#comparing us to fucking Hitler voters

[polyamorouspunk]

I’m glad that third party voters can pat themselves on the back about not contributing to the genocide in Gaza because guess what it did literally nothing and things are going to get worse and now you have the blood of your fellow Americans of color and queer Americans on your hands but hey whatever helps you sleep better at night besties.

[iizzeee]

Guys, I am begging you. Please please please please please PLEASE do NOT vote 3rd party, or not vote at all.

I get it. I really do. Biden’s handling of Israel has been, not gonna mince words, dogshit. Abominable. Unspeakably bad.

But we cannot afford to protest like this.

We don’t need Biden as president. We do need to keep Trump out of office. And to those who respond “well, I don’t want just the lesser of two evils,” please, for the love of god, grow the fuck up.

For one, why wouldn’t you want the lesser of two evils. It is, by definition, LESS EVIL.

“Why can’t we just have no evil, why isn’t that an option.” I really wish it was. Just as much as you. But it’s not. These are our cards, and we have to play our hand to the best of our ability.

Which brings us to two.

Trump is more evil. Like, so much more evil. We’re comparing apples and oranges here guys.

I understand that a lot of you might doubt that. The largest demographic of people advocating for third party or non-votes are in the 18-26 range. New voters, with one or no elections under their belt.

So they don’t remember.

Most of us (I myself fall under this age range) don’t remember 2016. The election, that is. They don’t remember how so many people protested Hillary vs Trump by going 3rd party or writing in joke votes, because they saw the two as equally bad. And Trump won.

Half of us don’t remember the Trump presidency. We’ve heard he was a weird, bad, bigoted president, but don’t fully grasp the scope of how bad.

So off the top of my head, here are some highlights of real things Donald Trump did while he held office.

- threw toilet paper at hurricane victims like he was trying to shoot a 3-pointer

- fired the man investigating him for election fraud

- called African countries “shitholes”

- appointed members of the Supreme Court who would go on to overturn roe v wade

- stole classified documents from the white house to hide at his resort

- tried to instate a Muslim Ban

- incited a insurrection to try and keep himself in office, and maybe hang his VP if there was time

- looked directly at an eclipse. Like no glasses, full on.

- fueled covid conspiracies. Also told people to “drink bleach” to fight the virus

- withdrew us from the Paris Climate Accord

- cofefe. Remember that? What a fun, normal thing for the president to tweet at 2am.

- employed literal white supremacists

- called Nazi’s “very fine people”

- got endorsed by the KKK, and refused to condemn David Duke

And that’s just what I can remember right now.

So if you’re angry at Biden about Palestine, please please please do not think for a fucking second Trump would be better. He would almost certainly actively be worse. He would give Netanyahu the green light. If you think Biden has used a loose leash, at least it’s some kind of leash. Trump would be all in. Full chips, flying to the Middle East to send in the bombs himself.

If you’re still hesitant, consider this last plea.

Things are bad. These shouldn’t be the only two choice we have, but they are. You can’t look at the menu, which is offering either bland soup someone spit in or actual rat poison and go “could I have some steak”.

You can order the soup and live to write a one-star review on Yelp, maybe call health inspections on the restaurant or contact the owners and say “you guys know your menu has only two options and they’re both dogshit. If you don’t add more, you’ll be unemployed soon.”

Or you can order rat poison and die.

If we elect Donald Trump in the fall, we will be eating rat poison. He has repeatedly said himself to be in favor of a dictatorship. He quotes Hitler. If he is put in office, the change we all want and so critically need will not be fucking POSSIBLE. Because with Biden, it’ll be hard, and tedious, and long, and exhausting, but at least it will be goddamn possible.

So, come November, please don’t order the rat poison.

Please just eat your shitty ass soup so we can live to get really angry about it.

Please.

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

A Letter From An Ex-Conservative To Her Parents On November 6th, 2024

Mom and Dad,

     When Trump got shot this summer, I remember you saying that this was all because the Left wouldn’t stop calling him Hitler. How we needed to “turn down the temperature” and stop “inciting violence.” I don’t think you understand that when people compare Trump to Hitler, it is not, in fact, just because they do not like him, but because he uses Hitlerian rhetoric on a regular basis. Obsessing over an imagined past version of a country that never truly existed. Saying that (insert frequently dehumanized other) is “poisoning the blood of the nation.” Before Hitler began the Final Solution against Jews, what did he say he planned to do? Deport them, until he realized it was too costly. I don’t think you understand that Hitler did not start putting people in death camps the second he came to power. Trump is currently in about the same position Hitler was in in the 1930s. Is it going to take him putting undocumented people in gas chambers for you to believe me? 

     You might think that I’ve only come to my current conclusions about Trump because of the lies of “the mainstream media”, which, as I’ve said numerous times, I don’t even watch. But it’s actually been largely due to the things Trump himself has said. I understand that you don’t like Biden calling Trump’s voters “garbage”, but the language Trump uses to describe his political opponents is at least as disturbing. He’s disparaged fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.” He’s proudly boasted about being the president who got Roe V Wade appealed, regardless of the estimated thousands of women who are dying because the medical treatments they need fall too close to the legal definition of abortion. A massive portion of his campaign advertisements are explicitly anti-trans. He thinks Palestinians should be moved off their land because it would make “great beachfront property.” He regularly speaks positively of and rubs elbows with the most disturbing members of the alt-right, such as Laura Loomer and Nick Fuentes. He’s a bully. (you voted for a bully. Remember when I was bullied?) And if Kamala’s plans are incoherent, which admittedly some of them are, Trump’s are even more so. He doesn't have a plan. America is just another failed business to him. 

     I don’t think you’re bad people. But I do think your party is bad. This is far more than just one guy. My journey has been less one of changing any of my beliefs than realizing that the Republican Party never represented those beliefs to begin with. It is the party of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, of stripping the oppressed of their means to succeed and then asking them to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” Your precious Reagan was a racist. There’s recorded evidence. His policies were racist. He enabled denial and misinformation about AIDS until it was too little too late and millions had died. And you proudly display his book on your shelf, right next to Rush Limbaugh and Pat fucking Buchanan. Your son is a gay man. How could you. 

     Being a conservative, whether you think so or not, is inherently about preserving the status quo, about making sure things stay the way they are, that the people who are down stay down, and crushing anyone who tries to make things better. I didn’t vote Democrat because I am one. I voted Democrat because it would be easier under one such administration to push this country in the direction of equity and liberty. Project 2025 was intended for the next conservative administration. Trump may deny involvement, but the foreword of one of the sections was written by none other than his own vice president. And with the House, Senate and Supreme Court all red now, it’s going to be easier than ever for him to pass any portions of it he likes. 

     I’m writing you this letter so that you know that if a nationwide abortion ban gets put in place, if schools and parents who support their children’s gender affirming care (which does NOT mean surgery) start getting investigated (which some already are), if Israel continues bombing Gaza until there’s nothing left, if billionaires continue to take up larger and larger percentages of the nation’s wealth, if immigrants who’ve lived and worked in this country for years start getting deported in droves because they couldn’t get the right paperwork, that it’s on you and people like you, even as you continue deny the very real damage done in Trump’s first presidency, the awful, awful people who felt empowered because of him. I tried for a while this summer to see if I could change your minds, but all it did was screw up my mental health and make me realize something truly painful: that you aren’t the people I thought you were. Not when your reaction to police shooting students the same age as your own daughter with rubber bullets because they don’t want their university to be complicit in a genocide is “well, what are they supposed to do? They’re the police.” Not when a man can say immigrants are poisoning the blood of the nation and you still vote for him. 

     It breaks my heart that you and so many people I love have been so deeply conditioned to vote against their own best interests, to think that a government that actually helps its people without actively harming others is a childish, fanciful expectation. I think I truly believed to the depths of my soul until last night that this wouldn’t happen. That we were better than this. That we wouldn’t reelect someone who objectively ran a terrible campaign, who conducts himself with boorishness and indignity, who genuinely, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, represents everything that made me scream "Fuck America" out Laura’s car window this summer. But why should I be surprised America likes fascists? My own parents certainly seem to.

     But I hope you’re happy with your lower grocery prices, I guess. Which we probably won’t be getting anyway, because that’s not actually what Trump’s policies are going to do. 

     You sold out my friends, and entire marginalized communities, for cheaper groceries. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you for that.

Lauren

[euniexenoblade]

genuine question, no hostile intent

what's the logic behind not wanting to vote for kamala when every flaw that she has as a political candidate is shared with trump, while he has much more hostile intentions? if one of them has to enter office wouldnt it be better if it was her?

