#electability fallacy

[ssruis]

Having negative fun right now. Previously unheard of levels of 😑 being reached as we speak. Does someone want to take pictures of a 360 view of tsukasa’s stupid emu5 costume so I can be released from this self imposed prison.

[tomorrowusa]

Looking for a Republican who is moderate on abortion???

Then definitely forget Nikki Haley.

It's a no-brainer: You don't get to be the GOP governor of South Carolina nor a member of the Trump administration by supporting reproductive freedom.

Paul Waldman at the Washington Post shines a light on Haley's views and how she'd act as president. (emphasis added)

[A]nyone tempted to believe Haley is a moderate on abortion should be warned: She isn't. Haley's approach is likely to be adopted by the GOP presidential nominee — even if that person isn’t Haley herself. But that will be just as misleading because no Republican administration will seek a moderate course on abortion. It will adopt an extreme right-wing stance in ways that right now are being ignored. [ … ] Haley, meanwhile, delivered lines she uses frequently, calibrated to sound sensible and sympathetic: "Don’t make women feel like they have to decide on this issue," she said, "when you know we don’t have 60 Senate votes" to overcome an inevitable filibuster of a national ban. She argued that legislation should focus on areas of potential "consensus," such as a ban on late-term abortions and allowing medical personnel to refuse to participate in procedures they object to. [ … ] Haley is on record supporting a national ban, even if she acknowledges it wouldn’t pass. That means her real plan is to enact a series of steps limiting abortion access, leading up to a national ban as soon as Republicans have the votes to enact it. [ … ] The judges President Haley would appoint would also not be abortion moderates; they would almost certainly come from the Federalist Society’s judicial pipeline to guarantee their conservative bona fides, especially on abortion. Even if she wanted to appoint moderate judges (and there’s no indication she does), it would trigger a revolt within her party. In fact, it’s unlikely anyone she appoints to any high position in the federal government with an influence over health care would be pro-choice.

No Republican president in this century has appointed a US Supreme Court justice who supports reproductive freedom. Despite the soothing double-talk we hear from Haley, she would be no different.

Supporting reproductive freedom means voting Democratic in federal elections and never missing an election. If there are any moderate GOP office holders left in DC they would only tell you so in some back alley after scanning the area for listening devices.

So let people know, starting now, that a vote for Republicans (including Nikki Haley) is a vote against a woman's right to choose.

[gender-euphowrya]

i seriously don't get how any country can call itself a democracy without having classes dedicated to teaching how politics work in its schools

[visenyaism]

Gortash redemption wouldn’t work because he does not give a fuck about growing or improving or breaking the cycle he’s putting fireworks into teddy bears for refugee orphans because fuck ‘em. He’s cooked. Ketheric thinks he’s too far gone the sunk cost fallacy already has his hooks in him. It’s over. Orin though. Six months of secure attachments to people who see her as an individual, an introduction to art mediums that are not finger painting with intestines, a trip to the circus (fun), regular exposure to the sun, and a blunt later and she is picking up trash by the river and voting in municipal elections.

[qqueenofhades]

been seeing some responses to the many many lawsuits and other actions taken against trumpet and munkfruit that fall along the lines of "this isn't enough, it's already too late, you can't fight fascism with the law, we're all gonna die." i understand the fear, truly, but i'm curious as to your thoughts on it, as to me it seems like this sort of behavior/posting doesn't do much beyond embolden the narrative that everyone actually likes these bastards and they're too powerful to be stopped.

Welp. This is the kind of question that requires me to write a long and complex sociopolitical/critical/historical/Discourse-esque analysis that will take a while and which I am trying to do only selectively, but I'm at home on Saturday morning, I don't have anything else to do right now, and it does present me an opportunity to address some things I've been thinking about. So. We'll give it a shot.

