#it's a big talking point from republicans

[veone]

I don't think any country has ever had a revolution for the actions it's military has taken in another country. Until the government starts killing the "right" people expect nothing.

[inbabylontheywept]

bad dating stories time: the shoe incident

so in highschool, my best friend wasnt allowed to go on dates unless there was another couple there to keep an eye on him. part of this was his parents being insane, but also, part of it was him being insane. in a problem with no reasonable parties, there are no reasonable solutions.

at some point in my junior year, my sorta-gf broke up with me, and i just wasnt feeling dating, which was bad for my friend, because he had a good thing going with a girl he met in court.

he kind of hounded me about it. kept pushing me to just put me feet back in the dating pool and i wasnt real thrilled about it, because i knew he was pushing me for his own benefit, not mine, so i kept telling him to fuck off, and after a few weeks of being told that i would date when i was damn well ready, he eventually said: okay. what if i paid for the date AND found you a blind date AND all you had to do was show up?

and i shouldve said no, i know, but i let him wear me down, and i will own my fault in that. a date starting on such a stupid premise could never have gone well.

but he still managed to find a way to make it worse.

i dont know how long he tried to set a blind date up. it couldve been multiple attempts. he couldve stooped to this immediately. but what happened in the end was that he called a girl from the ward he attended - a girl that he knew had a giant, mushy crush on him - and he said: hey! how would you feel about going on a date this weekend?

(you know, implying it was with him, but never actually saying it.)

and she said YES WOW I WOULD LOVE TO and he said great! and then he called me up and said he found me a date.

i did not learn about his crimes until several weeks later. i will die swearing before god almighty that i would never have allowed this travesty to happen if i had known.

that was on a monday. the date of the date rolled around that friday evening, and im sorry to confess, i really phoned the whole thing in. i showed up in my favorite comfy outfit, which was also a fashion crime: basketball shorts and flipflops and a baja hoodie. it was super comfy but it made me look kind of crazy. i picked him up first, and then i picked up his date next, and then we went to pick up my date, and thats where you're gonna get the play by play.

i arrived, walked across the yard, and knocked on the front door. she opened it almost immediately, like shed been waiting right by it, and i could see her expression go from OMG IM SO EXCITED to super disappointed, then disgusted and finally pissed. and because i didn't know about my friends sins, i thought it was from my outfit. which seemed... harsh. like, hey, im allowed to be quirky, fuck you. also its a blind date, i thought the deal was that we were both going to be sad broken sacks of mortality.

anyway, we looked at each other for several seconds before she slammed the door in my face.

i looked back at my friend. he was sweating bullets. i dont know what he expected from this, but there was this big long pause where we both tried to figure out what to do, and then the door opened up, and her dad invited me in, and he said she was gonna need a few minutes to finish getting ready, and that in the meantime we could sit and talk.

we did not talk. we did sit. i sat down on the couch, and he sat down in a chair across the couch, and then instead of talking he cleaned his pistol on the coffee table. i wasnt actually sure if it was a threat, or if it was just a fidget thing for 40+ year old republican men, but when i tried to help he got snappy so i just watched him put a pistol back together.

he was okay at it.

eventually my date came downstairs, still mad as hell for reasons beyond my ken, and i felt pretty guilty for being such a mess because i thought that was why she was so angry. i tried to make up for by walking her to the car and getting the door for her, just generally trying to be extra polite, but before i could make it back to the drivers side, her dad called me back to the door. so i flipped around, went to the door, and immediately regreted my decision.

soon as i was within range, her dad got waaaay too close to me, leaned in, and said "whatever you do to her, i will do to you," and my brain went into overdrive making three consecutive realizations.

realization one was, damn, the pistol thing was a threat. that sucks. what an asshole. realization two was, wait, im autistic and even i know theres a 0% chance me and my date even hold hands, least of all boink. does this guy actually think there's even a 1% chance of anyone in that car getting laid tonight? is he an idiot? and then realization three went through, which was wait, is this guy threatening to fuck me? and unfortunately, with my brain doing so much processing, my mouth was left to run amok, so somewhere between realization 2 and 3, i said:

"i can't get pregnant"

which, i swear, wasn't actually me trying to be a smartass, it was just me pointing out that he couldn't actually follow up on that threat. it just wasn't possible. we do not live in the omegaverse and im not scared of you.

still, it was an insanely catastrophic thing to say, and the moment we both heard it, we bluescreened. that single sentence obliterated both of our momentary streams of consciousness like a saltine in front of a sand blaster. problem was, he'd probably gone his whole life not even realizing someone could say something that stupid, and making that realization was going to cost him a lot of thinking time. me though? i had been saying shit like that for 17 years, i didnt have to rewrite my expectations of human nature, i just had to plan an exit and start striding. so i was already halfway back to the car before i heard "hey. hey come back. Hey. Hey. HEY. HEY WAIT. HEY GET BACK HERE. HEY-"

and then i was in my car, and i drove away.

if this happened today, he'd have called her, and the whole thing wouldve imploded then and there, but back then, there were still a decent number of teenagers without cell phones. especially the teenagers of insane, gun toting parents. so she just said: whoa what was that all about? and i said: dont worry about it, he'll tell you about it when you get home.

and she said: ok and went back to staring daggers at me and my friend.

WHICH SURPRISINGLY isnt even how the story ends.

we went to an improv comedy show, and it was a disaster. it shouldve been like, 7/10 tops, but between my date being mad, and my friend having a good time, and me having the existential terror of knowing that a guy with a pistol was probably waiting outside his house for me to come back, it was easily 11/10. i laughed way too hard at everything. especially the jokes that flopped. id sit there in this mostly silent room and laugh until i dry heaved a little, and my date was absolutely disgusted, and even my friend was a little embarrassed, which would just make me laugh harder. i laughed so hard that night i could barely talk the next day. and then the show ended, and my friend said, you know, that was a good time, but i think we should maybe do something a little chiller? who wants to walk around the park? and his date said yeah, and my date said no, and i finally had mercy on the poor woman so i said, look, im gonna drop you off. and i am so, so sorry about this, but im dropping you off like a block away. super duper sorry.

do talk to your dad about the pistols thing if you dont want this happening more in the future tho.

and she said: okay. so i dropped her off, and she walked a block down, and that was that.

