#modern black republicans

[dorkshadows]

The Writeup

Thanks for the interest! As promised, I've come out of retirement for one (1) day to do this writeup about the intense things going on in the Nezha 2 fandom.

Once more, this is NOT about the people who happened to watch the movie, the people who are just interested in box office stats, the people who really enjoyed the movie, or the people who just really admire Nezha. This will be about the fandom fandom, the truly invested, the elaborate fanons behind certain ships that will make you go "wait what?", the rabid Ao Guang discourse that will also make you go "wait what?," the brainrot (affectionate) in its purest unfiltered form. This is a post about brainrot for those also suffering from brainrot.

This is a collection of patterns mainly from lofter, but also from douyin, weibo, bilibili, and xhs (I'm grouping everyone together because most artists/authors repost to multiple sites or have their content shared on multiple sites, so everyone ends up looking at the same things if they follow the relevant tags on each site). I didn't filter out or blacklist a single tag. I stared directly into the sun to collect this information!

Disclaimer: I genuinely have no idea how to warn for some of the things mentioned here, so just a blanket note of caution- if you click "read more," you are prepared to read about anything and everything. If you are OK with all this, then- let's go! 命由我不由天!

The movie has been out in China in for roughly 3 weeks. In those 3 weeks, all of this has happened in the deepest layers of fandom.

General patterns:

I can't speak for other site stats, but at least on Lofter, Nezha/Ao Bing as a ship is #1 and #2 trending (as Oubing and Bingzha respectively) out of all fandoms and topics on Lofter. But curiously, Ao Guang (#8 trending) and Shen Gongbao (#9 trending) are more popular as individual characters than Nezha and Ao Bing. The latter is noteworthy because Shen Gong Gong's tag was pretty barren circa 2019.

Some Oubing fans have decided that they don't have enough oubing content so they've started shipping Oubing.... from the 1979 movie. This is also in the top 10 trending. Their inspiration comes from this advert.

Ao Guang vocally disapproves of his son dating Nezha, but he can't do anything about it. The real victim here!

Any pairing you can think of exists. Any pairing.

Character/Reader fics exist for everyone in the main cast except Wuliang Shenweng and Taiyi Zhenren

There's a vibrant self-shipping community again for everyone except Wuliang and Taiyi

Lots of M-preg

CEO Ao Guang is common in modern AUs

Nezha is usually in his powered up form in Oubing/Bingzha content, but in his gremlin form in content focused on anyone else

Lots of "The characters themselves react to watching the movie!" type of stories

Shiji Niang Niang has been shipped with both Taiyi Zhenren and Shen Gongbao. The latter has spawned a meme. There's a comic I won't repost because I don't know who the original artist is, but it's very powerful. It goes like this:

SGB: "Prejudice is like a mountain in people's hearts-" SNN: "So I exist in everyone's hearts? That's beautiful <3"

"Lady Yin LIVES!" AUs aplenty

Wuliang's nickname is "Evil Peach"

Lots and lots and Lots of Shen Gongbao whump

Ao Guang has been separately interpreted as a daddy dom, a malewife, an old guy TM, a himbo, and a baby girl AND as all of those things all at once

Ao Run and Ao Bing are the only dragons considered to be smart

Shen Gongbao tends to have very low self-worth. This comes from a 2019 Jiaozi interview where he directly says our leopard lacks confidence

Any AU you can think of: modern AUs, mafia AUs, republican era AUs, actor AUs, musician AUs, wuxia AUs, this one AU where the Ao family are American senators for no reason, omegaverse, and so on

Lots of Journey to the West (a lot of Black Myth specific ones especially) and FSYY crossovers

There's a meme about the real Lu Tong using his antlers to attack people in their dreams if they dare make sexual content of him because someone who made "bottom" Lu Tong content claimed they were attacked by him in a dream. Others took this to mean that he only attacks if you make him a bottom. People who interpret him as a "top" claim that they won the lottery and their lives are going great.

Ao Guang and Shen Gongbao are usually on a first name basis. Ao Guang calls Shen Gonbao 公豹兄 (Gongbao Xiong, "Brother Gongbao") and Shen Gongbao calls him "Ao Guang" directly. This is sort-of canon because this is how they address each other in 敖丙传 "The Tale of Ao Bing/Aobing Zhuan". for those who ship it, their ship name is 龙王豹 (longwangbao/ dragon king leopard) *Keep Aobing Zhuan in mind. This will be important towards the wildest part of this writeup.

Now for the elaborate fanon lore behind two specific ships that seemingly came out of nowhere. Everyone knows about oubing, but what about the other popular ships out there? They're absolutely wild, but- HEAR THEM OUT.

DiLong:

This one has its origins from the first movie. 地笼 AKA "Prison Cage/Emperor Dragon." It's a ship based on Tiandi (Emperor of Heaven) x Ao Guang. The Di in "emperor" is pronounced the same as ground "di," which is also the first character that makes up the word "prison." And "long" (dragon) is pronounced the same way as cage (also "long"), hence the ship name.

Some time after Ne Zha (2019) came out, someone pulled out one of Ao Guang's lines and ran with it. It's a quote where he essentially says that even though the dragon clan was loyal to heaven and its emperor, the heavens betrayed and imprisoned them in the sea anyway. This section of fans took this to mean that Tiandi charmed Ao Guang on false pretenses, took advantage of Ao Guang's love for him, and then left him to rot in the eastern sea... after impregnating him with 1-3 kids. And this changed Ao Guang from an innocent beauty into a resentful dragon desperate for vengeance.

Things of note about dilong:

Tiandi 天帝 is NOT the Jade Emperor (Yu Di). Their mythos overlap, but the Emperor of Heaven is considered the supreme ruler of Everything in the universe while the Jade Emperor rules over the three realms. So Tiandi ranks higher than the Jade Emperor. (But he's also a more obscure figure in popular worship if we get technical)

At the time, Ao Guang didn't actually have a name in 2019 canon. So the fans referred to him as 敖广 (that's what the eastern dragon king has always been called, but Nezha 2 reimagines him with a different name that's pronounced similarly: 敖光).

Tiandi's given name, or rather, the name that the fans gave him, is Hao Tian 昊天, which is the actual name of one of the mythological Tiandi's many variations

Tiandi does not appear in either Nezha movie. His entire character (appearance, personality, etc.) is purely built on headcanons. He is usually written as a playboy, a heartless manipulative bastard, a deadbeat dad, an ungrateful power greedy monster, and so on. But he is always written and drawn as #Hot.

Ao Guang gave birth to Ao Bing in the Dilong universe.

As you can tell, this is a very angsty ship that usually ends in anger and suffering, but there are plenty of fix-its and happy ending versions out there too, mostly about Tiandi feeling bad for being such a shitty bastard in the past and trying to win Ao Guang back

Regardless of how you feel about Dilong after reading all this, if you are in any way fond of Ao Guang's design in Nezha 2, you owe your life and soul to Dilong shippers because Jiaozi's original idea for Ao Guang was making him a bearded geezer. The Nezha team saw how popular the humansona for Ao Guang was (from dilong fanart) and they incorporated it into canon.

#Dilong had a resurgence in popularity thanks to Nezha 2 (it's the no.6 trending topic on weibo as of right now). But you'll notice that pre-2025 Dilong may feel ooc now because Ao Guang is, for lack of better word, interpreted more as a softspoken twink than the beautiful himbo he is now.

*Keep Dilong in mind as well. It is the source of much insanity below.

