this. This is fascism

Before a single vote was cast in 2016, Trump was telling his supporters at rallies that, “The only way we’re going to lose, is if they cheat”. Coincidently he did win, and no fuss was made, no recounts ordered, no lawsuits filed. In 2020, when he botched the pandemic response, made an ass of himself, and us, on the  world stage, when he wouldn’t condemn racism or white supremacist groups and told them to “stand back and stand by”, when he had added nearly $8 trillion to the deficit, when he had broken every rule, every norm, all etiquette and ethics, there was no way he would “win in a landslide”, as it was said.

The American people were sick, broke, couldn’t work, dying by the thousands, stuck at home, frustrated. For him and his supporters to have the slightest doubt that he had the chance of losing is preposterous! Of course he had a chance! He dropped the damn ball numerous times!

His continued lies about the election system is the most damaging thing a “leader” has ever done to our democracy. He has sown seeds of doubt, that, just like weeds, will take a long time to eradicate. For over 200 years we have been the symbol for free and fair elections, the model for the peaceful transfer of power. Now, because Trump lost, we’re all the sudden not!? We’re a 3rd world country!? Or as Trump puts it, we’re the world’s garbage can!? That’s fascism too!

Na tho! It’s him that is garbage. It’s him who can’t be trusted. It’s him that is poisoning the blood of our nation. It’s him who is thin skinned, yet always putting others down. And it’s us.

It’s us who are going to show the world that we still are the America we portray ourselves to be. Leaders! Thinkers! Good, honest people! Kind! Compassionate! Empathetic! Strong.

Let’s show this wanna be dictator and the rest of the world who we are! Let’s show our dignity and self determination. Let’s vote Kamala Harris as the President of the United States of America!🇺🇸



[poorrichardjr]

Conspiracies Abound

If you ever spend any time around MAGA individuals you will quickly run into at least three different conspiracy theories before the first twenty minutes of conversation, and even more if you start speaking about politics. The country is doing terribly because of a loss of God, satanic democrats drinking the blood of raped babies they murdered just after they were born, or because of the Illuminati, deep state, or UN. Pick your poison and a MAGA has a conspiracy theory that explains everything. Covid was a Chinese hoax designed to get Biden elected. There is no limit to their madness.

No offense to any of these people. I understand the need to explain things that seem "unusual." The thing is, almost none of these people understand Occam's Razor, which states that the simplest explanation for any situation is often correct. America sucks because we elect bad leaders and don't take the time or effort to do the work to determine who really would be a better politician for us. Instead we descend into tribalism that has determined our entire view of the world.

The thing is, conspiracy theories have a place. It just depends upon why you are using them. Believe it or not, but conspiracy theories can be used to make yourself more aware of things that you should be paying attention to. If a conspiracy theory makes you suspicious of the election process, you "could" spend more time learning about it and trying to understand it. We know that almost never happens, but it is always a way to combat the craziness of some more outlandish conspiracy theories.

Another plus of conspiratorial thinking, not necessarily the theory spinning so popular in America today, is to posit future possibilities. Depending upon how far you take it the "theories" become more and more conspiratorial. However, there is a good reason to sometimes spin these yarns, especially when it comes to dictatorially minded politicians. I am not saying you should take all of these theories so seriously that you see the possibilities of the thinking everywhere, but it can make you aware of situations that are definitely questionable at best.

For instance here is a conspiracy theory to be aware of, simply because it has happened in history and considering our current situation could be a factor in our future. Complain all you want about how many people are drawing parallels between Hitlerian Germany and modern America, but any historian worth their salt will tell you there are many similarities. Hitler complained about Jews and undesirables, Trump complains about immigrants and undesirables. Each divided the people of their nations. Each came to power through election where they did not receive the plurality of the vote.

Here are some similarities that haven't yet come to pass. Hitler placed people into positions of power who had no experience in those jobs but who had a lot of disdain for the functions of those departments. Trump is nominating people to lead departments who fit that mold, though the Senate "might" keep them from those positions (though I doubt it). Hitler deported people, made life so uncomfortable that many "undesirables" left, and eventually put people into camps. We know how that ended. Trump is promising mass deportations for legal and illegal immigrants, removal of citizenship, and massive camps. We can go on, but you get the picture.