then i drove my friend and his date to a park that was good for wandering. i figured they wanted something more private, so instead of following them around point blank, i chose a park with this 30 foot rope tower, and i climbed to the top and i said: hey i can see you anywhere from up here, you are officially chaperoned from a distance. get panopticoned idiot. except my friend really is an idiot, and he didnt really get the whole 'now i dont have to third wheel so insanely hard with you guys' thing so he climbed up the tower too, and then his date followed behind him, so there are three people basically sitting together on top of a telephone pole.

and then they started making out.

i was close enough to hear it.

i didnt really know what to do so i was just kind of sitting there, dissociating, when some college kids came around and started shaking the tower. my friend's date went aaaaaaaaaa im afraid of heights :( and my friend went oh, dont worry, ill hold you tight ;) and i went hey, im gonna climb down and ask them to stop.

so i did climb down, and i did ask them to stop, and they flipped me off, which i wasnt even mad about. at that point i was i was like yeah, it would be weirder if this wasnt a mess. gods plan has been to fly this day like a 747 into my metaphorical twin towers and brother he is close enough for me to see him grinning through the cockpit window. still, eventually the college students got bored, so they climbed up the tower, which gave my friend and his date a window to climb down, and together we walked back to my car.

now, i cant explain why this is, but sitting back in the drivers seat was my carriage-back-into-a-pumpkin moment. i'd been chill about all the chaos, just rolling with the punches, but sitting down made me realize how much of a shitshow the day had been, and while i couldnt go back and fix all of it, i could go back and fix one thing.

so i told my friend and his date, hey, you two, stay here and don't do anything weird. don't. then i walked back to the rope tower, and i started picking up the shoes the college students had left at the base in order to climb.

about halfway through this, i realized that if i took all their shoes, they might think i was in it for the money, and i actually wanted them to know i was in it specifically to spite them. fuck those guys. so i put all the right shoes back, gave myself a 100 foot headstart, yelled "nice shoes, assholes", did a little jig, and started running.

my advice to everyone is that college students are faster than you think. even with the headstart, and the whole climb down the tower thing, i was still only fivish seconds ahead of them by the time i got to my car. i flung the door open, looked in the backseat, didnt see anyone, flung the stolen shoes in the backseat, heard two "ow"s, took that as proof of presence, jumped in and pealed out of the lot.

my friend and his date popped up a few seconds later. they were, uh, doing something weird in the back seat. my one request - obliterated.

they climbed up to ask where the hell all the shoes had come from, and i was like yeah i stole them from the college students, and they were like oh. cool. hope you had fun. and i was like, i did. i did. but speaking of fun, what were you doing back there?

and for the first time in my buddies life, i think he was actually embarassed.

[cookinguptales]

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

[creepyscritches]

I read your post about open enrollment for the ACA and was hoping you might expand on why you believe it would take years to dismantle. I've been terrified that with a Republican house/senate, Trump could just snap his fingers and make it go away within months of taking office. I'd love some reassurance that that's not possible.

Hiya, sure I can share some thoughts on the matter! First, it's very important to understand the ACA is a huuuuuuuuuuuuge system with subject matter experts in dozens of places throughout the process. I'm one of those SMEs, but I am at the end of the process where the revenue is generated, so my insight is limited on the public facing pieces.

What this means is that I am professionally embedded in the ACA in a position that exists purely to show what conditions people are treated for and then generate that data into what's called a "risk score". There's about 6 pages I could write on it, but the takeaway is that the ACA is

1) intricately interwoven with the federal government

2) increasingly profitable, sustainable, and growing (it is STILL a for-profit system if you can believe it)

3) wholeheartedly invested in by the largest insurance companies in the country LARGELY due to the fact that they finally learned the rules of how to make the ACA a thriving center of business

4) since the big issuers are arm+leg invested in the ACA, there is a lot of resistance politically and on an industry level to leave it behind (think of the lobbyists, politicians, corporations that will fight tooth and nail to protect their profit + investment)

The process to calculate a risk score takes roughly 2 years. There is an audit for the concurrent year and then a vigorous retro audit for the prev year - - this is a rolling cycle every year. Medicare has a similar process. These are RVP + RADV audits if you would like the jargon.

Eliminating the ACA abruptly is as internally laughable as us finishing the RADV audit ahead of schedule. If Trump were to blow the ACA into smithereens on day 1, he would be drowning in issuer complaints and an economic health sector that is essentially bleeding out. You cut off the RVP early? We have half of next RADV stuck in the gears now. You cut off the RADV early? No issuer will get their "risk adjusted" payments for services rendered in the prev benefit year (to an extent, again very complex multi-process system).

The ACA is GREAT for the public and should be defended on that basis alone. However, the inner capitalistic nature of the ACA is a powerful armor that has conservatives + liberals defending it on a basis of capital + market growth. It's not sexy, but it makes too much money consistently for the system to be easily dismantled.

Or at least that's what I can tell you from the money center of the ACA. they don't bring us up in political conversation because we are confusing to seasoned professionals, boring to industry outsiders, and consistently we are anathema to the anti-ACA talking points.

I am already preparing for next year's RVP for this window of open enrollment. That RVP process will feed into the RADV in 2026. In 2025, we begin the RADV for 2024. If nothing else, the slow fucking gears of CMS will keep the ACA alive until we finish our work at the end of the process. I highly doubt that will be the only reason the ACA is safeguarded, but it is a powerful type of support to pair with people protecting the ACA for other reasons.

I work every day to show, defend, and educate on how many diagnoses are managed thru my company's ACA plans. My specialty is cancer and I see a lot of it. The revenue drive comes from the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) rule stating only 20% MAX of profit may go to the issuer + the 80% at a minimum must go back to the customer or be invested in expanding benefits. The more people on the plan using it, the higher that 20% becomes for the issuer and the more impactful that 80% becomes for the next year of benefit growth. It is remarkably profitable once issuers stop seeking out "healthy populations". The ACA is a functional method for issuers to tap into a stable customer base (sick/chronic ill customers) that turns a profit, grows, and builds strong consumer bases in each state.

The industry can never walk away from this overnight - - this is the preferred investment for many big players. Changing the direction of those businesses will be a monumental effort that takes years (at least 2 with the audits). In the meantime, you still have benefits, you still have care, and you still have reason to sign up. Let us deal with the bureaucracy bullshit, go get your care and know you have benefits thru 2025 and we will be working to keep it that way for 2026 and forward. This is a wing of the federal government, it is not a jenga tower like Trump wishes.

