#our democracy is on the line

[what-even-is-thiss]

I’ve seen people ask why democrats are getting endorsements from conservative republicans during this election. “Who is this for?” they ask.

It’s for the conservative independent/unaffiliated voters. People like my grandfather. And frankly I welcome endorsements from republicans in this election even if I hate the guts of the individual politician.

The enemy in this election is fascism. And not fascism like how some people use it to refer to everything they don’t like. Fascism is something very specific and the maga people are fascist.

You don’t have to like someone to have the same enemies as them. And right now everyone who isn’t maga and is against fascism has the same enemy whether they realize it or not.

It is important that we have conservatives saying “that guy is anti-democracy and we need to protect our democracy”

Do I like Liz Cheney? Hell no. I think she sucks. But she has influence in certain circles that are hard to reach for basically anyone left of center or even a bit right of center.

Avoid your pearl clutching about people getting endorsed by republicans right now. The fact that even hard line republicans can see that our democracy is under attack should both give you hope and show you just how bad this is.

Vote if you’re registered. And if you’re not, see if same day registration is available in your state.

[benjjedi]

I know a lot of people think Biden is just as bad as Trump (some might think he's worse), but if there's one thing I don't want, it's to see Trump (who I know is a thousand times hell-of-a-lot worse as a leader than Biden could be) reclaim the Oval Office. Because if he does, he'll make life a whole lot more unbearable for women, the working class, the LGBTQIA community and anybody who opposes him in general and nobody would be able to do jack about it. So if you don't want that kind of reality, I encourage you to vote blue up and down the ballot, no matter whose name is on it. If you haven't registered to vote yet, I encourage you to do that too. A lot of us might not like it, but voting for Joe Biden is our best bet to defeating the human cheeto and his Project 2025 scheme. Yes, voting third party is an option, but like the OP I'm reblogging this from similarly said, the third-party candidates don't have a snowball's chance in Hell. Plus, any third party vote gives Trump an even bigger chance of winning the election. Do NOT give him that chance! Vote Blue!

Trump isn't guaranteed to win this year's presidential election because he's been shot at. In 2020, Trump supporters voted in heavy numbers, but guess what? They still lost because we outvoted them. 

Do I want to vote for Biden? No, but I will since no third-party candidate has a winning chance, and I don't want Trump to be president again. Unless y'all are gonna overthrow the American political system and government, we need to vote.

It's normal to be terrified about this presidential election, but don't allow it to stop you from voting and trying to stop that orange fucker from returning to office.

[carladuquette]

European elections are on Sunday, June 9 🇪🇺

And for the first time, 16- and 17-year-olds get to have a say!

If you are

- 16, in Austria, Belgium, Germany or Malta

- 17, in Greece

you can vote in this election.

AND YOU SHOULD!

European elections might sound boring, complicated, less sexy than your average national elections. But they matter greatly.

Since the establishment of the EU, this previously volatile region has not seen war. We are stronger and better together 🫶 But our peaceful life together doesn’t run on autopilot. Right-wing populists across the EU are spreading hatred, trying to draw lines between “us” and “them.”

DON’T LET THEM WIN.

Democracy and the EU we have right now depend on all of us to get involved. So make your voice heard. Vote in the EU election on Sunday, June 9. In some countries (for example in Germany), you are already able to vote now, via mail-in ballot or by going to your city’s election office. Whichever way you do it…

GO VOTE!

You get to brag about it here afterwards (and, you know, get to keep living in a democratic society 🙂)

[wilwheaton]

Donald Trump threatens the entire existence of the American republic. He is able to do this because the Supreme Court he created is assisting him in doing so. It is a corrupt Court – on which more later. It overturned a central right for half of our population. It routinely mixes and matches rationales, jurisprudences, logics to arrive at the end point of transforming America into their extremist vision. We’ve heard that yesterday’s decision was a terrible decision, an extremist decision, that it changes the American experiment fundamentally. No disagreement with any of those points. Most importantly, in my mind, it’s a fake decision. Yes, it will now be controlling within the federal courts. But it doesn’t change the constitution any more than a foreign army occupying New England would make Massachusetts no longer part of the United States. That may seem like a jarring analogy. But it’s the only kind that allows us to properly view and react to this Supreme Court.

The rationale for the decision yesterday has literally no basis whatsoever in the US constitution.

Josh Marshall is correct, but I don’t think it matters. This corrupt, activist, fascist SCOTUS does not care. The majority has decided that the Constitution, 250 years of precedent, popular opinion, and the foundational ideas that have made America what it is since 1787 are what they say they are.

I live in a country of three hundred and forty million people.

In this country, six unelected christian nationalists, five of whom were placed on the court by presidents who lost the popular vote, who are opposed by SEVENTY PERCENT of the population, are making up laws out of whole cloth because their power is unchecked. A country that allows this to impose their regressive authoritarianism on that entire population is not a free country. It is not a Democracy.

America has not been attacked like this since 9/11. Six unelected people forcing their christian nationalist agenda on a population of three hundred and forty million is not a Democracy. It is tyranny.

Everyone is missing the central message of yesterday’s ruling: SCOTUS is going to install Trump as dictator for life, by any means necessary. Somehow, after he loses the popular vote again, and after he’s even lost the Electoral College again, these six Fascists will invent a reason to overturn the will of the electorate, again. Every single one of their rulings this term have been part of their coup. Now, just line them all up and connect the dots.

We are four months away from the likely end of what passes for freedom in America, and once it’s gone, it’s not coming back in my lifetime.

[femmedplume]

“As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so.” They are not reporting that [Joe Biden] is a loser; they are making him one.

Iam not usually one to offer diagnoses of people I’ve never met, but it does seem like the pundit class of the American media is suffering from severe memory loss. Because they’re doing exactly what they did in the 2016 presidential race – providing wildly asymmetrical and inflammatory coverage of the one candidate running against Donald J Trump.

They have become a stampeding herd producing an avalanche of stories suggesting Biden is unfit, will lose and should go away, at a point in the campaign in which replacing him would likely be somewhere between extremely difficult and utterly catastrophic. They do this while ignoring something every scholar and critic of journalism knows well and every journalist should. As Nikole Hannah-Jones put it: “As media we consistently proclaim that we are just reporting the news when in fact we are driving it. What we cover, how we cover it, determines often what Americans think is important and how they perceive these issues yet we keep pretending it’s not so.” They are not reporting that he is a loser; they are making him one.

According to one journalist’s tally, the New York Times has run 192 stories on the subject since the debate, including 50 editorials and 142 news stories. The Washington Post, which has also gone for saturation coverage, published a resignation speech they wrote for him. Not to be outdone, the New Yorker’s editor-in-chief declared that Biden not going away “would be an act not only of self-delusion but of national endangerment” and had a staff writer suggest that Democrats should use the never-before-deployed 25th amendment.

Since this would have to be led by Vice-President Kamala Harris, it would be a sort of insider coup. And so it goes with what appears to be a journalistic competition to outdo each other in the aggressiveness of the attacks and the unreality of the proposals. It’s a dogpile and a panic, and there is no one more unable to understand their own emotional life, biases and motives than people who are utterly convinced of their own ironclad rationality and objectivity, AKA most of these pundits.

Speaking of coups, we’ve had a couple of late, which perhaps merit attention as we consider who is unfit to hold office. This time around, Trump is not just a celebrity with a lot of sexual assault allegations, bankruptcies and loopily malicious statements, as he was in 2016. He’s a convicted criminal who orchestrated a coup attempt to steal an election both through backroom corruption and public lies and through a violent attack on Congress. The extremist US supreme court justices he selected during his last presidential term themselves staged a coup this very Monday, overthrowing the US constitution itself and the principle that no one is above the law to make presidents into kings, just after legalizing bribery of officials, and dismantling the regulatory state by throwing out the Chevron deference.

Trump’s own former staffers are part of the Heritage Foundation’s team planning to implement Project 25 if he wins, which would finish off our system of government with yet another coup. “We are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be,” said the foundation’s president the other day. This alarms me. So does the behavior of the US mainstream media, which seems more concerned with sabotaging the only thing standing between us and this third coup.