So, here is where I will give you a conspiracy theory to ponder. Hitler had power when he got his Chancellorship, but that wasn't enough. Similar to how Trump being president isn't quite enough to turn him into a dictator. What really gave Hitler power was the moment he was able to remove his oppositions ability to interfere with his plans. Enter the Reichstag fire, the pretext the Nazi's used to seize total power and jail and make illegal opposition parties.

Yesterday all I heard from some people was that the people Trump was nominating for power were being targeted with bombings and swatting threats. I expect tons of protests when Trump takes office, especially if he gets his way and starts deploying the military and police to go through cities. Here is where the conspiracy comes into play. Some event is going to happen in the future that causes the right wing talking heads to demand Trump crack down on the opposition. Whether that is the death of a possible head (even if it isn't caused by liberals or immigrants) or a riot by the "liberals."

Where that goes is anybody's guess, but if history repeats itself it will be the fundamental issue that gives Trump the power he needs and craves to do everything he wants. As I said, it is a conspiracy theory, but one based in some semblance of reality. As reactionary as our republican "friends" are, I wouldn't put it too far past them to try something like this. Care to take bets now?

[happymeishappylife]

Like many of you are, waking up to the news this morning was shocking, saddening, and worrying. And while I am a believer of getting every last count, the numbers don't look strong enough to flip these results, as unfortunate as that is. But unlike 8 years ago where I felt miserable, lost, and unable to focus, I don't feel that way this time. Maybe thats because I got ready for work, just like I always do. Maybe thats because I know I will be talking to people who voted for this today, even a couple who didn't like the guy.

But overall, I am ready to keep fighting. And what this election has shown me more clearly is that we have to fight, but we also have a lot of work to do. The polarization in this country is ripping us apart and we need to fix that before we can fix the country. And to do that we need to do 3 things:

1. We need to build our communities back.

We are at a point with politics that people have made them their entire identities and thats all they consume, feel, and react to. We need to instead find a way to connect people to people. And we need to find the things we enjoy so we can get to know our neighbors as people with interests and not just people living on our streets. We need to raise each other up, help where we can, and we need to celebrate others achievements. That will help in this scary time and hopefully bring us back to a civility to discuss the heavier topics without making it feel like we need to attack each other or rip each others throats out.

And how do we do that?

2. We need to get people offline.

The 24 hour news cycle, political podcast and constant commentary is not healthy for anybody. Not only because it keeps everyone in a constant state of anxiety, but also because it traps people in their echo chambers and lets propaganda and radicalization breed into minds of otherwise normal people. And we are all susceptible to propaganda, don't think you are immune because you are on the other side. Its also getting worse by the spread of misinformation, AI, and bad actors who want to divide us and make us hate each other.

Now of course, we should be paying attention to what our leaders are doing, but we don't need to read every tweet or hear every soundbite. Instead, pick two times a day where you are ready to consume the news for 30 minutes or an hour. And don't take one source as gospel. Hear the news event, and double check other outlets to see how they are reporting it. Find the actual recordings and not just the clips. Because sadly, there is not a reputable news source anymore. And after that time, go do something else you love so you can start connecting to people in real life and relax which help the mental stress.

And yes, being online helps organize these events, but in person events will benfit us so much more. So please, find a way to disconnect from the virtual world and find a way to connect to real people again.

3. We must engage people to do their civic duty.

And no, I don't mean converting them to your side because everyone gets hostile about that. I am talking about, getting them engaged in the process at all because I have a sneaking suspicion that like 2016, a majority of Americans didn't vote at all this time.

But how do we do that?

We don't wait four years. In fact, this goes for people who are politically active too because we keep turning out every four years, but ignoring the elections where our votes really matter and affect the most change which can help make all of us feel like our vote does matter.