The first thing that has struck me is that in a few short weeks, we're getting a sharp empirical disproving of two common online-leftist fallacies: one, the old "both parties are exactly the same" chestnut, and two, "the only resistance that matters is Violent Glorious Revolution" (which somehow and conveniently never happens). We had months and months of "Biden is just as bad as Trump!!!" being spread as gospel truth in online-leftist circles, and then when Harris took over, it switched just as seamlessly into "Harris is just as bad as [or even worse than] Trump!" Now, as I have said before, there were plenty of legitimate criticisms to make of Biden, particularly the Gaza policy (upon which Harris notably differed). But it's quite telling that the keyboard warriors who spent all of last year howling for The Righteous Punishment of Biden-Harris (regardless that the obvious ancillary consequence was letting Trump come to power) have either disappeared completely when it comes to dealing with the results of that rhetoric, or have switched to "everything is doomed so I guess we shouldn't bother anyway." Like. Trump is now proposing to fully ethnically cleanse Gaza and either blithely hand it over to Israel or build Jared Kushner Beachfront Resort Disneyworld, and what do we hear in protest? For the most part, crickets. These are not serious people. Their opposition is not morally consistent, and it only depends on how they can make themselves look good. I thought that Trump was somehow supposed to be magically better than Biden particularly on the Gaza issue, and that was why it was worth letting him get elected? Or something? Something!?!

I'm curious as to whether those people still legitimately think that Harris would have spent her first few weeks in office dismantling USAID, signing weekly anti-trans executive orders, unleashing ICE across the country and terrorizing immigrant communities, putting the Project 2025 guy in charge of the Office of Management and Budget, letting Elon Musk run rampant with Treasury data, nominating the likes of RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard to Cabinet posts, trying to freeze all federal funding, stripping DEI initiatives, dismantle the Department of Education -- etc. etc. The thing is, as ghoulish as it is, none of this is a surprise, because it is literally what Trump and his people spent the entire presidential campaign loudly, openly, and repeatedly promising to do. However awful they were and are, they were not remotely secret about their intentions. That information was out in the open every time they opened their mouths. But too many people didn't pay attention, rationalized it away, decided that "he won't actually do that" (despite the fact that he launched a literal violent coup attempt on the Capitol the last time he was in office), or just made up their minds that Trump Will Reduce Grocery Prices and refused to listen to any information that countered that view. What do we get now? Trump laughing off the grocery-prices issue and insisting that it's "not a priority" and Musk managing to claim that the real problem is government spending, not corporate greed. Again, this was completely predictable, because y'all got willingly suckered. It was not hard to see it coming.

That said: if the Glorious Online Leftist Revolution is still coming, and by some lights we might now legitimately need it, where the fuck is it? Are they still out there banging the drum against Trump and his "let's ethnically cleanse Gaza" policy and anything else that they insisted, they swore up and down, was functionally equivalent or possibly even marginally better than Biden-Harris getting another term? No. They're either dead silent, offering weak excuses, or completely giving into "we're doomed there's no point fighting back through weak shitlib institutions that are obviously terrible and will fail" blubbering that makes no fucking sense. One, because they move the goalposts so constantly that there's not even any attempt to reckon with the last effects of their damaging bullshit, and two? As I said, where's the fucking Revolution magically coming to save us and install a perfect leftist utopia (which is never how revolutions have ever worked) and sweep away Government Tyranny? Is that only for when a Democrat is in office and you can have confidence that the government is not going to come after you in the middle of the night for talking about it? Now that there's an actual fascist in power, it's somehow too hard to resist at all, even in small, institutional, and everyday ways that are often far more effective at practically confounding the bad stuff instead of empty and useless online echo chambers, so guess we should all just give up??!

Fuck. That.

This is also why we have to talk about the catastrophic lack of information literacy and critical thinking skills in young leftist spaces. A good example is the recent migration of TikTok users to the Chinese app RedNote. It was sweet for a little while as there was cultural exchange and friendship and memes. But then, predictably, it dove hard into "ah, once again The Evil US Government Has Lied To Us and there are no problems at all in China!" I have seen posts float by on my dash that unironically claim this is the case and China is truly great and Americans should want to move there and clearly all that business about authoritarian control and mass repression was just a ruse by, again, The Evil US Government. If you are so utterly devoid of basic information literacy and research abilities that your standard of proof for "is the Chinese government repressively authoritarian and totalitarian" is "a random Chinese person on an app in a country where the Internet is viciously controlled and voicing the slightest criticism can make you disappear told me that it isn't," then for Christ's fucking sake, you need help. For one, it wasn't just the US government saying this. It was, y'know, Chinese dissidents, the entire nation of Taiwan, historians, academics, researchers, the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang, etc etc. If your only standard for believing or supporting anything is "the opposite of what the US government thinks," then you are perfect targets for authoritarianism. Hey, a person living under an authoritarian regime who will punish them if they speak out against it told me everything was fine! Clearly there's nothing to worry about and we should want it here in America!