LuBao:

Next, in a similar vein to Dilong, another wild ship has risen over the horizon! In terms of quantity, dilong is more popular, but in terms of engagement, this is doing bigger numbers nowadays. I'm talking likes in the ten-thousands range. That ship is.... Lu Tong x Shen Gongbao. AKA 鹿豹 (LuBao, DeerLeopard)

You might be thinking "HUH!? Why!?" My answer for you is that it's all Taiyi's fault. Both inside and outside the movies, Taiyi consistently screws Shen Gongbao over. Life imitates art! This section is a little longer than the dilong section because there is a Lot going on here. I'll admit that one of the most profoundly beautiful and well-written stories I have ever read is a lubao fic on lofter, I understand now

Just as the fans did for dilong once upon a time, this section of fans pulled a blink-and-you-miss-it quote from Nezha 2, where Taiyi tells Nezha that the previous captain of the demon hunting team was Shen Gongbao (after they meet the current captain, Lu Tong).

From there, the lore just got deeper. When Lu Tong greets Taiyi, he calls him 师伯 (Shi Bo, senior martial uncle). But you only call a male relative 伯 in Chinese when that person is your father's older brother. Wuliang is Taiyi's elder (martial) brother (Shi Xiong, as I'm sure you all know), so Lu Tong's address is incorrect. Taiyi knows this as well, so he corrects Lu Tong and says "It should be 师叔" (Shi Shu, younger martial uncle). Lu Tong continues calling him Shi Bo anyway. The fans took it to mean one of two things:

Lu Tong did it on purpose because he only acknowledges one (1) person as his Shi Shu and that's Shen Gongbao

Lu Tong is officially Wuliang's disciple, but he believes himself to truly be Shen Gongbao's disciple and since Taiyi is Shen Gongbao's elder martial brother, he'll call him Shi Bo

Then it got even more elaborate. The fans surmised that since the celestials are so condescending towards demons, Lu Tong and He Tong were ostracized and bullied when they first arrived at Yuxu Gong. And the only person who was nicer to them/protected them/stuck up for them was Shen Gongbao since they're the only demons there. This is why you'll sometimes see fanart of the three of them together in the "Yuxu Gong days."

When Shen Gongbao immediately realized Shen Xiaobao's wound came from Lu Tong's arrow, the fans decided this meant that he was familiar enough with Lu Tong to know his fighting style. When paired with the above headcanon, this directly turns into "Shen Gongbao himself taught Lu Tong archery."

Whenever Ao Bing possessed Nezha, fans noticed that there was always a closeup of Lu Tong's reaction. They decided this meant that Lu Tong recognized Ao Bing through recognizing his fighting style, taught to him by Shen Gongbao.

The fans also think Lu Tong did not have to go off that hard on Shen Xiaobao and Shen Zhengdao. There's following your boss's orders and there's following those orders in the most hyperviolent over the top way possible. Their conclusion is that Lu Tong knew that was Shen Gongbao's family and did it on purpose. Because when Shen Gongbao left Yuxu Gong without telling him, Lu Tong took that personally. And when he took Ao Bing on as a disciple, Lu Tong took that more Personally. So Lu Tong has decided to do his best to kill everyone Shen Gongbao ever cared about until he has nobody left but Lu Tong. Audiences complained that Lu Tong lacked a personality in the movie- the fandom has assigned him a personality and that personality is "sadistic freak obsessed with his Shi Shu."

Things of note about LuBao:

dilong was requited at some point in time, but lubao is an aggressively one-sided ship where Shen Gongbao only requits 1% of the time either because it's a complete AU, none of the movie's events happened, or he has amnesia (inflicted on him by Lu Tong)

A common trope revolves around Lu Tong hoping and hoping for Shen Gongbao to take him on as a disciple, which never happens, planting the first seeds of disappointment and HATE

Lu Tong really fucking hates Ao Bing, whom he considers to be the antagonist of his life because Ao Bing STOLE all of Shen Gongbao's love that rightfully should have been Lu Tong's. He also really hates Ao Guang too, again for stealing HIS shishu. actually, he hates Taiyi sometimes too. He hates anyone Shen Gongbao ever talked to.

He Tong is the only person who knows Lu Tong is this way.

Sometimes Lu Tong meets Shen Gongbao as a primitive deer, a fully adult celestial-in-training, or a literal "deer boy." During his time as captain, Shen Gongbao usually takes Lu Tong under his wing at some point and/or is the person who spares Lu Tong from being slaughtered by the rest of the team or convinces the others not to kill him. OR, even wilder, Shen Gongbao interacts with Lu Tong for 5 minutes 200 years ago and that's enough to cause Lu Tong to go on this spiral. Whichever the case, Lu Tong imprints on Shen Gongbao.

90% of LuBao content includes Lu Tong taking his revenge on Shen Gongbao after Wuliang imprisons him. This includes all manner of graphic torture.

Lu Tong wants Shen Gongbao to hate him because he believes Shen Gongbao left him in the past due to indifference towards him. "Hate lasts longer than love."

Shen Gongbao: *exists* Lu Tong: I'll kill your family. I'll kill your disciple. I'll kill your disciple's father and your disciple's best friend. And Taiyi Zhenren too. I'll kill everyone who ever interacted with you. Then I'll break you and break you some more until you're nothing but bones and dust. I hate that you made me love you and that you left me. What do the dragons have that I lack? Are my antlers lesser than their horns? We both have blood on our hands and yet you think yourself nobler than I. You are inherently kinder than me and I hate that the most about you. My dearest revenge is dragging you down to my level, to make you hate me as much as I hate you. If I can't have your love, I will have your hate and your pain and your tears- Ao Bing & Ao Guang: 有病!??????? WTF.

恨明月高悬独不照我 is a phrase now permanently associated with this ship. It translates to "I hate that the moon in the sky shines for all but me." Lu Tong hates that shishu shares affection with everyone except him.

This is such a prevalent characterization of Lu Tong at this point that "obsessed with Shen Gongbao" is now his defining trait even in content where neither he or Shen Gongbao are main characters

If its an Ao Guang/Shen Gongbao fic, Lu Tong sometimes shows up as SGB's abusive ex, abusive stalker, or a guy that Ao Guang finds extremely creepy and annoying

If you're still here, this next and final section puts everything else to shame!

The Ao Guang Discourse

There is a lot of drama surrounding Ao Guang now, not because of anything he did as a character, but because of who's he's shipped with. But there's actually only one side of the fandom instigating all the arguments.

Now, remember Aobing Zhuan? That's a spinoff comic focused on Aobing's childhood that came out circa 2021(?). It goes into depth about his early days with Shen Gongbao, his brothers, and even his mother, 应龙, Yinglong. (Yinglong is a real mythological creature, a powerful dragon with a place in old mythos and folklore as well, but that's not entirely relevant here lol). Yinglong is older than Ao Guang, is beautiful, strong, etc. She dies in the spinoff.

A significant number of fangirls latched onto Ao Guang (as presented in Aobing Zhuan), and projected onto Yinglong, the mother of his children. After Nezha 2 released, Ao Guang understandably gained even more fangirls. Most of them became GuangYing shippers.

Now, it's a golden rule in CN fandoms to tag your content so others can avoid. GuangYing shippers do not care about this. They go onto any and all m/m content with Ao Guang to insult the authors and argue that their disgusting ways are disrespectful to canon, disrespectful to Ao Guang, and disrespectful to women everywhere. It doesn't matter that Yinglong is not in the movies and also dead--Ao Guang is not allowed to move on from her ever, and also he is STRAIGHT. Is there not enough gay content out there?? Why can't the heterosexuals have this one man to themselves?? The injustice!

Edit to add: m/f is also unsafe from the wrath of guangyin shippers. They also attack Ao Guang self-shippers for daring to be sluts coming in between him and his true love, Yinglong.