So start with your Town/City council. You don't have to watch the hearings/meetings (because they are arduous, trust me, I attend them), but read the news the day after, find out what they discussed, voted on, rezoned. Do you like it? Great, vote to keep those people on the councils. Don't? Vote them out. These elections happen every year and also involve ballot measures that affect your taxes and community. Understand the process and get involved here first, then your county, state, and them the federal. Then it won't be intimidating to get into and it won't be as polarizing.

And you may think 'but why should I vote for the superintendent when I don't have kids in school or the agricultural commissioner when I am not a farmer?' Do you want our society to be taught well or poorly? Do you want our food to be ethically produced or make us sick? You don't need to know the ins and outs for every issue or position but you can at least make sure qualified people are in those roles to make those decisions and not just people hoping for a platform.

So don't despair. I know thats hard today. I know it will feel desperate right now, but we can't give in. We can't give up. And we can survive this.

[anamericangirl]

I noticed something recently. Since yesterday, I've been pointing out on liberal posts that Kamala said "Trump wanted to abolish the supreme co-… The supreme co… The supreme… … Land… of our… … … constitutional… American land." and that I think she might be retarded. And people have been replying saying she didn't say that, or that I need to prove she said that, or asking me where she said that.

Same goes for Biden when I point out his golden quotes such as "I was the vice president for Barack America"

Libs always have no idea what I'm talking about. They always demand I prove they said those quotes. When I said Hillary wanted to build a wall long before Trump did, they say she never said that, and I show them the video and they don't wanna watch it.

What I'm getting at is

Liberals don't even watch the speeches of their own candidates. They don't watch them at all! These are incredibly commonly known quotes, these are easy to find videos, these are things they say unbelievably commonly in all of their speeches and libs are always dumbfounded when you bring them up.

THEY DON'T EVEN WATCH THEIR OWN RALLIES.

If I said that Kamala said "We need to build Strength through Joy" at the DNC, which is literally a Nazi thing (google "Strength through Joy"), which she DID SAY, and Oprah Winfrey ALSO SAID IT, the libs would reply "She never said that" as though they didn't even watch the DNC at all.

It's fucking wild

They are completely uninformed, they aren't listening to their own candidates, they're voting entirely out of hate or racially fueled shit like "I want to vote for a black woman" instead of actually watching their speeches.

I've watched every single Kamala, Biden, Trump, RFK Jr, Obama, Hillary, etc. speech for every election I've been old enough to vote for because it's extremely important to me as a human being to know who I'm VOTING FOR TO BE A REPRESENTATIVE OF MY VOICE AND A LEADER TO MY GODDAMN FUCKING COUNTRY EXCUSE ME GOD

And when I bring up quotes that liberal politicians say, liberals will always demand I'm lying and demand proof, and when I give them the proof they refuse to watch it!

I am 100% convinced liberals are just white-hating racists who want slavery to make a comeback which is why they're so strongly for letting illegals into our country and giving them the right to vote and mass amnesty because the democratic party fought tooth and nail to give slaves full voting power so they could get their slaves to vote for the left wing politicians who wanted to keep slavery going because they were filthy rich under slavery, but now that slavery's been abolished they're looking for any other way they can get colored folks to vote blue hence giving them $150,000 home loans in California. 100% convinced.

Get "I study history" on, liberals. Reminder that Kamala's literally a descendant of slave owners. Liberals regularly say shit like "All white people should be killed because they're descendants of slave owners" but despite factual evidence Kamala's a descendant of slave owners, they make an exception.

Sorry liberals. But you are horrible people, you're racist, you're intentionally uninformed, you don't put a single bit of effort into reading about US history or the history of the politicians you're voting for, and you're retarded.

Liberals are the definition of low information/no information voters. They get all their news from tiktok and think they’re informed enough to vote on who is the best person to lead the country.

They have no idea how much context and information they are missing.

And at this point I think it’s largely intentional with some people because otherwise they would have to confront the fact that these liberal politicians they are putting on pedestals as the saviors of America who will restore “democracy” (another term they don’t know the meaning of) are literally everything they claim to hate.

