#i remember learning in history class that republicans and democrats used to basically be opposite of how they currently are

[rainbowloliofjustice]

Also, what these pro-ACAB idiots don't realize is that police officers sees shit that people can only have nightmares about. They don't realize that cops would often have PTSD from seeing so many innocent people getting killed in very gruesome ways, entire families being slaughtered at times, just the cruelties of others. Hell, they even catch legit child predators in the act (1/2)

There's even a video that showed body cam of cops busting into a hotel and finding a child with blood on the bed in which they arrested the pedophile, who kidnapped the child, hiding in the room. And these cops have to see that SO OFTEN while these idiots who are screaming "ACAB!! reblog to hate a cop uwu because they're all pigs uwu" get fucking """triggered""" because of fictional shit. It's just... So damn infuriating to see

The biggest issue is that many of them are unwilling to accept criticism (which would allow them to see the faults in their movement/slogan/whatever) or talk about other alternatives to just defunding and getting rid of the police. Like Obama said, the left is awful at conveying a message. 

“The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?” Obama added.

And wanna know something? A lot of them want to feel good among people they already agree with. To them, that’s progress. They often have no intention or desire to actually do anything. They have no intention or desire to reach out to anyone other than those who already disagree with them. And ironically enough, a lot of the people criticizing Obama for criticizing the way they go about things are blue checkmarks and people who have a cushy bed of money to sit and a house that is guarded by a nice, picket fence. A lot of them think that if they have to convince you or think that you’re just an idiot for not fully understanding what a three/four letter slogan means and how it is intended to be interpreted, then you aren’t worth getting on their side.

This, among many other reasons, is why the left and progressives are fucking losing to republicans and conservatives. Yeah, ik that defund the police and ACAB is meant to say that the system is corrupt and that some police areas are overly funded. However, I still disagree with it for the criticisms outlined in my other post, as well as the fact that some areas actually have a relatively decent police force and because I know that politicians will probably gleefully defund the police and then take another vacation. 

I also disagree because I know what those slogans “truly mean” because I’m fortunate (or unfortunate depending on how you look at it) enough to be able to spend a majority of my time on social media watching idiots be idiots. If you have to give a one to two minutes long explanation of what something means after you say it because someone doesn’t “truly” get what it means, that is a sign that it is fucking awful. 

Like I have absolutely zero issues (other than ya know, general safety, people, etc.) against social workers, paramedics, etc. being sent out to places alongside the police so that way, they can properly deal with issues. The reality is that police officers are not trained to be able to evaluate mental health and may not have any idea how to talk down a crazy addict. The reality is that social workers and paramedics are not equipped to deal with said crazy addict waving around a gun and threatening to shoot people. Given that the situation can be one of two ways, both should be sent out to investigate and better allow one or the other to actually do their job. Not to mention, if some fucked up shit does happen, you have people that are not obligated to feel like they need to protect someone out of fear of repercussions or loss of their job. 

Similarly, I have no issues with scrapping the current training system that police officers have to go through in favor of one that better teaches how to de-escalate and how to better handle situations before having to turn to aggression. I also have no issues with either getting rid of or heavily limiting police unions. I have no issues re-allocating money from overly funded police forces to better public systems. 

However, despite all that if you so much as criticize acab or the dtp crowd you’re just someone who uwu wants to sleep in the same bed as pigs uwu or yOu jUsT dOnT gEt iT. If you have to constantly tell people “they just don’t get it” or “they’re misinterpreting it” every time a criticism is brought up, that is probably a sign that it should be re-evaluated and to evaluate whether those criticisms hold weight and if so, use those criticisms to better yourself. 

But, since they want to feel good around people who already agree with them, they see no reason to change. As long as many of them continue to do that, they will continue to lose supporters

[ravenmorganleigh]

Whenever I go back and forth between Europe and the States, a curious set of facts strikes me.

In London, Paris, Berlin, I hop on the train, head to the cafe — it’s the afternoon, and nobody’s gotten to work until 9am, and even then, maybe not until 10 — order a carefully made coffee and a newly baked croissant, do some writing, pick up some fresh groceries, maybe a meal or two, head home — now it’s 6 or 7, and everyone else has already gone home around 5 — and watch something interesting, maybe a documentary by an academic, the BBC’s Blue Planet, or a Swedish crime-noir. I think back on my day and remember the people smiling and laughing at the pubs and cafes.

In New York, Washington, Philadelphia, I do the same thing, but it is not the same experience at all. I take broken down public transport to the cafe — everybody’s been at work since 6 or 7 or 8, so they already look half-dead — order coffee and a croissant, both of which are fairly tasteless, do some writing, pick up some mass-produced groceries, full of toxins and colourings and GMOs, even if they are labelled “organic” and “fresh”, all forbidden in Europe, head home — people are still at work, though it’s 7 or 8 — and watch something bland and forgettable, reality porn, decline porn, police-state TV. I think back on my day and remember how I didn’t see a single genuine smile — only hard, grim faces, set against despair, like imagine living in Soviet Leningrad.

Everything I consume in the States is of a vastly, abysmally lower quality. Every single thing. The food, the media, little things like fashion, art, public spaces, the emotional context, the work environment, and life in general make me less sane, happy, alive. I feel a little depressed, insecure, precarious, anxious, worried, angry — just like most Americans do these day. So my quality of life — despite all my privileges — is much worse in America than it is anywhere else in the rich world. Do you feel that I exaggerate unfairly?