They especially hate dilong and have been harassing all dilong content for the past month. Dilong is their main target, but it's not their only target- you can also find them under Ao Guang/Shen Gongbao content claiming that "they're just besties" and "Ao Guang just sees Shen Gongbao as a pet" asdfasdf

Dilong shippers retort by saying all Guangying shippers do is attack and harass others instead of making their own content, which is why their content is so lacking and pitful. They also called into question the canonicity of Aobing Zhuan. Jiaozi supervised it, but he's not the actual author. They started bashing Aobing Zhuan as focusing too little on Aobing, making Aobing look bad to make his brothers look good, accusing the author of being a Xiao Zhan stan in the wake of the ao3 ban, creating events that directly contradicted with canon, crediting things that Ao Guang or Shen Gongbao did for Aobing as things that Yinglong did, the official Nezha team is embarrassed of the direction Aobing Zhuan went in and doesn't acknowledge it anymore, Yinglong is the author's self insert, etc. And back and forth-

And then, 匪我思存 (Fei Wo Si Cun), acclaimed web novelist, author of multiple novels, including 东宫 (Goodbye My Princess 2019) and 9 more that were turned into TV shows.... published a Dilong fanfic on main (weibo). It referred to Ao Guang as 敖广 and involved M-preg, of him giving birth to Ao Bing, who is also Tiandi's child here. Yinglong and Tiandi's wife are both in the story too- they are a lesbian couple who double as beards for their husbands.

The Ao Guang fangirls, I mean, Guangying shippers LOST IT. They came at Fei Wo Si Cun with full throttle rage. Countless socmed posts about what a horrible disgusting disgraceful thing this author did! How dare she use her wide platform to do this instead of putting it somewhere where nobody can see!? Some have even accused this one fic of destroying Nezha 2's image on the global stage. This one story about this one ship has DESTROYED the reputation of ALL OF CHINA. This is TREASON. Now when normies see Ao Guang and Ao Bing, all they will think about is M-preg.

Not only that, Fei Wo Si Cun had the audacity to do something as misogynistic as turning Yinglong into a lesbian beard! It is a SIN to break up a "canon" pairing and a sin to change the character's sexualities into anything except heterosexuality!

Correction: the lesbian couple part is hearsay and probably came from FWSC saying (that in her fic’s setting) Yinglong and Tiandi’s wife married their husbands because they can’t be with the people they love for “reasons”

The Yinglong crowd is still going at it as I write this. FWSC has not deleted or apologized for this fic. China's reputation has, last I checked, not been DESTROYED by this one story about an animated dragon man from a kid's movie, and dilong shippers are still suffering.

And that's a wrap for now. I may or may not update this if something even wilder happens. I want to say no, this is the end of the ride, but we are only 1 month in. There's plenty of time for more to crop up!

UPDATE: This post is already out of date LMAO! For those interested in updates on everything mentioned above, here's the follow-up: Writeup Part 2.

BONUS UPDATE: Part 3

[sillysiluriforme]

hello! i absolutely love la terreur and i’ve been wanting to make an oc for a while now. i usually don’t use tumblr at all but i really wanted to participate in la terreur.

(i got too lazy to colour it)

here everybody’s favourite evil teenage capitalist!

additional info:

-sentikid (dad died but it’s ok he was an ass)

-PROUD AMERICAN rahhh 🦅🦅🇺🇸

-centrist-republican (it varies) 

-constantly says “money makes the world go around” as an excuse for everything

-operates on 1) ���everything is legal as long as you don’t get caught” and 2) “if get caught, be rich enough to avoid consequences”

-enjoys sci fi and brutualist architecture. enjoys modern shit basically. also possibly the only person ever to enjoy modern art (she frequents the guggenheim museum regularly on vacays)

-pro capitalism WASP family, has family members spread out across various new england states. some are in government (usually municipal or state), others are in academia or business 

-hates wearing the hat and sunglasses actually (it looks fabulous but it’s lowkey bothersome) but has to to hide her natural roots and eyes

-her favourite character ever is patrick bateman

-loves heels (just enjoys making her presence known with click clack sounds)

-hates children. hates everybody actually

-yes that is a tie. she wears a tie 

-protestant christian but a weird mix of strict but also incredibly loose in faith 

-actually aspiring to be a corrupt billionaire 

-distinct lack of morals and empathy (both inherent and learned)

-unhinged and psychotic behaviour (is not very good at pretending to be a normal person)

-actually needs glasses but doesn’t like the look of them so she just goes around blind and squinting at things (she is not allowed to have contacts) 

-has meltdowns like a man. punches walls and destructive shit. she does not have the ability to cry (senticommand)

-huge anger issues 

-huge huge superiority complex 

-very loud and general lack of volume control (it’s actually on purpose)

-homeschooled

-born in washington dc

-unapologetic. does not try to hide her true opinions. in fact she actually doesn’t shut up about them. no social filter whatsoever 

-despite running around proclaiming to be WASP she’s is actually a quarter east asian and russian descent. it doesn’t show at all except in for her black hair and monolid eyes. she’s the only one to look slightly non-WASP in her family and she’s pissed about it  

what an icon,,,,,,,

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Qasim Rashid at Let's Address This:

The Holocaust Encyclopedia defines a concentration camp as follows:

[What distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison (in the modern sense) is that it functions outside of a judicial system. The prisoners are not indicted or convicted of any crime by judicial process.]

That’s not a historical footnote—it’s a warning. And today, it’s happening again. Mahmoud Khalil was here legally. Rümeysa Öztürk was here legally. Kilmar Ábrego García was here legally. Yet they are all detained, disappeared, or deported without trial, without conviction, without any due process. Languishing in government ordered confinement, their incarceration can only be described as a Concentration Camp.  The Trump regime’s horrific treatment of a growing number of Black and brown (and yes, documented) immigrants is proof of one thing: When MAGA Republicans claim they “just want legal immigration,” they are lying. What they actually want—what they’ve always actually wanted—is to end non-white immigration entirely, just as it was before the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. That’s what the “Again” in “Make America Great Again” has always meant: a return to Jim Crow America. A return to white Christian nationalism by any means necessary. This isn’t speculation. This is policy. Take the case of Kilmar Ábrego García. This week Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to fight for his release. He discovered something that should horrify every American: El Salvador admits Kilmar committed no crime, that they have no evidence that he committed any crime—and the U.S. government is paying El Salvador to keep him locked away. This despite the US Supreme Court ruling 9-0 that Garcia should be returned to the United States immediately. This is a Constitutional Crisis of the highest order. An American president is defying a direct order from the U.S. Supreme Court. He’s sending innocent people—legal immigrants—to foreign black sites and demanding other governments build more camps to detain more people. Caught on a hot mic last week, Trump remarked to El Salvador's president to build at least five more of these facilities because Trump wants to send “home grown” people there soon. That’s not immigration policy. That’s not national security. That is fascism. And yes—those are concentration camps.

Horror show in action.

[just-french-me-up]

it's been months since the olympics and the opening ceremony but i'm still REELING from Aya Nakamura's performance

A franco-malian black woman, constantly attacked for being "impossible to understand" because she mixes french with slang, standing by the académie française, an institution that stands for the "purity" (ew) of the french language and against everything she stands for and symbolises

Aya Nakamura TROLLING them to NO END, singing an iconic and "conventional" french song going "id better go choose my french vocabulary to basically make myself likeable to you" while the republican guard band HYPES HER UP

Tradition and modernity coexisting in harmony and feeding each other artistically

[damnfandomproblems]

Fandom Problem#6020:

Im just going to assume everyone who screams "JUST MAKE UR OWN CHARACTERS!!!!!1!" at people who want to add poc to monochrome white casts are privileged white people at best and racist at worst. I'm sorry I have a favorite character I already like that happens to be white and can't invest the time nor energy to create a whole new ass character for the same world to fill the same space of my favorite char when I can just..........have my favorite character in a different shade. jesus fucking christ.