“Why aren’t we talking about Trump’s fascism?” demands the headline of Jeet Heer’s piece in the Nation, to which the answer might be a piece by the Nation’s own editor-in-chief titled “Biden’s patriotic duty” that proposes his duty is to get lost. Sometimes I wonder if all this coverage is because the media knows how to cover a normal problem like a sub-par candidate; they don’t know how to cover something as abnormal and unprecedented as the end of the republic. So for the most part they don’t.

Biden is old. He was one kind of appalling in the 27 June debate, listless and sometimes stumbling and muddling his words. But Trump was another kind of appalling, in that almost everything he said was an outrageous lie and some of it was a threat. I get that writing about the monstrosity that is Trump faces the problem that it’s not news; he’s been a monster spouting lurid nonsense all his life (but his political crimes are recent, and his free-associating public soliloquies on sharks, batteries, toilets, water flow and Hannibal Lector, among other topics, are genuinely demented). He’s a racist, a fascist and a rapist (according to a civil-court verdict).

We are deciding whether this nation has a future as a more-or-less democratic republic this November, and on that rides the fate of the earth when it comes to acting on climate change. If the US falters at this decisive moment in the climate crisis, it will drag down everyone else’s efforts. Under Trump, it will. But the shocking supreme court decisions this summer and the looming threat of authoritarianism have gotten little ink and air, compared to the hue and cry about Biden’s competence.

Few seem to remember that Biden’s age and his verbal gaffes were an issue in the 2020 campaign. Biden is a lifelong stutterer, and the effort to keep his words on track means that he operates under an extra burden with every unscripted answer he gives, particularly under pressure (though he had a long, easygoing conversation with Howard Stern a couple of months ago, in which he discusses his stuttering at about the 1:13 mark).

Some speech pathologists have suggested he may (not does, just may) have a disorder that sometimes accompanies stuttering, called cluttering, which is not an intellectual deficiency but a sometimes hectic and disorderly translation of thoughts into words. In recent months, actual gerontologists have said in print that Biden appears to have normal signs of aging, not signs of dementia. Nevertheless, the amateur armchair diagnosticians have been out in packs, and their confidence in their ability to diagnose from watching TV is itself an alarming delusion. I am not giving Biden a clean bill of health; I’m saying that I don’t have a basis to render a verdict (and neither do the august editors of large publications).

Few seem to remember that Biden’s age and his verbal gaffes were an issue in the 2020 campaign

Although the Biden administration seems to have run extremely well for three and a half years, with a strong cabinet, few scandals and little turnover, a thriving economy and some major legislative accomplishments, the narrative the punditocracy has created suggest we should ignore this record and decide on the basis of the 90-minute debate and reference to newly surfaced swarms of anonymous sources that Biden is incompetent. Quite a lot of them have been running magical-realism fantasy-football scenarios in which it is fun and easy to swap in your favorite substitute candidate. The reality is that it is hard and quite likely to be a terrible mess. Nevertheless, this pretense is supposed to mean that telling a presidential candidate in mid-campaign to get lost is fine.

The main argument against Biden is not that he can’t govern – that would be hard to make given that he seems to have done so for the past years – but that he can’t win the election. But candidates do not win elections by themselves. Elections are won, to state the obvious, by how the electorate turns out and votes. The electorate votes based on how they understand the situation and evaluate the candidates. That is, of course, in large part shaped by the media, as Hannah-Jones points out, and the media is right now campaigning hard for a Democratic party loss. The other term for that is a Republican victory. Few things have terrified and horrified me the way this does.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

[reasonsforhope]

Article

"The Democratic Party largely coalesced around Vice President Harris as its likely new presidential nominee on Monday [July 22, 2024], as she kicked off her campaign by promising to prosecute a forceful case against Republican nominee Donald Trump and defend the legacy of President Biden.

Hours after she delivered remarks laying out some of the themes of her campaign, Harris secured pledges of support from a majority of Democratic National Convention delegates, a forceful show of unity behind her presidential campaign that signals she is likely to officially become the party’s nominee next month.

“Over the next 106 days, we are going to take our case to the American people, and we are going to win,” Harris said during a visit to campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., where she was greeted by a group of energized staffers for Biden’s now-abandoned candidacy. Harris accused Trump of wanting to “take our country backwards to a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights.” She added, “we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.”

Biden dialed into the impromptu meeting, using his first public remarks after dropping out of the presidential race Sunday to thank his staff and ask them to support Harris with “every bit of your heart and soul.”

“The name has changed at the top of the ticket, but the mission hasn’t changed at all,” said Biden, who joined remotely from Rehoboth Beach, where he has been recovering from a case of covid. “We still need to save this democracy. Trump is still a danger to the community. He’s a danger to the nation.”

The high-energy, highly unified setting reflected the broader sentiment across the Democratic Party, in which Harris’s swift ascendancy has upended an already tumultuous and unpredictable presidential race. After being exhausted by weeks of turmoil and infighting over Biden’s prospects, relieved and newly energized Democrats across the country rushed to embrace Harris’s candidacy and unite around the goal of defeating Trump.

Less than 36 hours after Biden abruptly exited the race and endorsed Harris as his successor, hundreds of state delegates, the majority of Democratic lawmakers and governors, a group of state party chairs, and several influential interest groups threw their support behind Harris, as other potential candidates said they would not challenge her. Top congressional leaders followed suit, with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) expressing support for Harris on Monday.

While a small number of Democrats have advocated an open, competitive process, Harris appeared to have an inside track Monday to quickly securing the nomination ahead of the party’s convention next month...

After celebrating the extended infighting and discord that plagued Democrats in the aftermath of Biden’s halting performance at the June 27 debate, Trump’s allies watched Monday as Democratic leaders quickly fell in line behind Harris.

“I’m excited to fully endorse Vice President Harris for the next president of the United States,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. “The vice president is smart and strong, which will make her a good president, but she’s also kind and has empathy, which can make her a great president.” ...

Democratic Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Wes Moore of Maryland also endorsed Harris on Monday, joining a growing list of potential rivals for the nomination that instead opted to endorse her candidacy. Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, each considered potential candidates, both endorsed Harris on Sunday.

Democratic leaders on Monday unveiled a new virtual process for selecting a nominee to replace Biden that would conclude by Aug. 7, ahead of the nominating convention in Chicago next month. The dates for the virtual process will be announced on Wednesday.

The private doubts about Harris’s vulnerabilities and less-than-impressive polling numbers largely remained unspoken Monday as Democrats appeared eager to consolidate around a candidate and head off a messy competition for the nomination 106 days before the Nov. 5 election. During her visit to campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Harris was greeted by more than 100 staff members who gave her a standing ovation. The room was covered in newly printed signs that read “Harris for President,” though at least one lingering “Biden-Harris” sign stood as a testament to how rapidly the presidential race had shifted.

Campaign aides said more than 28,000 new volunteers had signed up to lend support, more than 100 times the typical number. Harris, who has been traveling around the country, planned to continue her campaign travel this week.

Trump had built an advantage in polls of key swing states and has at times appeared frustrated with Biden’s exit from the race, lamenting Sunday that he had to “start all over again” after long focusing on Biden...

Harris’s operation raised a record $81 million in the first 24 hours after Biden dropped out and endorsed his vice president, aides said. A group of tens of thousands of Black women gathered on a virtual call Sunday evening to showcase their support for Harris’s bid to become the first woman of color to be president...

Harris has already begun leaning into her background as a prosecutor and state attorney general as she began to cast the race against Trump in a new light.