It’s not just an anecdote, of course. Americans enjoy lower qualities of life on every single indicator that you can possibly think of. Life expectancy in France and Spain is 83 years, but in America it’s only 78 years — that’s half a decade of life, folks. The same is true for things like maternal mortality, stress, work and leisure, press freedom, quality of democracy — every single thing you can think of that impacts how well, happily, meaningfully, and sanely you live is worse in America, by a very long way. These are forms of impoverishment, of deprivation — as is every form of not realizing potential that could be.

But I don’t wish to write a jeremiad, for I am not a pundit. The question is this: why don’t Americans understand how poor their lives have become? Is it even a fair question to ask?

Of course, one can speak of capitalism and false consciousness and class war, of technology hypnotizing people with outrage. But I think there is a deeper truth here. There is a myth of exceptionalism in America that prevents it from looking outward, and learning from the world. It is made up of littler myths about greed being good, the weak deserving nothing, society being an arena, not a lever, for the survival of the fittest — and America is busy recounting those myths, not learning from the world, in slightly weaker (Democrats) or stronger (Republicans) forms. Still, the myths stay the same — and the debate is only really about whether a lightning bolt or a thunderstorm is the just punishment from the gods for the fallen, and a palace or a kingdom is the just reward for the cunning.

Hence, I have never once sees in America a leader saying, “hey! See that British healthcare system? That German union and pension system? Why don’t we propose that? They work!!” Instead, the whole American debate is self-referential —���pundits debating Andrew Jackson (LOL) instead of, say, what the rest of the world does today in 2017. How can a broken society grow only by looking inwards? If you are a desperate, heart-broken addict, what can you learn from yourself? Won’t you only, recounting your pain, reach for the needle quicker? So we must look outwards, always, to learn best and truest — but I will return to that.

Still, though, “why don’t Americans get it!” is an unfair question unless we ask it for both sides. So let us look at the picture from the opposite side, to see if our question is worth asking.

Do Europeans “get it” — how good their lives are, relatively speaking? Well, in Europe, regressive forces are at work, too — not as badly as in America, but rising, to be sure, in every single nation. So Europeans, too, at least enough to seat extremist parties in parliaments, take their quality of life for granted a little. Why would that be? Probably because they have now grown up with the gift their grandfathers and grandmothers gave them — constitutions in which healthcare, education, dignity, and so on, are essential rights — which are what underpin Europe’s stunningly high quality of life. Hence, regressive forces in Europe say “these people must not have rights!”, not understanding that those very rights, enshrined in rewritten constitutions, are exactly how Europe rose in a generation from the ruins of war, to the highest living standards ever, period — and to take them away is to begin erasing history.

So just as Americans don’t get how bad their lives really are, comparatively speaking — which is to say how good they could be — so too Europeans don’t fully understand how good their lives are — and how bad, if they continue to follow in America’s footsteps, austerity by austerity, they could be. Both appear to be blind to one another’s mistakes and successes.

Now. What does that really mean? We are living in a world unable to learn from itself. What would sane societies do, watching each other, watching each other’s fortunes rise and fall? A sane America would look at Europe, see it’s tremendously higher quality of life in every possible regard, and say, “My God! That is what we should reach for, too!”. And a sane Europe would look at America, see it’s falling life expectancy and imploding middle class, and say, “My God! We must never become that!” But you see, the irony is this: both are doing precisely the opposite. Europe is fighting against becoming more American, and America is not fighting to become more European. (Of course, I don’t mean culturally — I mean in terms of constitutions, institutions, economy, polity, and social contracts).

History teaches us tragedy with irony. And this to me is the greatest irony of now. We are making three great mistakes in this age. The first is that we cannot learn from modern history — which is the story of Trump and America and tyranny. The second is that we cannot learn from deep history — that the whole story of human progress has been written by lifting one another up, not keeping anyone else down, and so the seductive ur-myth of the fascist, that I rise by pulling you down, right down into the abyss, is mesmerizing societies whole.

The third mistake we are making, though, is more invisible, and perhaps the greatest of all — what this essay is about: we cannot learn from one another anymore. How do we learn things? We can learn only in these three ways: from our own mistakes, from the mistakes all people have made, or from the fortunes and misfortunes of our peers. And of those three, the swiftest way to learn is to simply look at what others are doing, that work, and copy it.

Mimicry, of course, is how babies learn the most basic things — yet we cannot seem to even handle that much. So here is the unforgiving truth. We, in this age, this time, have regressed to something past an infantile state: we cannot even manage the mimicry that babies perform happily, the most basic form of learning that exists. We have regressed beyond regression itself.

And so we live in an age that feels paralyzed, stuck, unable to even grow like a baby does. It is failing the most basic test of all: the test of ignorance, of folly, of being unable to see, hold, mature, develop, grow. History is easy to forget — and it’s easiest of all to take it for granted when you are the one who has not learned from it yet. What do you call a world that can’t learn from itself? It is not even a baby. It is something more like an old man, on the edge of darkness.

Umair December 2017

[youmadeyourbedamerica]