It says a lot about them when they can pull up Trump quotes from 10 or 15 years ago but they can’t tell you what Kamala said yesterday.

[alarajrogers]

Just re-reading some of my old "for the love of God vote for Biden so we don't get Trump" posts, and I'm super happy that instead we have Kamala Harris, who people seem to be excited about... but I did notice a recurring theme in the leftist opposition (aside from refusal to actually understand electoral politics or pay attention to what's going on outside of the one issue they care about):

"We need to smash the existing system because it doesn't serve anyone! We need a revolution!"

It is understandable that Americans should believe in this fantasy. We have been taught that our Glorious Revolution that started this country was the height of righteousness and a wonderful thing for the whole world.

The problem is, it wasn't a revolution except in the most technical sense. It was the overthrow of a distant colonizing power and the institution of locally controlled government.

"Revolutions" that get rid of distant colonizing powers and grant the locals self-governance are often pretty successful, because the locals have a structure for self-governance already -- no distant colonizing power has ever been successful by installing nothing but puppets at every level of government in the entity they're trying to govern. But they're not really revolutions. They're the overthrow of occupying powers.

France took inspiration from us, misunderstanding what our "revolution" really meant, because they hadn't had 250 years to understand colonialism and what it meant and how it behaved... and their revolution involved unspeakable bloodshed and then takeover by a strongman who wanted to conquer Europe, and came damn close to doing it. How many French people died in the revolution? How many in the Napoleonic wars? Yeah, eventually they got their shit together and got a better government in place. It only took them a hundred years after the revolution... which, by the way, killed 16,000 French people. There were not that many nobles in the country. During the century of unrest that followed -- Wikipedia quotes this:

"Every [French] head of state from 1814 to 1873 spent part of his life in exile. Every regime was the target of assassination attempts of a frequency that put Spanish and Russian politics in the shade. Even in peaceful times governments changed every few months. In less peaceful times, political deaths, imprisonments and deportations are literally incalculable."

The Russian Revolution killed even more people. They started with the idealistic notion of a state that would wither away, and ended up with totalitarianism, and widespread hunger and black markets, because their version of Communism had to start with a state strong enough to strip everyone's property. They had a brief period of free press and free speech from the mid-80's when the Wall fell, to the 10's when Putin started turning them back into a colonizing empire. Now they are no better off than they were before the Revolution -- overall better food and health care, maybe, but less freedom to speak out against the government.

Oh, but our revolution would be different, right?

I want y'all who hope for revolution to seriously ask yourself these questions:

In the US, who has the most weaponry (outside of official government functions like military and cops)? How strong is our military? How leftist are our soldiers, in general? How leftist is the country, in general? Who controls the media that tells most of the country what to think?

I will answer those questions for you:

Right wing gun nuts who hate queers, Jews and Muslims and are not real happy with the notion that women and black people are human

Strong enough that if every single right wing gun nut rose up in revolution to kill our elected leaders, the military could put them down

Not very leftist at all

Our "left" is the rest of the world's center or moderate right

Big corporations, and a disproportionate number of evangelical Christian billionnaires who control those corporations

In other words, a violent leftist revolution is NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Never. Not in our lifetimes, at least. And I'm including three year olds in that "our" there. And if it did, it would probably condemn our country, and most of the world, to unrest for a hundred years, and might result in us ending up with a far-right-wing dictatorship at the end of the churn.

The far left wing of this country -- the communists and extreme socialists who want to see all or most capitalism destroyed -- are a tiny minority of the nation. The progressives, who want stronger socialist protections but are okay with capitalism existing with stronger controls, and who want to see all people being treated as equals, are not a minority but have almost no guns in comparison to the right wing. Guns are actually necessary in rural areas due to the existence of wolves, bears, coyotes who will eat your chickens, etc, so even if we had excellent gun control measures, the majority of the non-government weapons would be held in the rural areas, which are predominantly white, Christian, and have been largely taught that queers, Jews, Muslims, atheists and socialists are evil subhumans. But most of the non-military weapons are held by cops... who exist to protect property rights and are so riddled with racism, sexism, ableism and corruption that good cops often end up dead rather than being able to change anything.