Come on. Come on.

This is also the case because uneducated young leftists like to unironically label themselves "communists" or "Marxist-Leninists" as if it's cool and hip and has never been involved in anything problematic in all of history, so anything that calls itself that must be supported. Shoutout to the idiot in my notes recently who reblogged a several-year-old post just to shout at me about how historical communists NEVER worked with or collaborated with fascists, because something something The Communists Were The Pure Shining Good Guys! (Uh, nobody tell them about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.) Clearly, the Chinese Communist Party is good and beneficial, end of story, no more criticism or caution needed! Obviously, yes, official American policy toward China has often been driven by basic Sinophobia, and the determination that nobody can change American hegemony or unipolarity or its ability to call the shots how it pleases. But if that is the literally only criteria you're using, then yeah. If you're so unaware that "the Chinese people are ordinary human beings" and "the Chinese government is repressive and authoritarian" are statements that can and in fact do coexist, then apparently you've missed the situation you're in right now, where "the American people are ordinary human beings" and "the American government is repressive and authoritarian" is also the case. Because online leftism is essentially devoid of a consistent moral principle and will just blithely switch up to support Bad Things as long as they're being done by governments with the correct ideological label, here we are.

Anyway. This is getting long, but the main takeaway is that the "all resistance against Trump is doomed and I guess we just gotta die :(" line is now, somehow, often coming from the same people who were constantly yelling that the only hope was a Glorious Revolution against Biden-Harris, and it is somehow even stupider. So you'll trumpet about Gloriously Overthrowing The Government all the day long as long as a Democrat is in office, but the instant a Republican gets in there instead and starts acting like an actual fascist, welp, time to just shut up and accept our doom and not even bother to struggle? Please tell me how any of that makes sense. Especially when actively confounding the Trump/Musk Axis of Evil is already working. There is also the fact that the establishment-media types are supporting this narrative for reasons of their own; witness the fact that the entire US corporate media is owned by oligarchs who hastened to bend the knee and pledge fealty to Trump 2.0. They obviously also have a reason for inculcating hopelessness in you, and that the only recourse is to shut up, accept it, and let them continue to rob you blind. Because American democracy will never matter as much as money, power, and control for the Billionaire Bros.

The point is: this is a bad-faith narrative on all sides. Whether it's coming from the online leftists in their latest head-spinningly hypocritical volte-face, the oligarch-owned corporate media that wants to feed you constant Bad News to keep you clicking and worried and distracted and unable to resist, the Trumpist power that wants people to quit making this pesky stink about all their authoritarian fascist adventures, or anyone else. There is nobody who has your best interests at heart if they are telling you that everything is doomed and the only thing to do is lie down and take it. There is no logical reason you should listen to them. Go forth and keep resisting, in whatever way presents itself. Those cumulative small actions are far more effective than any Splendid Revolution that never, ever materializes, while the people who preach it just sit back and whine about how things are so bad now so clearly they couldn't. Shut up.

It is always important. It always matters. It will make a difference.

Courage, etc.

[eyrieofsynapses]

To get into nerd territory for a second: most "trolley problems" are a breed of logical fallacy called a false dilemma. Logical fallacies are basically flaws in reasoning, and you'll see them used A LOT in political campaigns. They're good at getting your attention and making you feel a certain way, while completely distracting you from the actual point. False dilemmas are pretty common: it's black-and-white thinking, "us against them," "only one of us can be right" etc. So in some cases, yeah, politicians (or corporations) will use false dilemmas guised as "trolley problems" to get our attention and make us think irrationally.

Except OP is right. Not every trolley problem is a false dilemma. So while it makes sense that our knee-jerk reaction is to say "well, that's impossible, that's a false dilemma!", since we're so used to people using that argument to mess with our heads, the trolley problem is still useful. It's still true to life. Yes, we can't let ourselves be tricked into thinking everything is black and white. But no, you can't always choose your favorite shade of gray, either.

The point of the trolley problem isn't to say "what's the best option?" It's to say, "what's the better of two awful options?" And sadly, right now, our world is full of awful options with very few truly good options. (No ethical consumption under capitalism, right?)