[annabelle--cane]

we're now far enough past the major 2016-18 tumblr Discourse Era that I fairly often see people posting retrospectively about branches of it, both in a poking-fun way ("if you're seriously still mad about asexuals in queer spaces then I mean this deeply: get a life") and a more serious way ("the 'su critical' community was an astounding display of ridiculous double-standards for diverse media"), but I rarely see people step back and address what I think was the root of it: these harassment movements weren't just silly teen leftist infighting, for basically every big weird tumblr discourse back then that made you go "hang on this sounds like a basic conservative talking point with some vocab swapped out," you could almost always trace it back to a source from the 2014-16 online fascism boom. prominent transmed youtubers were consistently vocal republicans, "q slur" discourse came to us by way of terfs, the first crop of popular "su critical" videos were explicitly fascistic, etc., and all those discourse cycles can still be clearly felt in the today's topical tumblr tussles.

[thebreakfastgenie]

You ever think about how Democrats are always judged on their worst policy positions, sometimes (for example with Biden) from decades ago, while Trump and his ilk are given every benefit of the doubt? Yeah Biden voted for a draconian crime bill in the 90s but the fact that he pardoned an incredible amount of nonviolent drug offenders and nominated tons of black female judges, etc? Perhaps he has learned from his mistakes.

Yeah lol. Democrats are never allowed to grow or evolve. When it's even acknowledged it's immediately discounted as not enough or characterized a cynical attempt to score political points. When Democrats actually do something leftists have been advocating for they scoff "well, they only did it because we told them to!" Okay? Isn't that what you want? Nothing is ever good enough because they weren't born already agreeing with every single activism demand. It's weirdly Calvinist and kind of contrary to the entire purpose of activism when you think about it. I also remember seeing Hillary accused of flip-flopping because she changed her position on an issue once. Growth is actively punished.

Biden won the primary because of Black Democrats and when he chose Kamala Harris as his VP her base, which is mostly older Black women, gave him their energy in the general. He didn't forget that, because he's a lifelong politician and he knows you don't forget who got you there. You see that reflected in his appointments of Black women and his determination to put one on the Supreme Court, which he did.

Overall Biden did progress over the course of his long career, which is good! It's what you hope will happen! He was also more progressive on some issues than his "moderate white guy" image suggested, going back a ways. The big one of course is LGBT rights.

Republicans meanwhile... lmao. They get the benefit of doubts they don't even want. There is a deep societal neurosis about appearing "fair" at all costs, which means people are constantly looking for positive things they can say about Republicans and if they can't find them they just make them up. Some of the negativity toward Democrats comes from the place. Republicans are doing bad things, Democrats must be doing bad things too, and if they aren't we'll invent something.

Over the last few years it's metastasized into a bias toward Republicans. I think as Republicans have become so obviously and absurdly evil, and partisan Democrats and their liberal supporters have become more and more frantic in pointing out what Republicans are doing, it's pushed that false "balance" process into overdrive.

Weirdly I think being in a wealthy liberal bubble can exacerbate this, because the mindset is "well obviously we all know Republicans are bad, let's be contrarian by talking about Democrats being bad and Republicans being good!" It's sort of like tumblr producing "let men be masculine" takes. That's not the only place it comes from, though, some of these people just like Republicans even though they won't admit it.

[ms-demeanor]

Knowledge Fight anon again - thank you for the list and recs! I look forwatd to checking them out. I was excited to see there's a West Wing podcast because I enjoyed that show, but yourself and the hosts hate it so maybe not for me lmao. Though I will still give the first episode a listen - very curious to understand why our feeligns about the show differ so vastly. And if you -want- to rant about why you hate TWW - feel free! I'm genuinely curious - I'm European, have never lived in the US, so for me it was one of the biggest tools of learning how US politics work, which made it absolutely fascinating to watch.

Anyways! I'll be looking at the other podcasts as well, they all seem very interesting, and the common-denominator format you describe them having does jive with me. Thanks again!

My very republican father and sister very much wish that all democrats would act like the democrats in the west wing. It's touted as a point of honor and a great example of compromise when Democrat Jed Bartlett appoints a republican justice to the Supreme court, any time there's an environmentalist or a union supporter on the show they're painted as extreme and uncompromising, in the later seasons the Jimmy Smitts character is running as a democrat on a pro-school-vouchers, anti-tenure/union (so anti-public school, basically) platform, the show as a whole is against entitlements (free college especially is something the ostensible dems in the show aren't even interested in enough to lament).

Idk at a certain point it gets frustrating to see anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-healthcare republicans being praised as the mature compromisers in the room with complicated motivations and good points when every time a leftist protest shows up it's a warehouse full of people without enough message discipline to talk to to cameras without erupting into a shouting match and getting brushed off as whiny babies by toby zigler.

"Oh, we need CJ to look a little loopy, let's have her agree with these cartographers who are pointing out that the mercator projection privileges the global north." "Oh we need to present something that's a ridiculous waste of money, how about a wildlife crossing that would prevent keystone species injuries in an area of urban incursion, that's bullshit that we shouldn't spend money on." "Oh, we want to explain why big pharma can't provide free HIV meds to african nations in 2003, let's suggest that it wouldn't matter even if they did because *Africans don't have clocks and can't take meds 12 hours apart.*" "this hollywood producer is pushing too hard for gay marriage in 2007, let's lecture him about how you need to slow down and respect the process instead of being an activist about it"

There's this interview with Aaron Sorkin where he's saying "America used to be the world's heroes, when my dad was a soldier people would say 'thank god, the Americans are here' and they don't say that anymore and it's because of Donald Trump" - Sorkin totally ignores US imperialism and the way that people in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn't say 'thank god, the americans are here' to an extent that is genuinely startling, and that shows up in the show. At one point in the show president bartlett okays the assassination of a foreign leader and says 'today we enter the league of ordinary nations' as though the US hasn't backed coups or assassination around the world, as though the CIA isn't a thing, as though Henry Kissinger isn't a thing, and it's *bizarre* from a show that is supposed to be politically aware.

I'm actually super hesitant to recommend the west wing thing to general audiences because i don't always agree with the hosts or their guests but as an analysis of the surprisingly right-leaning politics of the show it's a worthwhile listen.

It's honestly something i could rant about for way too long because I had early warning signs about it. My sister *loves* this show and its politics. She's got a "my president is Jed Bartlett" sticker that she keeps next to her signed copy of one of Ann Coulter's books. If my sister thinks your liberal character is reasonable and level headed and has good policy positions, your liberal character isn't all that liberal.

