#keeping up with the coalition

[weaponizedducks]

poor shiro cannot catch a fucking break can he. first he gets a crippling disease he's got two years to live. then an angsty wattpad breakup with his boyfriend then he gets kidnapped by aliens and pumped full of alien weed then he crashes on earth with so much walking midlife crisis energy that he gains the skinning puppies to make a fur coat hair, and then he immediately gets shot right back into space by his shittass little brother and weirdo friends with the literal matt clone. then this poor man is made the leader of an alien war, becomes a father to four fuckass teenagers through accidental child acquisition, is forced into the kim kardashian lifestyle by a ginger on drugs, gets kidnapped again, gets cloned, fucking dies, somehow comes back (yeah I'm not really clear about this) then this pathetic wet cat of a man, this stressed jean valjean father of four, experiencing his fourth midlife crisis and millionth mental breakdown, gains that senior citizen swag at twenty five. you could colour match his hair with a polar bear. then he witnesses a walking loreal ad (derogatory) get melted alive, watches a castle get blown up, loses three years in a space time jump and then finds out his ex- fiance who broke up with him right before he left has fucking died in a purple thumb invasion before he got to marry him. but oh no no no that's not the end for this poor sad man. poor guy doesn't get a second to grieve before he is visually assaulted by a less cunty sue sylvester ripoff and her gang of bitchy cheerios (this is admiral s*nda), and yet again made a leader against his will, and shot right back off into space again. then he watches the only other responsible adult in this entire franchise (hot badass space princess who like shiro did not catch a break) sacrifice herself and is left a struggling father. ends up marrying some random fucko. all while suffering through his shitass hot topic brother and blueberry disaster's doomed yaoi romance. oh yeah and he's only got one arm. give the guy a BREAK. FREE my man he doesn't deserve this 🔥🔥

[cator99]

I always get detained at da border because PROFUNC never ended but basically I'm like if a targeted individual didn't even care

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

Me: I don't know what to do with Veronica's character in post s8 au, I don't want her to be Just Lance's sister and Kuron's friend with Pidge's storyline slapped on her, but also I'm not really sure about her character. Sure there's the whole lying to her family thing but I don't think that's enough?

Brain: ok so what if Veronica started out as trying to look for what was Lance upto but she ends up being so obsessed with finding the truth that not only she repeatedly puts herself in harms way but also the original goal falls on wayside.

This could be her way of dealing with trauma which is getting engrossed in the Mission and a problem to fix while suppressing her grief and refusing to actually acknowledge her problems and her own emotions a foil to Kuron's arc that is him being literally driven by emotions. She's angry at Lance for leaving without a word and angry at her family for their clinginess, however she keeps it to herself and just avoid them pretending everything is fine and normal

Also a foil to Lance who started as trying to figure out what was going on but as soon as he realized that 1) Allura and Kuron are still sorta alive 2) he can bring them back, he got obsessed with it consequences by damned.

Plus through her we can actually explore how quintessence actually effects and changes humans rather than become aware of the end result

Also there's something a character who is obsessed with truth but is also such a frequent liar

[mummer]

what was mance’s actual plan in a scenario where he can take castle black and let all the free folk through the wall (i.e. if jon died before warning them). let them disperse into the gift and just. fend for themselves i guess? would his kingship have ended there? was there ever a plan more complex than “dont get turned into ice zombies” or was he just riffing the whole time. was he imagining some kind of treaty? maybe his plans relied on there still being a reasonable stark in winterfell lol. but it’s not like he can negotiate with the boltons or stannis… and the wildlings are so fractured they would IMMEDIATELY split off. like what would he have DONE if he won? was he doomed from the start??? someone please spitball with me

[genderkoolaid]

I know someone who calls herself a feminist, puts her pronouns in her work email signature, donates money to women’s empowerment funds, and thinks we should deport more refugees. I also know someone who calls people ‘pussies’ when he plays video games, who doesn’t know what a pronoun is, and, for his defence of low-wage women workers in a highly-exploited industry, is a better, more strident defender of the rights of working-class women than almost anyone else I know. Of these two people, I know who is on my team, and who I want on my team, yet the standard liberal feminist calculation would have me chose the woman who loves a little deportation over the man who is occasionally uncouth, solely because the woman knows to keep her language civil, and the man doesn’t. Liberal feminists get incredibly caught up in the politics of language, because language is all they have. They don’t have a revolutionary programme for overthrowing patriarchy, so they’re forced to tinker around the edges of it, quibbling over word choice and jargon instead of building the coalitions necessary for destroying patriarchy.

