#it's more 'if dick cheney thinks you're evil YOU'RE EVIL'

[dchan87]

https://x.com/mistergeezy/status/1832133683513270680

When Dick Cheney or all people has enough morals to vote for Harris to keep Trump out of the White House, but not dirtbag leftists, it's time for leftists to throw in the towel.

[dalekofchaos]

I hate Trump and I hate Harris and I just want this election done with

I'm tired of Donny Dipshit and I am tired of the lesser evil.

I can't believe we're doing this again. Once again Trump is threatening democracy and human rights, only this time he's bringing a theocratic nightmare and Kamala is the "nothing will fundamentally change" status quo. I'd rather take the status quo, but for fuck's sake can we NOT do a genocide? Can we have Universal Health Care, Affordable Housing, Education, protected reproductive rights and LGBTQA+ rights and protections? Is that too much to ask for?

Apparently so because our would be "savior" is more concerned with getting the Republican vote than her own voting base. Even bragging about being endorsed by Dick Cheney and 200 Republicans.

Translation: She’ll govern like a neocon because she is a neocon. She’ll govern like a banker because the bankers own her, and the two-party system. Bipartisanship means the elite wins, the rest loses. That’s not democracy. That’s not healthy.

If you're bending over backwards to get Republicans to like you instead of stop fucking sending blood money to fund and arm a genocide, not giving a single concession to the left, not endearing herself to black people, Muslims, the disabled, actually having a plan to combat PR2025, actually helping the LGBTQA+ community and apparently not the policies and strategy that shut them out. You're telling me not to vote for you.

That dumbass Nancy Pelosi during the first few years of Biden's administration said "we want a strong republican party" and it looks like Kamala is fulfilling that promise. Congrats, you gave us Roe V Wade being overturned and the Republicans realized what they could do and came up with Project 2025.

Like, I'm sorry. If Ronald fucking Reagan and fucking Bush of all fucking people can tell Israel to fucking stop or threaten to withhold funding from Israel and they got them to comply, and instead of actually listening to the people who she wants to vote for her, instead she's trying to cater to the fucking Republicans. Reagan and Bush ARE LEFT OF KAMALA. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

If your big selling point is "I got DIck Cheney and 200 Republicans to endorse me" you're telling me not to vote for you. Dick Cheney and Bush destroyed this country and you think bragging about The Butcher of Baghdad endorsing you is the thing to entice disenfranchised voters?

Trump is a piece of shit. But at least he's honest about it and he makes it clear he wants minorities oppressed or dead. He wants to strip everyone of their rights and keep white supremacy on top. He is on Epstein's client list and now owns his plane. He's a convicted felon, a rapist and a bigoted piece of shit. He wants Christofascism and he is a clear and present danger. I want him gone. I want him gone so I don't have to fucking worry my boyfriend, me, my brother and my brother-in law being killed for being trans and gay. I want him gone so I don't have to worry about the day where I find myself rounded up and taken to be euthanized along with every disabled person in this country. But even I know Trump would not last long if he won, cause they will oust him and replace him with JD Vance, or worse. Muskrat.

But fucking god....why is it everytime Trump comes back around, we always have to bring out the worst possible candidate to fight this piece of shit?

Kamala is a two-faced underhanded piece of shit. Her biggest selling point is she's not Trump, but she's showing us she is willing to sell out to Republicans instead of embracing progressives. Instead of embracing the policies of her chosen VP. Instead of embracing the interests and well being of her alleged voting base. We want health care, affordable housing, affordable education, clean energy, reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ rights and protections and the disabled's right to marry without losing their benefits. Instead we're getting more fracking, the deadliest storms we've ever seen with only $750 while Israel and Ukraine gets Billions. Funding and arming a genocide, continued police state and embracing the republicans over the needs of your voters and your alleged party.

Malcolm X warned us of politicians like Kamala.