The show is steeped in American exceptionalism and imperialist apologia but it's got a tearjerker soundtrack and maybe the best and most charming cast ever assembled so you ignore it when CJ wants to brush off constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure or cruel and unusual punishment (she's a huge fan of cops and intelligence agencies and not a fan of oversight) or when she shits on affirmative action (she believes her father lost his dream job to a less qualified candidate who was selected due to minority status, and that that job loss led to his mental decline - CJ Craig thinks that DEI hiring practices killed her father) because Allison Janney is an incredibly talented and charismatic actress who is elevating the hell out of her character.

But, you know, it would be kind of fucked up if a Democrat president's chief of staff was cheerfully on-record about the fact that she thinks intelligence agencies are more effective when nobody knows what they're doing so we should leave them to their own devices.

Thank you for the opportunity to rant i cannot fucking stand this show and i kind of want to do an episode-by-episode breakdown of various flavors of bullshit but there are much better things to do with my time so i don't but it's nice to have a chance to yell about the stuff that makes me crazy off the top of my head.

That said: if you want a podcast that is less vitriolic but does actually get into how parts of the US political system work, check out 5 to 4, which is a podcast by 3 lefty lawyers talking about Supreme Court decisions. It's great!

[aashiqeddiediaz]

you know, after watching day 3 of the democratic national convention, i need to say something, especially to other muslims like me.

most of the muslim communities that i'm a part of have chosen to vote uncommitted, or independent, or sometimes, even trump. they refuse to give their vote to kamala harris and tim walz, because of the way the us has handled the war in gaza, and how they have been careless with acknowledging palestinian lives lost, how it was american bombs and american tax money that went towards funding this genocide. it's fucked up, and it's wrong, and there shouldn't be any debate on that.

and i am 100% in support of that anger. i am 100% in support of forcing america to stop funding this genocide. no one wants to keep seeing palestinian lives suffer. no one is free until we're all free, and i believe that to my very core.

my only concern is that where this anger is being placed, from 1 year to 11 weeks before the presidential election, is so scary. because the reality of the situation is that america has a bipartisan outlook. whoever gets the presidency is either democrat or republican. and every vote that doesn't go towards democracy (i.e. voting for kamala harris) inadvertently goes towards trump's big plan of project 2025, which is basically dictatorship. Even voting uncommitted, even voting independent. we cannot afford to elect trump for a second term, and voting anything other than democrat draws that line way too close, especially in swing states like michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, georgia.

yes, there are many issues that we wish joe biden would handle better. there are many ways that the democratic party has fucked up beyond repair. there are many ways the democratic party has refused to acknowledge the pain of people affected by their military people throughout the years, and we've been seeing it for years. this is not a new thing. this did not start on october 7th. we see it during pretty much every administration.

however, voting for your candidate should never be based on a singular issue. no political candidate is ever going to check every single box. and its so unfortunate that we have to always take the "lesser of two evils" approach when nominating our president, but that's the reality of the situation at this very moment. there are many other rights to be considered that are at stake this election, all of which trump is trying to remove. abortion bans, women's rights, healthcare, social security, climate change, to name a few.

(and, somehow, there's a belief that trump will lead to a ceasefire deal where biden-harris didn't? let me tell you that is never going to happen.)

does this mean we just stop protesting or pressuring? absolutely not. you NEVER stop, because if our votes are the ones that put the candidate in their position of power, then we expect results. we expect them to work towards what they promised. and we can't let up on reaching out to our local county offices and our state governors and escalating these issues further until someone takes notice and does something about them. we don't elect them and just leave them to do what they want. we keep them accountable. use that anger i was talking about.

but it also means not having tunnel vision. the election in november could very well mean the end of democracy if kamala harris doesn't win. this post is not me all giggly-happy over the democratic party, because trust me, i have my fair share of issues with them as well. this post isn't to tell you what to do, because i can't force you to vote blue. i can't force the community i'm in to change their minds about toss-up votes. but what i can do is put down plainly what's at stake this election. and that is, very simply, our right to choose everything.

so if you are eligible to vote and haven't registered, please do. if you haven't voted before because "what's the point", please see above what the point is. a handful of votes is enough to flip the outcome of an election, especially with the electoral college.

and if you're still on the fence on whether to vote for kamala or trump, hopefully this post gives a little bit more perspective in the most streamlined way i could manage without bogging you down with statistics and numbers.

the choice is yours.

[balioc]

Back in 2016, when Trump was first getting big and scaring everyone, there was a lot of commentary -- especially on the frightened left -- about how he was this totally sui generis figure, with bizarre magic abilities (in the metaphorical sense), who could do things that no one else could even hope to do. Don't fight Trump on his own terms, you can't possibly win, no one can fight Trump on his own terms. Shit like that.

Recently I've been seeing a resurgence of that feeling. It's got a slightly different flavor, given the different context, but...basically the same thing. Writers from Sam Kriss to Ross Douthat are talking about how Trump is a Man of Destiny, how history bends around him, how his personal qualities make him a figure of grand and sweeping impact upon our historical stage.

And...no?

Trump is, in his heart, a B-list celebrity. He's a pretty good B-list celebrity. He has the celebrity skillset, which is very different from the normal elected-politician skillset, as it turns out. (Even if we liked to tell jokes, going back to the mid-twentieth-century, about how elected politicians were basically just tabloid celebs mugging for the camera -- that was wrong, it was a funny comparison but not an actual truth. Even Ronald Reagan had to learn real politics before he could be governor, let alone president.)

We have reached a point where the celebrity skillset is really just overpoweringly strong, compared to the normal elected-politician skillset, at least when it comes to winning the US presidential election. Playing to the crowd, and the camera, beats everything else. We can talk about the whys and wherefores some other time, but that is the thing that Trump has shown us. It's a damn shame, the new reality is even worse than the old reality, but there we have it.

Other people have the celebrity skillset. Other people have it more, and better, than Donald Trump.

If you really want to win by comfortable margins, more than you want anything else: run Taylor Swift. Or if you can't get her, run, like, Dwayne The Rock Johnson or something.