(also im not american so maybe that has something to do with me not understanding)

1) I've never said don't vote 2) I live in solid blue territory, my vote ultimately wouldn't matter what direction I go so I can use my vote to potentially help a third party get funding 3) I think we deserve a candidate that's actually useful and not essentially a celebrity (yes, Harris is essentially a celebrity politician at this point. So was Biden. So is Hilary.) 4) not voting is a method of protest, if the Dems want to win so bad then they should appeal to their voter base. It should be "what can we do to represent the people" and not "vote for us or it's your fault you lose human rights." 5) Kamala Harris is a cop. She has held a place in society that specialized in incarcerating people. I am a prison abolitionist. Through her job she enacted systematic bigotry. "It was her job" yeah, she chose that job. 6) Kamala Harris wields no notable differences to the world at large than her predecessor, or his predecessor, or his predecessor, the rest of the world will continue to exist as the plaything of the United States Military and its politicians and corporations, so long as Kamala has her way. 7) You cannot "push her left" without actually doing some form of protest or retaliation. 8) my main gripe is people need to stop comparing their candidates to Hitler every election. "Hitler vs. Super Hitler" is stupid, ignorant, insensitive, self centered, belittles the Holocaust and its victims, and overall doesn't make your candidate look good. If the election is truly "Hitler vs Super Hitler" then it's time we all start being these brave revolutionaries we claim we'd have been in the 40s and fucking kill the Nazis. 9) I will reiterate that in no post have I ever said "don't vote." I think voting is fine, but I think a lot of the "you gotta vote Kamala or I will suffer!!" People are self centered shit lords who don't actually do anything else but vote. Go actually work with your community, feed the unhoused, go fist fight a fucking neo Nazi, literally anything else. Don't just make voting and harassing commies and anarchists online the only thing you do.

[tornad001]

i do think biden is unironically the most pro-labor president in over a century. and the natural shift over time of the overton window means he's also the most pro-black and pro-queer and pro-disability president in a hot minute. i don't think biden is comparable to 99%hitler even a little bit. i'd say hes overall a good president, even if he lies SIGNIFICANTLY to my right.

the point i'm making with the 99%Hitler stuff is that the logic i use to vote biden even though he doesn't really represent my politics very well, would also apply to the choice between Hitler and 99%Hitler. biden is simply the best choice of the 2 options for achieving my goals, as would 99%Hitler if that was the choice before me

but its not the choice on offer. i was explicit in saying i don't think biden's that bad. its ghoulish overkill on the rhetoric front in oder to make a point about the underlying political philosophy of electoralist harm reduction

and frankly, i don't want to ignore the bad hes done in favor of gassing up the good. because it fucks up a political climate when u have to pretend that ur guy is some saint when hes just a politician. the problem is that the lefties are correct when they criticize Biden for, say, aiding and abetting genocide. and i won't pretend thats not the case just so i can get him elected because it all stems from some weird kind of purity culture. people have this idea that you can't vote for someone who supports genocide or you're personally also supporting genocide.

but that's not how politics works, and that's never how politics has worked. its messy and complicated. america is supporting genocide so simply living and paying taxes and contributing to the economy here is in fact you incidentally supporting genocide. but thats not even the biggest issue. the big problem is that DONALD TRUMP ALSO SUPPORTS GENOCIDE.

there's just flatly nothing u as an individual voter can do to stop it via voting this november. u just have to accept that geopolitical fact of reality. and since both guys r pro-genocide, it really doesn't make sense to use that as an exclusionary criteria for ur vote. that being said, to pretend like trump, a narcissistic fascist, and biden, a weak neolib, r equivalent in their propensity to make things worse in israel is mega-cope

tl;dr i dont think biden is like 99%Hitler. but even if he was, the arguments from the anti-voting left don't make sense. i was engaging the lefty discourse where it's at rather than try to pretend like biden is some political savior when hes really just the best choice on offer atm. and until we escape the 2-party first past the post system, it'll remain the case that u should... vote blue no matter who

genuinely curious what Biden could do at this point that's "too far" for liberals other than getting a spraytan

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Political Rant: Nothing To See Here

Literally, I just need to vent for a bit, just move along.  You didn’t see anything.  Go about your business.

I can’t keep pretending that I want Joe Biden to be president.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m gonna vote for him, but only because it’s a broken 2-party system, and I would literally rather die than vote for Donald Trump.

Joe Biden is at best a moderate centrist, and at worst a mainstream conservative who acknowledges what the people in his party want without actually doing it.  The Overton Window has shifted so far right in the last few years that people are hailing him as some bastion of liberal democracy; Democrats are acting like he’s the greatest politician they’ve ever nominated, and Republicans are calling him a communist.  He’s neither of those things; he’s store brand white bread, he’s a single scoop of plain vanilla with no mix-ins, he’s room temperature with 40% humidity so as not to be explicitly uncomfortable.

He very well could win in November.  I don’t doubt his qualifications, nor his popularity relative to the Gonad Lump we have now, but he’s not going to make any substantive changes if he takes office.  He’s not going to defund police, he’s not going to shrink the executive branch, he’s not going to raise the minimum wage, he’s not going to rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal or the Paris Climate Agreement or the WHO, and he’s certainly not going to abolish ICE and close the actual literal CONCENTRATION CAMPS. He’s going to uphold the status quo so as not to alienate the Republicans who didn’t vote for him, while driving a wedge in his own party between the old guard moderate leadership and the up-and-comers who even so much as lean to the actual political left.

Republicans are united under a common banner of cartoon supervillainy, Democrats are a party of chickens running around with their heads cut off. 

Republicans are lemmings who will follow their leader off a cliff. Democrats are turkeys that look up and drown when it rains.

There are no progressive Democrats in any real positions of power; their voices are being drowned out by the career politicians who would rather compromise with the right than fight for anything they claim to want.  Democrats will bend over backwards to reach across the aisle for the sake of bipartisanship, but Republicans would never budge an inch in our direction.  This is demonstrably true, just look at the last 50 years of presidents; Democrats controlled the House of Representatives for Ronald Reagan’s entire presidency, and he still managed to get a shit ton of legislation passed which fucks over the middle class and minorities to this day.

Bill Clinton was effectively a Republican, and they absolutely HATED him.  Newt Ging-bitch’s Republican Revolution?  And Obama, don’t even get me started on Obama.  George W. Bush was so unpopular that BOTH parties ran candidates under the platform of “I am not George W. Bush,” and it’s no surprise that between Barack Obama and John McCain voters chose the one who was the least like Bush.  Obama was a perfectly competent president who pulled us out of the worst economic recession since the 1930s, and Republicans hated him even more than Clinton!  The Tea Party rose up less than a month after he took office, before he’d even DONE anything!  I don’t agree with everything he did as president, in fact I oppose a lot of it (drones), but I know that America was a better place under his leadership than it is now.

And now the Democrats are kowtowing to the Republicans AGAIN, nominating an adequate politician, Average Joe, that Republicans wouldn’t complain about if he wore a red tie instead of a blue one, but even now they’re complaining about it!  They’re acting like he’s a far-left socialist because they want the country to think that his middle-of-the-road policies are WAY too radical; they want to make people think that normalcy lies to the right of Joe Biden, they want to keep shifting the Overton Window until they pick a candidate in 2032 or 2036 that will make Donald Trump look like Bernie fucking Sanders.  Republicans never shift to the left, they never try to appeal to Democratic voters, they never think twice about alienating liberals, they won’t compromise, they’d rather shut down the government than spare a dime for any even remotely liberal talking points.

I’m sick to death of this country.  I’m sick to death of everyone pretending like what we see is not what it is!  Joe Biden is better than Trump, but the bar is so low at this point that I’d feel ore comfortable with a flaming bag of dogshit in the Oval Office than the racist date rapist we have now.  I will swallow my pride and vote for Joe Biden, but I will not be happy about it.  This man does not stand for the people’s best interests.  He will face overwhelming opposition, cave to the pressure from the right, then lose re-election because I know for a fact that he’s too proud to admit he’s too old to run again in 2024.  People keep pretending like his VP is going to get the nomination, but there’s no way on Earth or in Heaven that this man is going to just retire!  This year was a vanity run; he wants to be president because he wants to be president, not because he wants to do anything.  He’s wanted it his whole career; he’s a dog chasing cars, he doesn’t know what to do when he catches one, and no, I don’t means he’s like the fucking Joker, I just think he’s focusing more on himself than the country.  What would it look like in 2024 if the president retired because he’s TOO OLD to keep the job?  The Democrats would be even bigger laughingstocks than they are now; there wouldd be no way for him to retire with dignity without admitting defeat and giving the Republicans a political victory.

He’s going to run for re-election in 2024, and he’s going to have his ass handed to him because by that point he’s going to be stumbling over his words even worse than Trump is now, and the Democrats aren’t going to blindly rally behind him like the Republicans do for Trump.  Republicans will vote in line with Trump whether they like him or not, they know their career depends on it, but Democrats won’t get in line behind one of their own because they want to appeal to everyone, even if that means ignoring the people they claim to represent.