And I'm only talking about racebending WHITE characters, mind, as there are a disproportionate amount of them and it wouldn't hurt if a few were.... not white. For example: musical fandom. stage musical is a different medium to movies. remakes of movies, even if they modernize and upgrade and cast poc into white roles, are still gonna have the same cast when you watch them over and over whereas you can watch 5 different shows of a musical and not get the same show twice unless it's a recording. you're gonna have actors and actresses of many ethnicities playing the same characters. heather duke was played by a white actress in the movie, an asian actress in the off-broadway musical, and lately she's usually black in west end. is that an issue? she's still the same character so to speak, but are all those iterations of heather duke not valid because they're not white republican shannen doherty? (granted, musical heather duke is a strange case because she's the ONLY character whose race is consistently changing but i digress)

make your own character, if I wanted an oc or a self-insert I'd write original fiction no one would read.

[rederiswrites]

Read this one. Read it carefully. Read it thoroughly. Yes, it's long. Take the time.

Heather Cox Richardson 

March 9, 2025 (Sunday)

Lately, political writers have called attention to the tendency of billionaire Elon Musk to refer to his political opponents as “NPCs.” This term comes from the gaming world and refers to a nonplayer character that follows a scripted path and cannot think or act on its own, and is there only to populate the world of the game for the actual players. Amanda Marcotte of Salon notes that Musk calls anyone with whom he disagrees an NPC, but that construction comes from the larger environment of the online right wing, whose members refer to anyone who opposes Donald Trump’s agenda as an NPC.

In The Cross Section, Paul Waldman notes that the point of the right wing’s dehumanization of political opponents is to dismiss the pain they are inflicting. If the majority of Americans are not really human, toying with their lives isn’t important—maybe it’s even LOL funny to pretend to take a chainsaw to the programs on which people depend. “We are ants, or even less,” Waldman writes, “bits of programming to be moved around at Elon’s whim. Only he and the people who aspire to be like him are actors, decision-makers, molding the world to conform to their bold interplanetary vision.”

Waldman correctly ties this division of the world into the actors and the supporting cast to the modern-day Republican Party’s longstanding attack on government programs. After World War II, large majorities of both parties believed that the government must work for ordinary Americans by regulating business, providing a basic social safety net like Social Security, promoting infrastructure projects like the interstate highway system, and protecting civil rights that guaranteed all Americans would be treated equally before the law. But a radical faction worked to undermine this “liberal consensus” by claiming that such a system was a form of socialism that would ultimately make the United States a communist state.

By 2012, Republicans were saying, as Representative Paul Ryan did in 2010, that “60 Percent of Americans are ‘takers,’ not ‘makers.’” In 2012, Ryan had been tapped as the Republican vice presidential candidate. As Waldman recalls, in that year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a group of rich donors that 47% of Americans would vote for a Democrat “no matter what.” They were moochers who “are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

As Waldman notes, Musk and his team of tech bros at the Department of Government Efficiency are not actually promoting efficiency: if they were, they would have brought auditors and would be working with the inspectors general that Trump fired and the Government Accountability Office that is already in place to streamline government. Rather than looking for efficiency, they are simply working to zero out the government that works for ordinary people, turning it instead to enabling them to consolidate wealth and power.

Today’s attempt to destroy a federal government that promotes stability, equality, and opportunity for all Americans is just the latest iteration of that impulse in the United States.

The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence took a revolutionary stand against monarchy, the idea that some people were better than others and had a right to rule. They asserted as “self-evident” that all people are created equal and that God and the laws of nature have given them certain fundamental rights. Those include—but are not limited to—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The role of government was to make sure people enjoyed these rights, they said, and thus a government is legitimate only if people consent to that government. For all that the founders excluded Indigenous Americans, Black colonists, and all women from their vision of government, the idea that the government should work for ordinary people rather than nobles and kings was revolutionary.

From the beginning, though, there were plenty of Americans who clung to the idea of human hierarchies in which a few superior men should rule the rest. They argued that the Constitution was designed simply to protect property and that as a few men accumulated wealth, they should run things. Permitting those without property to have a say in their government would allow them to demand that the government provide things that might infringe on the rights of property owners.

By the 1850s, elite southerners, whose fortunes rested on the production of raw materials by enslaved Black Americans, worked to take over the government and to get rid of the principles in the Declaration of Independence. As Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina put it: “I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson that ‘all men are born equal.’”

“We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration of Independence, that governments ‘derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,’” enslaver George Fitzhugh of Virginia wrote in 1857. “All governments must originate in force, and be continued by force.” There were 18,000 people in his county and only 1,200 could vote, he said, “[b]ut we twelve hundred…never asked and never intend to ask the consent of the sixteen thousand eight hundred whom we govern.”

Northerners, who had a mixed economy that needed educated workers and thus widely shared economic and political power, opposed the spread of the South’s hierarchical system. When Congress, under extraordinary pressure from the pro-southern administration, passed the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act that would permit enslavement to spread into the West and from there, working in concert with southern slave states, make enslavement national, northerners of all parties woke up to the looming loss of their democratic government.

A railroad lawyer from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, remembered how northerners were “thunderstruck and stunned; and we reeled and fell in utter confusion. But we rose each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach—a scythe—a pitchfork—a chopping axe, or a butcher’s cleaver” to push back against the rising oligarchy. And while they came from different parties, he said, they were “still Americans; no less devoted to the continued Union and prosperity of the country than heretofore.” Across the North, people came together in meetings to protest the Slave Power’s takeover of the government, and marched in parades to support political candidates who would stand against the elite enslavers.

Apologists for enslavement denigrated Black Americans and urged white voters not to see them as human. Lincoln, in contrast, urged Americans to come together to protect the Declaration of Independence. “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop?... If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!”

Northerners put Lincoln into the White House, and once in office, he reached back to the Declaration—written “four score and seven years ago”—and charged Americans to “resolve that…this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The victory of the United States in the Civil War ended the power of enslavers in the government, but new crises in the future would revive the conflict between the idea of equality and a nation in which a few should rule.

In the 1890s the rise of industry led to the concentration of wealth at the top of the economy, and once again, wealthy leaders began to abandon equality for the idea that some people were better than others. Steel baron Andrew Carnegie celebrated the “contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer,” for although industrialization created “castes,” it created “wonderful material development,” and “while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department.”

Those at the top were there because of their “special ability,” Carnegie wrote, and anyone seeking a fairer distribution of wealth was a “Socialist or Anarchist…attacking the foundation upon which civilization rests.” Instead, he said, society worked best when a few wealthy men ran the world, for “wealth, passing through the hands of the few, can be made a much more potent force for the elevation of our race than if it had been distributed in small sums to the people themselves.”

As industrialists gathered the power of the government into their own hands, people of all political parties once again came together to reclaim American democracy. Although Democrat Grover Cleveland was the first to complain that “[c]orporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters,” it was Republican Theodore Roosevelt who is now popularly associated with the development of a government that took power back for the people.

Roosevelt complained that the “absence of effective…restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.” Roosevelt ushered in the Progressive Era with government regulation of business to protect the ability of individuals to participate in American society as equals.

The rise of a global economy in the twentieth century repeated this pattern. After socialists took control of Russia in 1917, American men of property insisted that any restrictions on their control of resources or the government were a form of “Bolshevism.” But a worldwide depression in the 1930s brought voters of all parties in the U.S. behind President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal for the American people.”

He and the Democrats created a government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure in the 1930s. Then, after Black and Brown veterans coming home from World War II demanded equality, that New Deal government, under Democratic president Harry Truman and then under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower, worked to end racial and, later, gender hierarchies in American society.