“In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said. “Predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”"

-via The Washington Post, July 22, 2024

[sortagaysortahigh]

Operation Exemies to Lovers | Cregan Stark

A/N: Now yall know i have not written and finished a fic in a hot minute so sorry if this reads a bit wonky. Yk I'm an enemies to lovers and exes to lovers girl, so why not combine them both into a modern!cregan stark fic? Also, this is dialogue heavy as that's kind of my thing, if it's not yours, welpt keep scrolling boo I aint mad!. I also fixed the inc*st family tree so you'll see that in this as well (i'll prob keep it for future modern AUs). Anyways lmk what you think and enjoy! Also, I suck at summaries so I pull quotes from my fics, sorry not sorry pookies

Summary: “So y’know those sappy novels Hel’s always reading, anyways I asked her about them and she had one where the two main characters were like totally at ends with each other but their friends were like ‘nah they should be smashing’ so we think, based on our research and our scholarly source-Helaena, we should force them to be around each other until they finally talk it out! Or well, y’know-f*ck it out”

Warnings: cussing, spelling and grammar errors (sue me!), kissing, mentions of smut/allusions to smut but no smut, arguing, Alyssane Blackwood slander (sorry girl), somewhat mean!reader, this is an AU where Aegon's not a bad guy!!!! just a clown <3, mentions of an ill parent, Baela be hitting Aegon (he earned it!), Aemond is still missing an eye sorry to the Aemond girls

Word Count: 6.4k (period I stuck to keeping it short and sweet)

Modern!Cregan Stark x Fem!Reader

“He’s staring at you again” you scoffed, rolling your eyes, doing your best to focus on highlighting the passages about the few Westerosi Civil Wars that had happened centuries ago. It was already difficult enough to focus in the crowded library, midterms were killing everyone. 

It wasn’t a shock for the once quiet and almost empty library to be packed, especially with student athletes who were desperately catching up on their studies in attempts to pass all of their midterms, write endless essays, and practically beg their professors for extra credit via email. 

You should’ve been able to focus on the task at hand, studying with your best friends Baela and Rhaena for your upcoming history midterm, the exam itself would focus heavily on the several majors wars that shaped westerosi society as a whole, and would even include the transition from government leadership as a monarchy into a democracy. 

Hell you’d even have to describe what was once known as the ‘Iron Throne’ and its historical significance. Truthfully the large metal hunk of junk was now sitting in the King’s Landing Red Keep Memorial Museum.

Usually the library was the easiest place for the three of you to study, it wasn’t as loud as your fourth floor flat in one of the student apartment buildings off campus, it was usually pretty clean and well kept, plus every resource you could possibly need was somewhere within the large building. 

However today, your usually comfortable red leather-lined chair felt stiff and was making you hot, not to mention the lack of air flow and increased temperature due to the amount of body heat on each floor, then the lights were either too bright or too dim, and all you wanted to do was slam the books shut, grab your laptop and leave.

“Let him stare.” you muttered as you tried to keep your gaze on the text in front of you, however it was getting increasingly difficult as a very specific pair of eyes were practically burning a hole into your side. 

Gods, he was so obnoxious.

“I don’t think it’s healthy for you to hold onto the grudge against him, of course he totally earned it! I’m not downplaying your emotions but anytime he’s around you stiffen up like a virgin afraid of dick” your jaw dropped at Baela’s words, now staring at her, brows furrowed in shock.

“Baela! You can’t say things like that” Rhaena almost immediately swatted at her sister’s arm, shaking her head before tucking one of her loose locks behind her ear. “You really take after father sometimes.” 

Baela simply shrugged, glancing back at the two tables that were usually empty, now they were filled with six of the school’s hockey players, all spread apart with a plethora of books, laptops, pens, and notepads covering the tables. That’s also not counting all of their bags laying on the floor besides their chairs. 

“I get that you two broke up on not so good terms, but you should be showing him that you don’t care about him! Not that he makes you so angry you’re about to explode like a bomb in Mario Party”.

With that Baela turned her gaze back to her laptop, however at the sound of several texts chiming in at once to both Baela and Rhaena’s phones, you knew that their cousins had texted them once again. It made sense that they’d all shared a group chat, especially considering how close in age they were, and how large the Targaryen/Hightower/Velaryon family was. 

Of course the first time Baela had broken down their family tree you were incredibly confused. Her mother Laena Velaryon was married to Daemon Targaryen, who happened to be the uncle to her cousins Jace, Luke, and Joffrey’s mother Rhaenyra. 

Now, Rhaenyra was married to Dr. Strong (or just Harwin as he’d asked you to call him once at a family gathering you’d been invited to, to which you quickly declined as he was your Literature professor), but based on the Targaryen’s political status within Westeros, their sons took their mother’s last name, not their father. 

Then comes Aegon and Aemond, now truthfully you’d met Aegon your second week of classes a few years ago when he’d caught you off guard, asked for your number, then got mad when you’d ghosted him after finding out he had a girlfriend! (Shame on him, truly). But you actually ended up being pretty good friends with the goof. 

Anyways, Aegon and Aemond were the children of Rhaenyra’s best friend, and now sister-in-law Alicent Hightower who married Rhaenyra’s only brother Baelon Targaryen. 

It’s also important to remember that throughout this entire family tree, which was in fact drawn out on construction paper for you, Alicent and Baelon also had two other children, Daeron and Halaena, both of them attending Sunspear University together. Then of course Rhaenyra and Dr.Strong (Harwin), have two much smaller sons, Aegon and Viserys, which was even more confusing considering you’d already met an Aegon.

Rhaena and Baela shared a look, and it was a look that worried you, so of course instead of being rational and brushing it off, you clenched your jaw as you slowly turned around, making eye contact with none other than your ex-boyfriend who’d been leaning his head against his hand and staring at you with what could only be described as a mournful lovesick expression.

You rolled your eyes, quickly turning back around before anyone else would look at you and do something that would probably piss you off. 

It also didn’t help that the cousins texting Baela and Rhaena were also seated at the table with your ex boyfriend. 

“Jace said that Cregan wants to talk to you but you blocked him, I don’t think you want to know what Aegon said, but it involved an eggplant emoji and a bed” you rolled your eyes, letting out a deep sigh while sitting up straight and shaking your head.

“He’s apologized a million times and has yet to tell me why he decided to go out of his way to not only break things off with me and tell me he still loved me in the same damn sentence, then go out the same night and end up on Aegon-Aegon of all people’s instagram story sucking face with that Blackwood bitch while she was on his lap.” 

You let out a cynical laugh of sorts, rolling your eyes once again. 

“Tell Cregan Stark that I’d rather fuck Aegon after one of his alley-way vomit sprees than ever talk to him again” however, before you could focus back on your studies, an amused laugh came from behind you before the chair next to you was pulled out, only for you to meet the gaze of Aegon Targaryen himself, a lopsided smile on his face with his brows wiggling in a playful suggestive manner.

“Well if I knew the easiest way to get you into my bed was to go drinking until I’m sick then I would’ve invited you out sooner baby” with that he leaned closer while making kissing noises, only to be met with your hand shoving his face away.

“Aeg, for the last time, she doesn’t want you like that” he feigned hurt at Rhaena, sliding back into the chair with his hand over his heart. 

“You wound me dear cousin! You wound me!” then he sat up straight, now looking back at you “so I was sent over here as a trusted messenger. My boy back there, you know him quite well, if y’know what I mean-” he wiggled his eyebrows up and down again, then you shoved him “-anyways, Cregan has been like all sulky and heartbroken and he really misses you. And he doesn’t want anything to do with Alysanne! She came onto him!, so can you give him another shot?”

With that you simply shook your head, quickly packing your things up while scoffing. 

“Tell your “boy back there”-” you spoke with air quotations “-that if he really gave a fuck about me, he shouldn’t have dumped me after two years for no god damn reason, then fucked that Blackwood bitch-who by the way is a fucking whore!” 

Your outburst was met with the looks of many, Rhaena quickly clearing her throat watching as you packed your things away. “What she means to say is, she doesn’t want to talk to him. I think it’s too fresh still”

Aegon scoffed “it’s been four months people! Four months! The summer ended, it’s a new semester, I think she can talk to him now” he glanced around the table, eyes widening as he watched Baela grasp quite the hefty textbook while glaring at him.

“Baela don’t hit me! I’m just saying! Listen-” but before he could finish you’d already gotten up and mumbled that you’d see them at home while you walked away.

Aegon paused, watching as you walked away, blatantly checking you out for a few moments, then you’d disappeared. He then turned around and motioned for someone to come to the table, this is what led both Jace and Luke to walk across the room and now sit where you were sitting and in the last empty seat of the table.

“Listen, we’re all tired of being caught in the middle of this awkward divorce alright. So we came up with a plan!” Baela shook her head while Rhaena sighed slightly.

“No offense Aeg, but your plans are always horrible, need I remind you of Aemond’s missing eyeball?” Luke winced slightly, remembering the day he’d accidentally hit Aemond in the eye with a firewood poker when swinging it behind him.