Okay let me try this one again. The Trolley Problem sets up a scenario that sucks to be in. You either kill one guy, or you kill five guys. Nobody likes these options. We all don't want this be happening. That's kind of the point. It's a moral quandary. It's supposed to feel bad.

Now, according to a recent post floating around on tumblr, choosing either of the two options demonstrates "learned helplessness" and makes you a neolib sheep. The only correct answer, the post states, is to reject the question altogether. (Or to change the parameters of the question to include an option that saves everyone, thus eliminating the moral quandary.)

It sounds nice, doesn't it? Fuck this bad situation, we control our imaginations, so let's imagine a situation that doesn't suck. Hah! Bet you didn't think of that!

Here's the problem. Even though I think most situations generally have at least one solution that is both Feasible and Not Terrible, I have to admit that there are some situations (as in, not zero of them) where all the feasible options are unpleasant. This is a natural consequence of living in a world where A Lot Of Things Suck.

But if shitty situations do exist, even if it's super super rare, then it's not unreasonable to ask, "How should we make decisions when we find ourselves in a shitty situation?"

This is the beginning premise of the Trolley Problem. It says, "Hey what if you were in an unambiguously shitty situation? There are many shitty situations, so let's imagine one that is contrived enough to get everyone on the same page regardless of political affiliation, AND really emphasizes the key parts that I want to discuss."

Tumblr says "let me stop you right there. What if instead...we imagined a different scenario that wasn't as shitty?"

Well, okay, but then we're not talking about the same thing anymore. That doesn't actually count as an answer to the problem, you're just changing the subject to a completely different thing.

Tumblr goes on to say, "Exactly. That's the only thing you should ever do when confronted with an ethical quandary. Frankly the fact that you are willing to even consider a scenario that sucks suggests that you are fundamentally incapable of considering less shitty scenarios."

I just want to say I think that's bullshit. I don't think every problem is a trolley problem, but I do think that some problems are a trolley problem. And I think that those problems are worth discussing, even though they don't feel good. The trolley problem exists as a framework to discuss those problems.

Maybe our aversion to difficult decisions has an impact on our ethical reasoning, and maybe we should actually question how our ethical standards hold up under the weight of that aversion. So maybe moral quandaries like the trolley problem are worth discussing. And if you don't want to engage with the quandary, then don't - you don't have to concoct a whole essay about how the quandary is inherently morally bad.

It's possible that what you really want to say is that it sucks when people treat certain situations as trolley problems, when those specific situations actually do contain unambiguously feasible and unambiguously perfect solutions. I would agree with that.

But like. Let's not pretend that you can reduce all of ethics down to unchallenging black and white moralism.

[walks-the-ages]

I see people have decided to start demonizing Gen Z as somehow being uniquely responsible for the rise of Fascism in the USA, "gen z needs to reckon with its radicalization problem" like hey OP! Are you going to "reckon with" the people in OUR generation and our parent's generation doing the radicalizing?

"you are not a morally pure and superior generation come to save the world" LITERALLY WHAT GEN Z PERSON HAS EVER SAID THIS?

Like, excuse me??? You're really so caught up in a fake generational conflict you're gonna claim Gen Z is some monolith claiming moral purity?

You're not gonna talk about how literally all of the worlds problems are shoved onto the next generations shoulders from the day they're born and how we, the previous generations, always forcibly uphold them to rigorous, unobtainable standards or villainize them completely??

Get this shitass post off my dash.

You CANNOT blame the rise of Fascism and more specifically Trump winning the election on Gen Z, we are not playing this shitass game again.

YOUR peers in your age group are fascists.

YOUR peers in your age group are queerphobes.

YOUR generation is not immune to radicalization !

You do not get to sit there and act like fascists, queerphobia, and right-wing radicalization is a unique problem among "kids these days".

Joe Rogan is Gen X born in 1967.

Pewdiepie is a Millennial, born in 1989

JD Vance is another Millennial, born in 1984

Donald Trump is a Baby Boomer, born in 1946.

You gonna sit there and tell me Gen Z have a unique problem with radicalization when the people who are radicalizing them from young ages were born in the 40s and 60s and 80s??

Nope.

Shut the fuck up and stop spreading this stupid fucking post.