Y'know. If you're willing to make it clear that you care more about winning than about not looking like a joke. If you don't mind accelerating the slide into the awful new reality. There would be costs. The costs that the Republicans are already paying.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at Think Big Picture:

For years, critics of Vladimir Putin have been warning that the Russians have taken over parts of the Republican Party. They raised the alarm as Republicans defended the Russian leader, parroted clear Kremlin talking points, and became mules for disinformation campaigns. In recent weeks, that criticism has shifted to include not just Republicans who have left the party, including former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, but current GOP members. Recently, two powerful Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee warned openly about how Russian propaganda has seeped into their party and even made its way into speeches on the House floor. Other members are now even openly questioning whether some of their fellow officials have been compromised and are being extorted. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) suggested in a recent interview that the Russian spies may possess compromising tapes of some of his colleagues. It’s unclear where he’s getting his information or how accurate it is.

And then there’s this: According to a report by Politico, a number of European politicians were recently paid by Moscow to interfere in the upcoming EU elections by Russians pretending to be a “media” outlet called “Voice of Europe.” The Kremlin-backed operation used money to influence officials to take pro-Russian stances. Authorities have conducted some money seizures and launched an investigation into which members of the European Parliament may have accepted cash bribes. This in turn raises an important question for our own politics: Are the Russians doing the same with U.S. politicians, directly or indirectly? This piece walks through the three types of compromise—disinformation, extortion, and bribery—to give a sense of what we know and what we don’t really know, and, importantly, where we should be on our guard. As this summary will show, from the 2016 election till now, there’s enough Russian smoke now to assume there is a fire, one that compromises not only the integrity of our own system of elections, but the safety and security of the free world. Duped.

Over the past year, we have witnessed two distinct kinds of Russian propaganda in action. Both use our own elected officials and intelligence processes to amplify and even weaponize disinformation. The first kind originates online through Russian-backed internet channels. Information operatives begin spreading false rumors, for example about Ukraine, that then get repeated within right-wing silos before reaching willing purveyors of it within the halls of Congress. A chief culprit in Congress is Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among the Russian-originated false narratives she has uplifted is the patently false claim that Ukraine is waging a war against Christianity while Russia is protecting it. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Greene even claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine is “executing priests.”

Where would Greene have gotten this wild, concocted notion? We don’t have to look far. Russian talking points have included this gaslighting narrative for some time. The twist, of course, is that, according to the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, it is the Russian army that has been torturing and executing priests and other religious figures, including 30 Ukrainian clergy killed and 26 held captive by Russian forces. The Russians have also targeted Baptists, whom they see as U.S. propagandists, according to an in-depth Time magazine piece on the violence and death directed toward evangelicals. The Congressional propaganda mouthpieces for Russia aren’t limited to the U.S. House. Over in the Senate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance was also recently accused of spreading Kremlin-backed disinformation about Ukraine, this time over spurious allegations that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy siphoned U.S. aid to purchase himself two luxury yachts.

[...]

The accusation that Russians are presently extorting and blackmailing U.S. politicians into supporting Russia’s agenda has some broad appeal. It would help explain some mysteries, including why people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suddenly is no longer as supportive of Ukraine as before and constantly kisses the ring of Donald Trump these days—after presciently saying in 2016 that the GOP would destroy itself if it nominated him. 

The problem has been that these accusations aren’t supported by much evidence. That means that political extortion by the Russians is either not a very prevalent practice, or it’s so effective that no one dares expose it. Either way, we’re left without much to go on. The Russian word kompromat came into common parlance around the time that Buzzfeed published a salacious story about another intelligence report back in early 2017. In that instance, the author, a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele, was concerned Russia had compromising data on the soon-to-be president, Donald Trump.

That report never wound up being substantiated, and its sources and funding came into question as well. But intelligence agencies are in general agreement that obtaining kompromat is standard practice by Russia, and someone like Trump could have been an easy mark considering the company that he kept (e.g. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell) and the projects he was involved with (e.g. the Miss Universe contest). Lately, the notion of kompromat emerged once again, this time not from Democratic-paid outfits but from within the GOP itself. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) is one of the more “colorful” characters within the GOP, primarily known lately for being one of the eight members who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and even for getting into public jostling and shouting matches with McCarthy.

The Republican Party (or at least its pro-MAGA faction) is compromised by Russian kompromat.

[contemplatingoutlander]

How to cover an abnormal presidential race

Could the media coverage adhere closer to reality? Hard questions must be asked.

Jennifer Rubin offers a much needed road map as to how journalists should be covering an election between a politician who upholds democratic values (Biden) vs. a politician who is determined to undermine the Constitution and create a dictatorship (Trump). I wish mainstream journalists would follow her advice. Below are some excerpts, but you can use the gift🎁link to read the entire article.

The United States has never had an election in which: a felon runs for president on a major party ticket; a presidential candidate lays out a detailed plan for authoritarian rule; an entire party gaslights the public (e.g., claiming the president was behind their candidate’s state prosecution; pretending they won the last election); and, prominent leaders of one party signal they will not accept an adverse outcome in the next election. Yet, the coverage of the 2024 campaign is remarkably anodyne, if not oblivious, to the unprecedented nature of this election and its implications. [...] How could the coverage stick more closely to reality? Obsession with early polling that inevitably becomes meaningless after big events such as Trump’s conviction (stuff happens!) and that cannot yet gauge who is likely to vote should go by the wayside — or at least come with caveats and not drive coverage. What would be informative: A minute or two of unedited video showing Trump’s rambling, incoherent and deranged rants. Rather than merely “fact check” the nonsense blizzard, reports can explore the unprecedented nature of his rhetoric, illustrate the deterioration in his thinking and speech, and discuss how an obviously irrational and unhinged leader casts a spell over his devoted following. The media also can refuse to entertain laughable MAGA spin, such as claiming that Trump’s conviction will help him win the election.... When such incidents pop up, informative journalism would examine what else MAGA forces lie about (e.g., crowd size) and how authoritarians depend on creating a false aura of invincibility. When supposedly normal Republican officials parrot Trump’s obvious falsehoods and baseless accusations, interviewers must come prepared to debunk them. Republicans cannot be allowed to slide past hard questions about their election denial, false data points, baseless attacks on the courts and hypocrisy (the law and order party?). Treating Republicans as innocent bystanders in the democracy train wreck distorts reality. And instead of endless harping on President Biden’s age, some honest comparison between the disjointed, frightful interview responses from Trump and the detailed, policy-laden answers from Biden in Time magazine’s two interviews might illuminate the obvious disparity in acuity....There is simply no comparison between Biden, who talks in detail about policy, and Trump, who cannot get through a Newsmax(!) interview without sounding nuts. Likewise, treating Hunter Biden’s case (having nothing to do with the president) as though it were as significant as Trump’s criminal conviction betrays a lack of perspective and a hunger for clicks. Insisting this poses a problem or embarrassment for Biden amounts to amplifying MAGA spin. Finally, given voters’ misunderstanding of the economy, news outlets should focus on the results of Biden’s policies and the likely effect of his opponent’s shockingly inflationary plan. Focusing on the gap between public opinion and economic reality (to which coverage contributes) unwittingly reveals the media’s own shortcomings in educating voters. [emphasis added]