Outside of this blog, I try to keep my political thoughts and opinions to myself. I don’t post or share many articles that come through my various newsfeeds because of the outlash that will result from it due to much of my family being extremely Right-Wing. I learned at a very young age that arguing with my relatives was pointless and that most of them are childish enough to hold extreme grudges for decades over petty, minor things. Yesterday, however, I shared this Facebook post from my little sister’s timeline (which is sourced from this article). Initially, only my little sister and another friend of mine commented. My sister pointed out that she has needed to block several relatives for reasons I mentioned above after posting and sharing articles like this and attempting to discuss them. And then someone else became involved. Now, I should point out that my little sister is former military (Navy) and that she is disabled. My friend and his family are legal immigrants who travel regularly to and from their home country, so he knows quite a bit about immigration, visas and the process, citizenship, etc., he is also extremely well read in terms of history, civics, and racial relations. When this other fellow decided to point out that the article being shared wasn’t written by the person we shared it from and proceeded to then argue with us about plagiarism even though it was sourced, he also proceeded to argue with my friend about the immigration process, the border wall, and the length of time it takes to get a travel visa, all without backing up any of his claims with an article that actually supported his position. The articles he shared were ones that spoke against his talking points or referred to something different than what they were actually discussing, but still, he plugged on claiming that context clues were what we were missing and that the articles weren’t really speaking out against a wall, just that we were missing an important point. And I quote: “Because at no point ever has the US or Europe completed a complete wall surrounding their countries nor have they even effectively walled locations from not easily traversable to not easily traversable. They created a short patch of wall that literally you could walk around with ease.” My friend pointed out that both Berlin and Israel built such walls and it didn’t stop the smuggling of goods or people. That it would be impossible to wall off the entirety of the United States and multiple times he pointed out that the majority of the issues being pushed by this administration, as reasons to justify the ridiculous expense of the border wall and the extended shutdown, are caused by immigrants coming into the country legally and overstaying their visas. I think the best analogy against the wall that I heard from my friend against this wall was that the argument for the wall is exactly the opposite as the GOP position on gun control: A criminal isn’t going to care. They’ll find another way. Most of the people arguing on the side of the dumpster fire throw out double standards like they're water. They aren’t concerned with the facts, they're only listening to the rhetoric. I've heard far too many people complain that they shouldn't have to pay school taxes because they don't have kids in school, but they're okay with 2/3 of the US paying taxes for a wall they don't want.

I'll agree that there needs to be immigration reform, but this isn't it. The $5bil price tag is closer to $30bil and 2/3 of the US is against it, but the GOP doesn’t care. Trump squarely took the blame for the shut-down and then turned around within days and blamed the Dems, who have attempted to offer compromises, who have attempted to pass a temporary spending bill, who have attempted to stop the shutdown and restart the govt since - Reps refuse to even bring the House bills to the floor. Their own party doesn't back this wall. The senator from Texas doesn’t support this wall. Yet this whole time Trump and his administration continue to spread their lies and misinformation while people are going without pay, vets, disabled, elderly going without food and in danger of losing their homes all to stop the next 12 criminals from crossing the border through a legal PoE, and without paying Homeland Security to care. If Trump believes that there is a crisis at our border, why did he respond by shutting down the department that takes care of our borders? If this crisis has been going on for as long as he said, why did he wait until Democrats took control of the House to address it? Hell, even Fox News (well, Shep. He's the only one there with any journalistic integrity) is starting to call them on their BS.

And his followers blindly misquote the “alternative facts” as if they’re law. They ignore the facts laid out in front of them, no matter how many people present them. “Fake News” wasn’t a thing until this administration began touting it on a daily basis, but suddenly the die-hards believe that nothing is true unless the President says so. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. To covet truth is a very distinguished passion. - George Santayana

I’m beginning to wonder how many Republicans failed history class. I’d also love to know how many had 1984 on their required reading list and skipped it. The disturbing similarities between that novel and present-day occurrences should terrify people. The fact that it doesn’t lead me to question quite a few things; from the education system to the basic intelligence of the people.

I fear for this country. I fear for its people. I am concerned about my family, my friends. I think a number of people in my life will be receiving books for their birthdays this year. I don’t have much faith that they’ll be read, or that the concept won’t be lost, but at least the attempt will be made.

[pscottm]

Whenever I go back and forth between Europe and the States, a curious set of facts strikes me.

In London, Paris, Berlin, I hop on the train, head to the cafe — it’s the afternoon, and nobody’s gotten to work until 9am, and even then, maybe not until 10 — order a carefully made coffee and a newly baked croissant, do some writing, pick up some fresh groceries, maybe a meal or two, head home — now it’s 6 or 7, and everyone else has already gone home around 5 — and watch something interesting, maybe a documentary by an academic, the BBC’s Blue Planet, or a Swedish crime-noir. I think back on my day and remember the people smiling and laughing at the pubs and cafes.

In New York, Washington, Philadelphia, I do the same thing, but it is not the same experience at all. I take broken down public transport to the cafe — everybody’s been at work since 6 or 7 or 8, so they already look half-dead — order coffee and a croissant, both of which are fairly tasteless, do some writing, pick up some mass-produced groceries, full of toxins and colourings and GMOs, even if they are labelled “organic” and “fresh”, all forbidden in Europe, head home — people are still at work, though it’s 7 or 8 — and watch something bland and forgettable, reality porn, decline porn, police-state TV. I think back on my day and remember how I didn’t see a single genuine smile — only hard, grim faces, set against despair, like imagine living in Soviet Leningrad.

Everything I consume in the States is of a vastly, abysmally lower quality. Every single thing. The food, the media, little things like fashion, art, public spaces, the emotional context, the work environment, and life in general make me less sane, happy, alive. I feel a little depressed, insecure, precarious, anxious, worried, angry — just like most Americans do these day. So my quality of life — despite all my privileges — is much worse in America than it is anywhere else in the rich world. Do you feel that I exaggerate unfairly?

It’s not just an anecdote, of course. Americans enjoy lower qualities of life on every single indicator that you can possibly think of. Life expectancy in France and Spain is 83 years, but in America it’s only 78 years — that’s half a decade of life, folks. The same is true for things like maternal mortality, stress, work and leisure, press freedom, quality of democracy — every single thing you can think of that impacts how well, happily, meaningfully, and sanely you live is worse in America, by a very long way. These are forms of impoverishment, of deprivation — as is every form of not realizing potential that could be.