If Trump wins in 2020, America will go the way of the Soviet Union.  You know what, no, that’s not true.  America will never break apart, it’s too obstinate.  What will happen is America will go the way of the British Empire; once a global superpower, now just a bunch of isolationist racists who don’t know they’ve been irrelevant for the last 80 years.  America will continue to alienate its allies while sucking up to its enemies, the wealth gap will widen, life expectancy will drop, infant mortality will rise, and we’ll peak in the 2030s or 40s before losing our position as the de facto “leaders of the free world.”  Under normal circumstances I’d say that’s a good thing because we have no right to force the rest of the world to do whatever we want, but the resulting power vacuum will almost certainly be filled by China which is even worse than we are.  If Trump wins in 2020, democracy dies.  His handlers will find a way to skirt the 22nd Amendment so he can run for a third term in 2024.  They’ll just unilaterally amend the constitution so he can do whatever he wants; every right-wing dictator does that.  Hitler did it, Pinochet did it, Putin is doing it now.  IF the Republicans want to PRETEND that laws still exist, they’ll have him “retire” at the end of his second term, but then stay on as a top advisor to his successor, who will almost certainly be his daughter he wants to fuck, at which point he will be president-by-proxy, ruling vicariously through her until his brain melts enough for him to disappear into the woodwork like Reagan did in the 90s.

If Trump wins in 2020, the Trump dynasty will hold power for decades.  This regime will be no different than the fucking Saudi Arabia or North Korea.

If Biden wins in 2020, we’re just kicking the can down the road; Trump won’t let himself become irrelevant without a fight.  Carter and Clinton and Bush and Obama don’t pretend that they’re still president, they don’t make their voices heard, but you KNOW that Trump will.  He will try to stay in the limelight forever, and the media will let him; they’ll report on every snide comment and contrarian remark he makes on Twitter and compare him to Biden every single day because he’s a demagogue, and Republicans aren’t just gonna move on after they’ve invested so much emotional capital into him over the last five years.  They’ve doubled down in support of him, he can do no wrong in their eyes, he’s their golden boy, the Fuhrer is Always Right; they’ll follow him to Hell and back (though let’s be honest, he’d never lead them out of Hell once he brings them there).  They’ll treat him like an elder statesman and a genius political strategist/advisor until he dies.  He’ll basically get to pick the nominee in 2024 because Republicans will vote for whoever he endorses.  And he’s going to pick Ivanka or maybe, MAYBE, Tom Cotton because he’s a brown-nosing right-wing toadie.

FUCK.

[alexsmitposts]

It’s been One Hell of a Year in the US and its “Not Over with Yet!”

What is really going on in the US? Lots of people are having a difficult time, and see more of the same, if not worse, for the future. Most Americans are just thinking about one more stimulus check, just before Christmas, with so many unemployed, locked down with COVID restrictions, etc. And they should not get their hopes up too much, as they may be waiting for a long time.

All the while the US government is working to get Covid-19 vaccinations to the American public, but now they want strings attached, as people have not only lost faith in the government but the public health system. One proposal, from former congressman John Delaney of Maryland, aims to link the provision of stimulus checks to getting vaccinated, which is virtual blackmail.

Herd Immunity or Herd Mentality?

Since there’s such massive censorship, especially in the mainstream media and on social networking sites, people who would never otherwise give much credence to far-fetched allegations are now starting to believe there’s a conspiracy, or a “cluster-fuck” of conspiracies, starting out with Russiagate, Crossfire Hurricane Investigation, which proved to be the proverbial witch-hunt.

In light of everything that transpired during its run up, the recent US elections have really opened a Pandora’s Box. Take for instance absentee ballots. Several people claim they’ve seen boxes full of postal ballots not collected or counted after hours. According to Jackie Pick, a volunteer attorney in the State of Georgia who presented the evidence to the state Senate, said four suitcases ‘come out from underneath a table at the site while there was no election supervisor present’. But…. if they’re mail-in ballots, they would be for Biden anyway, right?

The mainstream media continue to totally dismiss claims of voting irregularities and fraud, without being willing to address the fact that the thing is remotely possible, claiming that Trump is merely “crying foul over the results”. But this only adds fuel to an already roaring fire. For example, CCTV evidence recently presented to a Georgia Senate Judiciary Subcommittee shows poll workers waiting for observers and media to leave before accessing ballot-stuffed suitcases from under a table, but no one has bothered to explain this, considering it not worthy of a democratic country’s attention.

Bearers of Bad News

Why is it necessarily to look elsewhere, to “off-the-wall” media outlets for alternative views on the election? Some of their insight into election cyber security, diverting votes by electronic means, Dominion Voter Machines, and old-fashion vote rigging is starting to make sense, and a democracy should be concerned about such claims, not treating them as part of sour rhetoric.

Some are now claiming that large transfers of money were made by Chinese investors prior to the elections, which brings a smile to my face in the light of Biden and his son Hunter, and a plethora of allegations of corruption involving them, including influence peddling and other backhanded moves, reported by the New York Post and other non-mainstream publications and outlets. Such stories, and even more scandalous ones, are quickly discounted or not reported in the respectful American mainstream media. They call that fact-checking.

However, a range of pundits and born again types, also not to be believed, are saying that 5 or 6 counties (cities) in the US were able to control the entire election process, and had known in advance what would be the outcome. In these same 6 cities the voting count was held up due to water problems, and allegedly people were robbed of their votes. There were also water main breaks in those same cities: Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Las Vegas, Phoenix…, and a few other cities also decided the election: Dallas Milwaukee and Seattle.

It is more than sheer coincidence that all these allegations are buttressed with the erosion of fundamental rights that Americans hold so close, free speech, majority rule, an array of constitutional rights and mainstream values. There is little doubt that the mainstream media, especially news networks such as CNN, have been manipulated in recent years, driving domestic and foreign policy, to a degree Joseph Goebbels would have been envious of.

At last some inside information concerning the agenda of the news networks is beginning to surface, and this is not good timing for those who have been manipulating the news. There is no longer a fine line between the truth and the lie, and CNN and others in the same stream of media flows have taken one maxim to heart: “If you tell a lie often enough people will come to accept it as truth.”

Some of the born again types, and their media outlets, seem to know what is going on, including the backdating of absentee ballots. They believe that Trump will somehow remain in office.

In the Meantime!

It is becoming clear that until Trump is out of the White House, he will be a problem. It does not matter whether he won or not. People continue to send him money that he can use for his own personal use. I liken these people to “useful idiots” or “real patriots.”

Yet many Republicans say nothing – which is sad, as without this force, which saw them of them riding on Trump’s coattails, many would not be in office now. It is so depressing to see that people can be so ignorant, or arrogant, or both. If Trump refuses to leave office – which I don’t believe – there will be huge protests. But he will leave office – he may not like it – but he will leave and continue to “suck” money from his supporters.

CNN Defect and Manufacturing Dissent

Recent breaking news is that James O’Keefe of Project Veritas caught CNN red handed conniving to influence the election over a period of two months during conference calls. This network made a concerted effort to report in favour of Joe Biden in the run-up to the election, and in its wake, thus adding more layers of conspiracies to an already complicated mess.

In the video he has released, O’Keefe enters into a CNN conference call, unmuting himself, telling the CEO, Jeffrey Zucker,

“We’ve been listening to your CNN calls for basically two months and recording everything. Just wanted to ask you some questions, if you have a minute … do you still feel you are the most trusted name in news? Based on what I’ve been hearing on these phone calls, I don’t know about that. I mean, we’ve got a lot of recordings that indicate you’re not really that independent of a journalist.”

The plot thickens as to how media and politics are joined up, and the playing field is less than level. The Washington Post, another media outlet which has also been accused in recent years of one sided coverage, reported that “while Project Veritas had previously disseminated covert recordings of CNN’s daily meetings, in this video O’Keefe himself could be seen dialing in to a private CNN call — apparently without the knowledge or consent of participants”.

It is clear that these recordings, legal or otherwise, show that CNN took sides in the US election, and even in the coverage of Trump’s bout with COVID, and made a concerted effort not to show him and his party in the best of light. What escapes critical attention, however, is what degree of conspiracy may have taken place with those outside of the media, such as the DNC. Based on the 2016 election, CNN is still referred to by some by the nickname, Clinton’s News Network, and that is not a good position for the network itself to be in.

I Smell a Rat!

I remember the news about the “stopped counting” on the night of the election. When this was first reported a few days after the election, election officials added an excuse that people were tired and needed to sleep. Nowhere else in history, especially on Election Day or before a deadline, and “where does a company send night-shift workers home because they’re afraid their workers are too tired?”

I smell a rat. This clip of vote counting clearly shows the counting votes continuing after hours, when everybody else, such as the election monitors, has left. Due to one sided media coverage, only now is this getting the attention it deserves, with recent Senate Hearings, e.g., Congressional Oversight in the Face of Executive Branch and Media Suppression.

Taken together, the media coverage, election results and all else happening now reminds me of an old film about the nexus of media to politics and American values. This is A Face in the Crowd (1957), directed by the rather controversial Elia Kazan, who has long been vilified for naming names during McCarthyism.