That is the world that Elon Musk and Donald Trump are dismantling. They are destroying the government that works for all Americans in favor of using the government to concentrate their own wealth and power.

And, once again, Americans are protesting the idea that the role of government is not to protect equality and democracy, but rather to concentrate wealth and power at the top of society. Americans are turning out to demand Republican representatives stop the cuts to the government and, when those representatives refuse to hold town halls, are turning out by the thousands to talk to Democratic representatives.

Thousands of researchers and their supporters turned out across the country in more than 150 Stand Up for Science protests on Friday. On Saturday, International Women’s Day, 300 demonstrations were organized around the country to protest different administration policies. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is drawing crowds across the country with the "Fighting Oligarchy: Where We Go From Here” tour, on which he has been joined by Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers.

“Nobody voted for Elon Musk,” protestors chanted at a Tesla dealership in Manhattan yesterday in one of the many protests at the dealerships associated with Musk’s cars. “Oligarchs out, democracy in.”

[thatwolfarrow]

KOSA is soon to be voted on in senate. Here's why you should oppose it.

Through KOSA, the government will be able to control of topics they oppose on the internet under the guise of protecting children from disturbing/inappropriate content. This isn't just limited to most websites requiring age verification and/or parental controls, but the FTC can also demand websites to straight up remove content it deems inappropriate

And even though it's taken up the lion's share of noise, this won't just be limited to queer topics and reproductive subjects, but literally anything the current ruling party opposes.

Think about the multitudes of things that the modern republican party takes umbrage with that have nothing to do with queerness or abortion, or even the bipartisan response to current social movements: Criticizing Christianity, criticizing Christian teachings in public schools, sharing footage of and/or criticizing war crimes and atrocities committed by the US military or its allies (like Israel), teaching about the US' involvement in the Atlantic slave trade, the civil war, the struggles of black people in the Jim Crow era, the genocide and forced migration of the Native Americans, global warming and climate change, or even discussion on how capitalism has negatively impacted our lives broadly.

All of these subjects can be deemed as inappropriate for minors due to their violent, heavy, and/or contentious subject matter. As such, they can be outright censored through KOSA's "duty of care" under the justification of these subject feeding into mental health conditions such as anxiety or depression.

And I'm not being hyperbolic in my language here, because this exact line of logic has already been used to enact book bans, abortion bans, and gender affirming care bans at the state level and was also the basis for the push to ban "Critical race theory" from universities. The US government will use this bill to censor the internet, and if the republican party wins the presidency this November and they re-categorize the FTC to being a schedule F commission (As outlined in Project 2025), it'll be done under completely partisan motivations. DO NOT let the rhetoric of "protecting children" blind you to the true implications of this bill. If you care about free speech in this country, you should be firmly against it. EDIT: I initially assumed the bill had passed in the senate, but, as it was brought to my attention, the senate has thankfully only moved to cloture the initial debate on the bill. The bill still has yet to be voted on in the senate, but they're going to call a vote in the near future. And it'll also have to go through the house as well. In the meantime, you can still find and contact your senator through this website here: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm As well as your local representative through this website here: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

[eugenedebs1920]

I’ve said it before, I’ll probably have to say it again. Who doesn’t want to be fact checked? F*ckin liars! These claims by Elon musk, a South African immigrant and nationalized Canadian citizen, a man who’s wealth was inherited through his father’s exploitation of black South Africans in his jewel mines, not an inventor or engineer, not some genius businessman, potentially the most infamous and successful welfare queen in American history, who made billions on government subsidies for electric vehicles, a trust fund kid, spreading lies to mislead the American people.

It’s an absolute disgrace the way the right abuses our Constitution. They decry this anthem of free speech. Then use that privilege to deceive and lie. They tout the importance of the first amendment. Then molest it in the most inappropriate manner.

This is what I’m talking about when it comes to the Republican Party. They have no regard for what they pretend to hold dear. To them everything is just a means to an end. Honor, integrity, and truth be damned.

If one were to truly respect the first amendment they wouldn’t use it to spread falsities and mistruths. If one were to revere the Constitution they wouldn’t test the very limits of its meaning. If one truly loved their country, they wouldn’t attempt to transform it into something it’s not simply to form it to their agenda.

The most disheartening aspect is that we have become so polarized, so divided, that nearly half the population doesn’t give a damn regarding the manipulation and mistreatment of the documents, laws and norms that have guided this nation for centuries.

People like Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, Newt Gingrich, led to people like, Donald Trump, Elon musk, and Charlie Kirk, peddling lies or at best half truths. Poisoning American against American in a campaign of deception designed to divide and distract, creating the necessary conditions to enact their oppressive agenda.

Some are just pawns, talking heads in this conspiracy of division, others are the brainchild behind the plot. All betraying the United States in their relentless pursuit of wealth and power.

The vast majority of the American people are the victims in this contorted scheme laid out by those who hold no reverence to the core principles of this nation. Yet we act as the expendable soldiers, essential to its fruition, not realizing that the one way to overcome the barriers that shackle us to an existence of mediocrity and a modern form of indentured servitude lies in our united rising against the forces that bind us.

We will never truly be free, we will never live up to the potential granted to us, we will never know liberty until we understand that we can only obtain these fundamental truths when we relinquish the manufactured rift that separates us.

We were gifted with such possibility, squandered in the ongoing culture wars and animosity built to keep us down.

I don’t mean to be a pessimist but the notion of this unshackled prison break from the interests poised to benefit from our segregation appears nothing more than a pipe dream.

Yet if we could become self aware to the villains purposefully pinning us against one another and find that the similarities we have far outweigh the differences limelighted to make us perceive otherwise, all our lives would be exponentially more fulfilling and easy, and mutually beneficial.

I beg of my fellow Americans. Please comprehend that when hate, anger and malcontent are being promoted, stop and contemplate who seeks to benefit from this spread of animosity. When you are being coaxed to harbor distrust and malice against your American counterpart, who will reap the reward of your calloused, untrustworthy view which you were coerced into seeing. Then step back and reflect, does this media personality truly have mine and my country’s interest in mind? Does this person truly reflect the soul of the nation? Is my American counterpart that ideologically opposed to what I consider to be American values.

If you truly internalize it, and mull it over, the answer is we are more alike than we’re portrayed to be. That we have the same goals, hopes, and aspirations, not only personally, but for our nation as a whole.

We will never know freedom until we end the turmoil that enslaves us.

[stellar-constellations]

I HAVE A QUESTION!!! 🙋🏾‍♀️ So sine Andrew’s now living with reader and stuff is she gonna make hime dress like he’s from the 1950s as well? I’d just love to think of her taking Andrew shopping to match her own style 🌚

It’s actually something I’ve definitely thought about before, but after fleshing the reader out; I’d say no.

Reader sticks to the 1950’s style for a reason, one that will be disclosed in chapter 3 for Heart on the Market (which I promise is coming out THIS WEEK, long chapter too!), so I definitely won’t spoil that as there’s good reason.

But in short—and this isn’t the reason why reader dresses like 1950’s but it’s a factor of why I personally made her 1950’s— has a belief that dressing 1950’s represents purity, since societal expectations and etiquette for women back then in Western America was “praise God; be modest” kind of like Republican Motherhood (look up the definition, it has nothing to do with modern politics), while the 1950’s it was also in its rebellious phase of women with pin-up girls and clubbing since the Women’s Right Suffrage gave women confidence they could fight for more of their beliefs later on.

It’s funny, the 1950’s had two types of women; Miss Purity and Miss Sin, which is what I’d say Reader is a perfect combination of. Reader’s looks is Miss Purity, while her personality is Miss Sin.