Lets forget that Harris is a top cop who fucked over a lot of black men. Let's forget she sent a trans woman to a men’s prison. Said trans woman was murdered in a hate crime within 8 hours by her male cellmate. Lets forget she's pro-fracking despite we're in the biggest fucking climate crisis and fracking is one of the many capitalist atrocities that got us here. Lets forget she claimed she would be "tougher on boarder policy than Trump" Lets forget that she said that she would make the US "the most lethal force in the world" and let's for once forget she's one of the biggest paid AIPAC politicians while her husband is an AIPAC prick and that she's going to continue to aid the genocide of Palestine and Lebanon and god knows what else Hitler's reincarnation has planned next.

Selling yourself out to the Republicans, the war mongers and the criminals of yesteryear and politicians who followed the two presidents responsible for destroying America in the 80's and set us down the path we've been on for the last 20 years. You are just showing me and the people who want to vote for you, the people who just want to vote to get Trump out of the white house, to stop Project 2025 or just want this nightmare to end. You are showing us that you are not to be trusted.

Chappell Roan was right. and she was attacked for standing what she believed was right. If you want your queers sanitized, women complacent and your artists fluently PR’d n spun., you want a boring and disinterested culture of unprincipled sycophants, I'm sorry but I'd rather my celebrities standing up for Palestine and Trans rights and holding politicians accountable than just blindly endorsing a politician.

Fuck Trump, fuck Vance and the Christian Fascists, but fuck Kamala, Biden and the democrats who refused to say no to a literal fucking genocide too.

So vote whoever you want for, vote for Kamala, vote Stein, vote West, vote for any independent. Anyone but Trump I agree, but use critical thinking and for fuck's sake, if Kamala wins, don't act like this is over. Demand better. Hold Kamala and her administration accountable. If Trump wins, don't blame Chappell Roan, don't blame Jill Stein, don't blame independents and don't blame leftists. Blame Kamala and the democrats for refusing to change. For refusing to fight for their voters interests. For refusing to stand AGAINST A FUCKING GENOCIDE!

Side note.

The Simpsons DID IT AGAIN

[morealias]

engaging you in good faith/trying to be helpful here - i think everyone's mad at you because:

People read 'I'd shake hands with Hitler if he hated Trump' and interpret that to mean 'There is a part of me that thinks Hitler is a lesser evil or otherwise a better person than Trump in order for me to come up with this analogy in the first place'. I'm not saying that's what you meant, but I think this is MAINLY what people are taking away and why you're being labelled as a nazi.

It's a pretty out-of-left-field analogy that, to many people from the outside, feels like an extreme escalation of the discussion ('should we cheer Cheney on for hating Trump'?) at hand. There's a bit of shock-value to most tumblr users upon reading an analogy like that, and people are going to respond with a knee jerk attitude. People are also in turn focused more on the shock value of your argument's subject rather than what you're actually trying to argue.

I think a lot of people took your analogy to be a form of 'vote blue no matter who' style fearmongering, and whether Trump should be treated as an election boogeyman has been a huge flame war on this site. A lot of tumblr's userbase is generally against 'vote blue no matter who' at this point due to partyheads' insistence on supporting Israel's genocide of Palestine, and believe people with the 'vote blue no matter who stance' accept genocide so long as it isn't happening in America. Your analogy can easily be interpreted as an exaggerated, extreme example of 'vote blue no matter who' and the fact you chose Hitler as the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' subject feeds into that take that liberals and general democrat voters are okay with the Palestinian genocide. Again, NOT saying this is your actual belief, this is again what I think people are taking away from what you've written.

Again, not lobbying any accusations here. Just sincerely trying to be helpful so that you can better address the inevitable wave of hate. My personal stance is that you should've left the argument as 'we should cheer on bad people doing good things to try and incentivize them to do better, even if that is the bare minimum' since there is a genuine point worthy of discourse (in the scholarly sense) there, but the shock-value of 'shaking hands with time-traveling anti-Trump Hitler' completely derails the conversation from continuing in any meaningful way.

I do hope this helps a little and that you are doing well.

"engaging you in good faith/trying to be helpful"

And know you're loved for it! (in a "platonic/I have no idea who you are/the good vibes" way)

"People read 'I'd shake hands with Hitler if he hated Trump' and interpret that to mean 'There is a part of me that thinks Hitler is a lesser evil or otherwise a better person than Trump"

Oh, I know. Tumblr isn't the only social media site that works very hard trying to gold in the Jumping To Wild Conclusions event.