— We Should Not All Be Feminists by Frances Wright

[hussyknee]

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.¹

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats.² The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine that, five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything, the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems are all purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government under a pro-union left-wing President and an unmarried female LGBT rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history. (Edit: She was knocked off first place by a dude in the final result. Boo.)

(On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state. Uh.)

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points (Edit: from the previous 5% to 10% in the final result!) but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! There Is a representative for Malaiyaha Tamils in the Central Province for the first time in history and it's a young woman! (Edit: now it's two female Malaiyaha MPS!!) This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, the NPP coalition formed around the nucleus of the JVP that used to be communist but haven't been in 30 years, they're now just social democrats who are left of places like the US and UK, whose "left" is now center-right. They're only threatening to the Western mainstream media for some reason who can't stop bleating about how we have a "Marxist" government now. In reality, the actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is quite high with a super majority government regardless of affiliation.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

---

¹ Well, nearly. There are a few career politicians and a nepo baby but they aren't so bad either.

² Goddamn it, Baby Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka's answer to JD Vance have wormed their way in using the list of Constitutionally reserved party seats for non-elected members. FUCK the National List.

[lipstickontheglass1985]

FULL DISCLOSURE i do not think suddenly everything will be perfect and beautiful and the whole country will be magically fixed. like im far from getting all fanboy mode towards the new (presumed) government. it is going to be flawed in a myriad of ways. but i do believe it is a step in the right direction

[gaelic-symphony]

You know, when Trump won in 2016, I was terrified, but I also felt like no matter how bad the government got, I would be safe and supported and welcomed by the broad coalition of left-leaning anti-Trump organizations and groups: feminist groups, queer community spaces, immigrant rights groups, abortion funds, environmental advocates, gun control advocates, etc. I thought the people in the loose alliance of leftists, liberals, and moderates who were outraged by Trump’s administration and the actions of Republicans were my allies and would stand up for me as a member of a vulnerable minority.

I don’t feel that way anymore. I’ve spent the past year watching leftists and “progressives” cheer on Islamist groups who call for the death of my people. I’ve watched groups who focused on specific issues of domestic policy completely unrelated to foreign wars embrace Palestine as an omnicause, forcing antizionism into spaces that have nothing to do with Israel and making them progressively more hostile to Jews.

This time, I feel very, very alone. Jews are 2% of the American population, and we can’t trust our government, our neighbors, or progressive organizations and movements to keep us safe—or even just not advocate for our deaths. We only have each other, and with Hashem’s help, we will keep each other safe and keep our communities and institutions and traditions alive until better times come along. Kol Yisrael aravim zeh ba’zeh.

Anyway, if anything I’ve said resonates with you at all, please consider donating to The Red Tent Fund, a new Jewish abortion support organization founded by a Jewish woman who was pushed out of the abortion fund she previously worked for when the organization started pushing antisemitic propaganda and refused to acknowledge sexual violence against Israeli women.

[agoodflyting]

Why Aziraphale is completely ridiculous in the Bastille scene (and I love him so much for it)

A while ago I posted a comparison of Aziraphale and Crowley's costumes in the 1793 flashback in Good Omens and I wanted to add these little tidbits. (Because they haunt me.)

I feel like most people know this but IF YOU DON'T, Paris in 1793 is right in the middle of something called La Terreur.

HISTORY LESSON If you didn't learn this in school the French Revolution was when, after years of escalating social tension, a coalition representing the working classes of France revolted against the monarchy, violently overthrew King Louis XVI, and declared France to be a republic.

The new National Convention governing France ruled that King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette were traitors to the people of France because of how they had spent ridiculous amounts of money on luxuries for themselves while vast numbers of the lower classes were literally starving to death. (keep the bold in mind - wealth and class disparities were one of the key causes of the whole-ass revolution)

In 1793 (year of the flashback) both the King and Queen were executed by guillotine for their crimes.

This kicks of something called The Reign of Terror (La Terreur if you want to be French about it). A multi-year-long period in which the National Convention goes on a bloody witch hunt for any and every member of the middle or upper classes who could even possibly be considered a traitor by those same standards.