But why she wouldn’t force Andrew into 1950’s clothes? As much as I’d kill to see Andrew in a white button-up and black suspenders (actually drooling about that mental image right now), she’s in a belief that Andrew wouldn’t really fit the narrative for 1950’s. He’s too… lethargic and brutally honest, while men back then were typically nice to your face and goal-driven. She doesn't like the belief of him ruining her own style with his crude personality (like she doesn’t have a crude one) and his inability to even put a normal outfit on that doesn’t consist of black.

Another reason is cause I already did a shopping scene in Star Patient and the Christmas Kinkmas special, so I don’t want my stories to feel repetitive too…

Thank you for the question, I love answering questions when I get them! Feel free to send me more, I also accept any story suggestions or plotlines for new series!

P.S. I’m sorry for getting sidetracked, I just love history and I blabber too much about it.

[sophieinwonderland]

tram-29 is proof you can't get MAGA voters to open their eyes. Pretty much everything they said has been proven false.

Victims of cancellation and censorship? Read "Politics v. science: How President Trump's war on science impacted Public health and environmental regulation"

Inflation and economy? Anyone who knows anything about tariffs know that they drive up prices and usually worsen the economy.

Politicians that only care about themselves? Which politicians are the ones to give tax cuts to the rich and cut things like medicare and public education again?

There are more, but this should be enough to drive home the point that MAGA voters are ignorant people living in an echo chamber of misinformation.

I'm not really sure what tram 29 is, but you did hit the nail on the head here.

Conservatives are living a post-fact world. They will accuse Democrats of spending too much when Obama dramatically reduced the deficit over the course of his presidency, and Bill Clinton left with a surplus that George Bush quickly ruined.

I wonder if most MAGA voters have heard that the Republican Senate recently passed a bill to uncap overdraft fees from banks. The Biden administration put a cap of $5 on overdraft fees. The average overdraft fee is about $35. The average, meaning that it could be $20, or it could be $50 depending on the bank.

These overdraft fees can also add up big time. If you get multiple charges on the same account, you can get multiple overdraft fees. You forget that something is planned to be taken out at the end of the month, and suddenly that $15 subscription you had is costing you $55, and then another subscription coming out at the same time can make that over $100.

These are fees that are designed to rob the poorest and most vulnerable people in the country.

Anybody who has ever had to deal with these types of bank fees stacking up while you are living paycheck to paycheck knows how awful it is to live with.

52 Republican senators voted to let banks keep doing that to their constituents, to their voters. Because they don't care about them. They don't care about the people who are poor. They don't care about people who are working to make a living while big businesses are robbing them blind.

And before anybody thinks that this was somehow to protect small businesses. That maybe the Republican senators who voted for your overdraft fees to go up are just trying to protect your local banks that are starting up... The fee limit only even applied to companies that already have more than ten billion dollars in assets.

The goal of the Republican party is to make people into wage slaves for big corporations, and to keep them that way. The problem is that the modern Republican voter seem more than happy to go along with it! Even if it hurts them. Even if it hurts their friends or family.

They will endure any amount of pain and suffering inflicted on them by the people they elect as long as the people they elect promise to hurt other people more. Whether those be trans people, black people, immigrants, or whatever other group they want to make into their scapegoat.

As long as the Republicans in office keep promising to hurt their constituents slightly less than they are hurting marginalized people, then it feeds into the superiority complex of the Republican voters.

Because Republicans don't want to make the country more prosperous as a whole. They really just want to be relatively more prosperous than other groups.

They will be fine with losing money as long as they believe that immigrants and queer people and women are losing more money than they are. They will be fine with giving up freedoms as long as they believe that marginalized communities are losing more freedom than they are. And as their defense of police violence proves, they will be okay with Americans dying as long as they believe that the deaths are mostly from people of color.

Republican voters will be more than happy to let their politicians cut off their feet as long as they believe that the other guys are getting their legs chopped off from the knees.

[mariacallous]

Lame-duck periods are meant to be inconsequential, but on Thursday afternoon at the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden got a chance to present one of the most important breakthroughs of his time in office. In what was the largest U.S.-Russia prisoner swap since the Cold War, involving at least seven countries over a period of months, a total of 24 people moved across borders as pawns in a game of global 3D chess.

Eight Russians are returning home in exchange for a combination of 16 Americans, Germans, and Russians. Within an hour of confirmation that U.S. prisoners were safely out of Russia, Biden assembled family members of the freed Americans at the White House and addressed a gathering of journalists. As he looked into the cameras, he no doubt knew that he was being closely watched by his counterparts in Beijing and Moscow, by millions of people around the world, and by history.

Even in his moment of triumph, Biden found a way to focus on the human reality of the moment. He singled out Miriam, the daughter of the released Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. It was one day until her 13th birthday, and Biden put an arm around Miriam, leading a chorus of the world’s most popular song. The joy was obviously precipitated by a major international development, but it was also the day a teenage girl would see her mother again after more than nine months in prison, convicted for the crime of writing about Russia’s army.

There’s a long list of prominent names involved in Thursday’s prisoner swap, including Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter sentenced to 16 years in prison under false claims of conducting espionage, and Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who was in Russia for a friend’s wedding and accused, again, of espionage. There were German citizens and even Russians, including Oleg Orlov, a human rights defender and co-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group Memorial, in prison for speaking his mind about his country’s war in Ukraine.

Journalists, tourists, and activists went one way in the prisoner exchange; on the other side was Vadim Krasikov, a former colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Service serving a life sentence in a German prison for a hit on a former Chechen fighter, conducted in broad daylight in Berlin. Others included a Russian citizen involved in international money laundering, a hacker, a credit card fraudster, and an actual spy.

The historic exchange instantly evokes imagery from the Cold War, when such transfers of prisoners were more common. But rather than the historical parallels, it is the contrasts drawn by Thursday’s events that will be remembered. There was Washington, fighting for the freedom of not only its own citizens but also Russians who dared to criticize their own government, and in stark relief there was Moscow, openly trading journalists for criminals and Nobel winners for fraudsters. The Kremlin has gleefully applauded knocks to U.S. soft power, from the misadventure of the Iraq War to the botched U.S. departure from Afghanistan in 2021, but the symbolism of the moment will have not been lost on Russian President Vladimir Putin: This exchange isn’t a great look for him. And even though Biden’s claims of a grand battle between democracies and autocracies are often criticized for being too black and white for the modern multipolar world, the lame-duck president now has a moment to mark his favorite reference in the history books.

It’s an election year in the United States, so contrasts will also be drawn around the alternate visions of Washington’s role in the world—currently being debated by surrogates for the Democratic and Republican campaigns. Former U.S. President Donald Trump has long argued for a more transactional approach to geopolitics. In such a world, there are two players—one is a winner, the other a loser. The Trump worldview prioritizes singular might over alliances; values don’t matter as much as the value of the hand of cards a player is clutching to their chest. Biden, while careful to focus on the humanity and history of the moment, couldn’t resist pointing out the difference: “For anyone who questions whether allies matter, they do.” He was referring in particular to the role of Germany, which had reportedly been reluctant to give up Krasikov. Biden personally spoke with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in January and February, arguing the importance of the prisoner exchange.

Speaking a short while later to reporters, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan built on his boss’s message as he detailed the roles played by Germany, Turkey, and others in the prisoner swap. “There is no more powerful example of the importance and power of allies,” he said. “This was vintage Joe Biden.”

Supporters of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris are also pointing out her role, visiting the Munich Security Conference a few times as vice president and building relations with German and European leaders.

Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, was quick to offer an alternative view: “We have to ask ourselves, why are they coming home? And I think it’s because bad guys all over the world recognize Donald Trump’s about to be back in office, so they’re cleaning house. That’s a good thing.”