Some recent liberal critics have begun to maintain that the film predicts the Trump era, as it exposes an unhealthy alliance between populism, media and politics, while others claim just the opposite. However it definitely shows how lies and manipulation are part of any election process, and what has apparently transpired shows much more than just how low lying, deceitful politicians, journalists and governmental election oversight watchdogs will go to achieve their ends.

We’re Nowhere Near the Thick of it!

There are several videos of postal contract workers saying they saw suspicious dealings with truckloads and boxes full of ballots. As for the movie, readers should watch this carefully, stop at places and take notes, as it tells it all. Think of your own political history, your country – many countries have had, or still do have, similar vote rigging, media manipulation, playing the same political games. Compare for yourself with what is being alleged in the US, and see how your own people are manipulated into accepting all this as normal by government and media.

Think back to Dr. Goebbels, and how Hitler grabbed and consolidated power, and how it all fell apart in the end. The US is supposed to protect the world from that sort of thing. Whenever it is criticised by doing the opposite, it deflects this by saying that can’t be true because such things don’t happen in the US itself. Once the global community had to accept that argument but will it now?

Nobody is going to be the winner in the US presidential election, and the vote count is a moot issue; only democracy will have been lost. This will only empower those who want a different system – dictators, radicals and extremists of all kinds. These are same people who then dress their deeds up as “democratic”, Soviet-style, to give them legitimacy. They day they don’t will be the day US-hegemony ends, and it make be as soon as the day you read this article.

[evilelitest2]

Where the Nazis Left Wing? They were called National Socialist after all.

No

Thats all folks

Ok seriously, sorry if i’m being rude but I only ever heard this argument made by bad faith actors or gullible folks who just know nothing about 1930s Germany.  THe Nazis as a Left Wing extremist organization is the type of thing that Far Right Pundits argue in books that they know will only sell to people who have no understanding of history and only consume Far Right Media, so I honestly kinda consider this question almost beneath me, but ok fine lets explain something which is super obvious.

(pictured, not leftists) 

yes, the Nazi party, and almost all Fascist movements for that matter are/where Right Wing.  If that wasn’t obvious by their beliefs (value traditionalism, patriarchy, anti immigrant, belief in hierarchy, conservatism) then it should be obvious by their choice of allies and enemies.  

See when the Nazi Party ran for goverment during the Weimar Republic, they were allied with other political parties because you know....European Parliamentary politics. Infamously, in the 1933 election, the Nazis were only able to get 49% of the vote (despite massive voter suppression, cheating, and violence against the opposition).  Hitler was only able to get the majority he needed to ally with other parties, specifically the German National People’s Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei) or DNVP.  THe DNVP was a conservative-Nationalist party who were the successor to the old pre WWI German Conservative Party.  

In fact it was the DNVP which lead to the election of Hindenburg as President of Germany in 1925, and remember it was Hindenburg who appointed Hitler Chancellor after the 1932 election.  This was part of the larger Hazburg Front, basically an alliance of all the Right Wing Parties to form a majority in the Parliament.  This including the DNVP, the Nazi Party, as well as the Conservative Agricultural League.

(they had a very stupid logo) 

They were also allied with the Pan-German League, a different German Nationalist Party, as well as the German People’s Party, who were a conservative Party.  All of these groups would work together to ensure the Nazi seizure of Power in 1932-1933 before Hitler finally completely seized power for himself.  

(The guy on the Right is the Hidenburg the Head of the Conservative Party, appointing Hitler Chancellor)

Another party worth mentioning here aws the German Centre Party (Zentrum) which was a Catholic Centrist Party which leaned conservative, who would eventually support Hitlers seizure of power. While they included left wing elements, the party as a whole included was Center Right, believing in the basic conservative principles you can find anywhere.  They made the mistake of viewing Hitler as the lesser of two evils.  

(Picture not Related) 

Or even look at this internationally.  The Nazi Party allied itself with Right Wing governments, from Franco in Spain to Mussolini in Italy, to the Governments of Hungary, Romania, and Croatia.  Their allies in Vishi France were the Right, the Nazi allies in within the Soviet Union consisted of many right wing regimes, again and again you see the Nazis ally themselves with Far Right organizations.  THis is at its most obvious with Imperial Japan, which was governed by a fanatically far right goverment.  What all of these groups shared was a hatred of leftists of all stripes, in particular communist, and joint anti communist principles would prove to be the lynchpin of most of their groups.  And this continues to this day, Nazi organizations identify with the right, even if they don’t necessarily support a specific party.  It is no coincidence that the Neo Nazis in the US today call themselves the Alt-Right.  

Basically if the Nazis were Leftists, they wouldn’t ally themselves with internationally with Right wing leaders.  Here are some pictures of Nazi allies, guess which ones are leftists 

....Thats right, fucking none of them.  

The only reason why people seem to buy this is because of the term National Socialist, and if you had bothered to look this up, you’d know that it is because the term Socialism had different meanings in 1930s Germany than they do in America today.  Basically the Nazis meaning of socialism was “take shit from non Germans and give to us” which is generally known as IMperalism. If you want more information, check out this article from Vox which explains it with more patience than I LINK 

Now there were more socialist inclined Nazis when the Party was first founded like the Strasser brothers, but when Hitler took over the party he had many of these people purged from the party.  In fact the left wing of the Nazi Party was largely killed in the Knight of Long Knives, though even calling them left wing is pretty far since they seemed to want “socialism but only for Ayrans”. 

(never Trust Nazis...no not even then) 

HItler himself basically hoped to co-opt the term socialist and the color red specifically to confuse leftist, a political strategy that experts call “U mad bro?”

Now Nazis were somewhat anti capitalist, but only in the sense that they felt both Communism and Capitalism were created by Jews who controled the world, because again, the Nazis were fucking idiots.  

Now while Nazism is right wing, until 2015 I would say it wouldn’t be fair to compare Americna Right wing Political parties with the nazis except in the vaguist terms, but with the election of DOnald Trump, we have actual fascists in office now so...thats not good.  

[theliterateape]

There Are FOUR Lights, Douchebag!

By Don Hall

For those who love Star Trek: The Next Generation, the two episodes during the sixth season that puts Gul Madred (David Warner) and Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) in a battle of wills is notable.

"Chain of Command" has Madred use sensory deprivation, sensory bombardment, forced nakedness, stress positions, dehydration, starvation, physical pain, and cultural humiliation to try to gain knowledge of the Federation's plans for Minos Korva. Picard resists. Madred attempts another tactic to break Picard's will: he shows his captive four bright lights, and demands that Picard answer that there are five, inflicting intense pain on Picard if he does not agree.

Listening to Trump's recorded phone solicitation to the Georgia Secretary of State reminded me of those episodes.

TRUMP: The other thing, dead people. So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.

RAFFENSPERGER: Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is the data you have is wrong. We talked to the congressmen, and they were surprised.

But they — I guess there was a person named Mr. Braynard that came to these meetings and presented data, and he said that there was dead people, I believe it was upward of 5,000. The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. And so that’s wrong. That was two.

TRUMP: So Brad, there can be no justification for that. And I, you know, I give everybody the benefit of the doubt. But that was — and Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put ’em in three times.

RAFFENSEBERGER: Mr. President, they did not put that. We did an audit of that, and we proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.

TRUMP: Do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County? Because that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their, uh, machinery.

Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal.

GERMANY: This is Ryan Germany. No, Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.

TRUMP: But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?

GERMANY: No.

TRUMP: Are you sure, Ryan?

GERMANY: I’m sure. I’m sure, Mr. President.

Like Madred, Trump simply keeps repeating his completely unfounded conclusions as fact over and over. I wonder if Rattensperger at some point in the conversation started to believe that maybe there were five lights. I wonder how tempting it would be to cave in just to get the man to stop talking.

Trump, with the help of a slew of GOP operatives and legislators, has managed to convince 68 percent of Republicans that he actually won the race. No evidence of fraud. No proof of the allegation. Thrown out of court over fifty times. Simply repeat the lie over and over until people agree that there are five lights.

The results were seen yesterday as a couple thousand dipshits literally stormed the Capitol. I’d be alarmed rather than disgusted except that instead of the staunch seriousness of revolutionaries with a cause they stopped to pilfer items and take selfies in Nancy Pelosi’s office. These idiots, like the Antifa in Oregon, are merely bored, unemployed assholes who see the burning down of the government as a great way to spend a weekend. Given the photos, it looks more like Animal House than Les Miserables.

Through it all, Trump continued hammering home the Big Lies he’s been spewing forth since November 3rd and the red meat was just too enticing for several thousand wannabe revolutionaries to ignore. If they’d been black, they’d be dead but they were white and managed to storm the Capitol for the first time in over 200 years. Those Big Lies have power.