But I don’t wish to write a jeremiad, for I am not a pundit. The question is this: why don’t Americans understand how poor their lives have become? Is it even a fair question to ask?

Of course, one can speak of capitalism and false consciousness and class war, of technology hypnotizing people with outrage. But I think there is a deeper truth here. There is a myth of exceptionalism in America that prevents it from looking outward, and learning from the world. It is made up of littler myths about greed being good, the weak deserving nothing, society being an arena, not a lever, for the survival of the fittest — and America is busy recounting those myths, not learning from the world, in slightly weaker (Democrats) or stronger (Republicans) forms. Still, the myths stay the same — and the debate is only really about whether a lightning bolt or a thunderstorm is the just punishment from the gods for the fallen, and a palace or a kingdom is the just reward for the cunning.

Hence, I have never once sees in America a leader saying, “hey! See that British healthcare system? That German union and pension system? Why don’t we propose that? They work!!” Instead, the whole American debate is self-referential — pundits debating Andrew Jackson (LOL) instead of, say, what the rest of the world does today in 2017. How can a broken society grow only by looking inwards? If you are a desperate, heart-broken addict, what can you learn from yourself? Won’t you only, recounting your pain, reach for the needle quicker? So we must look outwards, always, to learn best and truest — but I will return to that.

Still, though, “why don’t Americans get it!” is an unfair question unless we ask it for both sides. So let us look at the picture from the opposite side, to see if our question is worth asking.

Do Europeans “get it” — how good their lives are, relatively speaking? Well, in Europe, regressive forces are at work, too — not as badly as in America, but rising, to be sure, in every single nation. So Europeans, too, at least enough to seat extremist parties in parliaments, take their quality of life for granted a little. Why would that be? Probably because they have now grown up with the gift their grandfathers and grandmothers gave them — constitutions in which healthcare, education, dignity, and so on, are essential rights — which are what underpin Europe’s stunningly high quality of life. Hence, regressive forces in Europe say “these people must not have rights!”, not understanding that those very rights, enshrined in rewritten constitutions, are exactly how Europe rose in a generation from the ruins of war, to the highest living standards ever, period — and to take them away is to begin erasing history.

So just as Americans don’t get how bad their lives really are, comparatively speaking — which is to say how good they could be — so too Europeans don’t fully understand how good their lives are — and how bad, if they continue to follow in America’s footsteps, austerity by austerity, they could be. Both appear to be blind to one another’s mistakes and successes.

Now. What does that really mean? We are living in a world unable to learn from itself. What would sane societies do, watching each other, watching each other’s fortunes rise and fall? A sane America would look at Europe, see it’s tremendously higher quality of life in every possible regard, and say, “My God! That is what we should reach for, too!”. And a sane Europe would look at America, see it’s falling life expectancy and imploding middle class, and say, “My God! We must never become that!” But you see, the irony is this: both are doing precisely the opposite. Europe is fighting against becoming more American, and America is not fighting to become more European. (Of course, I don’t mean culturally — I mean in terms of constitutions, institutions, economy, polity, and social contracts).

History teaches us tragedy with irony. And this to me is the greatest irony of now. We are making three great mistakes in this age. The first is that we cannot learn from modern history — which is the story of Trump and America and tyranny. The second is that we cannot learn from deep history — that the whole story of human progress has been written by lifting one another up, not keeping anyone else down, and so the seductive ur-myth of the fascist, that I rise by pulling you down, right down into the abyss, is mesmerizing societies whole.

The third mistake we are making, though, is more invisible, and perhaps the greatest of all — what this essay is about: we cannot learn from one another anymore. How do we learn things? We can learn only in these three ways: from our own mistakes, from the mistakes all people have made, or from the fortunes and misfortunes of our peers. And of those three, the swiftest way to learn is to simply look at what others are doing, that work, and copy it.

Mimicry, of course, is how babies learn the most basic things — yet we cannot seem to even handle that much. So here is the unforgiving truth. We, in this age, this time, have regressed to something past an infantile state: we cannot even manage the mimicry that babies perform happily, the most basic form of learning that exists. We have regressed beyond regression itself.

And so we live in an age that feels paralyzed, stuck, unable to even grow like a baby does. It is failing the most basic test of all: the test of ignorance, of folly, of being unable to see, hold, mature, develop, grow. History is easy to forget — and it’s easiest of all to take it for granted when you are the one who has not learned from it yet. What do you call a world that can’t learn from itself? It is not even a baby. It is something more like an old man, on the edge of darkness.

Umair December 2017

[jamiedeline]

When Prejudices Become Partisan: What Also Happened Last November

One year ago today, our nation experienced a shift that we will be doomed to analyze and re-analyze and over-analyze until the end of time. Have you ever been a student in a history class examining particularly bizarre or frightening eras from our collective human past and wonder, “How the hell did they let that happen?” I feel I’m currently living in one of those eras and I understand it even less. I recently watched the documentary 11/8/16, which follows various Americans throughout the country on that fateful day, and I believe Anthony Ray Hinton, a man exonerated after 30 years on Death Row now voting for the first time since, put it best: “I’ve done stuff and woke up the next morning and said, ‘Man, what have I done?’ I don’t know when, I don’t know how long [it’s] gonna be, but the American people are gonna wake up and say, ‘What have we done?’”