If you A) had money or privilege, and B) had ever used your money or privilege to treat yourself, you were getting executed. Over 25,000 people died during the Reign of Terror, half of them by guillotine. In fact, the iconic guillotine was used because it was physically impossible to keep up with the sheer number of people they were executing in Paris every single day.

Some things that could get you killed (actually and completely seriously) during the Reign of Terror:

Implying in any way you were sympathetic to the monarchy

Having a noble title

Having expensive things

Wearing expensive, luxurious clothes (*cough* AZIRAPHALE)

helping or sympathizing with anyone who did any of the above

a working-class person saying you were mean to them once

And then there's this bitch...

I AM NOBILITY PLEASE KILL ME So we have established that Paris in 1793 is in the middle of a frenzied, state-sanctioned bloodbath in which the working classes are massacring everyone even remotely nobility-adjacent. And in the middle of this frenzy, Aziraphale proceeds to roll up in Paris in this outfit:

How will this outfit get him killed? Let me count the ways...

First off- at this point everyone with even the tiniest shred of self- preservation is hiding the fact that they are in any way associated with the monarchy. The wealthy are straight-up abandoning mansions. The middle-class are plastering over decorations to make their house look 'poor'. The only people dressed remotely decent are the guys leading the National Convention and that's just because nobody can stop them. Everyone else is in 24/7 peasant cosplay or else they are covering themselves in cockades and sashes on to show they're pro-Republic.

Aziraphale is basically a giant shiny white sign saying I AM NOBILITY PLEASE KILL ME.

First off the lace jabot and lace cuffs are both associated with the old-school wealthy in the 1790's.

His coat is also decorated in gold braid and silver buttons, which are both marks of wealth and luxury.

He basically looks like he works for Louis XIV - not just rich, but old school rich.

We know it's his natural hair color, but hair powdering (with clay and starch) had been a big trend with the rich all throughout the 18th century to get that clean white venerable look . To someone who doesn't know it's natural, it would very much look like he's wearing hair powder.

He's wearing shades of cream and white, which are very hard to keep clean and clearly states that the wearer is rich and can afford the upkeep necessary to keep an outfit like that stain-free.

He's wearing white knee-breeches and stockings, also called culottes. See above about laundry and how rich you had to be to wear white, but also working-class men wore long pants like this:

A large faction involved in the Revolution were the Sans-Culottes (no-culottes aka we wear long pants LIKE GOOD OLD WORKING MEN). Culottes are specifically associated with everything the revolution hated. That's right - Aziraphale is literally wearing The Fanciest of Fancy Pants in a city where a group called The Men Against Fancy Pants are running around murdering people.

And then there are his shoes.

Oh god his shoes

I could do a whole post about Aziraphale's blessed little white satin pumps and how ridiculous they are.

Actually I might just do that because this is getting so long and I still have to talk about the brioche.

So I can't remember if it's in the script book or if it's from Neil Gaiman's tumblr, but it's apparently canon (?) that Aziraphale was going around in that outfit asking people where he could get crepes and brioche when he was arrested.

The Affair of the Brioches

So... uh... we've all heard the line attributed to Marie Antoinette- how when she was told that her people were starving because there was no bread left in Paris, she famously said...

It's morphed into 'let them eat cake', but the line is first recorded as, "Then let them eat brioches."

While it's unlikely she ever actually said it, the important thing is that... people in 1793 would have thought she said it. It was used as political smear to show how arrogant and out of touch the monarchy was. Marie Antoinette in particular was reviled by the people of France, who thought she was the main cause of their economic problems. That's why she was executed too.

Bread and brioche and the lines between poverty and privilege were a big thing in Revolutionary France. There was a lot of political connotation to what you ate. The French Revolution came about because of decades of suffering among the lower classes of France. It wasn't something that some dudes just decided to do. The people of Paris have been through years of the absolute worst, most oppressive poverty and starvation you can imagine, all while watching the rich throw money around crazy.

So let us recap.

Aziraphale is dressed so ridiculously posh that he looks like a joke parody of a nobleman... and he is bumbling around Paris during the Reign of Terror. Asking people. For brioche. How I imagine everyone looked at him:

It is so astoundingly tone deaf and tactless. He is basically cosplaying as Marie Antoinette and then going around asking the poor for cake.

