#dinner with putin

[tomorrowusa]

^^^ a sample ballot somebody created for Nevada. 😆

Funny, but we need to take third party stand-ins for Trump seriously.

We should remind people that 1848 was the last year that a non-Democrat or non-Republican was elected president. That's not going to change in 2024. And as Rachel Maddow said on election night in 2016: "If you vote for somebody who can’t win for president, it means that you don’t care who wins for president."

When one of the two major candidates is preaching hate and violence, we really do need to care who wins for president.

In particular I'm no fan of the so called Green Party. Their candidate in 2000, Ralph Nader, ran with the intention of helping elect George W. Bush. It was part of the old and discredited Leninist theory of "heightening the contradictions". In plain English, that means making life miserable for the masses in the hope that they will turn to your party.

And Bush gave us two wars, two rounds of tax breaks for the filthy rich, and two recessions – including the Great Recession. Bush also ignored warnings of an impending attack by al-Qaeda. He appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and the odious Associate Justice Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court. Of course, people did not turn to the Green Party for bringing this string of horrors to the country. If anything, Ralph Nader is somewhat like the Gavrilo Princip of the 21st century.

Jill Stein is in some ways worse than Nader. She had been cultivated by the Kremlin to help elect Trump in 2016 and is attempting to do a repeat in 2024.

Seriously, she was a political nobody in 2015 when she was invited to sit at Putin's table at the anniversary of Russia's propaganda outlet RT in Moscow. Also at that table, sitting next to Putin, was Trump conspiracy nut Michael Flynn.

Guess Who Came to Dinner With Flynn and Putin

People on the left who express support for Jull Stein are helping to elect Trump. If the votes which Stein got in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2016 had instead gone to Hillary Clinton, Trump would not have been elected. (look up the results in those states!)

So if you notice any delusional folks pushing Jill Stein this year, be sure to give them a heavy dose of reality about the consequences of their actions. People who are helping to put Trump back in the Oval Office are no progressives – regardless of what they call themselves.

[odditycollector]

What's happening in France's politics right now is immensely cheering.

No final conclusion as of this moment, but with as few details as possible...

Far-right populist party seemed to be inevitable winners of today's election, no one was even questioned it, conversation was basically "I wonder what curtains they will pick!" "I wonder if they will invite Putin to the celebratory dinner or just send presents?"

2. BIGGEST FRENCH VOTER TURNOUT IN DECADES.

3. Projected winner is now HELL NO, ACTUALLY WE DON'T WANT FASCISM and the far-right populist party is currently trailing in 3rd place.

[janedoeremi]

Tumblr Memes of 2023

January: Polls, Bug Race, Tumblr Sexyman Round 2, No Fly List Leak

February: Vanilla Extract, Tumblr Sexywoman Polls, Homestuck Fandom Commiting Voter Fraud, Miette decimating Todoroki in Blorbo Polls, Just so many polls

March: Dean Winchester and his Time Traveling Impala in The Winchesters, Celebrating Ides of March a week early, March 14th: The Day Krabs Fries, Ides of March, Autism Swag Poll, Ultimate Cat Girl (Gender Neutral) Poll, Putin having a warrent for his arrest, The Bots returned with a vengance

April: April Fools Day, Sonic the Hedgehog died, Trumps arrest, Barbie Arresting Trump, Everyone getting a Barbie description, Poll with Nina Tucker and Alexander needs them to tie to move on together, hyperspecific polls, Misha Collins assigned Bisexual by the WB, Elon Musk being the victim of Murphy's Law, It's gonna be May

May: Dracula Daily cast is stuck in a time loop, Trigun stan causes book: This Is How You Lose the Time War to become a bestseller, whatever the fuck happened with Eurovision, TOTK releases and gave us our feral Link back, Barbie and Ken arrested template.

June: Pride month, Across the Spiderverse... just all of it, trump getting arrested...again, The Great Reddit Migration & r/196, Horse Race, Meows Morales, The week long Titanic Oceangate Iron Lung Clusterfuck, Destial 'i love you' news meme trends at least 4 different times for different reasons, Papyrus says fuck day

July: Twitter post rationing causing Tumblr Migration 2: Electric Boogaloo, ao3 went down for 2 days, ao3 readers debating on going back to wattpad/ff.net, Barbieheimer double feature, Tree Law invoked, Elon renamed Twitter to X

August: Tiktok trying and failing to make their own Goncharov: Zepotha, Destiel confirmed canon again by not-so-rouge translator, Riverdale polycule finale, Trump mugshot, One Piece Live Action Pirate-Clown annoys Tumblr users

September: Mole Interest, Ice King became a Tumblr Sexyman again, 21st of September.

