#i was expecting for this to happen in like January

[captaincorgi128]

On Christmas Day of 2018, I received a paperback copy of George Orwell's 1984. I was 12 years old.

I remember the adults - aunts and uncles, parents, grandparents, looking at me cautiously, as if they had handed me a live bomb rather than a book. "That's a very intense book, okay?" my father told me. "If you want, we can talk about it after you read it." 12-year-old me, with only a dim idea of what fascism actually was and an insatiable appetite for books, only nodded.

While my younger cousins and sister played with their new toys, I sat on the couch and read the book in one sitting. When I finished, I looked up to see the adults staring at me with a strange sort of fascination. "Do you want to talk about it?" my father asked.

"No." I shrugged and turned away.

The truth was, I had been expecting a happy ending. Winston Smith was the good guy, wasn't he? Why didn't he win? Evil governments always lost in the end, didn't they? How could Winston have been brainwashed into believing such an evil, awful dictatorship was truly great? After all, when my middle school history teachers talked about dictatorships, those of Hitler and Stalin, it was obvious that they were the worst of the worst. No one actually agreed with them, did they?

Then I remembered my fourth grade class talking about the upcoming election, laughing about how obviously stupid Trump's wall idea was, and how strange it felt to hear someone say Clinton was worse. I don't remember his reasoning, but I distinctly remember thinking it was dumb because what could be dumber than a giant wall around Mexico? I remembered my grandmother arguing against vaccinating children, and I remembered flat Earthers I had seen online. That day was the first time it clicked for me: people believe what they want to believe.

The years passed. I read 1984 again, and again, and again. I watched as Trump shut down the government for sake of a temper tantrum, as he was impeached, as he told Americans to object bleach, as he politicized a pandemic and let thousands die. I didn't know about his SA scandals. I didn't know he had called Mexicans "thieves and rapists." I just knew he could not be allowed to be president again.

Yet, when 2020 rolled around, I was only 14 years old and could not vote. I settled for watching anxiously as the votes came in - I didn't know much about Joe Biden, but he was clearly a better alternative. He actually believed the COVID-19 pandemic was real, for one. So I sighed in relief as the results came through four days later: Joe Biden had been elected president of the United States.

I kept watching. I watched as Trump incited insurrection, as terrorists stormed the Capitol. I stared in horror at the TV. How could this have happened? How were so many people so delusional?

In December 2021, for my sophomore year English class, I read 1984 again. I thought of January 6th.

My classmates thought it boring, confusing, stupid. It didn't make sense. What did it matter? Who cared whether or not we knew the significance of the character of O'Brien?

I kept watching. The summer before my junior year of high school, just before I entered a relationship with my now-partner, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and I felt a sinking pit in my stomach. Six months later, a friend of mine read 1984 for that same English class, and he loved it - we had a few intense study hall discussions about the nature of doublespeak, of totalitarianism, of a surveillance state. My partner agreed, reading it with a terrified fascination.

I kept watching. I realized I was nonbinary, and I watched in horror as the Republican Party made their creeping advances to eradicate trans rights. Idly, I reread 1984. What the right wanted did seem a lot like Oceania's government, didn't it? I wondered if I'd ever be able to marry my partner, who, despite also being trans, was still the same sex as me. If Trump ran again, he'd probably win, and then what would we do?

Then, 2024. Trump won the primaries in a landslide. I turned 18 and registered to vote. In the meantime, I skimmed Project 2025's bits about banning pornography and thought of 1984 and its carefully curated sexless society, created to achieve perfect complacency. I went off to college and voted absentee, carefully bubbling in the circle next to Vice President Kamala Harris's name. I woke up on Wednesday, November 6th to see Trump had won the presidency.

It has been one week. Again, I watch as Trump proposes a Department of Government Efficiency, which sounds euphemistically horrific. I watch as he suggests Musk to head it, a man known for being as inefficient as possible. I think of the Ministry of Truth and how its entire purpose was to disseminate lies. I watch as people celebrate, mocking me and many others who had desperately voted against a fascist, a rapist, a convicted criminal, a man who would kill us and spit on our graves if he was elected to office. I think of Parsons and duckspeak, the practice of simply spitting out the "correct" propaganda the same way a duck quacked. People really did believe what they wanted to believe, didn't they? I realize Trump won because, deep down, people hated minorities more than they loved democracy.

I hope my loved ones and I will survive another Trump presidency. I hope those in Gaza and Ukraine will survive it too, along with so many others - Jews, POC, immigrants, students, disabled, Muslims. At the very least, I hope to live long enough to watch as the bigots are forced to eat their own words and come to terms with the fact they gleefully voted in their own downfall.