On a sidenote, did you really expect the police, after being castigated for nearly a year for being fascist, racists monsters, would really step up to stop these buffoons? Are you kidding? And be honest — you are either in favor of violent protest or you are not. I’m not in favor of violent protest without regard to ideological bent.

Expanding out, it seems that Trump is not the only one using this bizarre brainwashing technique to convince people of factless realities devoid of substance but filled with emotional heft. While Trump's version of this game is almost cartoonish (and I'm not one to lightly compare the man to Der Führer) the playbook was written over half a century ago:

All this was inspired by the principle—which is quite true within itself—that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X

Like Picard, we are bound and subjected to this constant refrain of Big Lies and like Rattensperger we need to hold the line. There are four, not five, lights.

The presidential election was not stolen. There was no voter fraud. You cannot lose a substantial amount of weight in seven minutes a day. What holds you back in America is not your race or sex but your economic class. The customer is not always right. The scientific method is not biased. Merit is a better metric for success than identity. Equality is more important than equity.

THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!

Another sidetone. After watching yesterday’s ridiculous melodrama unfold, I decided to drink rye whiskey and beer and watch the arguments of the Senate to confirm Joe Biden’s electoral victory. And while there were a few I reacted with a simple “Oh. Go fuck yourself you partisan piece of shit.” I also found myself openly weeping at the words of so many of our elected legislators and their love for and belief in this country’s ideals.

God bless America, man. Four fucking lights.

Can we now impeach this motherfucker this week?

[juuls]

I get shitty things were done and said by all, including Biden, but we literally cannot NOT vote. I am so sorry you have to compromise your morals to vote for someone who is a lesser of two evils but with stakes like these, the one who doesn’t vote because of some hoity toity moralism is the true monster. Especially when the moral differences are so stark between the candidates. Not only that.... their capacity for moral actions is completely different too. Trump is capable of basically anything. Biden at least has some form of compass and guideline written into his base code.

But if you can compromise your morals enough to shop at Walmart or JC Penney, or buy diamonds, or clothes from some sweatshop, or basically any chocolate from anywhere in the world, or eat at Chic-fil-A, no matter how fucking delicious it may be.... you can vote for Biden instead of abstaining. I can almost guarantee you that action will weigh in your favour on the Scales of Judgment, if that’s something you believe in.

I would vote in Pontius Pilate over Trump at this point, and THEN I’d investigate him over the whole execution of Jesus thing. Thus, I would vote Biden in, get rid of the horrifying threat we’re facing, and use the system to address the flaws in a president who will actually listen to most people, especially advisors, and who will actually follow the goddamn law.

These are the stakes we’re dealing with now, that some people just don’t seem to understand: Trump is worse than said example of Pontius Pilate (I mean, from what we can tell/agree is history vs. myth) and Trump is now arguably on par with Joseph Stalin, Tsar Nicholas II, Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini, Chairman Mao, and Vladimir Putin, among others. Some of you think that’s awesome, and that’s the worst part in comparing him with these dictators, including the one he’s rapidly approaching in emulation: Hitler—to some of you, you see that as a sign of greatness.

It’s those people we have to fight. The ones who think it’s admirable he’s like a dictator, the ones who think he’s right just because he’s louder than anyone else and can threaten people into silence or worse.

It’s not even really a question of Trump vs. Biden right now. It’s not even really a question of right vs. left. It’s a question of—do we want to allow the people who admire these genocidal dictators to gain power? Because there is no doubt about it: voters have power. A man is a man. But a man backed by a feverish, hatred-filled, bigoted, armed, might-makes-right crowd is unstoppable once they get going. They could do anything they set their sights on, and America is already a powerful enough country when on the ‘right’ side of history. We can’t afford to allow the corruption of this power to flourish and be used to commit (continue) its own genocide and literal Crusade.

We can’t.

Not again.

Lisa Lerer of the The New York Times reports Tara Reade says that Biden supporters have been sending death threats threatening her and her daughter.

Current Affairs reports that Biden campaign surrogate has called for the FBI to criminally investigate Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson along with the Intercept’s Ryan Grim and Rolling Stone’s Katie Halper.

It’s weird that Biden supporters became just like Trump supporters. After all that time claiming they were better and had common sense.

[silvokrent]

I gotta say, that post about "Leaving someone because they voted trump" is one of the sillier things you rebloged, Like I get that you're not a fan of him, but I feel like not dating someone based on who they voted for in a election where both candidates were not liked. I'm cool with you not liking him and that, but I disagree with the message.

To say I’m not a fan is an understatement: I fucking hate him. And I take serious issue with the fact that between Clinton and Trump, there were people that legitimately believed Trump was the lesser evil. I don’t think it’s “silly” that we have a president that:

Spoke at the FRC’s Values Voter Summit, which has been consistently labeled a hate group due to its aggressive anti-LGBT+ stance.

Implemented a ban on transgender people in the military (which, while partially blocked, still says volumes about his own transphobic beliefs, and the supporters that he’s emboldened by promoting said beliefs).

Refused to (and then later begrudgingly condemned) the actions of white supremacists, Klan members, fascists, and Nazis in Charlottesville. The fact that his first immediate response was to decry the violence “on both sides” (“the alt-left”) instead of saying “Nazis are inherently bad” is telling.

Has repeatedly avoided talking about any sort of firearms legislation in the wake of the Orlando and Las Vegas shootings.

Has been repeatedly compared to Hitler by people like Eva Schloss, an Auschwitz survivor.

Wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico (which only serves to further emphasize his racist attitudes, like the time he accused Mexican immigrants of being rapists).

I could go on, but people far more informed and articulate than myself have already extensively covered Trump’s adherence to blind intuition over fact/reality, his volatile impulses and inflammatory behavior, his disgusting political inadequacy when it comes to leading a fucking country, and his many—many—pending allegations of corruption, both in the US and abroad. I reblogged it because I am unapologetically vocal about what a scumbag Trump is. And people know it.

Some of the shit he’s said and done were while he was on the campaign trail. His voters knew that he’d made plenty of hateful, toxic, misogynistic, racist, and Islamophobic comments, and they still voted for him anyway because they decided that those things weren’t deal-breakers.

I don’t like Clinton. I think the media is saturated with too many conflicting portrayals of her for me to say that she’s unequivocally trustworthy. But to say that because both candidates were unlikable and therefore excuses people from being held morally accountable when they voted for Trump is not okay.

Look, people are absolutely free to disagree with me. That’s their prerogative. As it’s mine to call them out on their bullshit. Because at this point, I hold the people that voted this monster into power just as culpable for the atrocities that Trump has committed. They’re complicit, not just for the fact that they voted for him, but for still refusing to condemn him. We have a president that advocates for barring refugees from our country (a country whose majority demographic consists of the descendants of immigrants that supplanted Native Americans, and systemically oppressed them for centuries). We have a president that delayed sending aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit, and then made grossly offensive and dehumanizing comments during his trip there. We have a president who, if he were anyone else, would have likely been charged with collusion and impeached by now.

What gets me is how I feel frustratingly helpless about our clusterfuck of a government. I hate that people still try to make excuses for him. I hate that people shrug their shoulders when he says yet another goddamn stupid thing on Twitter, because we’ve become so acclimated to Trump’s tantrums and beset by compassion fatigue.

More than anything, I hate that people are acting like Trump’s decisions don’t have far-reaching consequences. The last time the world let a charismatic warmonger ascend to power unopposed, and let him get away with scapegoating entire marginalized demographics for the benefit of the privileged few, over 61 million people died.

And look: I’m LGBT+. I’m queer. If I hypothetically dated someone that voted for Trump, that voted for Pence—a man who has a track record of pushing discriminatory legislation against LGBT+ people, and who Trump “jokingly” said “wants to hang [gay people]”—then that would mean the person I’m dating either condones those beliefs, or decided that they weren’t deal breakers. If someone supports politicians with anti-LGBT+ agendas that affect me, then yes, I’d get up in the middle of the fucking restaurant and leave.

The only message I’m sending is that I disagree with people that support fascist dictators. If you’re “cool” with my opinions, why did you feel the need to anonymously message me?

Addendum: I’m turning anonymous messages off for a while, because I refuse to get dragged into a Tumblr discourse on how I’m a butthurt liberal. I’ve seen that song and dance one too many times before. Not my circus, not my monkeys. If any of my followers take issue with my political ideologies, then you’re welcome to unfollow me. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

[euniexenoblade]

On my post saying liberals gotta stop comparing Biden/Harris to Hitler cuz no one wants to vote for Hitler someone left a dumb screed about how it's "anti-voters" doing that and it's like. No, ANTI voters aren't saying "if the election I is 99% Hitler vs 100% Hitler you vote 99.9999% Hitler" if they are ANTI voters why would they tell you to vote?!

Anyways liberals, no one wants to vote for 99% Hitler and the constant use of Hitler comparisons is insensitive and fucked. Y'all should stop telling us you want to vote for a Hitler.

