#it's a big talking point from republicans

[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.

[dostoyevsky-official]

Rather than losing by 78,000 votes, it now appears that Harris is set to lose by millions. This is a loss large enough that it would likely have happened even if many of the more marginal choices in this campaign season had been different.

[...] First: Harris did worse than Biden almost everywhere, in both Democratic and Republican areas. Although a few suburban areas bucked this trend by moving in the Democratic direction, the overall picture was disastrous, with Harris losing much of her margin even in Democratic strongholds like New York City. [...] Second, Harris underperformed Senate Democrats.

[...] The first fact above tells us that the entire country turned away from the Democratic ticket this year, and the second fact tells us that this frustration was focused more at the national Democratic ticket than it was at more local Democratic politicians. Can anyone think of something new in US politics since 2020 that has affected everyone across the country in a negative way, and which the average person tends to (wrongly) blame on the President?

The years 2021–2023 saw the highest inflation rate that the US has experienced since 1991. When inflation hit its peak of 8% in 2022, it was the highest level of inflation the US had experienced since 1981. The disruptions this caused to the American economy were significant, but the disruptions it caused to the American psyche were far larger.

That inflation has played such a large part in the thinking of American voters has greatly frustrated some of my fellow policy wonks who have been desperate to point out that 1) inflation was going to rise during the aftershock of the COVID-19 pandemic no matter what anyone did, 2) the US has experienced less inflation than most other wealthy economies, 3) average wages likely rose faster than inflation depending on how you measure it (even though this effect is unevenly distributed), 4) at least part of the high inflation can be easily justified when looking at record low unemployment and rapid low-end wage growth, and 5) inflation is basically back to normal now, even if it hasn’t meant prices declining as many hoped.

Watching the debate over this topic unfold was immensely frustrating, as both sides were generally talking past one another. The economists were correct that the US economy has actually done very well over the last few years, given the odd circumstances. But none of that changes the fact that people have noticed their cost of living rise, and this has had a large impact on both their wallets and their brains.

To state the obvious, the average person is not a perfectly rational economic calculator. This is especially true for inflation.

[...] I don’t think that many voters could describe the relevant differences in the candidates’ plans; they simply voted out the people in charge because bad things happened while they were in charge. Despite Harris’ half-hearted attempts to frame herself as an outsider this year, people knew she was the closest thing to an incumbent who was on the ballot. For many voters, this wasn’t a vote for a particular platform, but rather a referendum on the status quo (anyone else having 2016 flashbacks?)

The greatest tragedy of all is the effect that this will have on future responses to economic crises. [...] Biden’s administration learned from this [Obama's stimulus] failure and chose to go big. As a result, Biden’s recovery accomplished in five months what took Obama’s recovery years.

This is one of the greatest successes of Biden’s presidency, and he has been punished for it relentlessly. [...] Politicians will now be afraid to commit to countercyclical stimulus spending, even when it’s needed to stave off a depression.

Despite his commitment to a stimulus package far better than his predecessor’s, Joe Biden still holds a tremendous amount of blame for last evening’s results. His decision to run for re-election at all ran contrary to the hopes of many of his own voters that he would be a one-term transition out of Trumpism. The hubris of Biden’s decision became glaringly obvious during his debate with Trump, in which the entire American populace realized en masse that Biden was incapable of running a competent campaign. [...] However poorly Harris may have done in this election, we can be confident that Biden would have done far, far worse. Yet even still, Biden’s presence haunted Harris’ campaign.

[...] The Harris campaign did make a tremendous mistake in hiring many of Biden’s campaign officials for her own campaign. These Biden staffers reportedly tended to discourage Harris from pursuing some of the most successful talking points of her campaign — namely, the “weird” branding — and instead encouraged her to run a traditional Diet Republican campaign like Biden’s.

But if you can point to only one mistake that the Kamala Harris campaign made this year, it was her repeated refusal to explain how she would be different from Joe Biden.

[...] For all of the Democratic anxiety provoked by the notion of a spoiler candidate, this does not appear to have been a significant factor in this year’s election. [...] Not only did third party votes not decide this year’s election, but even in the one state in which they did matter, they were the result of the party’s own failures.

The Democratic Party cannot shame its potential supporters into voting for them. When a Democratic candidate fails, it is the fault of that candidate and the campaign they ran, not the fault of an insufficiently loyal electorate. If you want to minimize the risks of a third party spoiler, you should either expand your base to absorb them, reform our electoral system to eliminate the spoiler effect, or both. What you should not do is send Bill Clinton to Michigan to condescend to voters for caring about human life.

[...] Donald Trump — probably the most outwardly racist, xenophobic, and generally hateful Republican presidential candidate in modern history — has built a multiracial coalition. [...] Simply put, the “demography is destiny” theory has been completely debunked. But can the Party itself learn this?

[...] It is noteworthy that the Democratic Party ran to the right on immigration this year, and then lost many Latino voters to the party which is even further right on immigration. I would not interpret this as a general anti-immigrant sentiment among Latino voters; I would interpret it as Latino voters having enough other issues on their mind that immigration did not singularly decide their vote.