"It's a pretty out-of-left-field analogy..."

But was it? We were talking about Dick Cheney, a person that Tumblr has largely framed as a fascist genocidal asshole. So is it a real stretch to use the fascist genocidal asshole as an analogy for the guy we were just talking about?

"I think a lot of people took your analogy to be a form of 'vote blue no matter who' style fearmongering..." Oh yeah, mos def gold medals need to be handed out in that thread.

"I do hope this helps a little and that you are doing well."

I am great! Don't worry about me. Unless someone doxxes and SWATs, we're all good, I'm an old hat at socpol flamewars.3

[travllingbunny]

Actually let's really not tiptoe. if you voted for Harris, by the same logic, you are also a bad person. You voted for someone who has been complicit in genocide for the last 113 months. Not even promising to keep doing it (which she basically also did), but actually doing it. You voted for the legacy of the Iraq war (Dick Cheney), for promise of more wars and the US army killing even more people all around the world (the "strongest and more lethal army in the world").

If you voted for her, you are no better than the people who voted for Trump. If you actually think this was the moral choice, you are also not smart. If you voted for Harris, you lack empathy, you are unintelligent, you're weird, and you're a bad person, period.

At least going by this logic. As a non-American, I can just conclude that some 150 million of Americans (all of the Trump and Harris voters) are weird, unintelligent and/or bad people who lack empathy, because you all voted for candidates who publicly supported genocide.

Or... alternatively:...

maybe all those people are not actually weird, stupid and evil. Maybe the US political system has locked them into this insane two-party system where both parties are very right wing and arguing for and doing insane, horrible things, and every other party and candidate is marginalized, with voters constantly being forced to choose the so-called "lesser evil" while the two parties are increasingly more and more similar in their awful polciies.

So no, maybe all those 160 million Americans are not all bad.

The person who tweeted this, however, and anyone else who similarly claims moral superiority while telling people to overlook an ongoing genocide, or denying it? Definitely weird, unintelligent, a major hypocrite and overall a bad person, period.

(via kuvltej7ibzd1.jpeg (JPEG Image, 1125 × 871 pixels))

[cts2008]

gas prices etc….lol

People have been complaining about the rising price of gasoline recently, but I have always thought that gas was a good value (especially if you were to take the $0.30, $0.40 per gallon tax off at the pump)! Obviously others need a little convincing. So the article in this week's "Autoweek" magazine brought it all to light. What if you were to buy a gallon of . . .

- Diet Snapple 16 oz for $1.29 = $10.32 per gallon 

- Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz for $1.19 = $9.52 per gallon

- Gatorade 20 oz for $1.59 = $10.17 per gallon 

- Ocean Spray 16 oz for $1.25 = $10.00 per gallon 

- Quart of Milk 16 oz for $1.59 = $6.32 per gallon 

- Evian (water) 9 oz for $1.49 = $21.19 per gallon 

- STP Brake Fluid 12 oz for $3.15 = $33.60 per gallon 

- Vicks Nyquil 6 oz for $8.35 = $178.13 per gallon 

- Pepto Bismol 4 oz for $3.85 = $123.20 per gallon 

- Whiteout 7 oz for $1.39 = $254.17 per gallon 

- Scope 1.5 oz for $0.99 = $84.84 per gallon 

So next time you're at the pump, be glad your car doesn't run on Nyquil or Scope or Whiteout

                     XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

My wife wanted to go somewhere expensive for our anniversary, so I took her down the street to the Sunoco station.

I have my car towed to work because it's cheaper than buying gas.

All in favor of conserving gasoline, please raise your right foot.

I saw a guy on the street corner, holding up a hat and a sign that said, "Wife and 2 Cars to Feed."

For our vacation this summer, we're thinking it will be cheaper to just mail the car

                             XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

When the family car developed a slight knock, the wife asked her husband if he had bought regular or premium gas, but he couldn't remember. 

"You probably got the cheaper gas," she said. "That could account for the engine running so rough." 

"No, the gas wasn't cheaper!" he replied indignantly. 

"Well, how much did it cost?" asked the wife. 