[jjohnsonwriter]

OK, Boomer

The generational divide between the baby boomers and Generations Y and Z (gen X is relatively silent on the issue, having long ago been neutered of any political or social capital) in 2019 is at its widest point in recent historyIn the wake of activists like Greta Thunberg, 25 year old New Zealand parliament member Chlöe Swarbuck's two word retort (‘OK, Boomer’), and the phrase in question, which was recently equated by one New York radio host with the N-word, objectively the most harmful and historically loaded slur you can really say in modern society (Riotta 1).

I think its important to note that my parent’s generation voted for a lot of stuff which helped destroy the world, is fundamentally not to blame for their past ‘mistakes’. The schism between the generations we’re undergoing now as a society are one part nature (because the old and the young have been in conflict pretty much ever since there was an ‘old’ and a ‘young’) and one part nurture: because there’s money to be made (specifically by the most wealthy people) by putting us at each other’s throats.

It’s important to remember the majority of a society isn’t going to be some hyper woke paragon of foresight who can gather all the facts and understand everything going forward. That would be an unreasonable metric by which to judge a society: Is everyone in the top 75th percentile of a population going to be the cultural judge of everyone else?

It’s possible to convince some of the smartest people of something that’s fundamentally crazy, and there are many examples of this in societies (The Red Scare, Hitler). But it’s also worth noting that a if your goal is to get power and use it to advance your own goals, of course you can’t just walk around saying: “Hey everybody, look at me! I’m going to fuck you over!” Otherwise you’ll never get elected.

Case in point: What do you think of Senators Chuck Shumer, Dianne Feinstein, and Dick Durbin? Last I checked, I thought these leaders of the democratic party were all beltway insiders who should have been kicked out of office years ago, but at least they oppose some of Trump’s imperialism. They’re all democrats, so they might share similar ideologies in my goal of a liberal political project, but they also voted for the Iraq war in 2003 (Cohn 6). That’s a war that's still going on. At least they’re probably to be reliable votes for impeachment, even though impeachment is at this point is basically impossible because you need a two thirds vote (Impeachment 1). Out of 100 seats, there are 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and 2 independents, both of whom caucus with the Democrats (Party, 30). That would mean that every democrat would have to vote for impeachment. The numbers on impeachment have shifted drastically in the past two months, from a September poll by FiveThirtyEight indicating just 37% of Americans in favor and 54% Opposed in September to 51% in favor and 42% Opposed as of Halloween (Matsumoto 1).

And guess what? All those people who voted for Iraq, and are still in power? They’re not boomers, they’re members of the silent generation: the people born from 1925-1942 (Howe 1). My point here is that, as someone I know personally lamented “They just won’t die!” Am I calling for people to die? Obviously not, that's fucking insane. I even pondered (for about five seconds) if we should disenfranchise people who choose to retire, but then you instantly run into the problem of the fact that if you take away the right to vote for one group, you can pretty much take it away from any group, not to mention the fact that it’s just immoral to take away anyone’s vote anyway, despite what the republican party tries to do. Princeton professor Sam Wang points out, while both parties gerrymander, the GOP is the one doing the lion’s share of the work (Wang 2).

But you really can’t blame republican voters either. They’re in the same boat as the rest of us: a group of people who corporate and political (so basically extended corporate) interests are constantly trying to hoodwink. Major cash has gone into creating a media machine that pretty much forms the beginning and end of millions of American’s view on the world.

The Gerrymandering problem is an important one when we consider who’s in control of most of the republican states, both on the state legislative level and on the national level: Old white people. Now, moving out to all four corners of the 50 states can’t solve the problem of gerrymandering, but even so: the continued solidification of specific demographics (boomers) in specific areas (‘flyover country’) can only consolidate conservative power, so we’ll have to start spreading. Be the one to move out to Wisconsin and start that new gaybar! Be the one to drop everything, pick up in Arizona, and start your new life in the suburbs. Don’t just move to the cities, oh no! We’re taking over the neighborhood! Hey, you always wanted to own a home, and they’re cheap out there!

Sources:

Cohn, Jonathan. “Iraq War at 15: Who voted for it, who didn’t, and where are they now?”. Medium.com, Medium, 20 Mar. 2018. https://medium.com/@JonathanCohn/iraq-war-15-who-voted-for-it-who-didnt-and-where-are-they-now-595d1654bf9e.

Howe, Neil. “The Silent Generation, “The Lucky Few” (Part 3 of 7)”. Forbes.com, Forbes Media LLC., 13 Aug. 2014. https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2014/08/13/the-silent-generation-the-lucky-few-part-3-of-7/#584865ef2c63

“Impeachment”. Senate.gov, United States Senate. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Senate_Impeachment_Role.htm.

Matsumoto, Ryan. “Impeachment inquiry vote’s strong support from Democrats spells trouble for Trump”. Nbcnews.com, NBC Universal, 31 Oct. 2019. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/impeachment-inquiry-vote-s-strong-support-democrats-spells-trouble-trump-ncna1074661.

“Party Division”. Senate.gov, United States Senate. https://www.senate.gov/history/partydiv.htm

Riotta, Chris. “Right-wing radio host compares ‘boomer’ to the N-word”. Independent.co.uk, Independent Print Limited, 5 Nov. 2019. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ok-boomer-bob-lonsberry-n-word-baby-dictionary-radio-a9186396.html.

[slickbackdani]

If the Dems lose this election, they have no one to blame but themselves.

When I say that, I don’t just mean the hacks in charge of the DNC establishment, though they do get the brunt of the blame here. I’ll get to that later, but I think it’s equally important to point a finger at the so-called “liberal” voters who enable them.

I’m not talking about genuine leftists like myself here; I’m referring to the “#Woke #BlueWave #Resistance” folks on Twitter — you know, the ones who spent every day since Trump’s inauguration swearing up and down that they totally support left-wing causes like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All... but when finally presented with the opportunity to vote for a candidate who would actually give us those things, they shouted him down out of petty revenge on behalf of Saint Hillary before scurrying away from their political causes with their tails tucked between their legs, happily latching onto whichever scripted establishment centrist could most convincingly promise to bring them back to the comfy status quo of yesteryear when they didn’t have to care about politics.

But of course, the DNC do genuinely deserve most of the credit for creating this travesty we find ourselves in. They expect the young voters to unquestioningly fall in line behind them and do their bidding, despite the fact that their candidate has explicitly said he does not care about us at all. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so egregious if they didn’t go out of their way to blatantly rig the primary against our preferred candidate in the first place.

You remember the primary earlier this year, right? It looked for a while that Bernie Sanders was genuinely going to win before the idiots in the mainstream media started doing everything they could to assassinate his character. They ignored his sweeping electoral victories in battleground states while lavishing praise on other candidates for not coming in dead last. They slandered and vilified him as a dangerous extremist when he really wasn’t— by global standards, his brand of socialism is extremely moderate, and his policies would have harmed no one and to this day remain massively popular among the voting public. Some even went so far as to compare Bernie and his supporters to the Nazis; not only was this extremely hyperbolic, since Sanders’ policies were the exact opposite of Hitler’s in every way, but it was also fucking tasteless considering that Bernie’s a Jew who lost family members to the Holocaust.

No, instead of seeing the writing on the wall and allowing Sanders a victory, the DNC establishment threw themselves at the eleventh-hour candidacy of multi-billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who only placed as high as he did because he jumped into the race long after most other candidates left and who was only considered a real contender because he shelled out money to flood the airwaves with ads, bribe the DNC into letting him on the debate stage, and pay people to say nice things about him on Twitter.

Despite Bloomberg’s staggering unpopularity among the majority of Democratic voters — thanks in no small part to his extensive history as a racist, authoritarian, Islamophobic, anti-LGBT, sexually predatory hyper-capitalist who only jumped into the race to protect his rich asshole friends from having to pay their fair share in taxes — every establishment pundit from Bill Maher to Joy Reid happily proclaimed him the Democratic Party’s only chance to beat Trump for no other reason than because Bloomberg has more money than him. As one astute Twitter user put it: “Yes, the only way to beat a right-wing billionaire fascist is to replace him with a right-wing billionaire oligarch. Don’t look at the policies, man! Money is all that matters!”

When it became painfully clear the public wasn’t biting with Bloomberg, the DNC switched their strategies. Centrist candidates Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer all “coincidentally” dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden just before Super Tuesday while self-proclaimed “progressive” Elizabeth Warren stayed in the race just long enough to play spoiler to Bernie before changing all of her positions and quietly dropping out.