I just.... Aziraphale. babygirl. no. oh no. You're lucky they even bothered to take you to prison. I am amazed Crowley ever let him live that down.

I have no conclusion other than this. Aziraphale is ridiculous and I love him so much.

YES YOU REALLY SHOULD SIR.

[queeranarchism]

One of the most important things that I learned from Susan Stryker is that the basic tendencies of nationalism can pop up anywhere.

Those tendencies being: 'This territory/group is better than others and must be kept unified by a coherent shared identity and by keeping out those who fall outside that identity'.

You apply that thinking to the group 'women', you get terfs.

You apply that thinking to the lgbtia+ community, you get exclusionist, you get 'drop the t', you get anti-ace discourse.

You apply that thinking to a political group, you get thought police and echo chambers.

You apply it to a subculture and the subculture becomes insufferable and eventually dies.

Learn to recognize it and go 'no, we're not doing nationalism, we're a coalition of people with diverse experiences working towards shared goals' and you're stopped like half the possible bullshit you can fall into.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

The Woodland Park Zoo is my home zoo, and the possibility of a strike has been brewing for a while. The staff at the zoo have been working without a union contract for over 200 days because the zoo is unwilling to pay them a living wage.

Zookeepers around the country are consistently underpaid, and Seattle is an incredibly expensive place to live. The zoo is losing animal care staff rapidly - I've been told they'd lost five keepers and a vet tech to another nearby AZA zoo this year alone - because they can't afford to live here. And I've been told that because there's no contract, the zoo is on a hiring freeze, which means they're perpetually understaffed.

Photo credit: Yulia Issa

There was an informational picket outside of a big event last month, which got a ton of community support. Then the only content the zoo put out for National Zookeepers Week was a single post about how much gratitude the staff are owed, which... hmmmm, came off a little tone-deaf in the current moment.

Now it looks like staff might end up striking to make their point, after almost a year of negotiations.

"Workers at Woodland Park Zoo, who are members of the Joint Crafts Council (JCC) Coalition of Unions, have been making plans to protect the animals if they go on strike. If the group of 200 workers is unable to reach an agreement with their employer over a new contract, they say they will run a skeleton crew that would provide necessary care to the animals but require the Zoo to close its doors to the general public. “We are making contingency plans to ensure the continued well-being of the animals if we are forced to strike,” said Janel Kempf, a learning coordinator who has been with the Zoo for 25 years and is a Shop Steward with Teamsters 117. “A strike is an absolute last resort and one that none of us takes lightly, but the Zoo keeps pushing us in that direction. If the Zoo doesn’t change course soon, we will have no other choice than to withhold our labor.” Negotiations between the Coalition of Unions and the Zoo have been ongoing for the last ten months with workers growing increasingly frustrated at what they say is the Zoo’s failure to value and retain an experienced workforce. “We are hemorrhaging critical animal care experience which directly affects the standard of care we can provide for our animals,” said Allison Cloud, an animal keeper and member of Teamsters 117. “The Zoo is forcing us to choose between our livelihoods and our animals, a heartbreaking decision no zookeeper ever wants to make.” Workers say low wages, the skyrocketing cost of healthcare, low morale, and high turnover have put the Zoo’s AZA accreditation at risk. Loss of accreditation could cripple the Zoo’s resources and lead to the transfer of animals to other accredited facilities. "Woodland Park Zoo cannot maintain AZA accreditation without us,” said Joe Gallenbach, an Exhibit Technician with IATSE Local 15. “The loss of AZA accreditation would demonstrate catastrophic mismanagement on the part of the Woodland Park Zoological Society.” The Coalition of Unions and the Zoo have one more bargaining session on the calendar: Friday, August 9. If the Zoo does not make an acceptable proposal next Friday, workers say they will take their case for fair wages and benefits to the public through direct, concerted action."

Now, when you bring the risk of AZA accreditation loss into the conversation, things get interesting. I've written before about how some zoos are legally or contractually obligated to maintain AZA accreditation and couldn't choose to leave. Woodland Park Zoo is one of those facilities: the agreement with the city that allows the Woodland Park Zoological Society requires them to be AZA accredited. If they lose it, they default on the agreement.

So, would there actually be a chance the facility could lose accreditation if the staff struck? I couldn't find any recent information about staff at other AZA zoos striking and how it related to their accreditation cycle, but I did find this, in an AZA press release about how the Aquarium of the Bay lost accreditation a few months ago.