"It cost the same as always," said the husband. "I bought the usual ten dollars worth

                                XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Q: What happens after the government takes 35 percent of your paycheck?  A: The gas station takes the rest!

Q: What does OPEC now stand for?  A: Oil Pricing Evil Cartel! 

Q: What did Dick Cheney say when his daughter told him she was a lesbian?  A: I'm alright with who you choose to be as long as you drive a gas-guzzling car! 

Q: Why shouldn't George W Bush ease environmental regulations to reduce gas prices?  A: It'll backfire and not only will you not be able to drive, you won't be able to breathe either." 

Q: How high are gas prices in New York City?  A: So high rats are carpooling in from New Jersey! 

Q: What is it like when you put Republicans in Congress in charge of gas gouging legislation?  A: It's like putting Dick Cheney in charge of gun safety

                         XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

In prison you spend the majority of your time in an 8' X 10' cell. At work you spend most of your time in a 6' X 8' cubicle.

In prison you get three meals a day. At work you only get a break for one meal and you have to pay for that one.

In prison you get time off for good behavior. At work you get rewarded for good behavior with more work.

In prison a guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you. At work you must carry around a security card and unlock and open all the doors yourself.

In prison you can watch TV and play games. At work you get fired for watching TV and playing games

[morealias]

No it doesn't. It means that the horrible person thinks Harris is better for the country than Trump. Nothing more, nothing less. You're having a Waffle Moment here kiddo. Dick Cheney said "Trump is the worst thing for our republic", that was the reason that the war crimes purveyor gave publicly for why he was voting for Harris. The guy who was in the oval office for the worst bill to reduce our freedoms and rights since Reagan, took one look at Project 2025 and went "Oh fuck no". If you're still not sure why or need further rationale for why it's not "Harris is somehow eviler than Orangemandbad", maybe you've forgotten that his daughter is LGBTQ+ and Project 2025, the playbook that Trump's supporters and cabinet all want to push through should Trump get a second term, would be the worst thing to happen to LGBTQ+ community since Reagan decided that AIDS was a good cure for homosexuality.

You've seen what four years of Biden was like, Harris was part of Biden's team. Maybe she was a token pic, it sure looked like it when he chose her (and her immediate 180* attitude towards him), but she was on his team the last four years. She also has a long history in law enforcement (which is objectively horrible). But Trump was actually in office for four years, he also to has a long history as a conman, a thief, a racist, a sexist, a falling businessman, and an idiot. His team has published their playbook, Project 2025.

It's not a hard choice as to which of the two will be worse. Pick one or sit it out, or by ZOD do something radical. But making shit up because you don't like the choices is just a stupid play.

Löl

[mydogatemymotivation]

#ooh this is so good#especially with all the stuff about propaganda for the military#how much more insidious would that be considering the Republic was demilitarized for decades/centuries/millennia?#the Empire comes on the scene and it’s recruiting. Remember the Battle of Coruscant? Remember all your dead friends?#they got that close because the Republic was weak. its military was 3 years old. but you can build something great with the empire#you can be part of a military that will make sure everyone is safe. you want that don’t you? can’t you see how very necessary enlisting is? (via @inquisitor-apologist)

no I was actually going to get into this in the original post but I was worried that it was getting too long. George Lucas said that, as far as the prequels were concerned, Palps was Dick Cheney and Vader was George Bush (source: I read it somewhere once and you're going to have to trust my memory bcuz I don't feel like going to find this info rn) and I keep thinking, in episode 3, the attack on Coruscant and the Jedi committing treason (according to the people on Coruscant) doesn't it make sense that there was some patriotic fervor in the core systems a la post 9/11 style? Revenge of the Sith, btw, was released in 2005, a post 9/11 America. If you're shutting down 'production' of a clone army and you're about to lose every single one of your soldiers and your ability to create more soldiers, there needs to be a way to rally populations that are far removed from where all the actual conflict is. You need to frighten them and then scapegoat a population. So the attack on Coruscant, we know was orchestrated by Palps to get to Anakin, but it was also a political move against the people on the planets surface to rally them into action (this is making me sound like a bush-did-9/11-theorist and its making me realize there are palps-did-9/11 truthers on Coruscant).