Try having a productive conversation where you're not blaming an entire generation ranging from 14 years old to 27 years old for every single one of your problems with the politics in this country.

The oldest members of Gen Z have literally had to deal with Trump their entire adult lives, and the youngest were just 6 years old when he became President in 2016.

Gen Z is not a monolith who uphold themselves as being "morally superior to the ones who came before" and if you honestly believe that then you've already succumbed to your own fucking fallacy of blaming "kids these days"

You do not get to blame Gen Z for Trump becoming president again because you're so desperate for someone to blame.

With more than eight million members of Gen Z becoming eligible to vote in the 2024 Presidential election, a new era is coming in politics: the Gen Z wave. In an independently conducted survey by The News Record, 42.9% of college students who engaged in the survey are registered as Democrat, 42.9% as Independent, and only 14.3% were registered as Republican.

[slavicbee]

My new favourite picture from the Slovak Parliament is this picture of Fico (mafia boss newly re-elected prime minister master of obfuscation) and Šimečka (a relatively tolerable guy the leader of the liberal opposition the bravest man in Slovakia)

Please look at his face I can’t I can’t that is exactly how I would react if Fico was so hard pressed in his ass to avoid answering one normal question honestly because he knows that the truth would reveal what a real scumbag he really is this picture is composed as a romantic painting it is my Roman Empire

Context: Fico was supposed to answer some simple questions in regards to the coalition’s political agenda. Since he is physically incapable of normal answers (because he’s a snide, conniving populist) he resorted into the ad hominem fallacy and started insulting Šimečka. If that doesn’t scream “coward” then I don’t know what does.

Source (x) <- Michal Šimečka on Instagram

[hashtagloveloses]

i don't think people understand the insane conditions i experienced november 5th 2020 under. it was an out of body experience for a lot of people but for me specifically:

i was working news, in the year 2020. i spent every day looking at the literal horrors and had become a hollowed out shell of myself by the time the election had came around

an early covid infection and probably that fuckshit job gave me a neurological condition where i was unknowingly put on a psychiatric medication without my consent that is jokingly often called DOPE-amax because of how it makes you zooted out. other than being in the hospital for said condition i kept working in said job the ENTIRE summer and fall of 2020, on this medication, ingesting the brunt of the world's news while numbed to the world, stuck in my house because of covid, protest street curfews, and a diuretic medication that made going in the sun difficult so i could barely even go on walks

because of sunk cost fallacy i was one of the few people still watching spn by the final season and actually was caught up and still watched it week to week so i had the CONTEXT when november 5th rolled around

the week BEFORE the election, i had been doxxed by jack posobiec the white supremacist and said news job tried to fire me for it, so i couldnt say anything political online, leading to my only outlet being TALKING ABOUT DESTIEL for days at a time to which said employer spying on my private social media accounts performed a WELLNESS CHECK on me because of the amount of destiel i was posting

the week of the election i was obviously working more than usual while being on call for the election results for days at a time so when a friend said "oh my god check tumblr" my first response was "theres no election results on tumblr"

i was taken off said medication that made me zooted out about a month or so before the election (and being doxxed), so i went into that fateful day with a clearheadedness i had not had in literal months

please imagine experiencing destiel putin election night under these conditions

[kalessinsdaughter]

Anyone who claims they're a pro-pal leftist, yet won't vote for Harris because they think she's insufficiently pro-pal, proves that they don't give a damn about actual real-life Palestinians in Gaza.

They just care about performing moral purity to impress their equally performatively 'pro-pal' buddies.

It's not even nirvana fallacy at this point.

[fakeoldmanfucker]

The thing about blaming Americans (in general, or one political party, or one faction of one political party) for the election of Trump is based upon a fallacy that there is democracy in America. There is no democracy in America that matters in any real way to the election of federal office, nor local office if there's enough money put behind the campaigns. It's becoming clearer now, with the obvious visibility of oligarchs supporting Trump, but this is not a new condition. America is not controlled by the President, or by the Congress, or by the Court. It is influenced primarily by the interests of business, by the companies that prey on our sick, our poor, our vulnerable, our marginalized, all in the name of profit. It is their lobbying and their bureaucracy that affects the life of our country. It was the pursuit of wealth and the inability to conceptualize a communal society that set America on a bad track from the beginning. It has only been through the determination of the human spirit, the compassion and empathy and hope, that has made anything worthwhile of this country. The people in America that voted for Trump did so after decades of political campaigns priming them to vote for just such a candidate, a candidate that has finally shed the false skin of democracy and openly embraced the ruling force in this country, the force of capitalism. Any democracy we do have has been clawed from the grasping hands of the capitalist class and must be held onto. Go to local government meetings. Speak up at town hall. Talk to your neighbors, your coworkers, your classmates. Organize. No action is too small, no effort is a waste, as long as it comes from the people. Because if we don't do it ourselves, they will do it for us. And they will do it for their own benefit, with no regard to how many necks they step on, how many laws they break, or how many people they speak over.