[batboyblog]

hey thanks for not being super doomer over these anti-trans bills. i kept on seeing so many people being defeated over them and it messed up my mental health for a while, like nothing could be done. but you did bring up some good points and shed some light onto people who are actively fighting for us so i thank you again

The queer movement, in the US any ways, has always been cyclical, we make big gains and push forward, then there's a super scary backlash. We're right now at the hight of a really scary backlash thats focused on trans people in particular but is anti-queer more generally. It's intense but its important to remember these backlashes don't generally last very long, they are scary, but each time they've happened, the mid to late 1970s, the 1980s, the early 2000s, the tide has gone out and gay rights, LGBT rights, and society's acceptance of LGBT people has been farther along than before they have never ever managed to turn us back in the years since Stonewall.

And as intense and scary as this is in some ways it's better than last time, when I was a gay teenager. in those days... in 2004 and 2008 the Democrats running for President were uniformly against gay marriage (the big issue of that time) they were trying to get us to settle for the not marriage alternative of civil unions. Only a handful of Congresspeople (some of them gay themselves) in DEEP! blue districts dared to support gay marriage outright. Today the Democratic Party is the most pro-LGBT major political party in the world, you had the President and every Democrat of any note making statements for TDOV a few days ago and you're not seeing even red state Democrats back down and agree to be "a little transphobic" for votes. It felt a lot more lonely last time when it was us and a handful of allies fighting the backlash with most of the Democratic Party on the side lines handwringing and saying "well can't you wait?"

any ways this movement is and will always be a struggle, the rights we've won, the acceptance we've received has never just been given, it's been won, through hard work. Everyone has to dedicate themselves to work in their corner of the earth to the best of their abilities and to push themselves past what they think they can do. That means hooking up with LGBT rights groups on the ground to protest, to rally, to try to support and comfort those queer people who are down and out in whatever way right now, it means digging deep and having hard and awkward conversations with the people in your life, if you're gay or trans or whatever and you got that one aunt/uncle/cousin/whoever in your life that loves you to bits but you know still votes Republican and you just don't bring it up because you don't want to hurt the relationship... have the talk keep having the talk as many times as you need to. Tell your grandparents if they don't know, tell your parents (if its safe or if you don't need their money any more) tell co-workers who don't know etc, they vote for us 2 to 1 if they know they know one of us. Finally register to vote, make sure all your friends particularly if you're young are registered and vote, vote in every election. Trust me it's AMAZINGLY easy to find the email of candidates for school board or city council and it's amazingly easy to ask questions. Last election I emailed every school board candidate about Holocaust education, and the state rep candidate about trans rights, she wrote me back a lovely note and mailed be a sticker she'd picked up from a trans rights group. It's amazingly easy to get involved, I volunteered with my local democrats for one election and they offered me the #3 spot in their local party, I have the phone numbers of my state rep and state senator without trying really, you can get in the room with these people, with candidates for governor, congress, I have my picture with 3 US Presidents? its not hard to do, and you can use chances like that to talk to them and show them your humanity and leave an impression that really matters in the long run.

sorry to RAMBLE but it's important that everyone do their part, pick a little something, a project to push this thing forward, people doom scrolling, particularly posting about how its hopeless does not help, posting in general doesn't help much even if its not doomerism, I think in the years after the anti-gay marriage Bush backlash we got very online and we got very "progress just happens" and a lot of people fell out of the habit or came of age without the habit of protest and without a local queer community or local progressive community and its very important in the face of this to find or build those and also understand in some places its gonna be years of work to get where we want to go, but we will and it'll be worth all the work.

[dostoyevsky-official]

The Second Trump Presidency, Brought to You by YouTubers

In an effort to understand the media diet of a generation, Bloomberg watched and analyzed over 2,000 videos from nine prominent YouTubers.

To hear them tell it, America is in a desperate place, destabilized by soaring inflation, migrants streaming across the border and the beginnings of a third world war. Gender politics have gotten out of hand while schools and the medical establishment duped the public. The same messages were communicated in Trump’s inaugural address on Monday. Now that Trump is back in power, the broadcasters are well-positioned to help build support for his political agenda, transforming grievances into policy that could have lasting effects even beyond Trump’s term in office.

In the months leading up to election, hosts had more politicians and pundits on their shows and discussed the issues more frequently. Of the broadcasters’ videos that reached over 1 million views on YouTube during the time span Bloomberg reviewed, more than a third of videos mentioned voting or the US elections — often with the host explicitly calling on listeners to vote.

None of the broadcasters style themselves as political pundits, and their conservative talking points were sandwiched between free-wheeling discussions of sports, masculinity, internet culture, gambling and pranks — making the rhetoric more palatable to an apolitical audience. Still, their popularity is sparking a “very big sea change in terms of who are the voices that matter,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta Platforms Inc. chief executive officer, said in a conversation with Rogan published Jan. 10. “There’s this wholesale generational shift in who are the people who are being listened to.”

According to Edison Research, close to 50% of people over the age of 12 listen to a podcast monthly. Rogan’s three-hour interview with Trump in late October drew about 50 million views on YouTube.

[...] Exit polls have shown that Trump received more support from young men than any Republican candidate in more than two decades.

[...] Above all, the broadcasters described American men as victims of a Democratic campaign to strip them of their power — a comforting message to a disspirited audience. These days, young men are lonelier than ever, with those aged 18 to 23 the least optimistic about their futures, and having the lowest levels of social support, according to Equimundo’s 2023 State of American Men report. Trump and his allies showed up for young men in the places where they were already spending their time — and supplied them with answers.

Trump is expected to continue prioritizing the broadcasters once the administration gets underway, treating them like an “alternative press corps,” said Aaron Ginn, CEO of AI infrastructure startup Hydra Host, and co-founder of the Foundation for American Innovation, a center-right think tank for conservatives in Silicon Valley.