Thus, the young voters were stuck with Joe Biden, a candidate that most of us cannot muster any genuine enthusiasm for because, honestly, he hasn’t done much to earn our enthusiasm. Sure, even those who acknowledge his numerous flaws told us he was “more electable,” but the only thing he really had going for him in that regard was name recognition. Nathan J. Robinson of Curreny Affairs summed up the problem with the “electability” argument perfectly:

“But the electability argument for Biden might be the worst argument of all. Biden is a corrupt, inept, dishonest, undisciplined, rambling con man. This makes him less electable, not more. It makes him exactly the person we don’t want to use to make those very same charges against Trump. Because Biden is a man with almost no message, a bunch of scandals including feeling women up against their will, a seemingly addled and confused brain, a long history of inventing nonsensical stories, and a record and agenda that will inspire no one, the electability case seems thin. Much is made of the difficult challenge Sanders faces in increasing youth turnout, but I’m not sure why anyone under 30 would show up for Joe Biden, a man who has contempt for them and has spent his life embodying everything about the Democratic Party that turns them off politics. If there is a Biden plan for mobilizing and exciting ex-Sanders voters, I struggle to think what it could possibly be.”

The reason so many of us don’t like Joe Biden isn’t because we’re sore losers; it’s because Biden has offered us nothing substantial except for the fleeting satisfaction of “beating the other team.” It’s clear to us that he has no real plans for what to do if he actually wins, aside from perpetuating the pre-Trump status quo. To quote Zak Cheney-Rice of Intelligencer:

“His policies, such as they are, are milquetoast appeals to moderation in the face of impending catastrophe — vows to compromise on legislation with Republicans, despite their demonstrated commitment to steamrolling democracy in the interest of partisan advantage; refusals to fight for free health care for all in the name of preserving private insurance, despite the rampant horror stories of insulin rationing and deferred emergency-room visits that prevail among the tens of millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans.

“But where his policies underwhelm — and, indeed, most voters would be hard-pressed to name a single one — his campaign has found incredible success drawing on voters’ emotional attachment to what they think he represents: a return to the sociopolitical norms that were so rudely disrupted by Trump’s election. (...)The idea is that Trump took something away from us — an ill-defined feeling that we’re not actually the America that he suggests we are. Biden is offering nothing more ambitious than returning things to the way they used to be.”

Exactly. The problem with this is that the pre-Trump status quo wasn’t working. People only think it worked because they weren’t paying attention. “As tempting as it may be to believe Trump somehow created all the problems our country is facing, he did not,” Late Night host Seth Meyers once explained. “He certainly made them worse and, in many cases, profited from them, but the structural inequities and institutional failures we're seeing right now long predated him.”

The status quo to which the Biden camp wants us to return is marked by three things: a Democratic Party that bends over backwards to appease the GOP without even trying to put up a fight; Republicans making a token effort to hide their fascism instead of brazenly advertising it the way Trump does; and a complacent, distracted populace just letting it happen.

I’m not saying Biden isn’t the lesser evil compared to Trump. He certainly is. I’m just saying it would’ve been nice to vote for someone who will actually make things better instead of a guy who will just not make things worse.

I hope everyone has a good day except people who say stuff like “Not voting for Biden is a vote for Trump,” you’re fucking stupid, I hate you, and you don’t deserve to have a good day. <3

[cepmurphy]

20 Elections, 10: Special Relationships

It was all going fine until the head of the KGB had a car crash. Allegedly.

“His brakes had an accident while shaving,” said the Foreign Secretary, in that cor-gosh-blimey voice she did when Putin came up. “Who could have seen that coming?”

“Louise, is that what MI6 say or is that what you’re saying?”

“You should be asking what the KGB are saying. GRU as well.”

“Corruption to murder is a leap.” Fuck, even she didn’t think she sounded confident. Course it wasn’t a leap. Happened all the time in certain countries and now, Russia could be one. “How much evidence do we have now that will sell the public?”

“Most of the public already think Putin’s a gangster, you know that.”

The Prime Minister sighed. “That doesn’t mean most of the public will want us to do anything about it. You know the routine: ‘You should do something! Wait, not that!’ We’re too economically bound to Russia, especially in Scotland and the City. That’s a lot of key seats Labour could win and a lot of Tory donors, both likely to freak out. Never mind—”

“The fuckwits?”

The hardcore who used Jesus as their excuse to mutter darkly how a dyke shouldn’t be the leader. “The fuckwits.”

“I don’t know what to tell you there. Only option I can give you that’d make sense is dumping Russia until it dumps Putin and trying rapprochement with either Japan or America.”

She laughed like a toddler watching Mr Tumble fall into cake. “Oh thanks, Louise, yes, let’s tell the voters ‘we’re going to be friends with America!’ Then Labour can put the war on every fucking poster in the land. I can see the Kent posters now, that old photo of a big smoking crater with a bit of church sticking out, ‘VOTE LABOUR’.”

The Foreign Secretary thought that through. “No, that means Labour’s the one burning the church.”

“Well, something like that. The theme of ‘we can’t rely on America’. Maybe we can sell Japan.”

When the war restarted, Japan had lined up behind Hitler but however brutal the Singapore Blitz had been, the public had been far happier to forgive it than America not showing up during the Battle for Britain. When the Germans were driven back to the beaches and made to swim for their rapidly sinking ships and America had responded with only more loans – never mind they kept the country in austerity over starvation, as Washington kept whining – that had been particularly unforgivable. The Cold War was inevitable after that.

And at Britain’s side, their partner and equal however different their ideals had been, Russia. Even under Powell, the special relationship had survived. The blood-soaked empire and the blood-soaked Commies, then the empire-in-name-only neocolonials and the decaying-nasty socialists, always at odds with the Great Eagle. Even under détente, when they were all officially mates, some were better mates than others. 

That was the final thing she worried about. In the end, however bad the new Russian President was, however erratic and monstrous and a clear threat to the established order, however much he was currently escalating tensions that could go nuclear with Iraq, however much Britain had mocked and claimed to look down on crass, humourless, their-movies-suck-compared-to-ours Moscow…

“You think voters won’t want us to turn against Russia. Fine, I won’t dispute you on Scotland, you know more than me, but England? I can tell you right now, England would be fine with it. McDonnell’s best shot at beating us is the Putin card. It makes his policies look better because hey, how scarily socialist can he be when he’s condemning Big Vlad? You’ve seen the same polls I have, Ruth, every time you ask the voters about turning against Putin—”

“When it’s not actually happened yet, when nobody’s got any fucking consequences, then yes! If it starts to become real then just like with the EEC referendum, they’ll bottle it!” That was why she was Prime Minister now and defeated, embittered David Davis was not. You had to respect and fear the voters’ fickle minds. “Tell them we’ll actually turn against one of our oldest allies, our friends in every war comic and film, that the economy will shift? They’ll turn on it. Labour will find that out soon enough.”

“Meanwhile, Putin’s still killing his spy chiefs,” said the Foreign Secretary, sotto-voice.

Everyone had assured her last year that hey, Putin, he can’t win, he’s not even a true socialist and his party know it, he can only get so much – the Russians may be angry about Chechnyan independence and the changing world, just like everyone else panicked about Japan’s ascendance and the African Lion economies, but in the end, they’ll be smart. Deep down, she’d looked at the transformative policies being proposed by the Russian libertarians and knew the voters would rush to what they considered the safe, established, patriotic bet. God help them.

“People will overlook it, in the end.”

“McDonnell doesn’t think so.”

“Well, in June we’ll learn who’s right, won’t we?”

And in July, when his foreign policy actually kicked in, they’d learn again.

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: October 2018

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of October 2018 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

The entire Jamal Khashoggi affair has been one hell of a shitshow, starting with the Saudi Arabian government sending a hit squad to Turkey to murder him when he visited the Turkish embassy and then, after weeks of pretending that Khashoggi was alive and well, stating that he died when he got into a fight - because apparently the Saudi definition of a fight involves having fifteen people, one carrying a bonesaw, ambushing somebody before torturing and murdering them.  In response to this cock and bull story, the font of 90% of the world cock and bull stories Donald Trump states he wholeheartedly believed the Saudi’s version of events (until, two days later, saying that he didn’t) in an effort to deflect attention away from how he blew off any suggestion that the FBI should launch an investigation because, while Khashoggi may have resided in Virginia and worked for the Washington Post,  he wasn't a US citizen so fuck him.  The British response wasn’t much better either, with Jeremy ...Hunt waffling on about how Brits and Saudis had shared values just days after Khashoggi’s disappearance - all of which left us with a situation where Turkey’s dictatorial leader Recip Erdogan was somehow the voice of reason in the whole affair 

It’s funny how we’re supposed to think there’s no connection between Cesar Sayoc Jr embracing Trump’s rhetoric wholeheartedly and him sending bombs in the mail to several of Trump’s most frequent targets - sort of like how we’re supposed to think there was no connection between Trump’s rhetoric and  Brandon Griesemer threatening to go on a shooting rampage at CNN’s HQ back in January, or  Robert Chain threatening to blow up the Boston Globe’s offices back in August.  One thing’s for certain, though: those 4chan dullards saying the left can’t meme have been very, very quiet since it emerged that Trumpists’ meme ability is a tad more explosive than they’d like to admit

On the subject of the MAGAbomber, let’s not forget that countless Twitter hate preachers such as Paul Joseph Watson, Candace Owens and EducatingLiberals were all so quick to claim that the Democrats were sending the bombs to themselves as a false flag attack they were boldly predicting, and not one of them has retracted their original comment - or think that, by deleting it, nobody remembers it.  That’s not how screengrabs work.