Truthfully, Luke had no idea Aemond had entered the room when he and Aegon were ‘dueling’ one another, however he’d felt his poker hit something, and he heard Aemond’s loud scream of pain. 

They’d all been kids when that happened, and to make it worse it occurred on their grandfather’s birthday when everyone had traveled to King’s Landing for a large birthday dinner/family holiday.

“She’s got a point there Aegon, but-guys-we all came up with the idea together!” Luke placed his hands on the shoulder of his cousin and his brother, smiling widely while Baela and Rhaena both shook their heads in disappointment.

“Okay, you win, but if the idea is bad, Baela’s going to smack Aegon with that textbook, so pray it’s not bad” they all nodded, Aegon scooting back slightly.

“So y’know those sappy novels Hel’s always reading, anyways I asked her about them and she had one where the two main characters were like totally at ends with each other but their friends were like ‘nah they should be smashing’ so we think, based on our research and our scholarly source-Helaena, we should force them to be around each other until they finally talk it out! Or well, y’know-fuck it out”

He paused to take a quick breath “But we can’t let them in on the plan, otherwise Cregan’s gonna be all like ‘oh my god no she hates me, the love of my life hates me I can’t torture her, blah blah blah, I’m so nice and honorable, blah blah’ and she’s gonna be like ‘fuck that, I’ll kill him for fucking that Blackwood bitch and dumping me for no god damn reason’. Also I don’t think he ever fucked Alysanne-but I did-niether here nor there though!” 

Jace and Luke looked at Baela and Rhaena as if they were waiting to be yelled at by their mother, meanwhile Aegon smiled and nodded after his long winded explanation.

Rhaena spoke first “y’know honestly, your impression of her is pretty spot on.” Baela nodded her head in agreement before adding in “but if this doesn’t work, and she finds out, she’ll want to kill all of you and Cregan. I’m sure you all have realized being on her shit list isn’t exactly the best”

Jace nodded, glancing back at Cregan who was finally focusing on his statistics work with a stoic expression on his face. “Listen, if it doesn’t work and she kicks our asses that’s fine, but we at least have to try! I mean come on Rhae you told me that she cries over him still! And he’s no better. There might not be tears but he’s so long winded and mopey”

He then sighed, patting Luke on the back “I think this is our best shot. I mean c’mon they’re some of your guys' closest friends, and Winterfell over there’s my best friend that I’m not related to-oddly enough they’re pretty rare these days. They used to be so happy together! Now look at them both”

Baela sighed, nodding her head as she finally set the books in her hands down “she’s definitely not really herself anymore. Maybe if it doesn’t work, then at least they’ll both get closure from their relationship”.

Aegon smiled, nodding rapidly again “see! You guys get it!. Also don’t tell Aemond either, y’know he’s too ‘I’ve got a stick up my ass’ sometimes. We can call it operation-uh what’s the book trope that Helaena called it again-one second everyone!” he paused, grabbing his phone from his pocket before quickly calling his sister.

“Hey Hel, yeah yeah I’m good, what did you call that book again! The one where they were like forced to be around eachother then fuck it out and get married and shit?” 

Several hundred miles away, Helaena was grasping her nose bridge as she let out a deep sigh, her brother truly was a character.

“Oh-okay! Got it-thanks so much Hel, love you too! Give Daeron my love and remind him to wrap it up with those Dornish baddies!” with that he hung up the phone before meeting Baela’s disgusted glare.

“You’re so gross, Aeg. And stop saying the word baddies-you sound so cringey!” he simply shrugged at her.

“Anyways, now that we’re done being rude and judgemental to our baddie eldest cousin who’s super smart, funny, and beautiful, we’ll call it operation enemies to lovers!” 

Rhaena raised a brow “wouldn’t it actually be exes to lovers? Since they’re exes? I guess they might also be enemies based on the way she wants to wring his neck-and not how she used to-” with that her eyes widened as she slapped a hand over her mouth.

Jace sighed “don’t worry Rhae, we already know about the shit he let her do to him. Young love, what can I say” 

Aegon nodded his head, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively once again, then he slightly elbowed Luke, who met his gaze with a laugh before they both spoke in unison “kinky innit”.

“Anyways-are we doing this or not? I’ve got a history midterm to study for and you three are interrupting it, and it’s bad enough that Aegon already made the smartest person we know leave” It was clear that Baela was losing her patience.

“Oh come on Bales! Y’know if you’re still interested I can set you up with ol Benji over there, heard he’s a freak in the she-” there it was, the book smacking him in the face “-ow Baela! Jesus! You’re just like your dad! Mean and ever so beautiful to look at” he winked.

“Gross man, she’s our cousin!” he shrugged “didn’t stop our ancestors, okay fine-fine! I didn’t mean it okay! Shit. you all are so violent. The blood of the dragon I guess”.

-

Three days have passed and the TarVelTower group chat had been in constant communication about ‘operation exemies to lovers’ with the additional confused replies from those that were not present in the library that day.

They were planning a game night, it was something they’d all done in the past, inviting their other friends to come along as well for drinks and a night of utter tomfoolery. Baela and Rhaena had done everything but swear on the Old Gods themselves that Cregan wouldn’t be there, meanwhile Jace, Luke, and Aegon had to practically beg Cregan to come to Jace’s for the game night.

It was also a plus that most of them lived in the same building. Dragonstone University wasn’t that large, not compared to other schools such as Sunspear, Driftmark, or even Harrenhall-although it was rumored that Harrenhal U was in fact haunted, that’s probably what brought so many to the school in the first place.

Baela and Rhaena had to drag you out of your bed after your post-class nap and usher you into the shower, stating that you ‘stunk of outside’, which was rather rude considering your only classes today were virtual. 

They’d mentioned the game night several times, and each time you asked if Cregan would be there, they’d said no, which you found a bit odd considering Jace was literally his best friend and probably closest confidant. Maybe his father had come down from Winterfell again, but you were thankful that he wouldn’t be present to ruin your mood.

All you had to do was take the elevator up two floors, so all you did was shower and throw on a pair of sweats and one of Aegon’s many discarded team sweatshirts. It had his number on it and even after washing it what felt like a million times, it still smelled like his overly strong cologne that he claimed ‘the ladies love’.

He’d also told you that maybe you were an ogre for not loving it, which of course even further solidified your friendship with the moron (lovingly).

You took time to braid your hair, knowing that you’d probably wake up hungover without a want or a need to brush it, so this was just easier. Then you’d foregone makeup, knowing you truly didn’t care how people saw you, especially not your friends. 

Of course the one thing you’d always contemplated wearing sat on your desk, the thin gold chain adorned with a small charm in the shape of a howling wolf. It was as if it sat mocking you because almost everyday you’d stare at it while getting ready.

You’d worn it everyday for a year after Cregan gifted it to you. He randomly showed up at your door one day, slightly out of breath, a wide smile on his face with his disheveled hair pulled back. One hand rubbed against his short beard, while the other held a small black gift bag. He looked as if he’d run here, then was contemplating the decision to run in the first place.

Then he’d kissed you gently, a smile you rarely wore now, adorned your face then.

When you invited him in, he was quick to follow, shutting and locking your door behind him while you made your way to the small kitchen, grabbing him something to drink as he caught his breath.

Then as you spun around to hand him the drink, he held the bag out for you, practically forcing you to open it (it wasn’t forceful at all, rather when you declined opening it immediately, he didn’t hesitate to place the strings of the bag between his teeth before picking you up, then plopping you down onto the couch, soft giggles leaving your lips when he climbed right on top of you.).

You remembered him watching as you opened it, he held himself up overtop you, while you easily pulled the small jewelry box out of the packaging, then when you opened it he looked almost nervous, as if you wouldn’t like it.

But you’d kissed him, pulling him down into your lips, thanking him between rushed kisses. 

You shook your head, snapping yourself out of it before grasping the necklace and shoving it into one of your desk drawers. Out of sight, out of mind, you’d tell yourself-until you’d go looking for a pen and see it again.

Rhaena’s voice knocked you out of your thoughts completely, she stood in your doorframe, her posture a little too straight, which would’ve normally thrown you off, but you couldn’t focus on that, not when you were trying to shake off the feeling of heartbreak.