"Silver Spring, Md. (May 24, 2024) –  The Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Accreditation Commission unanimously voted to rescind the accreditation of the Aquarium of the Bay.  The independent Commission notified the institution on May 13, 2024, following its conclusion that the aquarium was not meeting accreditation standards in a number of key areas, including financial stability, staffing capabilities, and employee morale and turnover. Aquarium of the Bay has until June 13 to appeal the Commission’s decision."

So it looks like staffing issues and employee morale can definitely be things taken into consideration. Let's look at the AZA standards for more info. I found a couple standards that appear to be relevant:

7.3 "There must be an adequate number of trained paid and unpaid staff to care for the animals and to manage the institution’s diverse programs." Justification: "Although there is no set formula for prescribing the size of the staff (paid and unpaid), some of the criteria that may be used to define what is considered “adequate” include the number and type of species within the institution, the general condition of the animals and exhibits, and past staffing practices."

7.4 "Compensation for paid staff should be competitive with other similar positions in the local/regional/national market, as appropriate." Justification: "Institutions must be able to recruit and retain qualified paid staff. Competitive compensation is a key component in recruitment and retention of paid staff. Some positions can be successfully recruited for locally, while others are competitive on a more regional or national basis (e.g., animal care specialists)."

Both of those look like they could quite reasonably be an issue for WPZ at this point. They're losing paid staff due to low wages and operating understaffed due to the hiring freeze. Staff obviously aren't getting appropriate compensation if they're looking for jobs at nearby facilities that pay better.

Now, would the zoo actually lose accreditation if a strike came to pass? Honestly, I doubt it, because WPZ is too big a feather in AZA's cap for them to penalize them that harshly. Columbus - an equally prominent institution - got kicked because of a major public animal use scandal, but it was pretty clearly political because of how quickly they were re-accredited. I'd expect AZA might give WPZ a slap on the wrist, some stern public comment, maybe some minor penalties, but I'd be very surprised if they were willing to kick WPZ to the curb over something "just" as minor as a staffing problem.

Regardless, zoo staff deserve to be paid a living wage. I'll be really sad if the zoo is closed to a strike once the snow leopard cubs get old enough to debut - but I'd still rather the staff be paid a living wage than be able to see the fluffballs immediately. I want the people working at the zoos I visit to not be living in poverty. Zoo staff pub in an incredible amount of effort to care for animal collections and to facilitate the guest experience, and they should be able to do that without multiple roommates or three jobs. I know that the practical reality is that not all facilities can afford to pay their staff as highly as is ideal, but I'd expect a big zoo with reliable city funding to be able to do better. Supporting the zookeepers (and other zoo staff) is supporting the zoo.

I'll be keeping an eye on this going forward, both from a personal perspective (I'm a member, and I have a vested interest in what the organization I give money to does) and a professional interest in industry politics (what does AZA choose to do). I'll update if there's anything interesting on either end.

[stubz]

"Human Max and Kim?"

"Yeah?"

"There is something that has been on my mind for quite some time now, a question about your work."

"Okay shoot."

"..."

"She means ask away."

"Ah. Yes, well. I was wondering how you two knew to train before coming to work here? As I was under the impression you both joined shortly after the coalition made contact with Earth."

"Train?"

"You mean for taking care of younglings?"

"Yes human Max."

"We didn't. We just used the training we already had and then learned on the job about the finer details."

"What she said. Although we did need to take some first aide courses before opening."

"...come again?"

"We barely had information of other species so we mostly relied on the training and teachings we received at home, Earth."

"Don't worry we took some night classes later on to be more prepared later on."

"How later is 'later on'?"

"About a month."

"...you seem really confused about this."

"That is because I am. . .how were you able to tolerate the biting then? Or the vast difference in height and weight from some of the larger ones? Or keep up with the fast ones?"

"Oh I was bit all the time at home. Both at work and at home."

"I just like running so it's not that hard for me. Kim still struggles though."

"I have tiny legs you jerk."

"But the strength and weight of some of them..."

"Oh right, on Earth you have to be able to lift at least 50 pounds to go into childcare."

"I thought it was 50 kilos..."

"...but that's like a hundred pounds...wait.."

"You have to be able to lift 50-100 pounds with ease!"