October: Spooky month, Merlin Twitter updates for first time in years to show streaming options confusing fans, The Amazing Digital Circus and Nerdy Prudes Must Die both trend for a week straight, trying to insert Markipler into the FNAF Movie

November: Nov. 5th 3rd year anniversary, Zach and Cody get their dinner reservation after 15 years. Goncharovs 1st 50th anniversary.

December: Gavle Goat being devoured by Jackdaws, Hbomberguy lives up to his name and nukes James Somerton's plagerism ridden channel, Its Dec 10th, We're gonna have to kill this guy template, almost Christmas, one more sleep til Christmas (screams internally), Halloween trends on Christmas Eve

[cardinalcyn]

Louder for the people in the back.

IF YOU'RE 18 YEARS OLD OR OLDER, YOU SHOULD REGISTER TO VOTE ASAP IF YOU AREN'T ALREADY REGISTERED.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO JOIN A POLITICAL PARTY WHEN YOU REGISTER.

IF SOMEONE TRIES TO TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN SIT THIS ONE OUT, THEY ARE EITHER IGNORANT OR MALICIOUS.

IF SOMEONE TRIES TO TELL YOU THAT YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR A THIRD PARTY, THEY ARE EITHER IGNORANT OR MALICIOUS.

IF SOMEONE TRIES TO TELL YOU THAT YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, THEY ARE BOTH IGNORANT AND MALICIOUS.

I PERSONALLY THINK HARRIS COULD STAND TO DO A LOT OF THINGS BETTER, BUT IF YOU LIKE NOT TEETERING ON THE EDGE OF BIBLE-THUMPING FASCISM, MAYBE SUCK IT UP

Because I remember disinformation being spread around the last few elections and I’m sure assholes will bring it back:

YOU CAN’T VOTE ONLINE.

YOU CAN’T VOTE FROM YOUR PHONE.

IN MANY STATES THERE ARE LEGAL CONSEQUENCES FOR PHOTOGRAPHING YOUR BALLOT.

DO NOT WEAR CAMPAIGN GEAR TO THE POLLS.

DO NOT TRY TO PERSUADE PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR A CANDIDATE AT THE POLLS.

DO NOT ENGAGE IN ANY KIND OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE AT THE POLLS.

NO ELECTION IS EVER A SURE THING, EVEN IF YOU’RE IN THE BLUEST OR REDDEST OF STATES.  IF SOMEONE TRIES TO TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN SIT THIS ONE OUT, THEY ARE EITHER IGNORANT OR MALICIOUS.

VOTE.

[creature-wizard]

So I was searching for more of Jill Stein's shitty takes on Ukraine and Russia (she's apparently said that the US shouldn't help Ukraine against Russia), and came across this:

The extent of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election is well-documented and yet still not fully understood. Russian agents were responsible for stealing and releasing emails from the Democratic National Committee. Russia used Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to spread disinformation and sow discord among the American public. This was done to benefit then-candidate Donald Trump.

...

The NBC News analysis found that Russians working with the infamous Internet Research Agency — the Kremlin-linked propaganda outfit with close ties to Putin — tweeted out Jill Stein’s name at least 1,000 times, on a network of fake accounts whose online reach is thought to be in the tens of millions.

...

The environmental activist and erstwhile presidential candidate was in frequent communication with individuals inside Russia, and she herself made a trip to Moscow in 2015 to attend, among other things, a dinner hosted by Russian propaganda network RT, where she sat alongside future Trump campaign aide Michael Flynn and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

So... yeah. Russia encouraged people to vote for Stein back in 2016 to get people to split the vote, and Stein herself sure associates with Russians a lot.

[mariacallous]

When most Americans think of fascism, they picture a Hitlerian hellscape of dramatic action: police raids, violent coups, mass executions. Indeed, such was the savagery of Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Vichy France. But what many people don’t appreciate about tyranny is its “banality,” Timothy Snyder tells me. “We don’t imagine how a regime change is going to be at the dinner table. The regime change is going to be on the sidewalk. It’s going to be in your whole life.”

Snyder, a Yale history professor and leading scholar of Soviet Russia, was patching into Zoom from a hotel room in Kyiv, where the specter of authoritarianism looms large as Ukraine remains steeped in a yearslong military siege by Vladimir Putin. It was late at night and he was still winding down from, and gearing up for, a packed schedule—from launching an institution dedicated to the documentation of the war, to fundraising for robotic-demining development, to organizing a conference for a new Ukrainian history project. “I’ve had kind of a long day and a long week, and if this were going to be my sartorial first appearance in Vanity Fair, I would really want it to go otherwise,” he joked.