[...] An electoral approach towards communities of color which focuses on symbolic in-group gestures is not enough. The Democratic Party needs to speak to every community directly about the economic and social issues affecting them, rather than just scheduling a stop at Howard University and then calling it a day.

[...] The Never Trump movement has always been a mirage.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: the median voter theorem is dead. Appealing to the mythical “center” of US politics is a highly inefficient route towards national electoral victory in the 21st century, something which the Republican party seems to have realized under Trump. If they want to reverse their fortunes, Democrats should spend less time trying to appeal to Republicans and more time trying to appeal to the people who actually vote for them — including both registered Democrats and many independents. I don’t know how many failures it will take for them to learn this lesson, but I hope that they do so by the time I’m done pulling my hair out.

I know writers who take the time to edit their rants before publishing them, and they're all cowards. Fresh off the print, here's my longform view on some of the major takeaways from this presidential election

Shortened, my argument is:

Inflation is the primary explanation for Trump's victory

Joe Biden's initial insistence on running is also important

Third party and write-in voters did not decide this election

The Democrats should stop taking voters of color for granted

"Never Trump Republicans" are not a real voting bloc

[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.

[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.

[nico-di-genova]

Genuine question are the Andrew Tate kids now old enough to vote? Is this trend or gen-z/college age kids voting Trump tied directly to that misogynist and the ideals he placed in these kids heads at such a young age?

[brehaaorgana]

This is an embarrassing reply lol

Reading comprehension babes. I said "partly culpable." Meaning there are other responsible factors. One of many. Y'all. Please read words. I believe in you.

I don't think leftists have enough population to vote only sufficiently leftist candidates into office, I think they have enough population to meaningfully contribute to generically Democrat candidates though. That's called "consolidating the base." The republican party succeeds more easily when the democratic/left base is divided. Always has.

Plenty of moderate people can hear "don't vote, don't support genocide" and then just fucking not vote. People who decide not to vote and vocally say so will influence other people. That's the whole point of vocalizing your non-vote.

These people are the same people who in turn, are not reaching out to moderate or even conservative people and talking about voting for the candidate who isn't trump and why. Voter outreach can sway people. Talking to friends, family, neighbors — sways people. This is just a fact.

Have....you ever been to Philadelphia? The leftist protest i saw last weekend where people were discouraging voting was not the first time I had seen these people. Lmfao. Pennsylvania is a swing state. Philly is a big ass city which, like many cities, is typically the liberal stronghold part of a swing state. Hey uh do the math on Philly 2020 vs 2024.

In 2020 democrats had 603,790 votes, and only lost 4,487 to the liberal party. A total of 741,377 votes cast.

In 2024, democrats had 529,783 votes, and lost 7,780 votes to the liberal and green parties. A total of 674,726 votes cast.

This means that 66,651 LESS votes were cast. Some of these could be covid or natural deaths of regular voters, but it wouldn't be all of them.

The democrats lost nearly 8,000 votes to other left parties in a democratic stronghold county in a swing state. The republicans had no such division. And in addition to this, nearly 67,000 less ballots were cast overall.

Now look at their neighboring county, Bucks county. Bucks is a KEY county to win. It flipped red:

The democrats lost 3,676 votes to other left parties (liberal and green). The republicans only had 1,963 more votes than democrats.

Democrats lost Bucks county because 3,676 people voted for other left parties, which allowed republicans to gain a clear advantage. This is actually less than the number of people who voted liberal in 2020 in Bucks county (4,155), but also, 396,234 people voted in Bucks in 2020, and only 385,519 voted this year. That's 10,715 less votes between two elections. Yes, some of that is due to death rates. But NOT all of it.

Less voter turnout overall ALSO means that voting third party has a higher negative impact for the Democrats. Or to put it another way, 4,155 votes wasn't enough to make democrats lose bucks county in 2020, and also wouldn't have helped republicans win. But in 2024, losing 3,676 votes combined with 10,715 less voters overall — cost democrats bucks county.

You're just looking at the statewide numbers and going "Kamala wouldn't have won with 65,310 more votes." And technically yes, if that's all you're considering. But that's not how elections are thought about or won.

But also: 6,915,283 voted in 2020. 6,814,580 in PA this year. 100,703 less votes overall.

The reasons why PA went red aren't simply "white supremacy won." Less people voted in this election. When less people vote, third party votes have more of a weighted negative impact dividing the overall left base, because they're LESS likely to make up the losses in undecided/independent voters. It mattered less to have more third party votes in 2020 because 100,000+ more people were voting overall, where those losses could be made up.

Because the Democrats only won 80,555 more votes than Republicans in 2020. So losing 79,380 votes to a third party would have been disastrous in 2020, EXCEPT for the fact that 100,000 more people voted in PA. And the more people who vote, the more likely Democrats are to win the popular vote. Democrats win by increasing voter turnout and minimizing the impact of third party votes.

People protesting in big groups, or postering flyers everywhere in swing states telling people to a) not vote or b) to vote third party contributed to Donald Trump winning this election. This is just math. Johns Hopkins reports 1,123,836 Covid deaths so we can't just blame decreased voter turnout on Covid alone.