When do you think a minority of leftists who mostly do not have guns are going to be able to mount a revolution against the most powerful military in the world, against cops who are willing to drop bombs on civilians (check out the story of MOVE in Philadelphia, and recall that the cops have gotten worse toward civilians since then), against the people who feel like they're not really safe unless they have twenty-seven guns in their home and they know how to shoot all of them?

Your leftist violent overthrow of the wealthy will never happen, because all the wealthy will do is use the media to redirect a substantial number of you into attacking Jewish doctors and lawyers for being "rich" instead (or for being "Zionists", which is happening right now, because anti-semitic hostile powers like Iran and Russia have infiltrated your leftist spaces and filled them with misinformation), and the people who should share your class consciousness think you should be dead for not being a straight evangelical Christian, or for believing in Communism, or both.

Your only hope is to change the culture. Change the government through non-violent ways like peaceful protest, calls and letters to your representatives, and voting. Change people's beliefs by writing, teaching, running for office and speaking, controlling school boards to make sure the next generation are taught to question authority and not mindlessly accept everything the media tells them. Make things better in little ways, then crow about it so everyone knows you did it, then use that to prove that you could make things better in bigger ways if you were given the power to do so.

You have tried, election after election, to "teach the Democrats a lesson" by withholding your votes, to make them go further left. As a result they went further right. Because if leftists don't vote, why should an elected politician care what they want? Go after the people in the middle who could maybe be pried loose from the right wing, by catering to them. That's how we got Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act and welfare "reforms" that fucked over poor single moms and why we still don't have national marijuana legalization despite the fact that Bill Clinton admitted to smoking it in college. When a strategy has not only failed to work but has made matters much worse, over the course of at least 20 years, maybe 50, why do you keep pushing it like it changes anything?

You argue, votes don't change anything. Has nothing changed in 50 years? Corporations have more power now than when Howard Beale yelled "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore" in the movie Network, in the 70's. Real wages are down. The job I do paid $90 an hour in 2010 and now it pays $70 -- that's not "with inflation", that is actual numbers. AIDS happened and killed untold thousands of gay men, drug users, hemophiliacs and people who needed blood donations, because the left wing didn't come out to support Jimmy Carter, so we got Reagan instead. Reagan didn't cause AIDS, but he did his damned best to make sure that AIDS research got no federal funding. Many things got worse because you didn't come out and vote.

Things have also gotten better. Because people who are nowhere near as far left as you economically, but who believe all humans should have rights, have voted, so now we have a world where on paper everyone is equal and discrimination is illegal, which is nothing at all like a world where everyone is actually equal but a hell of a lot better than a world where people are allowed to legally discriminate. But meanwhile things turned to shit for the working class. Because you guys are the ones who put pressure on the government to protect people's economic rights, and you abdicated because you wanted to teach the politicians a lesson. Well, you sure did. You taught them that nobody who votes cares all that much about economic justice. It's only now that late-stage capitalism and corporate/right-wing control of our economic system has gotten so toxic it affects the middle class, that we're seeing any economic reform at all or any pushback against corporations -- because you gave up. Because you declared, on the basis of no evidence because most of you are 20 and the rest have become so beaten down by life that you're hopelessly cynical, that votes don't matter.

The right wing buckled down and voted. Every election. Dogcatcher, school board, municipal waste authority, whatever. Vote for the person who gets you closer to where you want to go. And as a result, we are on a precipice where, despite how unpopular their extreme ideology is nation-wide, they are on the verge of being able to achieve it -- the rollback of everything we've successfully achieved throughout my lifetime, 55 years of progress, gone. Or, we can have leadership who have been trying to push a progressive agenda, uphill both ways but they're doing what they can.