"...How heavy are your children?"

"Between 50-100 pounds."

[cosmogyros]

(Reblog this version please!) Okay fuck it. I was too nervous to post this at first, but I see tons of non-Germans wanting to know what's going on right now. So here's my summary. Thanks to my buddy @keldermans and another German friend not on Tumblr for taking a glance at it to make sure I didn't get anything too horribly wrong <3 Any remaining errors are my bad!

I spent much of today writing up an outline of the current soap-opera drama going on in the German government, for my non-German-speaking friends who'd like to enjoy the tea as well.

Disclaimer: I am not technically German, but I did my best to explain this all as accurately as possible (and I did get a couple of Actual Germans to check it over for me).

For THE GERMAN DRAMA, see below...

Cast of characters:

The German government coalition (known as the “Ampel” – traffic light – due to its colors):

Olaf Scholz, Chancellor (leader) of Germany. Party: SPD (color: red). - and the other Red party members in the coalition - this includes the Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach

Christian Lindner, Minister of Finance of Germany. Party: FDP (color: yellow). - and the other Yellow party members in the coalition (four FDP members) - this includes the Minister of Transport, Volker Wissing - and the Minister of Justice, Marco Buschmann

Robert Habeck, Vice-Chancellor of Germany. Party: Greens (color: green) - and the other Green party members in the coalition.

Other characters: Friedrich Merz, likely to become the next Chancellor. Party: CDU (color: black).

The events I can recall so far, in roughly chronological order over the past five days:

1. The government coalition argues all day Wednesday, trying to pass laws while Lindner refuses to agree to anything. In the evening, Scholz loses his patience and fires Lindner with the legendary words, “Dann, lieber Christian, möchte ich nicht mehr, dass Du meinem Kabinett angehörst. ...So. Doof.” (In that case, my dear Christian, I don’t want you in my cabinet anymore. ...Well. Sucks.)

2. Scholz then calls a press conference and gives a surprisingly impressive speech in which his rage is barely concealed. He includes some sharp jabs at Lindner and sounds very personally betrayed by the breakup.

Scholz's speech includes the immediately-legendary line “Zu oft hat er mein Vertrauen gebrochen” (Too often has he broken my trust), which everyone here in Germany is now obsessively quoting.

He declares that he will ask for a vote of confidence in January, and if he fails it (as is expected), he will call for new elections in March, six months earlier than they would otherwise have taken place.

3. Lindner gives a very emotional and self-pitying speech in which he declares “Ich habe gelitten” (I have suffered) – another phrase that becomes an instant classic with those of us watching from the sidelines – and he includes some sharp jabs at Scholz.

4. Showing solidarity with their fellow party member Lindner, all the rest of the FDP members in the coalition resign from the government too… except for Wissing, who instead decides to quit his own political party, the FDP, in order to stay in government and keep his job. He is now a party-less politician!

5. Habeck gives an emotional statement to the press, practically in tears, coming across like a kid whose parents are divorcing and he doesn’t know how to handle it. In a maudlin moment of his speech, he compares the collapse of the coalition to the end of a relationship.

6. At the end of Habeck’s statement, a reporter calls after him: “Is Lindner going to apply for Bürgergeld benefits?”

(Background: There are two tiers of unemployment benefits in Germany. To explain it in a somewhat tasteless way, there’s kind of a class distinction. If you come from a “higher-class” profession, you can typically start by getting ALG I, which is more money. If you are unemployed for the long term or come from a “lower-class” working background, you get Bürgergeld. The stereotype about people on Bürgergeld benefits is that they spend it all on drugs and alcohol and sit on park benches getting drunk all day. Also, Lindner is known for trying to pass legislation to reduce social benefits of all kinds, including unemployment benefits.)

7. Background: After the failed assassination attempt on Trump earlier this year, a popular German comedian called El Hotzo posted a joke online saying basically “too bad he missed” and promptly got fired for saying that. He kept his spirits up and joked about the job loss, saying “Ich bin Deutschlands frechster Arbeitsloser” (I’m Germany’s cheekiest unemployed boy).

Back to the present: At a press conference, a reporter asks Lindner: “How are you handling the statements being made about you online right now, such as ‘This is Germany’s cheekiest unemployed boy’?”

Lindner seems to need a long moment to figure out how to reply to this question.