“You ready? I’ve got the snacks already packed to bring up, you’ve just got to grab our blankets. Baela’s already there helping set up. Aeg said he’d give her twenty bucks if she’d actually arrive earlier than him for once” you laughed at that, shaking your head slightly.

It was no secret that Aegon and Baela were incredibly competitive, and as cousins, they had what could only be described as a sibling rivalry, always trying to one up one another when they could, and making stupid bets over random things.

You actually liked that they were all so close, when you’d befriended Rhaena, you never thought that she and her sister would come with a large family that would welcome you in with open arms.

“Yeah, just, let me-um-get my shoes, yeah my shoes. Sorry” you were mumbling and stuttering as you walked to the shoe rack beside your door, slipping your feet into your fuzzy slippers before following Rhaena to the living room, grasping the small pile of throw blankets before the both of you left your apartment. She was quick to lock the door, then you both headed upstairs.

You were still technically early when you arrived, and as you entered the apartment Aegon was handing Baela a $20 bill, while she smirked. Luke was laying on one of the couches on his phone, Jace was putting drinks in the fridge with the help of Benji who honestly looked happy to be there. Meanwhile Aemond sat reading whatever random philosophical book he’d chosen for the week, and to your surprise, Helaena was pulling what smelled like cookies out of the oven.

“Hel! You’re here!” she smiled when she saw you, placing the tray down before meeting your embrace. “Yea, I actually was visiting my parents and Aegon picked me up earlier.” you smiled at that, you enjoyed her company, even if it was a rare occurrence. 

By the time everyone was settled in, around forty-five minutes had passed, and everything was nice. For the first time in a while you weren’t on edge, which was definitely noticeable, and you’d actually managed to relax into the large bean bag below you. Even if it did remind you of a certain someone.

Then, it was as if you’d summoned the asshole himself.

Jace was quick to shoot up and walk to the door, glancing at his phone nervously. Then he opened the door, nervously laughing for a few moments.

Then you spotted him. Not before Aegon, who was already tipsy, had managed to shoot up from his spot on the ground “Cregan! Glad you could make it man!”.

Baela and Rhaena watched as you let out a deep sigh, it was clear you didn’t want to ruin the night, so you simply turned to face away from the door, burying yourself further into the bean bag, covering yourself in the throw blanket as much as you could.

It’s important to mention that the bean bag happened to be big enough for two people, and for a long time, it’s where you would sit with Cregan, well technically, given his size, you’d be cuddled up together, and now, as his gaze found you ignoring him on that bean bag, the gloomy cloud that followed him around had resurfaced.’

After a few tense moments of silence, everyone commenced what they were doing.

Aegon, still standing, held up a deck of cards.

“For today’s game night we’re gonna need to partner up! Rhaena, you’re with me tonight! I need your smarticle particles!” you blinked slowly, Rhaena was usually your partner. Then you sat in silence as you watched everyone partner up.

Baela was shoved into Benji-literally shoved by Aegon. 

Aemond chose Luke as he stated their team needed “balance”, which actually made a lot of sense considering Aemond was always somewhat brooding, and Luke was a ray of sunshine.

Jace glanced between Helaena and Cregan, but when Baela shot him a pointed look-missed completely by you-he chose Helaena.

Which of course left you with the one person you wanted nothing to do with.

Rhaena tried breaking the ice, watching as Cregan awkwardly sat in the armchair beside the beanbag. “It looks like our old winning team is back together!” you were the first to scoff.

“Hey! They used to cheat!” you couldn’t stop yourself from responding to Aegon “actually he waited until we broke up for that”. As you spoke, everyone’s eyes widened, meanwhile you remained in your spot, staring at your phone, mindlessly scrolling through instagram.

However, as good of a guy that Cregan Stark is, you were the only person that was ever able to bring a different side out of him. You two rarely fought, but when you did, it was almost catastrophic and usually ended in very rough sex, or a heartwarming apology after ignoring one another for a few days. 

But you’d never broken up, you both took time to cool off in whatever way you needed.

Things are different now.

“For the last time, she came onto me! I’ve told you this thousands of times!” As he raised his voice, the frustration in his tone was evident, and his accent sounded thicker than usual-a key indicator that he was upset. So instead of backing down, you scoffed, now looking at him, fury evident on your features. 

“Yeah because a man your fucking size was so easily overpowered by her right! She just waltzed right up to you and beat you into submission or something?! Oh fuck you Cregan!” 

The two of you held eye contact, anger and frustration evident.

Aegon slowly sat down, leaning towards Jace and whispering “I think it’s working”, meanwhile Jace shook his head, having been witness to the few fights that you’d actually had with Cregan in the past.

“What would you have wanted me to do, I was shitfaced! Was I supposed to shove her to the ground and tell her to go fuck herself?!” you nodded your head at that, now sitting up, even closer to him than before. He stared down at you as you stared up at him.

“Yeah actually, that’s the best fucking idea I’d say you’ve ever had!” he scoffed.

“We weren’t even together and you hold that against me! Still!” That's what sent you over the edge.

“You fucking dumped me for no god damn reason, told me you loved me, and then went and fucked that Blackwood Bitch! The same fucking day! As if I meant nothing to you, we were together for two years Cregan! Two fucking years!” 

He heard the crack in your voice, everyone did. As you stared at him, he could see the way your eyes glossed over, he knew you too well. He knew the tears were coming.

“I tried to talk to you-you didn’t wanna hear anything!” you shrugged, gathering your things as fast as you possibly could, now looking anywhere but him.

“You don’t fucking deserve to talk to me you asshole”. Then you stood up and did what you always do in these situations, you ran away and left.

He was left there in shock, staring at the door, jaw clenched while he watched you leave. 

“Well that’s one way to start a game night” 

“Aegon shut up!” cue the smack “Ow! Baela! Stop hitting me! Go hit Benji, he likes that shit!-ow! Seriously?! Jace and Luke, get your cousin!”

Then in unison “she’s your cousin too!”

And finally, Benji piped up “is she talking about my cousin?” 

Instead of watching you waltz away, Cregan stood up, grabbing his things and mumbling his own apologies. Then he left, he knew exactly where you lived, so instead of taking the elevator, he rushed down the stairs, trying to cool off. 

When he stood in front of your door, it felt like a routine, something his body was so used to. As if this was muscle memory for him.

Then he knocked, once. No response. 

Twice. Nothing. 

Three times-maybe third times a charm. Nothing.

He stood there, his forehead leaned against the door. Cregan Stark was not a man of regrets, hell he prided himself on actually being a good guy, he was raised to be respectful, to be kind, to be strong, Stark men were not assholes. They weren’t childish, they weren’t selfish, they were supposed to be honorable in every way.

But here he is, leaning against his ex-girlfriend’s door, still in love with her, full of regret for ever breaking things off. He hadn’t even explained himself. He wanted to-he’d tried that day, but you stormed out, tears that he’d caused flowing down your cheeks. 

Then he felt the door shift, and you stood there, wrapped in the same blanket, eyes red as you stared up at him.

Gods, all he wanted to do was tell you he loved you, that he needed you, that you made him feel whole.

“I don’t have any fight left in me Cregan. It’s been months, why can’t you just leave me alone.” 

“Because I love you.” you sighed, shaking your head “no you don’t. If you loved me you wouldn’t have left me.” 

Sure you might’ve been being dramatic, but truthfully, you’d been heartbroken for months, following your breakup you’d lost ten pounds in two weeks. You’d never felt worse, and now, you were starting to feel alright, but it was no secret that there had been many nights full of tears, hugging a sweatshirt that you’d never washed, hoping to preserve the smell of his cologne.

“Can you just fucking listen to me for five minutes, please, I’ve been trying to talk to you for so long, just please-let me talk to you” you shrugged.

“Why?” he blinked a few times, taking a deep breath, running a hand through his hair-hair that you used to always touch, forcing him to sit between your thighs while you braid his hair, laughing when he’d complain, or when he’d do poses for you after you’d finished.

“I love you, I’ve never stopped loving you, I go to sleep at night and my dreams are filled with you, your smile, your laugh, even your fucking frowns. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything. My heart fucking yearns for you. I can still feel the way you used to hold me, the way your breath felt against my neck, Gods, I think about you 24/7! I think about everything that I did, the way that I screwed up-I screwed us up. I love you! I’ll scream it from the fucking rooftops if that’s what you want!” 