This is where we are. Because you want moral purity. You want to absolve yourselves of all the bad things American leaders do by not voting for any of them. But since you had the power to vote and you didn't use it, there is no absolution for you. Everything an American leader does that is worse than what his opponent would have done, your hands are dirty if you didn't vote against him. And if you wilfully refuse to understand that voting third party in a presidential election is basically not voting at all, and that all it does is make both of the large national parties that are capable of winning ignore you, and that this behavior is why we are in such a shitty place right now...

Well, maybe you think your conscience is clear, but honestly, you are the guy standing next to the trolley lever operator, saying, "Well, I didn't do anything to stop him from making sure 1 guy died instead of 5, because making 1 guy die is as bad as making 5 guys die, so my hands are clean!" And then the next trolley operator comes along and wilfully kills the 5 people on the train tracks and you didn't stop him either, because the last guy killed 1, and you refused to accept that your choices were 1 or 5. And because you gave away all your actual power, and fantasized about power you don't have and never will, you imagined that someday, in a perfect world, you and your friends will fix the trolley system so it never hits anyone. But you aren't even engineers, you won't pick up tools, you don't join public transportation planning committees, and you won't even stop the guy who keeps turning the lever to kill 5 people because the 1 on the other track gives him money, because the other guy killed 1 to save 5 and that makes him just as bad in your eyes.

[scrambledpancakes03]

Before the presidential debate...

I've got some thoughts.

While I know that even the "best" presidential outcome feels like a loss at this point, you do have to vote.

I totally understand not wanting to vote for Joe. There are a lot of reasons for that, some more valid than others. That's not my point rn. There's many genocides happening: read how joe is handling it from verified sources and make your own choices, I trust you'll do what you think is right. I'll just be here full of endless dread no matter what...

But for fucks sake before we all lose hope please remember...

Vote down ballot.

Conservatives win repeatedly all over the country and have been able to make life substantially harder for every individual working person, especially those with marginalized statuses... and it's not primarily due to the shit they've pulled in the Oval Office... it's because they're getting elected to sheriff's offices and school boards and zoning commissions and STATE LEGISLATURES.

Don't let your disillusionment with the president keep you from showing up for candidates you won't hear about from national news... because they are the ones who can save us.

Without progressives, leftists, and even more moderate liberals in local offices, every aspect of life gets substantially harder. Local programs shut down, public services are cut from city budgets, and police keep getting more and more absurd militarized resources. And in that environment, how would we ever stand in solidarity with people suffering around the world? Or even people marginalized here in the US?

Here are some (but not all) elected offices that may be on your ballot in the fall that need your attention in no particular order:

1. Secretary of state: oversees the states record keeping... including voting. Don't let them be fascists.

2. School Board: they decide pretty much everything to do with public school's funding, curriculum, and sometimes even personnel matters or district geography. They decide what your kids learn, where, how, and with whom. Don't let them be bigots.

3. District Attorney/Prosecutor: they decide what crimes have charges brought against them, and in what manner. They're the difference between a teenage kid being tried as an adult or a child for a felony, as well as other matters like that. Don't let them be racist.

4. Sheriff: have insane amounts of power over how criminal investigations are conducted and how a community is policed. FOR FUCKS SAKE STOP ELECTING RACISTS. Also we should just... reconsider the concept and maybe try not having sheriff offices at all. But that's a whole different goal.

5. Planning and zoning commissions: if you are struggling to get housing or stay housed, they are the reason there is little to no affordable housing in your area, because they decide what gets built or maintained in your area. Businesses, parks, houses... yeah. Don't let them be corporate puppets.

6. Public works commission: they control the utilities, the water, the trash, and the recycling. This is one of the main places the environmental movement should be looking to make change. They write regulations that can be used and enforced to reign whole groups of people and corporations in to make real collective change in the way we generate power, consume resources, and manage waste. They are also how we prevent more crisis situations like the one in Flint, MI.

7. City, state, and federal legislators. They write the laws. They appropriate the spending of your tax money. Stop narrowing your focus to the federal executive branch when the left needs to gain momentum writing laws at every level. Don't discount local change, because it adds up.