8. The next day, Habeck coyly soft-launches his candidacy for Chancellor by posting a mysterious video of himself on social media in which he’s wearing a cute beaded friendship bracelet that spells out “Kanzler Era” (Chancellor Era). This is apparently a Taylor Swift reference (?).

In this video, he’s sitting in an atmospherically-lit room, writing at a table. It appears that Lindner had posted a very similar picture of himself in the past, because he now tweets in response to Habeck: “All Democrats welcome here, Robert! You got the setup almost right – the lamp was on the other side. ;)” (and he adds his own pic, which indeed very much resembles Habeck’s video)

9. Angela Merkel muses publicly, “Maybe God only created the FDP in order to test us all.” (ETA: She said this a while ago, not in response to the present situation. But it's still so true :'D)

10. A mainstream German news podcast sassily comments on Friday:

“While Olaf 'Too often has he broken my trust' Scholz is enjoying his party’s admiration for his cowboy moment and Christian 'I have suffered' Lindner is going through his own personal St. Matthew’s Passion […]”

11. Buschmann (one of the FDP party members who resigned), who apparently moonlights as a composer of electronic music under the handle "MBSounds", drops a new self-composed track on SoundCloud about the collapse of the Ampel government. It’s called “To Go Is to Stand”.

The news comments dryly: “Well, at least he doesn’t sing on the track.” (Buschmann's previous biggest hit was simply an angry speech of Lindner’s, set to music.)

Lauterbach (one of the SPD party members still in office) tweets: “No offense, but I don’t think I’ll be listening to that song more than once. But still, it was good working with you, Marco.”

12. The media ask Scholz if he’s throwing his hat in the ring to run for Chancellor again. He says yes. They ask, in what ways is he different from Friedrich Merz (the dude who’s currently expected to win)? And he replies “Ich finde mich etwas cooler, wenn es um Staatsangelegenheiten geht” (I think I’m somewhat cooler [than him] when it comes to matters of state).

And now the German media is making up new words like "scholzen" (which I can only presume means "as the leader of a country, to fire other government members you don't get along with"):

[Headline translation: "Who Donald Trump will 'scholz' first"]

[quindriepress]

TLDR; All of Quindrie Press' profits from our November PDF sales will be donated to queer and racial equality charities. Browse at www.quindriepress.com/pdfs 🐉

The world is scary and keeps getting scarier. It's easy to look at America and say it would never happen here, but far-right ideology has already taken root in the UK and we cannot allow it to continue. Please stand up for the friends and neighbours whose lives are at risk the longer we stand by and let hatred spread unchecked: queer people, disabled people, people of colour.

I'm doing what little I can to support my community and loved ones. Every month, Quindrie Press donates a portion of its PDF sales to charities or organisations dedicated to supporting marginalised communities in Scotland. This month, alongside November's charity (TIE Campaign, a charity sharing LGBTQ education with Scottish schools), all of Quindrie Press' profits from PDF sales will go towards Refuweegee (a Glasgow-based organisation supporting forcibly-displaced people) and the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (a charity working to eliminate racial discrimination and harrassment in Scotland).

If you don't want to pick up any of the Quindrie comics, consider donating an equivalent amount to the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund to support the victims of a genocide that the UK is complicit in.

Look into who your local councillors are and write to them about the issues that matter to you. Support movements and campaigns that seek to make a difference. Put yourself in harm's way for the people whose very existence is under threat. Even if it's scary, we have to keep going.

Art from THE NIGHTINGALE & THE ROSE by @jmiltondraws.

[traegorn]

The "don't vote bc Palestine" people have completely disappeared huh?. I've seen maybe 2 lately vs the hundreds of posts before the election. Either they're all sitting quietly now or the few left are the ones who drank the soup from psyops. That's my guess.

The ones left are also more annoying, refusing to engage with how much worse the president THEY WANTED will be for their cause.

I cannot believe people are so stupid, especially people claiming to have a cause. I understand that people ARE that stupid, but it still blows my mind

So a good chunk of them honestly thought Harris was going to win. I think that's really important to keep in mind. Like they thought they were doing some ploy that could put the Democrats at risk, but still come out victorious. (Of course, the flaw in their plan was that if the Democrats won without them, the Democrats would come away with the impression that they don't need them -- but that's a whole other thing)

A lot of folks from this camp will hopefully understand what went wrong, and we can still coalition build with them. My only caveat is that I sort of need them to come to us at this point, since I'm a bit exhausted from spending most of the last year trying to reach out to them only to be ignored.