[asgardian--angels]

I don't talk about this much but I'm just going to say it now.

there's something uniquely vile about being the daughter of a father who is a trump supporter. and not just a casual supporter, a full drank-the-kool-aid moon-landing-was-fake deep red neonazi maga crackpot. because I had to watch that change happen over the last decade. my father, an intelligent, introspective scientist, whose brain has essentially turned to mush and critical thinking skills shriveled up and died thanks to that orange rapist.

He has always loved me, supported me to be whatever I want to be, given me the most opportunities he could in life. He taught me to be kind, and forgiving, and to remember that we are all in this together. And now, while still claiming to feel that way, he vehemently, and viciously, spews hateful rhetoric and vitriol against women, against climate change, against democrats, against all the things I am, against the field of study I've dedicated my life, my soul to. We can no longer even have a regular conversation because all he does all day is sit online and watch trump rallies, listen to 'patriot' podcasts, and troll people on forums. He has nothing else to talk about, and cannot be negotiated with. Him and I used to love having sparring matches of wit, picking topics to debate in good faith. Now, any hint of a challenge and he becomes enraged, petty, and belittling. He somehow maintains this hypocritic fallacy in his mind that he is a good person, that he does everything to make my life better, and that humankind must come together to make a better future. Just, not *those* people, I guess, not them or them or them who aren't even people to him.

And I must occupy some gray area in his mind, Schrodinger's political prisoner. Because even though he knows I am a democrat, that I am a woman who will be affected by these laws, that I study climate change in the work that he supposedly supports, I must not be to him, one of 'those' people. I'm not like 'those' democrats, 'those' women, 'those' climate change cronies. Except when I am, because if we argue, if we discuss policy at all, I am just a girl, under his roof, and I have no idea what I'm talking about - because I'm young, because women aren't capable of understanding His greatness, because Elite Academia has brainwashed me into being a liberal. That my mom and I are ganging up on him, constantly, to paint him as the villain when he's only the victim. He's going to elect the man who will save us all, whether we want it or not. Our say doesn't matter, because we just don't understand.

I miss the father I knew. He was always petty, always ready to poke and prod - he hurt my feelings plenty, but I could deal with it. But I felt he was genuinely good at his core, that he tried his best. Now, I don't know him. I don't recognize him anymore. I've imagined so many times what I would say to him if I could give a speech, or write a letter, where he could not talk back and just had to listen. I don't know if I'll ever get that chance, or take it. But I know he has truly no idea how hurt and betrayed I am, and he wouldn't believe me if I told him. He knows no shame, and he does not apologize.

I'm not looking forward to spending the winter at home with him every day for two months. I don't see how I can look him in the eye. And how dare he look me in the eye after fucking me over.

I love my father, no matter what, and that's why it hurts me so badly to see him change into a stranger, and wonder if there was anything more I could have done to change his mind before this transformation completed. Knowing that it's not my responsibility to argue with him to try and make him see reason when he's too far gone and all it does is make me feel like shit, and yet.

I'm sorry to everyone who may relate to this within their own families. It's probably going to get worse. These men will feel empowered to speak their minds and force you to hear it. They try to provoke you, just so they can say you're hysterical or overreact as women do, when you get reasonably upset. Know that you're not alone in this, Trump has truly torn families apart in ways that I don't think will ever heal.

[amaditalks]

There was no different outcome possible.

Biden had two primary challengers, one was dingbat woo peddler Marianne Williamson, who dropped out early and didn’t appear on primary ballots in many states. The other was Dean Phillips, a backbencher congressman from Minnesota of no acclaim who was burning personal wealth in a vanity run.