But it works and you throw the Jedi under the bus using, basically, Islamophobia to further the narrative that ~they~ aren't like you and you need to protect the Courscanti way of life by taking up arms against them. Which a lot of young Coruscanti's do - including Kallus. side note: this is your reminder that Adam Driver (Kylo Ren) did the exact same thing. joined the military because of 9/11. Anyway. People always say, 'oh, Kallus must've been weirded out in the rebellion at first because of all the high ranking aliens' and I mean, maybe a little, and he has some lingering misplaced resentment because of Onderon, but more than that, I think Kallus would struggle most with his relationship to Kanan. Because he's been told that everyone of his religion is evil and traitorous. And if we're talking about high-demand religions, when you challenge the intrinsic vertical (authoritarian) morality of the cult/religion people shut down immediately. Listen, imagine trying to convince a devout Fundamentalist Christian that Paganism is a legitimate religious practice rooted in connecting to the universe at large and that Pagans are NOT a threat. Imagine the mental break.

And you use that devout authoritarianism that people subscribe to, give them someone to be afraid of (Jedi and the other "terrorists"), give them something to protect (your friends and family whose way of life was ATTACKED by the Evil Separatists), and funnel them into an overinflated military industrial complex. They'll do anything you say, no matter what it is.

Thinking about Kallus. Thinking about the Empire. Thinking about how a fascist dictatorship can take over the minds of a population. I think more people should think about Kallus' defection the way they think about leaving high demand religions or cults. (not trying to absolve him of the shit he did, I'm just thinking things) I'm not a cult expert or anything, but if you're on tiktok I'm sure you've come across knitting cult lady, she's a cult expert who was raised in the children of god cult and she's mentioned more than once that the US military (which she was also in) is a cult, but people don't like thinking about it like that. But we grow up with all the propaganda about the army and there are recruiters going to schools and doing pull up challenges and there are ads on tv about how honorable and noble joining the military is, and how much good the military does (like technology research, paying for your education, providing jobs, benefits, etc.) to make it seem like it's a benevolent thing to do. And I have to wonder if that's what growing up on Coruscant was like. Ads every commercial break about joining the Republic's Military Academy, recruitment stations, veterans days and memorial days and military appreciation month and whatnot, and from Kallus' perspective joining the military would've been seen as honorable from the jump. Just wearing his uniform out and about for whatever reason got him "thank you for your service" and everything.

Then when you join, men shave their heads and women don't (maintains rigid gender binaries and division within the cult) and rigid body standards are maintained as well. This is something the US military does, too. It doesn’t matter how good you are at your job if you don't look the part, you'll be trimmed down until you do. There are real service members who've left the service that have confirmed as much. And think about it, when is the last time you saw a US army commercial with someone who wasn't conventionally attractive or uber thin. Controlling food is a surefire way to keep people in line, dependent on your organization, and too weak to resist. Cult shit. Worth noting that storm trooper armor is rigid. As far as we can tell, there's no way to adjust the plating, expand it, restrict it, whatever. It must be worn at the size it comes in. Which means body size must be maintained no matter what your body wants to do naturally. Also Leia's famous "aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?", could be she was just trying to antagonize, could be she meant it literally. It's also worth noting that Kallus, like the stormtroopers, wears rigid plate armor. So the people who give him an eating disorder upon his defection, or the inability to regulate his own body's needs are exactly right.

Cults also have the 'skinny-white woman' near the top of the cult. It's the female counterpart to the cults patriarchal leader (doesn't have to be skinny, doesn't have to be white, it's just an archetype). I don't think the Empire has one specifically (maybe in legends, Mara Jade? but I don't know enough about legends, so I could be wrong), but I think that it's kind of broken up into different regions or sects, or there's more than one or something. Because if you look at Lothal, there's Thrawn, who is the local patriarchal leader of the cult, and Pryce, who is the 'skinny-white woman'. She has to defer to Thrawn despite being the Governor of Lothal and Thrawn being a 'guest' so-to-speak in the region. There's also the Grand Inquisitor (patriarchal leader) and Minister Tua (skinny-white woman) and Vader (patriarchal leader) and the 7th sister (skinny-white woman) (though she does kind of share her position with the 5th brother) throughout the series. Kallus always works for the patriarchal leader, and is usually equal to the skinny-white woman in the chain of command, but ISB seems to be its own entity, so he's not quite as dependent on that hierarchy as the other imperials on Lothal, which gives him some leeway that others don't have.