There are other ones who are just going to shift to blaming Trump, completely ignoring that they were doing things that effectively pushed towards his presidency. I implore you to stop giving the high profile ones your attention. Like, random person who does this? Fine. We can get this person back on board. But the ones who went out to massive audiences who are playing election amnesia? Fuck those people.

Finally, I still have folks who show up in my political TikTok videos complaining about Harris who refuse to even acknowledge that Trump is an incoming threat. Deep denial motherfuckers.

No idea what to do with those ones.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Working class Dems who campaign on economics beat Trumpists in elections

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me FRIDAY NIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and more!

The Democratic Party Pizzaburger Theory of Electioneering is: half the electorate wants a pizza, the other half wants a burger, so we'll give them all a pizzaburger and make them all equally dissatisfied, thus winning the election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

But no one wants a pizzaburger. The Biden administration's approach of letting the Warren/Sanders wing pick the antitrust enforcers while keeping judicial appointments in the Manchin-Synematic universe is a catastrophe in which progressive Dem regulators (who serve one term) are thwarted by corporatist Dem judges (who serve for life):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

The Democrats – like all parties in two-party systems – are a coalition; in this case, a "progressive" liberal-left coalition with liberals serving as senior partners, steering the party and setting its policies. These corporate dems like to color themselves as "neutral" technocrats with "realistic, apolitical" policies that represent what's best for the country:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This sets up the left wing of the party as the starry-eyed, unrealistic radicals whose policies are unpopular and will lose elections. But for a decade, grassroots-funded primary challenges have made it possible to test this theory, by putting leftist politicians on the ballot in front of voters, especially in tight races with far-right Republicans (that is, exactly the kinds of races that the corporate wing of the party says we can't afford to take chances on).

The 2022 midterms included enough races to start testing these theories – and, unlike traditional midterms, these races enjoyed high voter turnout, thanks to the unpopularity of GOP positions like abortion bans, book bans and anti-trans laws. Jacobin teamed up with the Center for Working-Class Politics, Yougov and the Center for Work and Democracy at ASU and analyzed those races:

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/11134429/CWCP-Report-2024.pdf

Their conclusion: candidates from working-class backgrounds who campaigned on economic policies like high-quality jobs, higher minimum wages, a jobs guarantee, ending offshoring and outsourcing, building infrastructure and bringing manufacturing back to the US won with a 50% share of the vote in rural and working-class districts. Dems who didn't lost with a 35% share of the vote:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-03-18-how-actually-existing-democrats-run-for-office/

In other words, in the kinds of districts where Trumpist politicians are beating Democrats, running on "left populist" policies beats Trumpist politicians.

That's the good news: if Dems recruit leftist, working class politicians and put them up for office on policies that address the material reality of voters' lives, they can beat fascist GOP candidates.

Now for the bad news: the Democratic establishment has no interest in getting these candidates onto the ballot. Working-class candidates, by definition, lack the networks of deep-pocketed cronies who can fund their primary campaigns. Only 2.3% of Dem candidates come from blue-collar backgrounds (if you include "pink-collar" professions like nursing and teaching, the number goes up to 5.9%):

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/left-populists-working-class-voters

All of this confirms the findings of Trump's Kryoptonite, an earlier Jacobin/CWCP research project that polled working-class voters on preferences for hypothetical candidates, finding that working-class candidates with economically progressive policies handily beat out Republicans, including MAGA Republicans:

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/08125102/TrumpsKryptonite_Final_June2023.pdf

Since the Clinton-Blair years, "progressives" have abandoned economic populism ("It's not a burning ambition for me to make sure that David Beckham earns less money" -T. Blair) and pursued a "third way" that seeks to replace half the world's of supply white, male oligarchs with diverse oligarchs from a variety of backgrounds and genders. We were told that this was done in the name of winning elections with "modern" policies that replaced old-fashioned ideas about decent pay, decent jobs, and worker power.

These policies have delivered a genocide-riven world on the brink of several kinds of existential catastrophe. They're a failure. The pizzaburger party didn't deliver safety, nor prosperity – and it also can't deliver elections.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/20/actual-material-conditions/#bread-and-butter