At the end of the day, 1984 taught me something I could not have comprehended at age 12, 14, 15, or 16, but can understand now: democracy dies not with a bang, but with a whimper.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Sorry for throwing this at you but you're the most politically active person I follow so I thought I'd ask you for a second opinion. A few of my friends are getting mad at Harris and Biden for peacefully ceding power to Trump, calling it capitulating to fascists. And while I definitely understand the rage that this is happening, am I wrong in thinking it's kinda ridiculous to expect anything different? Unless some big evidence of election fraud comes out, Trump is currently the rightful President-Elect. I don't see how the Dems could just deny him without just arresting or killing him. If they just drag their feet I feel like the Republican controlled Congress would just step in and force it. So like, even if it was possible to accomplish I feel like it'd destroy the party's reputation at best and completely wreck our democracy in it's own way at worst.

The fact is, peaceful transfer of power is important and needs to be preserved. We do not need a leftist January 6th. We need to reckon with the fact that we lost because not enough people showed up and figure out how to avoid that in future, not search for a reason why we should do an authoritarian takeover of the government but for leftist reasons which makes it okay.

And if principles aren't enough, appeal to pragmatism: anything that the Democrats do to try and reclaim the White House even though they lost what was by all accounts a free and fair election, the Republicans will use as precedent to do the same in the next political cycle. Do not set that precedent.

[there-will-be-a-way]

I have a date for top surgery! The 6th of September! Not even four months from now. I'm starting to believe this really is happening! My last four months in my life that I will spend with boobies and a womb. It's the only hospital in my country that removes both in one surgery. I'm so excited y'all. When I heard the news, I started shaking so badly I could barely hold my phone 😂

[sibyl-of-space]

theres a certain emotion you can only unlock by reading all 47832094893284302 hours of higurashi and then listening to "you - destructive" on loop for like 3 hours like a year later. but ive unlocked it. and im experiencing it

[menlove]

global strikes really cannot feasibly be done without support and safety nets for the working class in place. the working class drives the economy and if you are asking people to take off an entire week off work with 4 days notice, you are asking the working class to get fired from their jobs. they are not going to do that. and they are the majority of the people that need to strike to have any kind of economic impact. middle class people who can afford to strike for a week and lose future vacation time aren't going to dent it, esp bc they're still making money bc they're salaried.

like yall it's just..... it's not feasible. you have to plan months, sometimes years in advance to make sure you can successfully carry the working class during a strike.

saw someone refer to a week long strike w 4 days notice as "the bare minimum" you can do and I'm sorry but it's not. you are asking people to give up a quarter of their monthly income and lose their jobs. you need to be cognizant of that.

[bondagebimbo]

LOVE when the pharmacy decides to fucking dick around with my meds so badly that now I’m off my mood stabilizer, my pain meds, and my fucking birth control (in a few days) because they’re insisting I should have extra fucking bottles of each one and I DONT because they don’t let me pick up more than a one month supply of narcotics at a fucking time so do explain where these extra bottles are, hmm ????? and they didn’t have enough caplyta ordered last time to even give me my usual 3 months supply of that so … ???? get your fucking heads out of your asses and give me the fucking meds you owe me ??? like ??? but I’m in a nasty headspace right now so if I call the pharmacy this morning, I’m going to be that cunt ass customer they bitch about all day because this isn’t the first time they’ve done this. in fact, the first time, they straight up committed insurance fraud by marking one of my scripts as filled and picked up WHEN, IN REALITY, THEY FUCKING LOST THE SCRIPT AND HAD NO RECORD OF IT BEING FILLED OR PICKED UP IN THEIR SYSTEM, BUT YET, MARKED IT AS SUCH AND CHARGED MY INSURANCE AN ALMOST 8 GRAND FOR THE FUCKING 3 MONTHS OF MY MOOD STABILIZER THAT I. NEVER. RECEIVED. I’m genuinely about to report this entire pharmacy to the pharmacy board because I’m so fucking done with this place. it needs to be shut the fuck down because you’re telling me, out of an entire pharmacy, y’all share the same IQ point AND dead brain cell, collectively ??? then don’t fucking work in healthcare where people rely on you to know your shit and keep track of their fucking meds because you’re just constantly making shit worse on people since you can’t seem to not fuck around with these meds and not ‘lose’ scripts. fuck out of here.

and I’m pretty much out of weed, which is usually my back up pain management method, without the money to afford a delivery order by their cut off time to order in 3 hours because I just paid my fucking bills and have SOME to go towards it, but not enough for delivery to be free, and I’d still have to walk my ass to one of the ATM’s nearby because they don’t accept my bank as a prepaid method OR any of the cards I have on my person. 🫠

I can literally feel my back spasming and seizing on and off while I’m laying on my fucking side, I’ve had a migraine with a stupid ass aura for almost a week now because chronic migraines fucking suck and i was REALLY hoping this one would be over by now, my muscle inflammations that my pain meds are supposed to limit are already beginning to start their itching deep in my muscles so soon they’ll blossom into a whole fibromyalgia fucking episode and become entirely inflamed, my joints in my hands fucking hurt because of the dreary weather so I really need to get into a rheumatologist at some point soon as well and get that shit figured out, I’m nauseas as fuck from all the pain, and I’m moody, hormonal, and just feel like fucking death physically.