I know we are all focused on the genocides going on around the world right now. The best way we can continue helping as November comes and goes, is to elect local leaders who will support global liberation by writing laws and regulations that protect our free speech, ensure the quality and equity of our education, and commit to divestment from violence all over the world.

Okay? We all got this?

Can we all just agree to do this part, and we can fight about biden separately, please?

TLDR: Fuck you, vote in all the local races.

[whilomm]

hey listen guys I know its hard to hear but you dont have to say Trump Cheated to point out the problems w this election

Yeah theres tons of votes being thrown out, but that doesnt mean the trump campaign was doing shady backroom deals or anything, it means that this country has places where its set up so that its way too easy to throw votes out for tiny reasons, and its been set up like that for a while. this isnt a new issue Caused By Trump Personally this is existing problem. yes, if you voted by mail or anything, make sure your vote went through and cure it if needed cause those could have massive effects downballot, but dont conspiracize about it, its just your average everyday voter suppression in this bitch of a country.

ideally they would give voters more time to cure ballots for legit issues (like signature mismatch, which yeah if u wanna prevent vote theft on mail ins It Is Important) and notify them better (especially in an age where No One Answers Their Phone) but they make the windows tiny because This Country Sucks. the conspiracy is that "wow, america sucks". very surprising, i know.

meanwhile the bomb threats. suspicious as hell, yes. needs to be investigated, yes. but also they could have come from some random ass maga cunt. I don't know how to tell yall this but some right wing fuckers do in fact love doing a terrorism independently on occasion, no conspiracy needed. now, if it comes out the threats can be directly connected to the campaign somehow? yeah, THEN its direct election interference, and we have to have a whole nother conversation, but realize it could just as easily be some random asshole doing it.

also "the dems lost 15 million votes" theyre still counting. they probably lost votes still, yeah, but you have to wait for them to finish counting to see how many. some of the states still counting like california lean heavy dem so like, the gaps gonna lower at least a bit probs. looking now its more like 10 mil gap. dunno how much thatll change, but neither do you yet. shut up with the numbers til you actually Have The Numbers. the full postmortem cant come til you actually have the body all here to dissect.

unfortunately yall i think half of american voters are just fucking stupid ass cunts who are easily swayed by shit like "egg prices" and "gas prices", and the dems massively failed every step of the way on that front (biden didnt do enough to combat price gouging when it happened, biden still decided to run knowing how fucking unpopular he was with everyone from rightwingers to checked the fuck out normies to leftists and despite barely being able to string a sentence together and then waiting until so fucking late in the race to finally drop out, the dems usual noncommital ass messaging and refusal to take strong stances on shit bit them in the ass once again...)

no, chances are from how its looking right now, trump won, no conspiracy needed. Some of its the rabid maga crowd yeah, but also some of its probs the normie ass checked out average levels of misogyny people who dont even realize their "feelings" about how trump just seems like a "stronger leader" are 100% "he is man therefore strong", some of its people who genuinely fucking vote based on shit like name recognition and had to google "did joe biden drop out". the average american is unfortunately oftentimes a fucking idiot who doesnt pay attention to goddamn anything beyond how their personal finances were these past 4 years, and dems didnt do enough to energize the voting base of people who actually do pay some attention to get them over that gap.

They couldnt get the checked out normies, they didnt even bother with the people who pay attention, and they massively goddamn fucked up.

Theres no one single thing to blame here, the whole thing is a massive messy shit stew. a million things that could have been done, including shit that should have been done over a decade ago by the dems when they really had power, but this country fucking sucks so.

[esperderek]

The honest truth is that there's a vast, vast amount of people who hold absolutely no political opinion nor have any sort of political knowledge. Who don't think of the world beyond their job, their family, and the place they live.

These people don't think of politics in terms that more politically minded folk do. They don't care about what's happening in other countries, or to other people. They literally do not care beyond what they can see with their eyes and feel with their wallets. They don't care about issues like 'LGBT+ rights' unless it directly impacts them. They are that fucking myopic.