Donald Trump received LESS of the popular vote than he did in 2020. 158,481,688 people voted in 2020. 140,965,949 votes have been counted for 2024.

2,354,264 LESS people voted for Donald Trump in 2024 than in 2020 and he still became president. The Republican party LOST VOTES compared to the previous presidential election where they also lost. Donald Trump did not win by having more white supremacist voters than he did in 2020 - his overall votes went down from 2020 when he lost the election. Less people voted for him than they did in 2020.

Donald Trump won because less people voted overall. Less voters mean that third party votes dividing the anti-trump voting bloc have a greater impact, and votes blocking trump from winning are harder to gain back because there's less people voting.

Also edit to clarify that I didn't fucking make this up lol I specifically saw these people on 11/2/24:

The leftists are indeed in the room with us.

Idk guys, maybe people are blaming leftists who refused to vote because of genocide because I literally saw them holding political rallies last weekend in a swing state telling people not to vote

Like it wasn't just tumblr leftists saying not to vote for Kamala, or at all, because of Palestine. Those were real people I walked past last Saturday in Pennsylvania, a key swing state. They had megaphones in front of Philadelphia city hall and a sizeable crowd. I feel like we can, in fact, say they are partly culpable here.

[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!

[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.

[isaacsapphire]

Yesterday, I was talking with an old coworker, a guy who has worked hard his entire life, a guy at an age to be looking at retirement, a man who I know exactly how little money he makes and what a shithole he and his sick wife have to live in.

He and his wife have tried to get government assistance, but the social workers very explicitly don’t have anything for a White native born elderly couple. Or rather, there’s waiting lists longer than she is probably going to survive, but functionally that’s nothing. Meanwhile, refugees and people who aren’t White get ushered to the front of the line. It’s not subtle, it’s not secret, and it’s a very intentional thumb on the scale at the bottom of the labor market to subsidize the housing, healthcare, and food for different races/immigration status people differently. It’s a thing that nobody is supposed to talk about, very much so, and I fully expect to get pushback and denials and accusations from saying this, but every White person who has needed to seek government assistance I have ever encountered is quietly aware of this. Every social worker is aware of this (and frequently intentionally engages in this).

One team wants no welfare. The other team wants functionally no welfare for Whites. You can see how a lower class native born White American might see both sides as pretty similar.

Dems hand out jobs based on bloodlines too, and neither party’s favored bloodlines include me, so again, no difference from my perspective. The Dems seem functional to you? Really?

On some level, who gives a shit what kind of offensive nonsense a politician spews? Again, both sides’ politicians have very explicitly said they dislike certain groups. Trump is honest enough to say things like “shithole” and we pretend that “garbage” and “deplorable” are perfectly fine and polite terms. Does the name-calling actually do anything? Does it help me pay rent? If no, I have rent to pay, who cares what the news cycle is cycling today.

Chicken Little pearl clutching about how the Republicans said a naughty word is a big part of the Dem/left of center strategy these days, but as I already said, just claiming Trump is an existential threat and then trying to jam the nearest body that is owed a win down the voters throats doesn’t have a perfect record at this point.

I honestly think they didn’t want to win in 2020 and Biden was supposed to be a midterm throwaway candidate who was old enough and stupid enough to take the nomination itself as his victory lap because he wasn’t going to last to 2024 anyway.

Feeling generally demoralized and lowkey hopeless about the election; we’ve been doing this since 2016 and it’s starting to feel like Groundhog Day.

Donald Trump probably ran for president as a PR stunt. His whole thing feels like a joke that stopped being funny before the 2016 primaries were over.

The Democrats appear to have been phoning it in, flopping between halfhearted attempts to get the Obama energy back with a woman this time, and flinging whoever is closest at hand up and declaring that Trump is an existential threat so you gotta shut up and vote for whatever reheated leftovers they dragged out, and then the combination of both.

Both have coalitions of both perfectly cromulent normies and batfuck wannabe genocidaires who want to violently repress some portion of the population. Who knows how that’s gonna pan out; might be nothing, might be horrifying, I honestly don’t know if either coalition is more tilted towards horrifying in numbers or inclination.

Whether either ticket is capable of leading the world hegemon through a war or other major crisis is also unclear; Trump’s old and clearly not what he once was, and that’s assuming he was ever up to the task. He didn’t perform well during the Covid crisis imo, which leaves me doubtful that the Trump of 2025 will be able to navigate some new crisis well. Kamala is a social climber lawyer who has transparently gotten this far in large part because of her gender and ethnic heritage but at least she probably has a few good years left in her. Neither of them are stupid but neither of them really seem like the right person to lead the country through the crises that are inevitably coming up in the next four years.

The VPs both seem potentially more capable but also kinda wildcards, especially Vance who appears to have been revealed as a consummate suck-up, but his relationship with Thiel is promising to me rather than threatening and his mixed race marriage and children mean that he personally is bought in to a multiracial society. Walz seems fine and fairly competent, his background in education is nice. Neither are silver spoons, both have real life experience and some kind of military experience, which is good. I would actually be engaged and having to make a real decision if this was a legit Vance vs Walz race.

I don’t live in a swing state so my opinion is irrelevant though.

[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.