Obviously Americans take many different stances on last year’s election, as did the subjects featured in said documentary. But nearly all of us agree that things were said during the course of last year’s election that were disrespectful, misogynistic, racist, and for lack of a better word, stupid. I had long hoped (if not assumed) that the majority of the American people would draw the line at such blatant bigotry. Well, the majority of Americans did draw that line, but still not nearly enough to stop said offender from ascending to the Oval Office. When the polls closed, I remember not so much being shocked at the results, but more heartbroken, as my worst fears about my country had just been confirmed. So how did we get to a place in our nation where bigotry is brushed off, if not all out accepted, by so much of the voting electorate?

I’m not speaking about the radicals and reactionaries who will always be among us. I’m speaking about the majority of the American public, who I’ll assume, for the sake of my sanity, to be morally decent and good. (Donald Trump is not among the majority I’m considering.) So forget the alt-right and the old-school Nazis. To be fair and balanced, I guess we can forget Antifa, if you even remembered them in the first place.

Partisanship is not a new phenomenon in this country. It’s as old as our constitution. For various reasons, our nation divided itself into a two-party nation, and despite two dominant parties rising and falling and shifting in ideology over time, there has always been two on top. Any vote for a third party ultimately only helps one and hinders the other, because surely it will always be one of the dominant two in the end. I have often claimed that this is far from ideal, but that’s the way it’s always been, and it leaves ample room for in-fighting about the platform of each party (yes, I see you, Bernie bros) while plenty of people feel they cannot solidly identify with either.

With that said, I’m still not sure exactly how and when our partisanship got to be this bad. Yet I do know that it’s worse than I’ve seen it in my lifetime. Despite the cries of many who insist it to be so, I maintain that this is not and never will be politics as usual. I also believe one of the reasons we got here is that many Americans have been fooled into thinking this is the case, and Donald Trump is not the only reason for this. I may not know why and how it came to this, and any reporter or analyzer is welcome to take up the study, but I can present examples of its existence and argue why it needs to be stopped before this country really does go off the rails into total self-destruction.

A prime example was given by Republican Tim Miller in a segment brilliantly pinned “The Cuck Zone” in a summer episode of Lovett or Leave It (one of the many brilliant podcasts from Crooked Media). He referenced back to the 2012 debates between President Obama and Mitt Romney, where the latter made reference to his “binders full of women.” Miller reminded us that in response to this off-hand remark, many liberals pounced on Romney and labelled him a sexist, despite the fact that he’s been married to a woman with whom he shared his first kiss at age 16 for nearly 50 years, and he actually wanted to hire these women. Looking back at the time, I very well may have gotten swept up in the rhetoric in the heat of the impending election and been more critical than necessary of Romney in that regard, but I don’t think I believed him to be genuinely sexist. He’s certainly not the most progressive candidate for women’s rights, but I think at the time the comment and the subsequent jokes it produced was more entertaining to me than disconcerting. (See below for an example.)

Yet come four years later, when the Republicans have on their ticket a man who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, stood accused of sexual assault a dozen times over, claimed that hiring women costs his businesses too much money, and practically confirmed that he would bang his own daughter if she were not, you know, his daughter - then what good was our outrage if we had already overused and misplaced it in previous elections? We are so bitterly divided in this country along political lines that we the people failed to recognize an actual danger to our democracy. We’ve been crying political wolf for so long, that when an actual misogynistic prick is running for the highest office in the nation, those who identify with his “side” do not take the legitimate gripes of the opposition seriously. At this point, it’s just another partisan divide. Not a threat to our democracy, not a threat to many of our citizens, but just Democrats vs. Republicans as usual.

When Trump was finally chosen as the candidate the Republican party would have to run for president, I did find it a bit of glee in it. Not only was this a time when I naively believed the majority of Americans would see through his bullshit, but it seemed to be poetic justice for the Republican establishment of the past eight years. So much of their party’s platform had become all about blindly hating Obama and everything he did or tried to do, with and (more often) without their willingness to work with him. It was also not lost on me that many of this vitriolic hate came from a place of pure bigotry. There were plenty of people in this country and in our Congress that resented the fact that a black man with Muslim relations was in the White House. Never mind that he was one of the most decent and intelligent human beings to take up the job in my lifetime, never mind basic political differences of opinion; too many of the people that opposed him were ruled by prejudice.

For all that they had done and refused to do, I thought Trump was the candidate they deserved. For their party’s anti-LBGTQ, anti-women, and anti-immigrant agenda, a bigot at the head of the ranks made sense. Now, I am not saying that all Republicans are inherently bigots, yet I do believe the Republican Party of the past decade is less in line with traditional conservatism and more in step with white male prosperity. Nevertheless, the Republican establishment stood ready to reject Trump. How could they be so shocked when the majority of their constituents drank the poison they’d been feeding them for years?

So life-long Republicans who did reject Trump were forced to make a choice; vote for the bigoted bully your party was now all but required to endorse, or vote for Hillary Clinton. Yes, Hillary Clinton. The lightening rod for conservative hate, despite her largely centrist views that has also made her a lightening rod of hate for the far-left. I’m sure most of my fellow millennials saw this GIF going around on their Facebook:

My first reaction was “Dude, you spelled Hillary’s name wrong.” My second reaction was “Heh, that’s funny, I guess.” But my third and most passionate reaction was, “Wait, are you fucking kidding me?” How is Hillary Clinton on the same level as Donald Trump?! How can you not make that distinction?

“But what about her emails?” “What about Whitewater?” “What about her speech at Goldman Sachs?” At the time, I believed this to be complete and utter partisan bullshit. While I recognize the legitimacy of some these gripes back then as I do now, one year of a Donald Trump presidency has proven my initial instincts to be correct. Watching the Trump administration not only have scandals of the exact same nature (and worse) as anything Hillary was accused of during the election and watching the Republican establishment look the other way has validated my initial inclination. Yet what would the Democratic Party do if Hillary had insisted on a Muslim ban? I’d like to think we’d rebuke her, and I know Republicans would tear her apart just because they’d have the opportunity. But would we still endorse her? Would I still vote for her?