But the rest of our conversation was no laughing matter. It largely centered, to little surprise, on Donald Trump and how the former president has put America on a glide path to fascism. Too many commentators were late to realize this. Snyder, however, has been sounding the alarm since the dawn of Trumpism itself, invoking the cautionary tales of fascist history in his 2017 book, On Tyranny, and in The Road to Unfreedom the year after. It’s been six years since the latter, and Snyder is now out with a new book, On Freedom, a personal and philosophical attempt to flip the valence of America’s most lauded—and loaded—word. “We Americans tend to think that freedom is a matter of things being cleared away, and that capitalism does that work for us. It is a trap to believe in this,” he writes. “Freedom is not an absence but a presence, a life in which we choose multiple commitments and realize combinations of them in the world.”

In an interview with Vanity Fair, which has been edited for length and clarity, Snyder unpacks America’s “strongman fantasy,” encourages Democrats to reclaim the concept of freedom, and critiques journalists for pushing a “war fatigue” narrative about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “There’s just something so odd about Americans being tired of this war. We can get bored of it or whatever, but how can we be tired?” he asks. “We’re not doing a damn thing.”

Vanity Fair: The things we associate with freedom—free speech, religious liberty—have been co-opted by the Republican Party. Do you think you could walk me through how that happened historically and how Democrats could take that word back?

Timothy Snyder: Yeah. I think the way it happened historically is actually quite dark there. There’s an innocent way of talking about this, which is to say, “Oh, some people believe in negative freedom and some people believe in positive freedom—and negative freedom just means less government and positive freedom means more government.” And when you say it like that, it just sounds like a question of taste. And who knows who’s right?

Whereas historically speaking, to answer your question, the reason why people believe in negative freedom is that they’re enslaving other people, or they are oppressing women, or both. The reason why you say freedom is just keeping the government off my back is that the central government is the only force that’s ever going to enfranchise those slaves. It’s the only force which is ever going to give votes to those women. And so that’s where negative freedom comes from. I’m not saying that everybody who believes in negative freedom now owns slaves or oppresses women, but that’s the tradition. That’s the reason why you would think freedom is negative, which on its face is a totally implausible idea. I mean, the notion that you can just be free because there’s no government makes no sense, unless you’re a heavily drugged anarchist.

And so, as the Republican Party has also become the party of race in our country, it’s become the party of small government. Unfortunately, this idea of freedom then goes along for the ride, because freedom becomes freedom from government. And then the next step is freedom becomes freedom for the market. That seems like a small step, but it’s a huge step because if we believe in free markets, that means that we actually have duties to the market. And Americans have by and large accepted that, even pretty far into the center or into the left. If you say that term, “free market,” Americans pretty generally won’t stop you and say, “Oh, there’s something problematic about that.” But there really is: If the market is free, that means that you have a duty to the market, and the duty is to make sure the government doesn’t intervene in it. And once you make that step, you suddenly find yourself willing to accept that, well, everybody of course has a right to advertise, and I don’t have a right to be free of it. Or freedom of speech isn’t really for me; freedom of speech is for the internet.

And that’s, to a large measure, the world we live in.

You have a quote in the book about this that distills it well: “The countries where people tend to think of freedom as freedom to are doing better by our own measures, which tend to focus on freedom from.”

Yeah, thanks for pulling that out. Even I was a little bit struck by that one. Because if you’re American and you talk about freedom all the time and you also spend all your time judging other countries on freedom, and you decide what the measures are, then you should be close to the top of the list—but you’re not. And then you ask, “Why is that?” When you look at countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Germany, or Ireland—that are way ahead of us—they’re having a different conversation about freedom. They don’t seem to talk about freedom as much as we do, but then when they do, they talk about it in terms of enabling people to do things.

And then you realize that an enabled population, a population that has health care and retirement and reliable schools, may be better at defending things like the right to vote and the right to freedom of religion and the right to freedom of speech—the things that we think are essential to freedom. And then you realize, Oh, wait, there can be a positive loop between freedom to and freedom from. And this is the big thing that Americans get a hundred percent wrong. We think there’s a tragic choice between freedom from and freedom to—that you’ve got to choose between negative freedom and positive freedom. And that’s entirely wrong.

What do you make of Kamala Harris’s attempt to redeem the word?

It makes me happy if it’s at the center of a political discussion. And by the way, going back to your first question, it’s interesting how the American right has actually retreated from freedom. It has been central for them for half a century, but they are now actually retreating from it, and they’ve left the ground open for the Democrats. So, politically, I’m glad they’re seizing it—not just because I want them to win, but also because I think on the center left or wherever she is, there’s more of a chance for the word to take on a fuller meaning. Because so long as the Republicans can control the word, it’s always going to mean negative freedom.