[...] Thirty percent of videos discussing transgender identity also mention children. Hosts criticized public schools for letting children explore their gender identity, and staunchly opposed gender-affirming care for minors. [...] In one April 2024 discussion on Fridman’s show, the former US Representative Tulsi Gabbard argued that advocating for the rights of transgender individuals infringed on the rights of women.

Matt Fitzgerald, a 35-year-old stonemason from a suburb of Boston, started listening to Rogan during the Covid-19 pandemic. He said he now listens to more than a dozen podcasts, including by Von and Bet-David, most of which he discovered through Rogan and his guests.

Once a registered Democrat who voted for President Barack Obama, Fitzgerald supported Trump in 2016 and has stuck with him ever since. Fitzgerald said he is better informed because of the podcasts he listens to.

[asidian]

Go Vote

I don't often talk politics on this blog, but I'm going to for a minute.

This is, bar none, the most important election of our lifetimes.

Our options are between a career prosecutor and a career criminal. A person who held rapists accountable and a rapist. An intelligent, articulate woman in the prime of health and an elderly man whose mental facilities barely allow him to string together a coherent sentence. A person who has a genuine plan to make life better for millions of Americans and a grifter who is only in it to line his own pockets. A racist who espouses Hitler's talking points and a competent, experienced woman who will work for all Americans.

Whoever the next president is will likely get to decide two Supreme Court justices. This will determine the fate of the court for a literal generation.

The rights of trans people are on the line. The rights of anyone with a uterus to have a say in what happens to their own body is on the line. My right to remain married to my wife is on the line.

Palestinians are begging people to vote for Harris because Trump's policies will be so much worse for them.

I understand that some people are inclined to vote third party. This is not the election to do that. In 2016, people thought there was a big enough lead for Clinton to enable them to abstain from voting or to vote third party in protest. That's how we got Trump in the first place. Those extra votes would have made all the difference.

Much as we may wish our system was more open, much as we may wish we had more options, now is the worst possible time to advocate for that.

We have exactly two choices today. One of them is going to make life measurably worse for millions of people. One of them may not be perfect but will try her best and may make inroads toward a better life for countless Americans.

Please get out there and vote blue all down your ballot. For President, and Congress, and every single local position.

We need to slap the Republicans on their proverbial knuckles so hard that their free-press-revoking, fascist, rights-stealing heads spin. So hard they realize that our country will not stand aside and let them take it where they want to take it.

I am begging all of my US followers of voting age:

Please go vote.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

By Julia Musto

Wearing a mask helps to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Social media users slammed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after the federal agency shared a post recommending Americans wear a mask to help protect themselves against catching the flu.

“The best way to reduce your risk from seasonal flu is to get a flu vaccine but preventive actions like taking steps for cleaner air or wearing a mask are two additional ways you can protect yourself and others this fall,” the CDC said.

“Ugh go away,” responded X user @lovelycoconut.

“We are not wearing masks in big 2024,” said @newbootscoobin. “P**s off.”

A third user tried to get the attention of the platform’s Community Notes contributors, who work to provide context on “potentially misleading posts.”

And, another hit at the effectiveness of this year’s flu shot, citing a recent article in USA Today that detailed research finding this season’s trivalent influenza vaccine reduced the risk for hospitalization by 34 percent. The report cited a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health associate professor who said experts typically expect that number to be around 50 percent. February data had found vaccines from last season had been 42 percent effective.

“It’s a little bit disappointing,” Dr Kawsar Talaat said. “This is on the lower end of what would be expected but not outside the range.”

Dr Jeremy Faust from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital pointed out that the figure is an average in an op-ed in The New York Times last week.

“Effectiveness also varied by age and other risk factors, and most likely differed based on when in the season people got their shots. It was 31 percent effective in older people and 59 percent effective for young adults with medical comorbidities, another important target group,” he said.

As vaccine effectiveness wanes over time, he advised people to wait for the next month or so and pointed out that many who have already gotten vaccines have lingering immunity. People who reliably get flu shots every year may have cumulative benefits. This year’s version protects against swine flu, the H3N2 virus, and a B/Victoria lineage virus.

The CDC says the best way to reduce the risk of seasonal flu remains getting the vaccine, but that preventative actions can also help to prevent respiratory illness. They instruct people to cover their mouth and nose, as influenza viruses are believed to spread mainly by droplets that are made when people sickened with flu cough, sneeze, or talk.

“Wearing a mask is an additional prevention strategy that you can choose to do to further protect yourself and others. When worn by a person with an infection, masks reduce the spread of the virus to others,” it says. “Masks can also protect wearers from breathing in infectious particles from people around them.”

Many people had fairly partisan reactions to mask recommendations during the height of the Covid pandemic. Many questioned their effectiveness in preventing the spread of Covid, with studies since then reaffirming guidance from health officials.

An Ohio Republican Senate candidate posted a video of himself burning a mask in 2021, with the caption: “Freedom.”

Currently, CDC wastewater activity for the Covid is low across the US and deaths are trending down. But, California counties have issued new mandates in health care settings this month.

Last year, more than 44,900 people were estimated to have died from flu complications.

Across all US states and territories, influenza levels remain minimal. But, peak flu season doesn’t hit until December and lasts through February.

Some social media users hypothesized that the CDC’s posts could be in response to recent human cases of H5N1, which is colloquially known as bird flu. California cases have recently surpassed double digits, and around 120 herds of livestock have also been infected.

“I suspect they are attempting to (badly) prepare the public for bird flu…” said @mo_journeys.

“CDC soft launching masks again as H5N1 continues to pose more and more problems,” wrote @veggiequeen420.

The first known case of transmission to a human in the US occurred just two years ago. While the CDC is watching the situation carefully and working with states to minimize exposure to H5 bird flu, it says the current public health risk is low. Japan, however, recently raised its risk to the highest level. More than half of cases worldwide from 2003 to April of this year resulted in death, according to the World Health Organization.