You didn’t bother wiping away your tears, instead you stepped aside, leaving room for him to come in.

“You want to talk then talk.”

Then he walked inside, and shut the door the same way he used to. 

It truly was muscle memory, the way he walked to the couch and sat down in the same spot he was always in, then he waited for you.

He watched as you slowly sat next to him, still wrapped in a blanket like a sad burrito-Gods he spent too much time around Aegon. He didn’t hesitate to wipe the tears from under one of your eyes with his thumb, repeating the action on the other cheek.

“I didn’t want to break up with you. I never wanted to break up with you. My father’s-well he’s sick at home, I was going to leave, go back to Winterfell to take care of him, to take care of everyone. I just-I didn’t want you to be alone here, and I didn’t want to be your long distance boyfriend that you only ever see on fucking facetime. I just-I couldn’t do it.” 

You were silent, watching as he broke slightly, his voice cracking at the mention of his father, then at the mention of you being alone. 

It was no secret that Cregan and his father were close, you’d met Rickon Stark twice, and each time he’d embraced you with open arms and a warm heart. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he shrugged.

“Because, I’m supposed to be strong, I’m supposed to know my duty to my family, I’m supposed to be there for them, and it was hard-hard to say that I had to leave you for an unknown amount of time. I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to go a day without seeing you, you make me crazy in the best way, even now, whenever I see you on campus my heart practically flies out of my chest. Seeing you at my games, you’re like a ghost haunting me.” 

You slowly nodded, listening to him, watching the way he’d blink away his tears, the way his brows would furrow and jaw would clench slightly. 

“My dad’s the one who told me to stay. Told me not to throw my future away, that he’d be alright, y’know he’s a fighter-always has been. Told me to get my girl back-” he let out a small chuckle, the laugh laced in sadness “-but I think she doesn’t want me back. I went back up after we split up, just for a week, and he told me I was an idiot to leave it all behind. A full ride to Uni if I kept playing hockey? The girl of my dreams? Called me a bloke before he told me that he’s okay, he’s not letting go anytime soon” 

Cregan hadn’t been looking at you, he was focused on his hands, fists clenching slightly as he tried to swallow his own emotions. He hadn’t noticed the way that you’d been inching closer, not until your arms were wrapped around him, head leaning against his shoulder.

“You could’ve just told me from the beginning. I would’ve been your facetime girlfriend y’know? Would’ve figured out a way up there”

The familiarity of it all was what made him break, a small sob leaving his lips while you held him. It didn’t take long for you to shove him further into the couch and climb into his lap, the same way you used to when all you wanted to do was be as close to him as possible.

You held him, sat atop one of his thighs, arms wrapped around his shoulders while he cried into your shoulder. His arms gripping your waist, holding you against him. 

This is what should’ve happened all those months ago.

“I’m sorry for being a bitch” he laughed at that, and you felt his small smile. Meanwhile you ran a hand through his hair, fingers dancing through the dark locks before slowly running against his scalp. Your other hand traced small circles against his shoulder blade, you missed this.

You missed him.

“You weren’t a bitch-I probably deserved that.” you scoffed, moving back slightly, now holding eye contact with him as you brushed his tears away. “I was a bitch, I was the biggest bitch ever.”

He smiled, shaking his head “She really did come onto me. I did push her off-” you shushed him “I know. I believe you, I just-I dunno. I was hurt, then I saw that and it just stayed with me. I figured you dumped me for someone else, someone better-” he cut you off with a kiss.

It was so gentle, so soft, so sweet. Then he pulled away “there’s no one better than you for me. I’m sorry I wasn’t honest. I just-I didn’t want to look weak and I didn’t want to leave you and-” you shushed him again, this time holding a hand against his mouth.

“Shut the fuck up Cregan Stark.” Your tone was light hearted as you shook your head “You’re not weak for having emotions, and you aren’t weak for wanting to care for those that you love. Don’t be stupid, we’ve both been stupid enough.” he nodded his head, then you slid her hand down, now caressing his face, your thumb lightly pulling on his bottom lip.

“I missed you” you smiled, a small giggle leaving your lips.

“Based on the way you stare, I could tell” he rolled his eyes “gotta commit your beauty to memory somehow” you slightly shoved his shoulder “you cornball!” 

“I missed you too loverboy”

Then you kissed him again, a slow, passionate kiss full of emotions, smiles, and even a few giggles. He then slid his hands under your sweatshirt, and you quickly pulled apart, letting him take it off, leaving you in just your bralette, then his lips were on yours again.

Before anything else could happen the front door swung open, startling you both, leading to Cregan’s grip against you tightening, meanwhile Aegon and Jace both hit the floor, while Luke stood there awkwardly, Rhaena shook her head, and Baela looked as if she was being held back by Benji. Meanwhile Helaena and Aemond were nowhere to be seen.

At least until they moved closer to the doorway, both of them shaking their heads and muttering “fucking Aegon” in unison.

“I told you guys it would work! Look at them! Kissing and close!” Aegon still spoke, even from the floor while Jace was on top of him. Then Jace slowly rolled off, letting out an ‘oof’. 

“Were you all eavesdropping?” Aegon blinked a few times at your question, glancing back at everyone else. Then you noticed the flush on Luke’s face and Rhaena’s awkward expression. Plus Jace was nodding his head. 

“Why did the Gods make him our brother?” Aemond shook his head “I truly do not know.” 

“So are you two back together now?” 

You sighed, standing up and grasping Cregan’s hand, pulling him towards your bedroom.

Cregan glanced back, still laughing at the scene “yes. Now please, fuck off mate”

With that you pulled him into your room and locked the door.

“They’re all the worst” he nodded his head at you, he’d expected you to pull him into your bed, however you walked towards your desk, rummaging through the different drawers until you found something. 

You glanced at him “can you help me with this”, while holding up the necklace.

“I’d be honored” you rolled your eyes, a bright smile on your face while he walked over, taking the necklace then as gently as possible, clasping it around your neck. Then he left a line of open mouthed kisses from below your right ear, to the edge of your shoulder. 

“I love you” his voice was soft, a whisper, almost as if it was a secret shared between the both of you.

You smiled, spinning around, one hand now on his face, the other on the back of his neck, fingers tracing circles through his hair. “I love you too”

-

Taglist:

Girl it dont exist LMAO

[simply-ivanka]

PLEASE REPOST

This is who Tim Walz is.

“Let’s see how weird the Democrats’ new leadership is:

It’s weird that Walz mandated tampons in boys’ bathrooms in Minnesota schools.

It’s weird for the party that promotes itself as the guardian of democracy to install its leaders without an election.

It’s weird that Walz dawdled for three days while Minneapolis burned before calling in the National Guard during 2020’s BLM-antifa riots.

He abandoned the city’s Third Precinct police headquarters when it was overrun and set ablaze.

Walz explained his weird lack of action as a desire not to be “oppressive” to the rioters who had suffered “generations of pain” and “fundamental, institutional racism.”

It’s weird that Walz’s wife kept the windows open “as long as I could” during the riots so she could “smell the burning tires” and savor the historic moment.

It’s weird that Walz let his then-19-year-old daughter leak the National Guard’s deployment plans on Twitter so rioters knew they could keep destroying Minneapolis.

It’s weird that Harris and Walz base their campaign on “freedom” yet he was the most authoritarian governor in the country during the pandemic, ruling by decree for 15 months, enforcing draconian shutdown orders, mask mandates and curfews.

It’s weird that Walz tells Republicans to “mind your own damn business” when he created a COVID telephone “snitch line” so that people could inform on their neighbors who breached his draconian COVID restrictions.

It’s weird that Walz defended censorship of COVID dissenters by telling MSNBC: “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech especially around our democracy.”

It’s weird that Walz signed laws allowing teenagers to be sterilized and genitally mutilated without parental consent and called it “gender-affirming care.”

It’s weird that Walz signed into law a new definition of “sexual orientation” that deleted an exemption against pedophilia.

It’s weird that Walz has turned Minnesota into a “trans refuge” with a law that removes children from parents who don’t agree to their kids’ sex-change surgery and hormone treatment.

Even transgender Minnesota state Rep. Leigh Finke called the bill “beautifully weird.”