I can’t judge the politics that well, but I think it’s philosophically correct and I think we end up being truer to ourselves. Because my big underlying concern as an American is that we have this word which we’ve boxed into a corner and then beaten the pulp out of, and it really doesn’t mean anything anymore. And yet it’s the only imaginable central concept I can think of for American political theory or American political life.

Yeah, it’s conducive to the joy-and-optimism approach that the Democrats are taking to the campaign. Freedom to is about enfranchisement; it’s about empowerment; it’s about mobility.

Totally. Can I jump in there with another thought?

Of course.

I think JD Vance is the logical extension of where freedom as freedom from gets you. Because one of the things you say when freedom is negative—when it’s just freedom from—is that the government is bad, right? You say the government is bad because it’s suppressive. But then you also say government is bad because it can’t do anything. It’s incompetent and it’s dysfunctional. And it’s a small step from there to a JD Vance–type figure who is a doomer, right? He’s a doomer about everything. His politics is a politics of impotence. His whole idea is that government will fail at everything—that there’s no point using government, and in fact, life is just sort of terrible in general. And the only way to lead in life is to kind of be snarky about other people. That’s the whole JD Vance political philosophy. It’s like, “I’m impotent. You’re impotent. We’re all impotent. And therefore let’s be angry.”

Did you watch the debate?

No, I’m afraid I didn’t. I’m in the wrong time zone.

There was a moment that struck me, and I think it would strike you too: Donald Trump openly praised Viktor Orbán, as he has done repeatedly in the past. But he said, explicitly, Orbán is a good guy because he’s a “strongman,” which is a word that he clearly takes to be a compliment, not derogatory. You’ve written about the strongman fantasy in your Substack, so I’m curious: What do you think Trump is appealing to here?

Well, I’m going to answer it in a slightly different way, and then I’ll go back to the way you mean it. I think he’s tapping into one of his own inner fantasies. I think he looks around the world and he sees that there’s a person like Orbán, who’s taken a constitutional system and climbed out of it and has managed to go from being a normal prime minister to essentially being an extraconstitutional figure. And I think that’s what Trump wants for himself. And then, of course, the next step is a Putin-type figure, where he’s now an unquestioned dictator.

For the rest of us, I think he’s tapping—in a minor key—into inexperience, and that was my strongman piece that you kindly mentioned. Americans don’t really think through what it would mean to have a government without the rule of law and the possibility of throwing the bums out. I think we just haven’t thought that through in all of its banality: the neighbors denouncing you, your kids not having social mobility because you maybe did something wrong, having to be afraid all the damn time. African Americans and some immigrants have a sense of this, but in general, Americans don’t get that. They don’t get what that would be like.

So that’s a minor key. The major key, though, is the 20% or so of Americans who really, I think, authentically do want an authoritarian regime, because they would prefer to identify personally with a leader figure and feel good about it rather than enjoy freedom.

You mentioned the word banality, which makes me think of Hannah Arendt’s theory of the “banality of evil.” What would the banality of authoritarianism look like in America?

So let me first talk about the nonbanality of evil, because our version of evil is something like, and I don’t want to be too mean, but it’s something like this: A giant monster rises out of the ocean and then we get it with our F-16s or F-35s or whatever. That’s our version of evil. It’s corporeal, it’s obviously bad, and it can be defeated by dramatic acts of violence.

And we apply that to figures like Hitler or Stalin, and we think, Okay, what happened with Hitler was that he was suddenly defeated by a war. Of course he was defeated by a war, but he did some dramatic and violent things to come to power, but his coming to power also involved a million banalities. It involved a million assimilations, a million changes of what we think of as normal. And it’s our ability to make things normal and abnormal which is so terrifying. It’s like an animal instinct on our part: We can tell what the power wants us to do, and if we don’t think about it, we then do it. In authoritarian conditions, this means that we realize, Oh, the law doesn’t really apply anymore. That means my neighbor could have denounced me for anything, and so I better denounce my neighbor first. And before you know it, you’re in a completely different society, and the banality here is that instead of just walking down the street thinking about your own stuff, you’re thinking, Wait a minute, which of my neighbors is going to denounce me?

Americans think all the time about getting their kids into the right school. What happens in an authoritarian country is that all of that access to social mobility becomes determined by obedience. And as a parent, suddenly you realize you have to be publicly loyal all the time, because one little black mark against you ruins your child’s future. And that’s the banality right there. In Russia, everybody lives like that, because any little thing you do wrong, and your kid has no chance. They get thrown out of school; they can’t go to university.