There was no meaningful or viable alternative candidate for voters to choose in the primary season.

I am very happy to give a brief lesson on why primarying an incumbent president is kind of like climbing Mount Everest in your underwear if anybody wants it. 

Y'all know that if you wanted a different presidential candidate, the primaries were months ago and "ceasefire" isn't an eligible candidate, right? There was a way to change this, but y'all didn't want to do it.

[some-triangles]

Now that everyone's a little less raw it looks like the Takes are rolling in, so I might as well add mine.

The thing that frustrates me is that everybody knows that the democratic party is a bought and paid for centrism machine, but we forget this every time an election rolls around. It's been the most important election of my lifetime, where we have to set aside petty concerns like the social safety net or not slaughtering people in the middle east in order to vote for the lesser of two evils, for the last 20 years. It is a reflection on how eagerly human beings will divide themselves into factions that this continues to work.

I want you to reflect on that moment of enthusiasm the left collectively had when Harris came on board (do you remember when Walz made that joke about Vance fucking a couch? Good times.) Do you ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

There is a very obvious lesson to be learned from Trump's win here, but it will go aggressively unlearned, because it is not in the interests of the media or the political classes to learn it. The CNN roundtable on how Harris lost because she wasn't pro-Israel enough went out yesterday. Consider how much money is spent on a presidential election in this country - even the nicest, most liberal lobbyists, lawyers, "journalists", consultants and associated professionals have mortgages to pay and mouths to feed.

All I want at this point is a little honesty from the "in my america" lawn sign brigade, a little reflection. All I want is for the next time the democratic party comes around asking for your money, your energy, your attention- just think a little bit about what you've bought from them so far. Think about the current state of the healthcare system, think about who profits from it, think about how much you still spend on insurance and on top of insurance. Think about how the rich get richer under both parties. Think about how this election was decided when business decided they could accept Trump and the democrats were left holding the principles they'd been trying to sell, outbid for them. Tear up the fundraising letters, and on top of that, tear up your medical bills. Kick the sunk cost fallacy out of your brain and admit that this isn't working. I'm not asking you to take the next step, to think about why a message founded on white supremacy and american exceptionalism is so persuasive to so many of us, or why every single person in a position of real power is lying about a genocide that we can see happening on our phones. Just think about where your money has gone and whether there's been a return on your investment.

For those of you who already know what I'm talking about, the story is the same as it ever was. Due to inflation the 20 bucks of mutual aid we pass around should probably be updated to 50, and we should probably find some way of passing it that doesn't involve Peter Thiel, but other than that, business as usual.

[leporellian]

thinking about mudclaw again as he lives forever in my heart. i think so many people are wrong about him. him and onestar are in reality two sides of the same paranoid coin and both of their actions are explained most by fear than anything else, which makes sense bc windclan was (still is?) the lowest-ranking of all the clans and constantly shit on in different ways by the other three especially in the tpb era. but of course instead of realizing that there's a sense of constant sunk cost fallacy and NEEDING to get to the top. tallstar is clearly mudclaw's father figure (at least like . the way i interpret things. what with shrewclaw's death and their interactions esp in winds of change) and mudclaw to some extent idolizes tallstar because he equates him- and leadership, and power, and etc- with the idea of windclan and the very ideal of their clan society. he certainly sees tallstar as fallible and doesn't agree with his decisions (and later becomes like almost annoyingly aware of tallstar's mortality) but i think it's in an 'only i can say that about him' way.

so of course when tallstar changes his mind and demotes mudclaw at the last possible second before mudclaw achieves (what is in his mind as) The One Path To True Success mudclaw feels a visceral sense of betrayal, not only because that was his father figure but also because it kind of flies in the face of everything mudclaw had led to believe was Worthwhile- all of it meant nothing, as does much of the system of the clans themselves do. but instead of willing to consider that (even if his subconscious sees it like A Little) mudclaw spirals into justification until he's ultimately turning on everything he once held dear to justify this One Perfect Concept in his mind of How Things Ideally Should Go. and then his own gods turn on him to kill him! as he dies in the same pointless battles that killed both his father and grandmother! fucking insane!