I had a couple friends in France that weren’t so thrilled with their final two choices in their most recent election. Because France has a run-off system, their final two choices came down to, as one acquaintance put it, “An inexperienced businessman and a racist.” Yet to me, that choice was obvious! Do not vote for the racist! Thank God 75% of the country took my advice. Perhaps they learned from our mistakes. Americans should have learned from Brexit if the majority of us paid any attention to international news.

What it came down to was that the majority of Trump voters either brushed aside or excused their candidates racism when they cast their ballot. There are plenty of bonafide racists in his constituency, and perhaps even more that aren’t even aware of how inherent racism and misogyny are in our system that they do not recognize it in themselves, but I don’t believe the majority to have had malicious intent. Yet at the very least, they ignored this maliciousness in favor of his policies which supposedly were more in line with their political beliefs.

But does it matter where your candidate stands on the economy if he’s actively mounting a racist campaign? Shouldn’t we, the American people, know where to draw the line between politics as usual and flat-out prejudice?

Unfortunately last year, the answer was no. But we need to learn.

Prejudice on partisan lines is not exactly new in this country, either. We literally fought a war amongst ourselves because one half of us refused to acknowledge the practice of maintaining other human beings was immoral. To this day people still try to make excuses for that, right up to the president’s Chief of Staff! They claim the Civil War was about more than slavery, but rather states’ rights (ahem, their rights to own slaves), economic opportunities (i.e. refusing to give up their slaves), and Southern oppression (because they were being forced to give up their slaves... you see where I’m going with this). Never mind that these statues of Confederate generals were erected decades later as yet another reminder to African-Americans that their lives matter less. And when there is finally some push-back against these symbols of oppression, we end up with Nazis marching in the street. Nazis which the president refused to condemn because he knows they are his constituents! This cannot and should not be acceptable. Even if you voted for Trump on an economic basis, good and decent cannot stand idly by and be complicit in this hatred.

I’m sure there are many who voted for Trump who are now having second thoughts. Probably many of them won’t be willing to admit it, but I’m sure they exist. I’m also sure many of them continue to be in denial, lying to themselves and coating these lies with their daily dose of Fox & Friends. People don’t want to admit they made a mistake. Our nation has made many of them and yet we still make excuses for ourselves rather than acknowledging them. Certainly we on the left are not and will not be so forgiving. I myself find it extremely hard to forgive anyone who voted for Trump, even though several of my loved ones are among them. They must have known what they were voting for, right? Yet so many people have become so tribal that it’s blinded their ability to think critically about their choices. This isn’t a new phenomenon either. Countless studies have shown that human beings will pick their tribe before they pick their beliefs, and then their beliefs will subsequently fall in line with the pack. We as Americans, let alone as people, have come a long way in shedding our more primitive, tribal roots. Yet we have a long way to go.

We on the left can be kinder to each other as well. The truth is that there is often great tribalism among minorities against other minorities. Far more often than necessary, we are compelled to attack ignorance where an attack is not merited. Not everyone is coming from a place of maliciousness. More often than not, people just don’t know. We have to open to hearing other people speak their truths, even if the opinions they’ve derived from their experiences clash with our own. This is the only way we can truly learn from each other and grow. Yet if those who are more “privileged” than us feel alienated from the conversation, they will feel alienated from the movement and more and more reluctant to stand with us as allies.

Maybe with the shock of the election and the disaster of a first year for Trump’s presidency, the winds are starting to shift. Yesterday’s election garnered much more hopeful results. While there is little hope to be placed on Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, there are still those in the party (though they won’t be there for long) willing to speak out. I don’t expect Sen. Jeff Flake or Sen. Bob Corker to start aligning themselves with Democrats on votes. They’re still Republicans and they have a different set of beliefs. Yet bigotry should never be a mainstay in any political party’s platform. It should be called out by all decent Americans, no matter where it comes from. Prejudice should not be a partisan issue. Let’s recognize that in our own personal politics and start voting only for the people who already do.

[takashi0]

#i never thought i'd see the pendulum of political parties swinging back the other direction#i remember learning in history class that republicans and democrats used to basically be opposite of how they currently are#in terms of values and lowkey its kinda surreal#seeing the value shift real time because now many democrats and leftists#consider being anti-censorship for example and standing up to censorship to be an alt right dogwhistle#even though i remember when i was younger#it was always the republicans and the right who were pro-censorship and all that moral value shit#and that shift is seen in other aspects too like#the whole acab and dfp shit#where they're too headass to realize that a normal person#who does not spend all of their time micro analyzing on social media#absolutely will take your slogans at face value

Also, what these pro-ACAB idiots don't realize is that police officers sees shit that people can only have nightmares about. They don't realize that cops would often have PTSD from seeing so many innocent people getting killed in very gruesome ways, entire families being slaughtered at times, just the cruelties of others. Hell, they even catch legit child predators in the act (1/2)

There's even a video that showed body cam of cops busting into a hotel and finding a child with blood on the bed in which they arrested the pedophile, who kidnapped the child, hiding in the room. And these cops have to see that SO OFTEN while these idiots who are screaming "ACAB!! reblog to hate a cop uwu because they're all pigs uwu" get fucking """triggered""" because of fictional shit. It's just... So damn infuriating to see

The biggest issue is that many of them are unwilling to accept criticism (which would allow them to see the faults in their movement/slogan/whatever) or talk about other alternatives to just defunding and getting rid of the police. Like Obama said, the left is awful at conveying a message. 