We don’t imagine how a regime change is going to be at the dinner table. The regime change is going to be on the sidewalk. It’s going to be in your whole life. It’s not going to be some external thing. It’s not like this strongman is just going to be some bad person in the White House, and then eventually the good guys will come and knock him out. When the regime changes, you change and you adapt, and you look around as everyone else is adapting and you realize, Well, everyone else adapting is a new reality for me, and I’m probably going to have to adapt too. Trump wants to be a strongman. He’s already tried a ​​ coup d’état. He makes it clear that he wants to be a different regime. And so if you vote him in, you’re basically saying, “Okay, strongman, tell me how to adapt.”

Yeah, we could talk about Project 2025 all day. This new effort to bureaucratize tyranny—which was not in place in 2020—could really make the banal aspect a reality because it’s enforced by the administrative state, which is going to be felt by Americans at a quotidian level.

I agree with what you say. If I were in business, I would be terrified of Project 2025 because what it’s going to lead to is favoritism. You’re never going to get approvals for your stuff unless you’re politically close to administration. It’s going to push us toward a more Hungary-like situation, where the president’s pals’ or Jared Kushner’s pals’ companies are going to do fine. But everybody else is going to have to pay bribes. Everyone else is going to have to make friends.

It’s anticompetitive.

Yeah, it’s going to generate a very, very uneven playing field where certain people are going to be favored and become oligarchs. And most of the rest of us are going to have a hard time. Also, the 40,000 [loyalists Trump wants to replace the administrative state with] are going to be completely incompetent. When people stop getting their Social Security checks, they’re going to realize that the federal government—which they’ve been told is so dysfunctional—actually did do some things. It’s going to be chaos. The only way to get anything done is to have a phone number where you can call somebody at someplace in the government and say, “Make my thing a priority.” The chaos of the administration state feeds into the strongman thing. And since that’s true, the strongman view starts to become natural for you because it’s the only way to get anything done.

You’ve studied Russian information warfare pretty extensively. A few weeks ago the Justice Department indicted two employees of the Russian state media outlet RT for their role in surreptitiously funding a right-wing US media outfit as part of a foreign-influence-peddling scheme, which saw them pull the wool over a bunch of right-wing media personalities. Do you think this type of thing is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Russian information warfare?

Of course. It’s the tip of the iceberg, and I want to refer back to 2016. It was much bigger in 2016 than we recognized at the time. The things that the Obama administration was concerned with—like the actual penetration of state voting systems and stuff—that was really just nothing compared to all of the internet stuff they had going. And we basically caught zilcho of that before the election itself. And I think the federal government is more aware of it this time, but also the Russians are doing different things this time, no doubt.

I’m afraid what I think is that there are probably an awful lot of people who are doing this—including people who are much more important in the media than those guys—and that there’s just no way we’re going to catch very many of them before November. That’s my gut feeling.

While we’re on Russia, I do want to talk about Ukraine, especially since you’re there right now. I think one of the most unfortunate aspects of [the media’s coverage of] foreign wars—the Ukraine war and also the Israel-Hamas war—is just the way they inevitably fade into the background of the American news cycle, especially if no American boots are on the ground. I’m curious if this dynamic frustrates you as a historian.

Oh, a couple points there. One is, I’m going to point out slightly mean-spiritedly that the stories about war fatigue in Ukraine began in March 2022. As a historian, I am a little bit upset at journalists. I don’t mean the good ones. I don’t mean the guys I just saw who just came back from the front. [I mean] the people who are sitting in DC or New York or wherever, who immediately ginned up this notion of war fatigue and kept asking everybody from the beginning, “When are you going to get tired of this war?” We turned war fatigue into a topos almost instantaneously. And I found that really irresponsible because you’re affecting the discourse. But also, I feel like there was a kind of inbuilt laziness into it. If war fatigue sets in right away, then you have an excuse never to go to the country, and you have an excuse never to figure out what’s going on, and you have an excuse never to figure out why it’s important.

So I was really upset by that, and also because there’s just something so odd about Americans being tired of this war. We can get bored of it or whatever, but how can we be tired? We’re not doing a damn thing. We’re doing nothing. I mean, there’s some great individual Americans who are volunteering and giving supplies and stuff, but as a country, we’re not doing a damn thing. I mean, a tiny percentage of our defense budget—which would be going to other stuff anyway—insead goes to Ukraine.