It's more of a baseline "My life is ok/My life is bad." dynamic when it comes to politics. If they feel like things are okay, they'll stand pat politically. If they feel like things are bad, they'll "vote the bums out" and swap to another party without really any concern for what that political party actually believes.

You see this more in countries whose major leaders don't have term limits, like my country. The US is kind of unique because it's presidential term limits help mask this, and the president being such a major figurehead (and voted for separately, unlike many other countries) helps your Congresspeople/Senators hide from this impact.

But, like, look at what's happened in the past four years. A combination of COVID and corporate greed has caused inflation. And what these people feel the most is when gas gets more expensive and food gets more expensive. We've seen a lot of incumbent governments around the world, on all sides of the political divide, crumble recently, and that has accelerated this in the US as well.

This is why you saw the "What happened to Joe Biden??" graphs, and the demographics of who voted for Trump being so different than previous years, with higher amounts of non-whites voting for him. (Those demographics are actually closer to what it tends to look like in other countries.) Why undecided voters exist at all.

Because you've got a load of people with literally no political thought other than 'Things more expensive, let's try other guy.' No matter how garbage the politics of the person and party coming in are, or if they'll actually be able to do something, or if they'll actually make things worse. Who don't want to and will not think about things beyond what directly effects them economically, and who immediately forget the result of the last election, let alone the election before that, and how it shook out for them.

It also makes them much more susceptible to things like the anti-immigrant rhetoric you're seeing literally everywhere in the world, or the male bullshit being peddled by Tate and his ilk. It also doesn't matter reasoning like 'Hey, you know, the US actually got hit way less than the rest of the world did by inflation.' Which y'all did, by the by.

Nothing the incumbent can really say or do solves this issue. It certainly hasn't been solved anywhere else so far.

Unfortunately, this...political stupidity has constantly made things worse because malicious actors like Trump and the Republicans are happy to take advantage of it, and actively encourage it, and more centrist parties (like Canada's Liberals) know (or believe) they'll just be back in power in 8-12 years again anyway. Even as we descend further and further into authoritarianism, thanks in part to this cycle.

And, to be certain, this isn't a US only issue. Not even close. This has effected and continues to effect basically every country.

[ceasarslegion]

Do you think visiting America changed your political views?

Honestly no, my political views are a bit too weathered to be too rocked by a week in a country I have been to before (been to NYC once before, plus Montana, Seattle, Oklahoma, and Texas before, I was just either a kid or a dumb college student for all of them so those trips were very much led by either the adults around me or my terminal disease of being 20 years old and in the same room as my dorm buddies at the time. What made this trip different was that it was entirely sponsored by me as an independent adult who pays his own bills, so I could really stop and take in the americanness of it all)

What it did do was give me some more depth regarding my political views around the US. Of course you're going to think easy access to killing machines is cool and progressive when there's guns on display for sale in Walmart. Of course you're going to act like the way they do about strategic voting when you've been entrenched in the sheer individualism in every mundane little facet of life that they are. Everything about that country screams "im special" rather than "im one part of a global community."

My doctor told me he couldn't let me in good conscious go to the US without travel insurance because if I got sick or injured I'd be in medical debt to a foreign country for the rest of my life. And I saw military discount stickers on street food carts and hometown heroes banners in every hovel we drove through because their military gobbles up every red cent of their tax dollars instead of a functioning healthcare system. It's so isolated and bubbled away it reminds me a bit of those bubble wrap kids but if it could be a country, and if those bubble wrap kids wrapped themselves up and then watched the rest of us playing and cried that we were doing it wrong

Idk man, ive always kinda suspected the whole "you only think the US is right wing because of gerrymandering without it we'd out-progress the whole world!!" thing that gets touted every US election season was hot horseshit. Like don't get me wrong gerrymandering does skew results in favour of Republicans but I don't think that person I saw with the trailer car that just said "LAW + ORDER" on it with a bunch of guns hanging off it and a dummy in a maga hat sitting up top would be a shining communist leader if there wasn't any gerrymandering. I think a lot of Americans are just organically fucked up as a result of the self-isolation and I don't think a lot of them even realize that. Even the ones who say they do