I’m just. I give up.

this shit is exhausting and painful and so mentally fucking taxing to constantly deal with and I just want a fucking break from all this fucking shit. I wish I could just … not exist … for even just a little while with how fucking painful existing actually feels right now 🫠😭

[emmenai-kalliston]

starting to get a new crush oops...

[honeyvenommusic]

❗️NEWGLASSANIMALSGLASSANIMALSGLASSANIMALSGLASSANIMALSGLASSANIMALSGLASSAN-

[maddy-ferguson]

talking to new people again is making me realize that (this is gonna sound dramatic) i haven't lived in five years but what i have done is watch a lot of movies and read a bunch of books and believe it or not that actually makes me an interesting conversationalist in some ways (?)

[omegasmileyface]

is it october outside for anybody else

[applexi]

school madness

[invizigothx]

the pain this week has been BAD and as l do every time I am losing patience, I googled "face pain migraine barometric pressure pain behind eyes pain in teeth pain in neck" as if there might somehow be new ?? information ??? and as always the articles are like "take an ibuprofen. take a deep breath. consider seeing a doctor." i would like to scream.

[harbingermotel]

do you guys actually think we’re getting speak now tv tomorrow be honest

[welcometogrouchland]

Okay I think I'm mature enough to admit. That I am getting withdrawal from the owl show. And that I miss her so bad it's not even funny anymore

[carnageacorn]

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[wilwheaton]

For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn't need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room. After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. [...] Even had Joe Biden been at the top of his game, he would not have been able to parry all those lies and he shouldn't have been put in the role of being Donald Trump's fact checker. His choice was to either ignore the lies and let them stand so he could use his time to make his own case or spend the entire debate correcting the record. It was not a fair fight. It's obvious that Biden's terrible performance has caused panic among Democrats and liberal pundits and analysts. The calls for him to withdraw are loud and meaningful and it's going to be a very rough period in this campaign whatever happens. For me, this isn't really a question. As long as Donald Trump is on the ballot, I will vote for the Democratic nominee. If it's Biden or someone else, the calculation remains the same. Nothing is worse than another Trump administration and I suspect that at the end of the day Democratic voters will agree with that. So it's still a matter of those undecided voters in swing states, just like it was on Thursday morning.

CNN's debate was no fair fight

CNN, yet again, gave Trump a national stage to vomit an endless stream of unchecked lies, and today, CNN is telling itself and anyone who will listen that the network and its moderators did a great job. That’s just plainly false, and America is paying the price for their failure.

That doesn’t let Biden off the hook. Biden had a terrible night. He was so bad, it’s allowed the political press to completely ignore not just how much Trump lied, but what he lied about: January 6, all his indictments, his Covid response, and on and on. President Biden was a disaster, and his campaign should be at DefCon 1 to try and repair all the damage. I am terrified that his awful performance will obscure his surprisingly good record and leadership in the post-insurrection era, and give the political press an excuse to run with “Biden is old” in the face of Trump’s endless lies, his felony convictions, his pending trials, and all of his criminality. Someone at Salon said that Trump didn’t win, but Biden absolutely lost. I can’t argue with that, even if the facts are all on Biden’s side.

I’ve seen President Biden on TV today, and even last night after the debate, where he didn’t come across as an ancient dude who needs a walker on his way to some Matlock reruns. He looks and sounds like the SOTU Biden we all expected would show up last night. I have no idea why he was so awful for 99% of the debate (the campaign says he has a cold), and I have no idea why the guy who is showing up to speak to supporters today, and who delivered the SOTU didn’t show up last night to save America from Trump, again.

But we have to live with this reality now, and I hope like hell that the Biden campaign, the candidate, and the entire Democratic party apparatus scrambles like fucking crazy to get all hands on deck to fix this, and remind voters that

This isn’t about BIden vs. Trump. This is about America vs. Project 2025.

There will be no second debate where Biden can try to salvage something out of the wreckage of this one. Trump has everything to lose and nothing to gain. Trump will crow about how he won, and declare he has no reason to debate again, and he’s right. Biden had one shot and he absolutely blew it. The moderators did not help, but the campaign had to have known they wouldn’t, and it sure looks like they didn’t prepare Biden for what we all knew was coming. I don’t know how those same people stop the bleeding, and if they can’t, America and the world are in real, real trouble.

But we all have to remember that we have a choice to make in just a few months. Right now, and probably on election day, the choice is between Joe Biden and Democracy, or Donald Trump and Fascism. It’s stark, it’s clear, it’s binary, and I can not believe that it is even a question. I just hope that there are enough voters out there who will understand that we do have a choice. The options suck, but we do have a choice.

Please choose Democracy. Please choose America. Please choose the future world our children will inherit from us.