And so the race for the White House rolls on, with both sides seeking to score points and spin their version of events. Thursday will be a historic study in contrasts—between Washington and Moscow and between rules and impunity. It will also be a moment that could play a part in an American referendum on Washington’s role in the world and whether the electorate favors the slow, painstaking diplomacy of Biden or the instant gratification and drama of Trump’s dealmaking.

[hero-israel]

More receipts of Pro Palestine being racist:

https://x.com/afrosabi/status/1824067188510130301 (Pro Pal accusing Black and Jewish people of making up the anti-Black history of the watermelon in America to discredit Palestine)

https://x.com/Sarahmango23/status/1823472916169707549 (Pro Pals accusing Black people of being racist for saying 'watermelon people', despite the fact that Black people told them from the beginning the symbol was racist against Black people and Pro Pals had told them to fuck off)

https://x.com/mistergeezy/status/1823828863220375622 (Another Arab being racist)

https://x.com/PettyLupone/status/1823777446594011530 (Targeting Black women specifically about "supporting genocide")

https://x.com/Datelinefam/status/1824046702493311347 (Black woman clapping back on an Arab thinking it's on Black women to fix I/P)

https://x.com/zackoryk/status/1823561655613067712 (Another Black woman clapping back on Pro Pal racism)

https://x.com/SashaBeauIoux/status/1823700014746546201 (Gay Black man calling out Pro Pals for demanding Black people give up their vote "for Palestine")

Bonus receipt:

https://x.com/rockera_bella/status/1823847606738673738 (Receipts on Arab Americans being reliable Republican voters despite them pretending to be Democrats)

Any member of Pro Palestine that's pretending this is a "psyop" (because of course they're already saying it's "the Jews" trying to sow discord), I can do this all day. 10 months worth of receipts if they want to go hard.

Pro Palestine is racist.

In 2000, 72% of Arab-Americans in Michigan voted Republican. Trump scrambled things (apparently not enough since clearly many are fine undermining Harris) but the concept of "shared struggle" is a complete lie from the start.

While I'm here, for over a century the U.S. legally categorized Arab-Americans as white. A few months ago Joe Biden invented the new census category of "Middle Eastern" - to include them and also to include Israelis. Couple that with Trump adding coverage of Jews as an ethnic group under the Civil Rights Act, and we can fairly state that there has never been a time in modern American history where by legal stricture Jewish Americans were "white" and at the same time Arab Americans were "people of color" or something like that. We have always been grouped the same as them; the strident colorist categorization is based purely on hate.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jonathan Cohn at HuffPost:

Election Day is Tuesday. And while plenty of politicos and pundits are out there predicting what will happen, the reality is that … nobody knows. The polls are super close, nationally and in the swing states. Forecasting models see the race as a coin flip. But you can spot some clear storylines that say a lot about how the two presidential campaigns have unfolded so far, and that might even help explain the outcome after the fact. One of those storylines is the determination and enthusiasm of women who back Democrat Kamala Harris, including women who might be afraid to say so publicly because their husbands support Republican Donald Trump.

I first heard about this last week, in Michigan, while covering a campaign event for Democratic Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin. Slotkin said canvassers were reporting stops at houses with large Trump signs, where women would answer and ― when asked which candidate they were supporting ― would quietly point to a photo of Harris on the canvassers’ campaign literature. [...]

And though the movement appears to have started on its own and spread over social media, lately the underlying sentiment has been getting high-profile support from figures like former first lady Michelle Obama, who in a recent Harris campaign appearance said, “If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter.” Are there enough hidden votes to change who wins a state? Probably not. But the emotional fuel for it, the determination of so many women to elect Harris over Trump, absolutely could prove decisive. If that happens, it would be one of the more ironic twists in modern political history ― and one of the more fitting ones, too ― because a campaign pitting men against women is exactly the campaign Trump and his advisers wanted.

The Boys vs. Girls Election

It’s no secret that this year’s gender gap is shaping up to be the largest in memory, with polls showing men favoring Trump by double digits, and women favoring Harris by a similar margin. In many ways, that gap was preordained not because of who’s on the ballot, but what’s at stake ― the future of reproductive freedom, and one side that’s actively pushing to regress back toward restrictive gender roles and limited rights. But instead of trying to counter that, Trump has leaned in. On the eve of this summer’s Republican National Convention, even before President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and Harris became their party’s nominee, Trump campaign officials boasted about how they were hoping to create what Axios called a “boys vs. girls election,” with ”Donald Trump’s chest-beating macho appeals vs. Joe Biden’s softer, reproductive-rights-dominated, all-gender inclusivity.”

So powerful was this appeal, Trump’s campaign managers told The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta, that Trump would manage to peel off some of the Black and Hispanic men who would traditionally vote Democratic, enough to offset losses among women. “For every Karen we lose, we’re going to win a Jamal and an Enrique,” one Trump ally had previously told Alberta. The Trump campaign has unfolded just as his team promised ― which helps explain why, for example, Trump has spent the final weeks before the election appearing alongside former Fox News host Tucker Carlson (who recently suggested that the country needed Trump to be a “dad” who would deliver a “spanking”) while sidelining former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (who has been popular with independent female voters). And the strategy may very well work. Polls have shown Harris struggling to hit the margins among Black and (especially) Hispanic men that previous Democrats have.

But the Trump gambit depends on winning over more men faster than he alienates women. And that’s hardly a safe bet. In just the last few years, the gender gap has been increasing at a faster pace than before, as my colleague Lilli Petersen explained recently.

[...]

The Backlash And Its Potential

How is this all shaking out?

Overall, according to a recent Politico analysis, women are accounting for 55% of the early vote across battleground states. And in Pennsylvania, a state that many strategists consider the most important for each candidate, data suggests that early voting includes a relatively high proportion of Democratic women who did not vote there in 2020. Early voting is a notoriously unreliable predictor of outcomes, for the simple reason that the data about who is voting doesn’t say that much about how they are voting, especially in an environment without solid baselines for comparison. Early voting did not become particularly widespread until 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and with Trump advising his supporters not to vote by mail. (This year, he’s generally encouraged them to vote early if they can.) But women are a larger proportion of the population and, historically, they have voted at higher rates too. Last month, political scientist and Brookings senior fellow Elaine Kamarck ran the numbers on different scenarios to see what would happen if women came out to vote in the same proportion as in 2020, given the latest polling numbers available. She found Harris would win Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — enough to win the election.

Donald Trump got his wish of this election being fought on gender roles and reproductive freedom... but it won't turn out like how he wanted it to go.

Read the full story at HuffPost.

[worstuspresidentbracket]

Quick Facts: 31st President Herbert Hoover (1929-1933)

Hoover is largely remembered for failing to do anything during the Great Depression. Despite warnings of the stock market bubble, the farm crisis, and growing income inequality, Hoover was a 'small government' Republican reluctant to regulate banks. He opposed congressional proposals to provide federal relief to the unemployed, believing that was the job of state and local governments or philanthropic organizations.

Hoover's record with racial minorities was likewise poor. While he did appoint a lot (for the time) of Black people to federal positions, he also removed them from leadership in the Republican Party. He refused to push for a much-needed federal anti-lynching law. Rather than decreasing the incredibly high unemployment rate by creating federal jobs, he scapegoated Mexicans. He did this first by cutting immigration and then later by 'repatriating' about one million to Mexico. Over half were US citizens who had been born in the United States. This meets the modern legal definition of ethnic cleansing.

If you've ever heard about the US political party 'swap', this is where it happened--the poor and racial minorities who before had made the base of the Republic party switched to support FDR in the 1932 election.