“The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?” Obama added.

And wanna know something? A lot of them want to feel good among people they already agree with. To them, that’s progress. They often have no intention or desire to actually do anything. They have no intention or desire to reach out to anyone other than those who already disagree with them. And ironically enough, a lot of the people criticizing Obama for criticizing the way they go about things are blue checkmarks and people who have a cushy bed of money to sit and a house that is guarded by a nice, picket fence. A lot of them think that if they have to convince you or think that you’re just an idiot for not fully understanding what a three/four letter slogan means and how it is intended to be interpreted, then you aren’t worth getting on their side.

This, among many other reasons, is why the left and progressives are fucking losing to republicans and conservatives. Yeah, ik that defund the police and ACAB is meant to say that the system is corrupt and that some police areas are overly funded. However, I still disagree with it for the criticisms outlined in my other post, as well as the fact that some areas actually have a relatively decent police force and because I know that politicians will probably gleefully defund the police and then take another vacation. 

I also disagree because I know what those slogans “truly mean” because I’m fortunate (or unfortunate depending on how you look at it) enough to be able to spend a majority of my time on social media watching idiots be idiots. If you have to give a one to two minutes long explanation of what something means after you say it because someone doesn’t “truly” get what it means, that is a sign that it is fucking awful. 

Like I have absolutely zero issues (other than ya know, general safety, people, etc.) against social workers, paramedics, etc. being sent out to places alongside the police so that way, they can properly deal with issues. The reality is that police officers are not trained to be able to evaluate mental health and may not have any idea how to talk down a crazy addict. The reality is that social workers and paramedics are not equipped to deal with said crazy addict waving around a gun and threatening to shoot people. Given that the situation can be one of two ways, both should be sent out to investigate and better allow one or the other to actually do their job. Not to mention, if some fucked up shit does happen, you have people that are not obligated to feel like they need to protect someone out of fear of repercussions or loss of their job. 

Similarly, I have no issues with scrapping the current training system that police officers have to go through in favor of one that better teaches how to de-escalate and how to better handle situations before having to turn to aggression. I also have no issues with either getting rid of or heavily limiting police unions. I have no issues re-allocating money from overly funded police forces to better public systems. 

However, despite all that if you so much as criticize acab or the dtp crowd you’re just someone who uwu wants to sleep in the same bed as pigs uwu or yOu jUsT dOnT gEt iT. If you have to constantly tell people “they just don’t get it” or “they’re misinterpreting it” every time a criticism is brought up, that is probably a sign that it should be re-evaluated and to evaluate whether those criticisms hold weight and if so, use those criticisms to better yourself. 

But, since they want to feel good around people who already agree with them, they see no reason to change. As long as many of them continue to do that, they will continue to lose supporters

[takashi0]

#i never thought i'd see the pendulum of political parties swinging back the other direction#i remember learning in history class that republicans and democrats used to basically be opposite of how they currently are#in terms of values and lowkey its kinda surreal#seeing the value shift real time because now many democrats and leftists#consider being anti-censorship for example and standing up to censorship to be an alt right dogwhistle#even though i remember when i was younger#it was always the republicans and the right who were pro-censorship and all that moral value shit#and that shift is seen in other aspects too like#the whole acab and dfp shit#where they're too headass to realize that a normal person#who does not spend all of their time micro analyzing on social media#absolutely will take your slogans at face value

Also, what these pro-ACAB idiots don't realize is that police officers sees shit that people can only have nightmares about. They don't realize that cops would often have PTSD from seeing so many innocent people getting killed in very gruesome ways, entire families being slaughtered at times, just the cruelties of others. Hell, they even catch legit child predators in the act (1/2)

There's even a video that showed body cam of cops busting into a hotel and finding a child with blood on the bed in which they arrested the pedophile, who kidnapped the child, hiding in the room. And these cops have to see that SO OFTEN while these idiots who are screaming "ACAB!! reblog to hate a cop uwu because they're all pigs uwu" get fucking """triggered""" because of fictional shit. It's just... So damn infuriating to see

The biggest issue is that many of them are unwilling to accept criticism (which would allow them to see the faults in their movement/slogan/whatever) or talk about other alternatives to just defunding and getting rid of the police. Like Obama said, the left is awful at conveying a message. 

“The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?” Obama added.

And wanna know something? A lot of them want to feel good among people they already agree with. To them, that’s progress. They often have no intention or desire to actually do anything. They have no intention or desire to reach out to anyone other than those who already disagree with them. And ironically enough, a lot of the people criticizing Obama for criticizing the way they go about things are blue checkmarks and people who have a cushy bed of money to sit and a house that is guarded by a nice, picket fence. A lot of them think that if they have to convince you or think that you’re just an idiot for not fully understanding what a three/four letter slogan means and how it is intended to be interpreted, then you aren’t worth getting on their side.

This, among many other reasons, is why the left and progressives are fucking losing to republicans and conservatives. Yeah, ik that defund the police and ACAB is meant to say that the system is corrupt and that some police areas are overly funded. However, I still disagree with it for the criticisms outlined in my other post, as well as the fact that some areas actually have a relatively decent police force and because I know that politicians will probably gleefully defund the police and then take another vacation. 

I also disagree because I know what those slogans “truly mean” because I’m fortunate (or unfortunate depending on how you look at it) enough to be able to spend a majority of my time on social media watching idiots be idiots. If you have to give a one to two minutes long explanation of what something means after you say it because someone doesn’t “truly” get what it means, that is a sign that it is fucking awful. 