[11queensupreme11]

You don’t have to answer this question if you’re not comfortable, however I saw you discussing a bit about the election. Based on your response I figured you were anti-Trump. I will admit I am right leaning (not extremely but leaning) and I will agree that I am not pro-Trump. However I am also not pro-Kamala. I wanted to know your view on both candidates, pros and cons if you’re comfortable with that! For me I wasn’t able to vote this year but I will be able to vote next election (my birthday is after November 5th). But coming from a leaning republican here’s my pros and cons

Trump cons

-he’s very extreme in republican beliefs

-doesn’t support the LGBTQ (I am not apart of the community so I don’t know much on this controversy but I have heard from my friends in the community that he’s against it)

-very sensitive about his rally’s

-his multiple charges against him (though it can be noted that the time the charges came out was during a crucial time in his run for presidency so it could have been a plan to try and make him look bad, I’m not sure how many allegations actually were proven true or false)

-foreign involvement (he tends to get involved with other nations)

Trump pros

-very good at fixing the economy (when he was president it was one of the few time my family, a middle class family, actually was making excess money, we actually saved up enough to finally buy a home and my dad didn’t have to work 2 jobs and my mom worked night shifts to make ends meet. A lot more people got employed under his presidency)

-less foreign conflict (when Trump was president last time there was a lot less rumors of wars and wars going on since Trump was very firm with foreign involvement but we already are in some foreign conflict)

-immigration (I am Mexican, my mother was an illegal immigrant, but I do have to slightly agree that we need stricter boarder control. I’ve heard stories about the Cartels and them chasing people from Mexico and into the US and that’s terrifying)

Kamala cons

-controversy (Kamala has also had her share of controversy. She had ads about legalizing weed and showed mainly black people in the ad. Also she may be, I can’t confirm but I’ve heard it from others, that she is related to a past slave owners. Kamala was also voted in my the Democratic Party and not the people. Biden was the candidate that people wanted for the Democratic Party till he dropped out the. The Democratic Party put Kamala Harris as the new candidate. She had run against Biden to be the candidate before he dropped out and lost so she didn’t originally have the people’s support. Ect.)

-extremely left (I see being extremely left and extremely right as big problems)

-“middle class” (a lot of Kamala’s speeches were about helping the middle class yet in her actual speeches the middle class she described was the lower-upper class, not the true middle class)

-economic growth (currently under democratic leadership the economy hasn’t been good)

Kamala pros

-she’s very pro-environment and that’s a problem that has needed fixing for a while

-she isn’t against the LGBTQ

I’m curious to hear your response since it’s by hearing and talking to others without hate or prejudice that we can expand our own thinking and see things from new perspectives. I always wonder how media can manipulate perception so much, how two people can consume similar media from different sources but form 2 different opinions. I love your works and thanks for reading this!

Sincerely, me, a Mexican-Hawaiian girl

everything you put under trump's pros is completely false and further proof as to why misinformation is such a huge problem so lemme address your points one by one

"very good at fixing the economy"

firstly, when trump reigned it was under obama's economy. this is actually a pretty common thing for new presidents to inherit the economy of the previous administration (obama was president and had bush's economy, trump was president and had obama's economy, and etc.). their job is to either continue building that economy (if it was a good one) or rebuild it if it sucked.

when a president is elected, the economy doesn't just restart to zero and the new guy has to begin a new economy. no, they inherit it from the previous administration and they either inherit successes or deficits and they get to continue building it or destroying it

(the "president" being mentioned is trump btw)

source: here. other sources if you wanna check out: 1

and speaking of economy, here's what things are gonna look like once trump goes back into office with his stupid tariffs idea that people stupidly thought was a GOOD thing:

(also, i love how they CONVENIENTLY decided to publish this AFTER the elections...)

"less foreign conflict"

💀💀💀

idek HOW you got that info and i'm even more confused as to why you put "foreign involvement" in the cons above that, and yet switched up to say this.... but anyway there are SOOOO MANY sources from articles, interviews, videos, HIS OWN TWEETS, that clearly prove otherwise but here's a nice lil tiktok that managed to compile a good bunch of it:

"immigration"

this part killed me especially since you also mentioned that your mom wasn't here legally BUT i noticed that you said "was" as in past tense, so i'm hoping she somehow found a way to fix that

you want strict immigration control because you heard stories about the cartel chasing people here... but i don't see why you have an issue with that? the cartel is dangerous af, OF COURSE people would want to flee to protect themselves and their families? but you say you want stricter immigration and border control??? are you worried about the cartel coming here or are you saying you think the ones fleeing are dangerous?

kinda confused ^ but regardless, trump doesn't want "stricter" border control for the safety of the people, he just wants you all gone cuz he's racist af and so are his rabid worshippers 💀

also, did you forget he had kids in cages, forcefully separated from their families with no way to get back to them and had those kids FORCED TO GO TO COURT? (sources: 1, 2, 3, 4) or the time his insanely strict immigration restrictions caused the amount of drowning migrants to increase (source: 1)

he and his team are working their asses off to get started on their little denaturalization project (forcefully revoking US citizenship) 💀

from the loving words of michael davis, trump's chief legal defender:

"We're gonna deport a lot of people, 10 million people and growing - anchor babies [that's YOU anon, since you said your mom was an illegal immigrant], their parents, their grandparents. We're gonna put kids in cages. It's gonna be glorious."

ALSO!!!

for list of cons for trump you forgot to add:

has 34 felonies

is a rapist

incited an insurrection

shrugged off the possible lynching of his vice president (mike pence) during said insurrection

his abortion ban led to the preventable deaths of thousands of women and now that he's back, the numbers will increase

got impeached twice

got thousands killed because of how he didn't even bother to handle the COVID pandemic

also caused a lot of asian americans to be harmed because of his racist comments about them during said pandemic

caused haitian immigrants to be harmed because of his stupid "they're eating the cats! they're eating the dogs!" comments

he's a racist, a rapist, a misogynist, a sexist, a narcissist, a habitual liar, and has no idea on how to actually run a presidency

and many many more

since we're on the topic of misinformation, here's this:

this here shows how powerful misinformation is for the trump administration. a lot of the people who voted for him did it solely to be cruel yes, but there's also some people who just genuinely didn't do ANY research and foolishly voted against everyone's interests including their own

the people who believed the misinformation voted for trump, the people who knew the truth voted for kamala, and some of the misinformation is actually VERY similar to the things you just mentioned

"violent crime rates are at a near all-time highs in most major american cities" FALSE, but trump voters thought it was true

"inflation in the US has declined over the last year and is near historic averages" TRUE, but trump voters thought it was false (this says "last year", implying under biden's rule, so trump voters believe that inflation did not decline under biden's economy when it actually did)

"the US stock market is at or near all-time highs" TRUE, but trump voters thought it was false

"over the last few months, unauthorized border crossings at the US-Mexico border are at or near the lowest level in the last few years" TRUE, but trump voters believed it to be false.