And by the way, Ukrainians understand that Americans have other things to think about. I was not very far from the front three days ago talking to soldiers, and their basic attitude about the election and us was, like, “Yeah, you got your own things to think about. We understand. It’s not your war.” But as a historian, the thing which troubles me is pace, because with time, all kinds of resources wear down. And the most painful is the Ukrainian human resource. That’s probably a terribly euphemistic word, but people die and people get wounded and people get traumatized. Your own side runs out of stuff.

We were played by the Russians, psychologically, about the way wars are fought. And that stretched out the war. That’s the thing which bothers me most. You win wars with pace and you win wars with surprise. You don’t win wars by allowing the other side to dictate what the rules are and stretching everything out, which is basically what’s happened. And with that has come a certain amount of American distraction and changing the subject and impatience. I think journalists have made a mistake by making it into a kind of consumer thing where they’re sort of instructing the public that it’s okay to be bored or fatigued. And then I think the Biden administration made a mistake by not doing things at pace and allowing every decision to take weeks and months and so on.

What do you think another Trump presidency would mean for the war and for America’s commitment to Ukraine?

I think Trump switches sides and puts American power on the Russian side, effectively. I think Trump cuts off. He’s a bad dealmaker—that’s the problem. I mean, he’s a good entertainer. He’s very talented; he’s very charismatic. In his way, he’s very intelligent, but he’s not a good dealmaker. And a) ending wars is not a deal the way that buying a building is a deal, and b) even if it were, he’s consistently made bad deals his whole career and lost out and gone bankrupt.

So you can’t really trust him with something like this, even if his intentions were good—and I don’t think his intentions are good. Going back to the strongman thing, I think he believes that it’s right and good that the strong defeat and dominate the weak. And I think in his instinctual view of the world, Putin is pretty much the paradigmatic strongman—the one that he admires the most. And because he thinks Putin is strong, Putin will win. The sad irony of all this is that we are so much stronger than Russia. And in my view, the only way Russia can really win is if we flip or if we do nothing. So, because Trump himself is so psychologically weak and wants to look up to another strongman, I think he’s going to flip. But even if I’m wrong about that, I think he’s incompetent to deal with a situation like this. Because he wants the quick affirmation of a deal. And if the other side knows you’re in a hurry, then you’ve already lost from the beginning.

[alittlebitofloveliness]

Curtis Brothers Minific

“What are you doing?” Soda lounged in the doorway, watching Darry put away the chicken Pony had made for dinner.

His brother jumped a little, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nothin’. Just putin’ the leftovers away.”

For all his voice was steady he looked guiltier than Steve had that time mom had caught him stealing cookies back when mom and dad were still alive and little things didn’t matter so much. Soda wasn’t sure what, but it was clear he was hiding something.

“That’s your chicken. Pony an’ I made sure to save you some.”

“I just ain’t all that hungry is all,” Darry shrugged, trying and failing to be nonchalant.

“Bullshit.” Darry was always hungry, they all were, teenage growth spurts and growing boys and all that jazz. “Are you gettin’ sick or something?” 

He couldn't help the slight spike of panic that shot through him at the thought. Darry hadn’t been proper sick since before their parents had died, and Soda knew himself well enough to know he wasn’t any good at looking after sick people. That wasn’t really the issue though, they could figure that out, but he got a bit nervous himself whenever Darry looked any sort of vulnerable, and Pony went clean crazy. He didn’t even want to think of the headache he’d have to deal with if his big brother was getting sick. Trying to nurse Dar, and go to work, and try and talk Pony into talking would make for a very tough week indeed.

“I ain’t sick,” Darry told him, batting away his attempts to check for a fever. “I mean it Soda, I’m fine.”

“Then why ain’t you eating? And why are you actin’ like I caught you doing coke off the countertop? I swear you never looked so guilty in your life.”

“I ain’t.” Darry set his jaw stubbornly and went back to slicing the leftover chicken breast and wrapping it in plastic wrap.

“Yeah you are. C’mon superman, spill.”

Darry sighed, like talking to him was the biggest chore in the world. 

“It’s track season,” was all he said, rubbing at his neck again. For a second he didn’t get it- then slowly, Soda felt himself grin.

“You big softie! You’re savin’ it for Pony, ain’t ya? So he’ll have his favourite before his big race.”

“The kid’s gotta eat,” Darry said simply, but Soda could see his cheeks flushing.

“There’s a bit of peanut butter in the cupboard. He could’ve had that.”

“Not when I’m about to finish it he couldn’t,” Darry said, putting the last of the chicken in the fridge and swiftly pulling the jar of peanut butter out of the cupboard, spreading it across a slice of bread.  “Now don’t touch those leftovers and make sure Steve doesn’t either, savvy?”

“Yeah, I savvy,” Soda grinned easily, following Darry into the living room, clicking the kitchen light off behind him.