In the wake of the Tree of Life shooting Gab hid behind a blanket statement about the “alleged terrorist” responsible for the shootings - which presumably sounded better for PR purposes that stating “We’re currently having hosting problems as a direct result of one of our many antisemetic users posting material claiming he was going to shoot up a synagogue and we sat back and did nothing, which made us look like negligent dickheads when that user then went and shot up a synagogue” 

As the Tory conference took place there was obviously going to be a lot to choose from, so I’ll compile it in one supersized entry: starting at the top we had Theresa May claim that austerity was over in spite of the fact the previous day Philip Hammond, who happens to be Chancellor, said the exact opposite - but far more ridiculous than her apparent ignorance of what other members of her cabinet said in their speeches is the fact ABBA are threatening legal action over her unauthorised use of their music for her cringe-inducing entrance; then there was Jeremy ...Hunt demanding respect from the EU before promptly comparing them to the Soviet Union; the waffling buffoon Boris Johnson went on a dog whistle spree that mainly consisted of saying Jeremy Corbyn’s name a bunch while also saying there’s nothing wrong with police using their stop & search powers to harass black people; and then we had Chris Grayling write so many punchlines about his ineptitude as Transport Secretary by arriving on stage seven minutes late for his own speech, before promptly trying to blame eight years of rail mismanagement under Tory rule on Labour

While there is plenty of justified criticism for Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov turning UFC 229 into a pub car park in Maidstone on a Friday night (which conveniently drew attention away from McGregor getting utterly annihilated in the bout), plenty should also be aimed at Dana White for his mealy-mouthed response afterwards where he failed to take responsibility for the situation, not least his complete failure to punish McGregor in any way for trashing Khabib’s bus or his repeated Islamophobic slurs against Khabib in the months leading up to the fight

Not only is Philip Green the sort of shithead who sexually and racially harassed members of staff, but he's also the kind of shithead who pays his lawyers half a million quid to issue a gagging order on it being revealed he’s the sort of shithead who sexually and racially harassed his staff - which I’m sure pissed off the thousands of former BHS employees who saw him scarper with their pension fund, as they can take a wild guess where that half million quid came from

The Tory conference must not have gone as well as hoped considering Sajid Javid repeated the repeatedly debunked lie about there being parts of London that are no-go areas for non-Muslims, and the fact Javid is regurgitating lies that Nigel Farage told Fox News says a hell of a lot doesn’t it?

Taking a page from her husband’s playbook Melania Trump claimed she is the most bullied woman in America, a week after her husband publicly bullied Christine Blassey Ford in the exact same way that his supporters had been doing for several weeks beforehand.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, she also claimed that if a woman is going to make an accusation of sexual misconduct they need to have evidence - which sounds an awful lot like telling them to keep their mouths shut, doesn’t it?

In a bid to prove that they should not be boycotted by readers wondering why the paper had turned into the Daily Express in recent years The Guardian ran an op-ed piece where Theresa May said any Labour voters dissatisfied with Jeremy Corbyn should vote Tory, which reeks of desperation just as much on May’s part as it does the Guardian’s

It appears that Esther McVey is unaware that people can see that she spent months saying that Universal Credit is perfectly fine until she suddenly turns around and says, actually, it's not fine - or maybe she can, given the amount of gagging orders she handed out to try and avoid the tsunami of criticism headed her way

Waffling gargoyle Nigel Farage demonstrated how desperate he is for attention these days by popping up on Fox News to say that Americans should be far more worried about the Jewish influence in their country than any rumours of Russian influence - a mere 48 hours after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting left eleven people dead at the hands of a white supremacist with a track record of posting antisemitic material to their Gab profile

Definitely not using the inquest into the Westminster terror attack as an excuse to clear his name and/or conscience, Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Craig Mackey claimed that the reason he locked himself in his car and instructed the driver to get the hell out of there while PC Keith Palmer was being stabbed to death yards away was because he didn’t have a stab-proof vest as if that’s any form of consolation to Palmer’s relatives given he didn't have one either.  What's worse, the inquest somehow came to the conclusion that Mackey acted properly, as opposed to showing extreme cowardice 

To prove just how caring and tolerant the Tory party are we have Daniel Phillips O’Leary, Jake Thurman, Ross Horton, Josh Hocking,  Charlie Edleston-Haynes and friends pictured wearing shirts featuring slogans such as “Fuck the NHS”, “Enoch was right” in support of racist ideologue Enoch Powell, at least two of them with the Star of David and the word “Jude” written on them that is both anti-semitic and the terminology of the fucking Nazi Party, while one of them was also flashing a white supremacy gesture to camera while another was done up to look like Adolf Hitler.   Yes, “tolerant” is the word I’d think of there... 

There was two levels of dickheadishness from Rockstar Games in a matter of days.  Firstly they proudly stated that their devs were working 100 hour weeks in order to have Red Dead Redemption 2 finished on time, an announcement they made just as the debate about game devs treatment of their staff was back in the spotlight after reports of Telltale Games expecting their staff to work a hellish schedule in order to meet a release date, and a few days later - having coerced their staff to say that, actually, they were “only” working 80 hour weeks and not the full 100 as if that’s any better - Rockstar followed that up by announcing that independent game shops would not receive copies of RDR2 until at least a week after the major stores, hitting them hard in the pocket as a result

In yet another desperate shriek for attention Roseanne Barr wailed about how terrible it is that her character was filled off in Roseanne reboot The Connors by an opioid overdose - apparently failing to not only see the irony considering she tried to blame her batshit outbursts about Valerie Jarrett and George Soros on an ambien, but also failing to consider that they couldn't have killed off her character due to a joke, voting Trump, or thinking the bitch was WHIIIIIIIIIIIIITE that were the other excuses Barr used when trying to avoid taking responsibility for getting her show cancelled

Continuing to justify the no confidence vote she received from the local party Kate Hoey decided the wisest thing to do would be to retweet posts from Avi Yemini - because when you really want to prove that you’re a credible MP for your constituents, retweeting somebody banned from social media for both antisemitism and Islamophobia who also happens to associate with Tommy Robinson, you’re not helping yourself 

Doing a fine job of making it impossible to differentiate between NBC and Fox News we had Megyn Kelly say that blackface is not offensive as long as it’s done for Halloween, because apparently Halloween is a gateway to Purge Night

Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz decided to be an edgelord by tweeting a photo of him stood next to a cigar store Indian at Disneyland just so he could make a snide jibe in the direction of Elizabeth Warren, which implies he wasn't paying attention during those two years he was on the House Oversight Committee

If it wasn’t galling enough that Lancashire Council decided to spend £38,000 of their budget on new iPhones for themselves, they soon raked in £43,000 by doubling bus fares for disabled people

Demonstrating their levels of editorial competence, the Daily Mail reported on a story where Indonesian pallbearers caught by a gust of wind dropped the body they were carrying into a swimming pool...having failed to verify that the video footage they were using as the basis of this story was taken from an Indonesian soap opera

Ever the edgelord Rod Liddle used a column in the Sunday Times to encourage Islamists residing in Tower Hamlets to blow themselves up - mainly because he doesn't live near the area so he wouldn't have to worry about the after effects of countless people blowing themselves up in a populated area, although he doesn’t seem to understand that just because his not living in Tower Hamlets hasn’t prevented these comments sounding like the deranged ramblings of an Islamophobic moron

Am I the only person who thinks the Banksy stunt where he shredded one of his artworks the second it was sold at auction looked an awful lot like a child throwing a tantrum, only for their mollycoddling parents to say how clever they were for doing so?

It apparently didn’t occur to William Sitwell that sending an e-mail to one of his staff asking for an article about “killing vegans” or tying them up to “Force-feed them meat” makes him look like an intolerant arse, especially since he then sent another e-mail suggesting vegans were all liars who couldn’t resist a bacon sandwich.  Funnily enough his position as editor of Waitrose Food magazine did not last long after that... 

According to increasingly bitter musician Jon Crosby anyone who believes that a healthcare system that doesn't financially cripple the country’s citizens with medical bills is, and this is a direct quote, an "anti Semite Nazi apologizing communist bigot" who must be blocked from his Facebook page so he can continue posting Alex Jones levels of ignorant tripe such as that old chestnut of the shamefully ignorant, the “Hitler was a SOCIALIST!!!!!!!!!!!1″ argument, without anyone pointing out that he’s a complete fucking idiot

And last but by no means least, there’s harasser of attempted rape victims and the only person on earth who thinks blaming the victims of a mass shooting for their being shot Donald Trump, who believes that addressing Hurricane Michael is far less important than hanging around with his new best friend Kanye West