It’s weird that Walz has turned Minnesota into an “abortion mecca” with no time limit up to the moment of birth and sometimes beyond, and no requirement that minors inform their parents.

It’s weird that Walz is presented as the epitome of decency and “Minnesota nice” and yet the first time he spoke to the nation, he peddled a smutty sex joke about Vance and a couch cushion made up by the bottom feeders of internet trolling.

It’s weird that Walz has visited China about 30 times, including spending his honeymoon there.

“No matter how long I live, I’ll never be treated that well again,” he said after his first visit in 1990.

“They gave me more gifts than I could bring home.” He should compare notes with the Bidens.

It’s weird that Walz and his wife, Gwen, chose June 4 as their wedding date to commemorate the bloody anniversary of China’s brutal crackdown on democracy protesters in China’s Tiananmen Square.

“He wanted to have a date he’ll always remember,” said Gwen.

It’s weird that Walz quit the National Guard when he was about to be deployed to Iraq, then told everyone he had gone to war.

It’s weird that Walz said he wanted to provide ladders to illegal migrants so they could climb over Trump’s border wall.

It’s weird that Waltz says, “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

It’s weird that Harris and Walz claim they are defending “democracy” but he signed a law to give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, the first step to voting ­illegally in elections.

It’s weird that Walz criticizes Trump for his record on law and order when crime in Minneapolis has soared on his watch.

It’s weird that he poses as a “folksy,” common-sense working man with “Midwestern dad vibes” who hunts and wears camo caps.

Yet he governs like a crazed, green-haired radical, with taxes among the highest in the country and residents fleeing the state as fast as they can.

It’s weird that Walz is a teacher married to a teacher, the son of a teacher and claims education is a priority, yet on his watch, Minnesota students’ average reading and math scores have plummeted to below the national average, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Despite record spending, for the first time majorities of K-12 students are not meeting grade-level standards, finds the Minnesota Center of the American Experiment.

Minnesota’s CNBC education ranking has dropped from fifth to 19th place in the country since he became ­governor.

It’s weird that Harris has not done a single interview since being appointed the presumptive Democratic nominee for president more than two weeks ago.

It’s weird that she laughs at her own jokes.

In psychology, attributing your own flaws to others is called projection, and Walz and Harris have a bad case of weird.”

[scottguy]

Make no mistakes. If Trump wins America becomes Nazi Germany but, this time, with nuclear weapons.

I heard a Washington Post journalist say, "Oh if Trump wins, yeah, it'll be a tough four years, but this is America."

He's implying democracy will survive despite Trump literally promising to end that democracy.

The journalist is implying that our INSTITUTIONS will save us.

Which institutions? Like our Supreme Court? The majority supports Trump!

Congress? Enough Republicans support Trump so that he's not been convicted of the huge crimes he HAS committed like the extortion of Ukraine or attempting to overthrow an election.

Our legal system? ALSO.. at the mercy of a right-wing Supreme Court.

Half of America is eager to do the greedy and racist bidding of an ignorant man-child Trump.

No institution will have the power to stop him once we GRANT Trump that much power.

If Trump wins... yes, the sun will rise and set in America. The economy will work at some level, people will live their lives in America... but..

"Undesirables" (immigrants, lgbtq people, liberals) will be jailed and the camps will eventually end up as death camps (except for the slave labor) because it costs money to feed and house millions of people. (Six millions Jews were just too expensive in Germany in the 1940s , so they murdered them.)

Martial law or the Insurrection Act will be used. Protests will be illegal. You better not complain or youll be shot. Abortion will be illegal nationwide. Birth control will be illegal nationwide.

If you say, "Oh, that wouldn't be allowed" remember that cops in most places during Covid refused to enforce mask laws because they were on Trump's side. Most police love Trump.

Mass firings of government job will happen. Then only Trump loyalists will be hired for EVERY GOVERNMENT JOB. Every single position. Trump is planning an intentional "deep state" but NOT to enforce laws or help Americans luke they do now. No, they will just to serve Trump's interests. They will stop enforcement of any environmental regulations in your area. If you live near ANY industry that might pollute...well good luck.

You have a problem and call the Social Security office? Screw you. MAGA is in charge now. Trump says, "stop sending paychecks"... they will do what he says. They're fanatics!

Then there will be the invasions. Mexico will be invaded first on the pretense of stopping Fentanyl. But then, why not make America "greater" by captuting all of Mexico? lots of land and resources there! Then, Canada. Why not? Our US military is bigger than the next top 10 countries combined. It's really just a change of flags.

Life in America will become the darkest possible nightmare you can imagine. It will quite likely lead to nuclear war.

Consider this when you wonder if your vote matters.

If you don't vote against Trump, all the MAGAs who are TOO STUPID to understand all the harm a Hitler-like Trump will do to America and to all of the world, will occur.

America should never have gone this far off the rails, but it has. The fact that it has gotten this bad is a warning that it could very easily get worse... IF we don't vote against Trump.

The ONLY power we have left to stop it, is the vote of people who do not want to repeat the mistakes of Germany before Hitler rose to power.

Your blue vote has NEVER been so crucial and so necessary.

If you like your normal life, vote blue. Life in America under Trump rule will be unimaginably worse.

[leandra-kinard]

You know, while this is and should be at the very bottom of concerns arising from the results of the US elections, there's one thing that I've been thinking about for weeks and we all should be aware of, imho.

All the queer representation we've had in recent years in movies and TV shows, all the big victories and groundbreaking depictions of queer love - that is likely going to be over.

Project 2025 lays out a very strict agenda to focus on "traditional Christian values"; things like pornography are explicitly named as something to be outlawed, but if you read between the lines it goes far beyond that. They could deem everything that doesn't correspond with traditional "family values" and traditional gender roles as worthy of censorship and worse. Russia has done it; you technically can be gay but you can't talk about it, show it, promote it. Many other nations have the same approach.

This may be the worst case scenario, because the American entertainment industry is global and influential and might not easily give in to extreme censorship, but it's far from unlikely to happen.

So what exactly could that mean? It could mean that any depictions of queer characters and queer relationships would have to be either be reduced to hinted at background characters, or going back to subtextual queer coding like under the Hays code. Or it could even mean that no such portrayal, even hinted at, is allowed in future.

In any case, getting something like Agatha All Along again, or Bucktommy, or movies like Love Simon etc. would no longer be allowed to be produced and broadcast/streamed in the US. And since the US and the US market dominate the Western-based entertainment industry, studios would likely refrain from producing such shows and movies in Canada or Europe because the huge American market would no longer buy these works.

And while, yes, this is not nearly as bad as women being sentenced to life for murdering their child just because they had a miscarriage, or gay marriages being dissolved across the country, or Palestine having no chance of surviving at all any longer, it still is something that concerns and impacts me greatly.

Entertainment is something that keeps many of us afloat in difficult times. And since many of us are queer, queer representation is very important to us. If we can no longer have it, it'll be a drastic impairment of our quality of life - worldwide, even if we're not Americans and live in (mostly) stable democracies in the West.

Maybe I'm being fatalist, but I think it's time we count our blessings. It's time we're happy for what we got and what we're still going to get in the next few months - what has already been filmed and produced and can still be published before such restrictive censorship laws are implemented. It's not a time for ship wars and shitting on existing queer representation, or fighting amongst ourselves.

We may never get again what we got this year, unless we look to British shows or other non-American productions and broadcasts. This is an option, of course, but it'll still be a tremendous loss for all of us who enjoy TV and cinema.

[mythica-ithaca]

Fuck this bitch and fuck all of you vote blue no matter who people begging us to vote for her. She does not give a shit about Palestine, she 100% supports genocide. That is who you want to be president of the united states.

Don't fucking come at me with the whole "oh you want trump to win then?" bullshit either. If you can't see that this is not a democracy anymore and that just voting for the fascist in a blue tie instead of a red one will not save us, that's a you problem.

Your inability to use your votes as leverage to make demands and not just give them out freely, hoping to somehow push people left after you've given them power is what got us to this point.

There is no threat or guilt trip you can use to make us vote for people supporting genocide. Because you're right. Our votes are powerful. And I refuse to give one single ounce of power to these genocidal monsters. You've given the Democrats a pass on genocide. They know that none of you have a red line and they will use that against us all. Voting blue no matter who won't save any of us anymore. It never did in the first place.