As for the harm he would cause. Yeah, he caused it. No one's denying that. But in the eyes of a Coruscanti, he was still just a vet. Probably had arguments about healthcare with the VA's office, would go home and have the narrative reinforced that he was doing the honorable thing, then would go back out into the field and try to maintain that slim grasp on what he was told was good. And I think this is why a lot of people are very uncomfortable with Kallus. Because he's a veteran and we all want our veterans to be taken care of and we all grill on memorial day and so on. And we don't want to think of our neighbors, and the women who've fought for the right to serve, and the queer people who've fought for the right to serve, as just abject bad guys. Like, yeah we'll critique the military industrial complex all day long, but our vets should be taken care of. Like they weren't all killing the same people for oil. And you can get online and wax poetic about how you're actually the special-special that always saw through all the lies and you think that all vets deserve to get spit in the eye. But no, you and I both know that's not true. I mean, George Lucas has confirmed that the rebellion is the Viet Cong, a militant leftist group that fought against the empire (Americans). And my grandpa fought in Vietnam. Or was it Korea. Or both. You see, I don't even know which one. You know why? I never asked. Either way, he got 'thank you for your service' and military discounts, and respect in his community, and blah blah blah. Because all of us are either directly in the cult of the US military OR directly affected by the cults' propaganda and then to see, accent aside, a US service member be blatantly evil and then acknowledge how blatantly evil he is, repent, turn around, and betray his home world, and the military industrial complex we've all been trained to love, makes us very angry because 'hey, you're not supposed to be self-aware'.

'Well, I don't love the military industrial complex, I'm the special-special >:(' ok what have you done that's helped destroy the military industrial complex other than complain about the healthcare vets receive and try to convince people not to use fireworks on the fourth of July. You benefit from colonialism. The US military is doing all the heavy lifting of colonialism globally allowing the US and Europe to benefit from ongoing systemic neo-colonial efforts, that's why the US military's budget is so overinflated.

'Well, Kallus still committed genocide,' so did your cousin that enlisted. In Star Wars, Anakin slaughtered a village of Tuskens and Padme married him and had children with him. Then he killed all the Jedi and Alderaan and got his redemption with Luke. Kylo Ren destroyed the entire Hosnian System and then got the girl. But yeah, those guys are space wizards and that distances them from real people so we don't think too hard about them. All the bad guys look like nazi ripoffs, so they're obviously evil and they stay evil for the most part, and all the good guys were always good guys. To us, at least. Sabine created a weapon that was designed specifically to slaughter her own people and their cultural heritage but that all happened off screen, so it's just interesting backstory for later. But Kallus? From space USA, not a wizard, and his about-face happened in real time for us. He looked right at us, holding up a mirror to us and our complacency and people had viscerally negative reactions to him, because we didn't like our own reflection. His redemption is so, so, so, so fascinating. Fascinating look at the US military. At least for me, I have so much fun doing analysis like this lol

I would've loved for Rebels to get into the weeds here, but I also understand why they didn't. He was a secondary antagonist from an animated kids show on Disney XD. So, naturally, they weren't going to get that in depth, especially with the military contracts that Disney has. I don't think they were planning on redeeming him at the beginning of the show. Sometimes characters kind of, come alive in a way, and say 'nu-uh, I wouldn't do that. Give me the pen, I'll write it,' and I very much get the feeling that's what Kallus did. If they had known from the beginning that they were going to redeem him, I think his backstory would've been different, but given the limited budget, and limited time, and the fact that he wasn't a main character, you know, these things happen. Real world stuff affects what happens in the writers room, and that's a bummer. But I'm also kind of happy I get to speculate and theorize the way I do. Like I said, it's fun. Anyway, I just think he's neat. I think his redemption is neat, and it was good enough for Zeb and his people, so it's good enough for me.

anyway, be nice. i'm just riffing to riff.