Pony didn’t notice, and Darry would never admit it, but it was clear to anyone with eyes that Dar spoiled the kid rotten. 

The next morning Pony let out a joyful whoop when he found the leftover chicken and hurriedly fixed himself a sandwich. For all he tried to hide it, Darry’s smile didn’t quite fit behind his newspaper. 

Soda didn’t bother to hide his own grin as he ran out the door. His brothers were the strangest guys he’d ever met, but god did he love them.

[lost-carcosa]

"I do agree that under Donald Trump when he was president of the United States, the world was safer. "I want to work with fellow conservatives to take on what I believe is a real threat of Western society and civilization being undermined by left-wing extreme ideas."

The entire country found out to it's cost that she is utterly incompetent and unsuited to any sort of leadership role.

Now it turns out she is also dangerously deluded.

Good grief... this stupid woman Truss is a danger to Britain and the whole world.

A failed Tory prime minister who only lasted a few disastrous weeks in office, but who managed to crash the British economy in that time, now suggests Trump should win?!

She shouldn't be allowed out into the community, never mind being given political power.

[libertarian-druid-ny-separatist]

So, Trump isn't even in office yet, but he's gotten a fair bit done already

1: Call from putin saying he's ready to talk about ending the war

2: Iran wanting a ceasefire

3: Hamas gets ready to surrender

4: China calls for peaceful coexistence.

Feel like a fair few of y'all should take a different stance than you've been taking. But that's up to you.

Will provide links upon request, but I'm about to have dinner.

[tomorrowusa]

Trump minions.

A reminder that Jill Stein already has a record of serving as a useful idiot for Trump. She and Trump's future National Security Adviser (and still QAnon fanatic) Michael Flynn were in Moscow in 2015 for an anniversary celebration for RT – Russia's international propaganda channel. You don't sit at Putin's table just because he enjoys your delightful dinner conversation.

Trump himself is a useful idiot for Vladimir Putin. Hapless third party losers are useful idiots for a useful idiot. SAD!

[woman-respecter]

no bc i hate HATE people ignoring ussr/russia’s crimes. seeing everyone called putin “based” for criticizing israel that one time when that man did not do it bc he gaf about human rights but bc israel is tied to the west. and he’s also anti semitic lol.

also people barely even acknowledge the indigenous siberians he’s ethnically cleansing at the moment and are literally downplaying his invasion and war crimes in ukraine bc apparently we can’t say the mass slaughter of people, regardless of race and nationality, is equally bad.

idk so many “leftists”, esp since october 7th, go so far left they start sounding like the alt right conservative grandpa at the dinner table and it’s….. yeah okay let’s take you home

wait were the people calling putin based the typical tankies for which its par for the course or were these otherwise normal people poisoned by oct 7 brainrot. bc if its the latter holy shit things have gotten bad.

also its bonkers how much evil shit russia has done. like i know some of the basics but i feel like i learn about a new crime against humanity of theirs every day

[loneranger0369]

I wish the Ukrainian Forces are able to F*CK the Russian Terroristic Bitches up and out of Ukraine.

F*cking Pussians don't get anything, yet they want to do anything and everything to satisfy their ever-greedy piece of Sh*t Leader, Putin, or should I say Pussin.

Ukrainian soldiers having lunch.

You can be sure that the Russian Army has nothing that comes close to this.

[joesalw]

I swear this...

Fucking USA stop hyping her up! ISTG!!

https://x.com/PopBase/status/1731729371143283201?s=20

No wait. Hitler was also Time Person of the year. So was Stalin, Jeff Bezos, Putin, Trump, Biden, Elon Musk.

Person Of the Year for dating a racist, nazi, bigot, hanging out with sa abuser and apologist, with a concert killing two of her fans, making her cult bully an ex relentlessly, shoving her music down everyone's throat, polluting the earth with her co2 emissions for quick trips to parties and dinners. We live in this kind of world...

[perrysoup]

Been seeing stuff about the Green Party and one part has me worried.

Jill Stein

Now, I want to say that I have a hard time fully understanding all propaganda I get shown. That's literally the point of it, confuse people into thinking it's right.

(Note: this is using Propaganda as the following definition: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.)

With that, I remember not knowing who she was until 2020 came around, and the key thing I was shown over and over was her apparent (I say that because I'm genuinely curious if what I was shown was evidence or lying by omission) ties to Putin and the Russian Oligarchy.