Like I have absolutely zero issues (other than ya know, general safety, people, etc.) against social workers, paramedics, etc. being sent out to places alongside the police so that way, they can properly deal with issues. The reality is that police officers are not trained to be able to evaluate mental health and may not have any idea how to talk down a crazy addict. The reality is that social workers and paramedics are not equipped to deal with said crazy addict waving around a gun and threatening to shoot people. Given that the situation can be one of two ways, both should be sent out to investigate and better allow one or the other to actually do their job. Not to mention, if some fucked up shit does happen, you have people that are not obligated to feel like they need to protect someone out of fear of repercussions or loss of their job. 

Similarly, I have no issues with scrapping the current training system that police officers have to go through in favor of one that better teaches how to de-escalate and how to better handle situations before having to turn to aggression. I also have no issues with either getting rid of or heavily limiting police unions. I have no issues re-allocating money from overly funded police forces to better public systems. 

However, despite all that if you so much as criticize acab or the dtp crowd you’re just someone who uwu wants to sleep in the same bed as pigs uwu or yOu jUsT dOnT gEt iT. If you have to constantly tell people “they just don’t get it” or “they’re misinterpreting it” every time a criticism is brought up, that is probably a sign that it should be re-evaluated and to evaluate whether those criticisms hold weight and if so, use those criticisms to better yourself. 

But, since they want to feel good around people who already agree with them, they see no reason to change. As long as many of them continue to do that, they will continue to lose supporters

[takashi0]

#i never thought i'd see the pendulum of political parties swinging back the other direction#i remember learning in history class that republicans and democrats used to basically be opposite of how they currently are#in terms of values and lowkey its kinda surreal#seeing the value shift real time because now many democrats and leftists#consider being anti-censorship for example and standing up to censorship to be an alt right dogwhistle#even though i remember when i was younger#it was always the republicans and the right who were pro-censorship and all that moral value shit#and that shift is seen in other aspects too like#the whole acab and dfp shit#where they're too headass to realize that a normal person#who does not spend all of their time micro analyzing on social media#absolutely will take your slogans at face value

Also, what these pro-ACAB idiots don't realize is that police officers sees shit that people can only have nightmares about. They don't realize that cops would often have PTSD from seeing so many innocent people getting killed in very gruesome ways, entire families being slaughtered at times, just the cruelties of others. Hell, they even catch legit child predators in the act (1/2)

There's even a video that showed body cam of cops busting into a hotel and finding a child with blood on the bed in which they arrested the pedophile, who kidnapped the child, hiding in the room. And these cops have to see that SO OFTEN while these idiots who are screaming "ACAB!! reblog to hate a cop uwu because they're all pigs uwu" get fucking """triggered""" because of fictional shit. It's just... So damn infuriating to see

The biggest issue is that many of them are unwilling to accept criticism (which would allow them to see the faults in their movement/slogan/whatever) or talk about other alternatives to just defunding and getting rid of the police. Like Obama said, the left is awful at conveying a message. 

“The key is deciding, do you want to actually get something done, or do you want to feel good among the people you already agree with?” Obama added.

And wanna know something? A lot of them want to feel good among people they already agree with. To them, that’s progress. They often have no intention or desire to actually do anything. They have no intention or desire to reach out to anyone other than those who already disagree with them. And ironically enough, a lot of the people criticizing Obama for criticizing the way they go about things are blue checkmarks and people who have a cushy bed of money to sit and a house that is guarded by a nice, picket fence. A lot of them think that if they have to convince you or think that you’re just an idiot for not fully understanding what a three/four letter slogan means and how it is intended to be interpreted, then you aren’t worth getting on their side.

This, among many other reasons, is why the left and progressives are fucking losing to republicans and conservatives. Yeah, ik that defund the police and ACAB is meant to say that the system is corrupt and that some police areas are overly funded. However, I still disagree with it for the criticisms outlined in my other post, as well as the fact that some areas actually have a relatively decent police force and because I know that politicians will probably gleefully defund the police and then take another vacation. 

I also disagree because I know what those slogans “truly mean” because I’m fortunate (or unfortunate depending on how you look at it) enough to be able to spend a majority of my time on social media watching idiots be idiots. If you have to give a one to two minutes long explanation of what something means after you say it because someone doesn’t “truly” get what it means, that is a sign that it is fucking awful. 

Like I have absolutely zero issues (other than ya know, general safety, people, etc.) against social workers, paramedics, etc. being sent out to places alongside the police so that way, they can properly deal with issues. The reality is that police officers are not trained to be able to evaluate mental health and may not have any idea how to talk down a crazy addict. The reality is that social workers and paramedics are not equipped to deal with said crazy addict waving around a gun and threatening to shoot people. Given that the situation can be one of two ways, both should be sent out to investigate and better allow one or the other to actually do their job. Not to mention, if some fucked up shit does happen, you have people that are not obligated to feel like they need to protect someone out of fear of repercussions or loss of their job. 

Similarly, I have no issues with scrapping the current training system that police officers have to go through in favor of one that better teaches how to de-escalate and how to better handle situations before having to turn to aggression. I also have no issues with either getting rid of or heavily limiting police unions. I have no issues re-allocating money from overly funded police forces to better public systems. 

However, despite all that if you so much as criticize acab or the dtp crowd you’re just someone who uwu wants to sleep in the same bed as pigs uwu or yOu jUsT dOnT gEt iT. If you have to constantly tell people “they just don’t get it” or “they’re misinterpreting it” every time a criticism is brought up, that is probably a sign that it should be re-evaluated and to evaluate whether those criticisms hold weight and if so, use those criticisms to better yourself. 

But, since they want to feel good around people who already agree with them, they see no reason to change. As long as many of them continue to do that, they will continue to lose supporters