Hoover's actions outside of his Presidency were altogether more helpful. Before, he headed relief for Belgium after World War I and many countries in Central and Eastern Europe. He successfully led the federal response to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and was influential in the development of radio. After his term, he helped provide relief for Poland, Finland, and post-WWII West Germany. For his actions throughout his life providing relief to foreign nations, Historian Richard Pipes said "Many statesmen occupy a prominent place in history for having sent millions to their death; Herbert Hoover, maligned for his performance as President, and soon forgotten in Russia, has the rare distinction of having saved millions."

[themattress]

The 20 most consequential events in modern US History that led us to the Trump Era:

The Cold War - How international politics played out changed during this conflict.

McCarthyism - The "Red Scare" that began pitting Americans against Americans.

JFK's assassination - No more durably popular Presidents + rise in conspiracy thinking.

The Civil Rights movement - Black people fighting to end segregation and achieve equality.

The Vietnam War - A botched overseas operation that put Americans off foreign wars.

Nixon and the Southern Strategy - Moved racists to the Republican Party.

Watergate - Shattered Americans' trust in government + emboldened media sensationalism.

The 1970s in general - A time of chaos, hardship, and low national morale.

Reaganomics - Created a gap of income equality + fueled corporate greed.

Iran-Contra Affair - Fueled Americans' distrust in government and aversion to foreign wars.

Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution - Increase in unprincipled, combative Republicans.

Bill Clinton's Scandals - Created a media divide based around bias toward either parties.

Bush vs. Gore - A super-close election that fueled partisanship between the two parties.

9/11 - Increase in fear for security + brief national unity that partisans viciously squandered.

The Iraq War - Reignited distrust in government + aversions to foreign wars.

The Great Recession - Brought division between classes to a fever pitch.

Barack Obama's Election - Unleashed anti-Black racism from the Republican base.

The Tea Party movement - The Republican Party begins explicitly catering to their base.

The Birther conspiracy - Trump gets involved in Republican politics and feuds with Obama.

Barack Obama's Re-Election - Cements Trump's decision to run for President in 2016.

If any given number of these things, especially in the latter half of the list, had gone down differently, we could be living in a different moment; in a better country. Alas, here we are.

[misfitwashere]

December 16, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 17

Today, President Joe Biden designated a new national monument in honor of Frances Perkins, secretary of labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The first female Cabinet secretary, Perkins served for twelve years. She took the job only after getting FDR to sign on to her goals: unemployment insurance, health insurance, old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and abolition of child labor. She later recalled: “I remember he looked so startled, and he said, ‘Well, do you think it can be done?’”

She promised to find out.

Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration’s massive investment in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend $3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than a million people in 1934.

In 1935, FDR signed into law the Social Security Act that she designed and negotiated, providing ordinary Americans with unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services.

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and maximum hours. It banned child labor.

The one area where Perkins fell short of her goals was in establishing public healthcare. It was not until 2010 that President Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act.

Perkins’s work to build FDR’s New Deal sparked the modern American state.

Before Perkins, the primary function of the federal government was to manage the economic relationships between labor, capital, and resources. Property rights, after all, had been the basis on which North American colonists had found the justification to rebel against the British crown, and that focus on the relationships inherent in property ownership had continued to dominate the government American lawmakers built.

But Perkins recognized that the central purpose of government was not to protect property; it was to protect the communities of people who lived in the nation. She recognized that children, the elderly, women, and disabled Americans, all of whom contributed to society whether or not that contribution was recognized with a paycheck, were as valuable to the survival of a community as male workers and the wealthy men who employed them.

“The people are what matter to government,” she said, “and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life.”

A majority of Americans of both parties liked the new system, but the reworking of the government shocked those who had previously dominated the country. As soon as the Social Security Act passed, opponents set out to destroy it along with the rest of the new system. A coalition of Republican businessmen who hated both business regulation and the taxes that paid for social programs, racists who opposed the idea of equal rights for racial and ethnic minorities, and religious traditionalists—especially Southern Baptists—who opposed the recognition of women’s equal rights, joined together to fight against the New Deal.

Their undermining of Perkins’s vision got little traction when they were attacking business regulation and taxes to support social services. Voters liked those things. But it began to attract supporters after 1954, when the Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision requiring the desegregation of public schools. That decision enabled those opposed to the New Deal to harness racism to their cause, warning American voters that a government that protected everyone would mean a government that used tax dollars paid by white Americans to benefit Black Americans.

Religious traditionalists’ role in undermining the New Deal grew in the 1970s. The new system dramatically expanded women’s rights, and when President Richard Nixon’s people worried he would lose reelection in 1972, they quite deliberately used the issue of abortion to claim that “women’s liberation” was destroying the family structure that religious traditionalists believed mirrored God’s relationship to his human flock.

By 1979, religious traditionalists had rejected the modern move toward women’s rights and made common cause with Republicans eager to derail the New Deal. In 1980 the support of those traditionalists put Republican president Ronald Reagan into the White House. Their influence grew in the 1990s as white evangelicals became the base of the Republican Party. By 2016 they had brought into the Republican Party a determination to reinstate a male-dominated, patriarchal world that resurrected the government Frances Perkins’s vision had replaced.

That impulse has grown until now, in 2024, attacks on women have become central to the destruction of the kind of government Frances Perkins helped to establish during the New Deal. Religious extremists in the Republican Party have in some states reduced or prevented women’s access to healthcare and are talking about taking away women’s right to vote, and the party itself has downgraded the role of women in society. When House Republicans released a list of their committee leaders for the next Congress last Thursday, there were no women on it. For the first time in 20 years, no House committees will be chaired by women.

“Very fitting in the MAGA Era—No Women Need Apply,” former Republican representative from Virginia Barbara Comstock posted on X.

In his term in office, President Biden has worked to reclaim Frances Perkins’s vision of a government that works for all Americans. When he took office, he promised to have a Cabinet that “looks like America,” and he created the most diverse Cabinet in American history. And he has emphasized women’s equality. In March 2024 he signed an executive order noting that, since women’s roles in American history have often been overlooked, it is imperative that we recognize the women and girls who have shaped the nation.

The creation today of the Frances Perkins National Monument tied together Perkins’s expansion of the government and the centrality of women to the American story. The event took place in the Frances Perkins Building, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., where acting secretary of labor Julie Su noted that Biden has been “the most pro-worker, pro-union president in history,” protecting pensions, defending unions, creating good jobs, and unapologetically wielding the power of the presidency on behalf of working people.

Su inducted the president into the Labor Department’s Hall of Honor, and Biden responded with the observation that “the American people are beginning to figure out all we’re doing is what’s basically decent and fair—just basically decent and fair.”

Then Biden spoke about Perkins and her work. He described how his administration has defended, protected, and expanded her vision. He reiterated that women have always been vital to the United States and insisted that they must be acknowledged both in our current society and in the way we remember our history.

As part of the day’s events, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced the establishment of five new National Historic Landmarks recognizing women’s history: the Charleston Cigar Factory in Charleston, South Carolina, where in 1945–1946, Black women led a strike that prompted the organization of southern workers; the Furies Collective, the Washington, D.C., home of a lesbian, feminist publishing group in the early 1970s; the Washington, D.C., Slowe-Burrill House, home of Black lesbian educators Lucy Diggs Slowe and Mary Burrill in the early twentieth century; Azurest South in Petersburg, Virginia, the home and studio of early twentieth century Black architect Amaza Lee Meredith; and the Peter Hurd and Henriette Wyeth House and Studios in San Patricio, New Mexico, where the two painted in the twentieth century.

In establishing the 57-acre family farm of Frances Perkins on the Damariscotta River in Newcastle, Maine, as a National Monument today, Biden acknowledged both the importance of Perkins’s New Deal vision of a government that benefits everyone and the centrality of women’s equality to that vision.

—