I'm gonna just Copy/Paste the section from Wikipedia so I don't miscommunicate what it shows:

On December 18, 2017, The Washington Post reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking at Stein's presidential campaign for potential "collusion with the Russians."[90] The Stein campaign released a statement stating it would work with investigators.[91]

In December 2018, two reports commissioned by the US Senate found that the Internet Research Agency boosted Stein's candidacy through social media posts, targeting African-American voters in particular. After consulting the two reports, NBC News reporter Robert Windrem said that nothing suggested Stein knew about the operation, but added that "the Massachusetts physician ha[d] long been criticized for her support of international policies that mirror Russian foreign policy goals." Windrem reported that his publisher (NBC News) had found that in 2015 and 2016 there had been over 100 favorable stories about Stein on Russian state-owned media networks RT and Sputnik.[92] In 2015, Stein was photographed dining at the same table as Russian president Vladimir Putin at the RT 10th anniversary gala in Moscow, leading to controversy.[93][94] Stein contended that she had no contact with Putin at the dinner and described the situation as a "non-event".[95]

In an official statement, Stein called one of the reports, the one authored by New Knowledge, "dangerous new McCarthyism" and asked the Senate Committee to retract it, saying the firm was "sponsored by partisan Democratic funders" and had itself been shown to have been "directly involved in election interference" in the 2017 US Senate election in Alabama.[96]

By July 31, 2018, Stein had spent slightly under $100,000 of the recount money on legal representation linked to the Senate probe into election interference.[97] In March 2019, Stein's spokesman David Cobb said she had "fully cooperated with the Senate inquiry."[98]

In October 2019, Hillary Clinton said that Russia's ongoing efforts to influence U.S. elections included a plot to support a third-party candidate in 2020, which could either be Jill Stein, whom she described as a "Russian asset," or Tulsi Gabbard.[99] A few days later, Clinton's comments were clarified to indicate that she thought that it was, in fact, Republicans who were behind the plot.[100] Stein denounced Clinton's comments on both herself and Gabbard, describing them as "slanderous".[101]

So the question is, is she a Russian asset? Does she genuinely have a history related to Putin? I believe there is a photo of her at a dinner with Putin and some other GOP people, but is it taken out of Context? Is it a meeting where she realizes she doesn't agree with them stuff? Legit I don't know, I want information, with sources please.

[mariacallous]

Courageous people risking their lives for freedom and democracy in Belarus and Ukraine need allies in the West if they are to prevail over tyranny, Tsikhanouskaya said in a speech in Washington.

“Tyranny is contagious. If not contained, it spills over,” she said. “We must reject the very thought that tyrants can be appeased or can be re-educated. Dictators will not stop until we stop them.”

Fresh from meetings at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Tsikhanouskaya said she had heard a lot of talk about the “fatigue” of war, of Russian President Vladimir Putin and of Lukashenka. Complaining about “fatigue” is a luxury unavailable to those on the frontlines, she said.

The tiredness of the conflict in the West is nothing compared to the experience of Ukrainian soldiers in cold trenches, parents whose children have been killed by Russian missiles, Belarusian political prisoners dying in jail, or a 77-year-old woman in Belarus who takes to the streets every day to protest Lukashenka’s regime, she said.

“I heard it so often that, at the end, I felt fatigue of fatigue,” she said. “This fatigue comes from the fact that we don’t know when it will end, when Ukraine wins, when the Lukashenka regime collapses. But sometimes, we can’t know when, and all we should do is bring this moment closer. We must do it because it is right.”

What unites true and dedicated campaigners for freedom is “immunity to fatigue” and “intolerance to dictatorship and injustice,” Tsikhanouskaya, who leads the Belarusian government in exile, told a September 26 awards dinner hosted by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA.)

“When you fight against tyranny, you have no rights for time outs or personal comfort. The struggle requires sacrifice, consistency, and bravery because any doubts, any hesitations, are seen by dictators as weakness,” she said. “We must continue to exert pressure on dictators, on Lukashenka and Putin, for each crime, for each broken fate, they must pay the price.”

Tsikhanouskaya’s husband, Sergei, was jailed for announcing his intention to stand against Lukashenko in 2020 and was one of 1,323 political prisoners currently being held in Belarus, according to Viasna, a human rights organization.

Those under fire and in jail as they fight for democracy and freedom in Belarus, Ukraine, and around the world need allies more than ever, she said, and appealed directly to the US for support.

“No war, no fight, can be won without allies,” she said. “It needs allies like the United States of America, you are a beacon of hope for many nations. Don’t stop standing for what is right.”

Tsikhanouskaya emphasized that the outcome of the struggle will have ramifications around the world.

“Supporting Ukraine and supporting Belarus is not charity, it’s an investment into peace and security globally,” she said. “The path for freedom might be very long and difficult, but it’s the only path worth walking, so let’s walk this path together.