and the REAL tragedy is that even IF mudclaw became leader he'd fall apart into a paranoid wreck, just as much if not more than onestar did, because ultimately he and onestar have the same rampant paranoia and fear of reliance that dooms both of them. for all intents and purposes until near the end onestar wasn't too bad of a leader by clan standards; windclan certainly became much more self-sufficient and hardy under his leadership (thunderclan be damned lmfao) and for having been elected amidst civil war there wasn't That Much dissent going on besides like crowfeather or whoever thinking onestar was being a jackass. mudclaw not only should have never been deputy, there's no universe where he could've achieved his own definitions of success ad prosperity because he was born not only in a clan that will never fully escape its position as the bottom of the pecking order but in the shadow of a leader who possessed traits that mudclaw could never have and who didn't even want the same vision of windclan mudclaw did.

so like ! damn all that was for nothing ! and he was killed to make a fuck ass BRIDGE! And hes trapped inside a horribly written wildly christian children's book series FOREVER!!!!!! Insane!!!! Insane!!!! I am going to think about this freak forever!!!! in short

[presidentkamala]

While the current situation in DC is no doubt Very Very Bad, I can’t help but think that part of the doom spiraling has to do with like. Decreased literacy and attention span lmao. Well a combination of that, for some lack of adversity that made someone need to grow thicker skin, sunk cost fallacy, and laziness (easier to doom than to do something). I won’t pretend I’m the most engaged constituent in the world but I call my representation in DC regularly (all three of them) and know when my next local elections are so.

Oh its all related - i mean the lack of literacy/active habit of reading/attention span is definitely NOT helping, for sure! And i think you definitely hit the nail on the head wrt dooming just being....easier, at least For Now, Ha Ha.

Because underlying all of these behaviors is a lack of resilience, an adverse reaction to experiencing any sort of internal/external friction - whether it comes to learning new and difficult concepts or skills or going out in the world and coming up against a different worldview or a challenging environment. And i like Get It because you know. You doordash one time and it turns into a habit/addiction VERY quickly lmao, our brains like the easy way out etc etc. (Like im on my phone NOW instead of like. Doing the groceries or cleaning up or working out or getting ready for going back into work tomorrow)

But the thing is that we HAVE to commit to getting better about this. Like its just NOT an excuse to look at the state of things and say, "oh we lost, democracy is gone forever im going to decide that its punk rock actually to roll over and plant a single container garden in a community lot that i WILL forget abt in like 9 months as a single flaccid little gesture towards mutual aid and community building"

Like you HAVE to ask more of yourself. You have to stop accepting this very tempting idea of yourself as a martyr or a drop in the ocean or an absorbed component of a borg-like online identity or anything else so reduced and inhumane. You have to accept the vastness ans the responsibility of your own humanity and what that means!! And i think that's at the core of this frustration i have, like. These guys spent all this time ratfucking us and demanding almost superhuman feats of virtue from liberals and democrats (ESPECIALLY black and poc women), and moved the goalposts every time to engineer it so dems/women/jewish ppl/whoever could NEVER hope to "win" them over -

But now when all I'm asking is, at baseline, to have the personal clarity and integrity to reflect on their actions and devote some fucking sustained attention towards actually rebuilding - that's too much? Its too much to bear? You have to just cry online abt it and pre emptively eulogize our nation and its people??

(And by the way, all those big boasting claims that everyone whether leftist or online or not have been making this whole entire time, almost a DECADE - NOW is when to put your money where your mouth is and you clearly cant fucking do it - theres no massive armed revolution, whoever has been successfully resisting ICE abductions are like 60 yr olds working directly w immigrants rights groups, no bounty of mutual aid has sprung up in the 6 months post-election to meaningfully address the tattered safety nets)

Sorry this got long winded and kind of away from me - but like again w the dooming/attn span/literacy like the lack of imagination. The inability to visualize an alternate future and commit to it intrinsically instead of relying on whatever the ~vibes~ of the day are online. The constant vampiric asks being sent my and others' way by people who are probably scared and seeking comfort but can't even crack open a reading list of abolitionist/suffragqette/lgbtq authors where most of their answers lie.

Like I can't do it for them!!!! Chatgpt can't do it for them!! That's the worst part - it HAS to come from within, and idk how they get there unless its through bitter, repeated experience.

Also THANK YOU for being an engaged voter it doesnt feel like much but you are doing more than like 80% of the current population!!!!