We deserve whatever happens to us in November for what we have allowed to happen in the desperate attempts to maintain our own comforts at the cost of millions of lives.

[mageofminge]

REMINDER TO BOYCOTT EUROVISION

Here's a quick run down of everything they've done + why you should boycott

Despite banning Russia for its actions in the Russia-Ukraine war, Israel is still in the contest (despite committing war crimes, attacking Gaza with genocidal intent etc)

"But Hamas attacked first on Oct.7" - Then why is Israel also bombing southern Lebanon if Hezbollah and the Lebanese government aren't involved?????

Israel often uses ESC as a platform for propaganda

One key example is their promotions for their 2019 broadcast, where they tried to turn attention away from the occupation and portray the country as a liberal haven of democracy, with the lines "... it's a land of war and occupation. But we have so much more than that!" and pointing out its the only place in the middle east where "gays are hugging in the street". (as if the rest of the Levant INCLUDING PALESTINE isn't actually relatively chill when it comes to gay rights)

Another example is them sending an Ethiopian Jewish singer to perform a song called "Set me Free" the same year they stormed Al-Aqsa during Ramadan, which seemed to be very intentionally trying to shift the narrative away from Israel as a colonial occupier, and more as a persecuted people who have finally found safety

As well as the issues with Israel as a competitor, ESC is SPONSORED by MoroccanOil, an Israeli company (ik the name is misleading, but speaking as a Moroccan Israel just really loves to steal our culture while treating our people they stole like shit [I could go on an entire rant ab this but I won't])

So what this means is we can't just boycott this year and then forget about it the next. Until Israeli presence is completely removed from EUROVISION, your views and your money will be funnelled to support an Apartheid regime. I already know people who are still watching Eurovision despite not supporting the occupation, because they love the artists and the spectacle. But no spectacle is worth supporting an Apartheid regime. The best way we can help the Palestinians is by making Israel a pariah state, and pressuring politicians to cut all their funding. That way they won't be able to put down uprisings and maintain the brutal police state they have - at which point they can only resolve the conflict peacefully and end occupation, or find themselves in the throw of a violent revolution. It was these strategies that ultimately helped end the apartheid regime in South Africa, and it is these strategies which can help end Israeli apartheid.

[fairuzfan]

Sorry one more thing I wasn't going to talk about but if you had asked me about the binational state/land thing maybe... in 2016, I might have given a somewhat positive answer but I think that since then, Israeli society has become exponentially more racist and anti-Palestinian. Since then we had the Abraham Accords, Sheikh Jarrah, Massafir Yatta, the highest child martyr count in years, and now finally a full blown genocide. Many Palestinians who previously advocated for equality in a single state look at all this, especially in recent months and think "how can I live side by side with these people?"

The vast majority of Israeli society is not against war for the sake of the Palestinians, they're against war for their own safety. They say as much. Hell, look at standing together. The founder guy says "our security is tied in with the Palestinians'". So if it wasn't tied with the Palestinians', you wouldn't care? And I get sometimes you need to introduce people to ideas gently, but their entire organization language emphasizes "shared pain" when there is an oppressor/oppressed dynamic they aren't even hinting at. How can anyone achieve safety if you won't even admit you have power over your Palestinian org members?

Even Brothers in Arms claims to want to "strengthen democracy" but they completely ignore Palestinians have never experienced democracy in "Israel". So what's the point strengthening your own standing when the most disadvantaged still are at rock bottom?? Plus your whole group represents the IOF reservists/members, you have no intention of helping Palestinians when you are the primary oppressors. And this is not an insignificant group in israel!

Not many Israelis are willing to put themselves on the line to protect or even advocate for Palestinians. I mean 7+ months into a genocide and what did israeli society do other than protest *netanyahu*? Hold up flour bags during the flour massacre??? The people serving in the idf are your friends and family and community. Tel Aviv is an hour away from Gaza. Surely you can do *something* physical!! They had people at their Gaza borders starving Palestinians on purpose and people just... watched it happen. Not to mention the IOF, which many Israelis are a part of, participates in the genocide and has been lauded for their "heroism". I look at that and I think "how can I expect you to seriously consider my rights as a person? How do I know you won't miss your old status and reclaim it?"

We've seen Israelis *celebrate* and *ridicule* our martyrs and people. So like where us the good faith in all this? Where can we work with some of these people and think "Yeah I believe they'll respect my inherent dignity as a person"?

Which binationalism relies on this. You need to have good faith between communities for this to actually happen. But when one community won't even acknowledge it's status as an oppressor at the height of oppression? Then what?

Israel as a country has never faced any retribution for its actions for 75 years. No one is holding them accountable. The country teaches propaganda in its schools about the Nakba. There is not serious consideration for Palestinian rights in Israeli society. Why would they suddenly decide to participate in a project that puts Palestinians as equal to Israelis when they learned all their lives that Palestinians are ruthless, unreasonable people who can't be reasoned with, and Israelis are logical, poor victims who are actually the ones who need protection from the Palestinians!

It just is mind boggling because I see people constantly complain about the way they hear things from Palestinians these days like "all Israelis need to leave". And they go on to say "why would you be so hateful/why would you say that" and don't think for a minute they're experiencing a televised genocide of their people (which they could have ended up in their shoes! People forget that Gaza has multiple refugee camps! Any one of us could have lived there!) And conversely are looking to Israeli society for them to do anything and they see nothing. At least think for a moment why they would say these things given the context of the situation. There's a genocide going on! And you're worried about what the people who are experiencing their people's genocide are saying because you're worried for the society conducting said genocide?? Let's deal with the matter at hand first!!!!!!

[apas-95]

that's pedantic you know what they mean when they say dictatorship

no, I really don't — at what quantitative level of centralisation of power in a bourgeois republic does it qualitatively become a Dictatorship? the bourgeois class dictatorship already excludes the vast majority of the population, and even large swathes of the petit-bourgeois, from representative power. capital syndicates already carry out open bribery and corruption to select candidates, and in the USA for example, 90+% of the time whichever candidate spent more money on advertising wins. the notion of 'democracy', as negatively implied by 'dictatorship', should always be met with the question 'democracy for whom?' and, given that the bourgeois republic is almost certainly a 'dictatorship' in that sense for the impoverished, working people, the colonised and enslaved people, the question should also be raised 'dictatorship for whom?' - which segment of the bourgeoisie should we consider the horrible arbiter of fascism should they be excluded from the class dictatorship?

we can understand that the tightening of the ruling class, the cannibalisation of its lower sectors, etc, signifies serious change within the capitalist system, but we mustn't fall into the theatre of bourgeois democracy and see it as some break from bourgeois democracy. similarly, it was a serious escalation of contradiction when the fascists of the previous century started carrying out mass depopulation campaigns and paramilitary massacres in europe - but it was fundamentally the exact same process they had been carrying out in their colonies and occupied territories already; and it is a very fine line to walk to accept that this represented an escalation in line with previous activity, without falling into the exceptionalism of 'they did it to europeans!!'

it is an incredibly common trap to fall into rehabilitating liberal capitalism through our condemnations of fascist capitalism - the key features of fascism that we oppose are features common to all forms of capitalism, it is simply their application that is different

[mariacallous]

Rhetoric has a history. The words democracy and tyranny were debated in ancient Greece; the phrase separation of powers became important in the 17th and 18th centuries. The word vermin, as a political term, dates from the 1930s and ��40s, when both fascists and communists liked to describe their political enemies as vermin, parasites, and blood infections, as well as insects, weeds, dirt, and animals. The term has been revived and reanimated, in an American presidential campaign, with Donald Trump’s description of his opponents as “radical-left thugs” who “live like vermin.”

This language isn’t merely ugly or repellant: These words belong to a particular tradition. Adolf Hitler used these kinds of terms often. In 1938, he praised his compatriots who had helped “cleanse Germany of all those parasites who drank at the well of the despair of the Fatherland and the People.” In occupied Warsaw, a 1941 poster displayed a drawing of a louse with a caricature of a Jewish face. The slogan: “Jews are lice: they cause typhus.” Germans, by contrast, were clean, pure, healthy, and vermin-free. Hitler once described the Nazi flag as “the victorious sign of freedom and the purity of our blood.”

Stalin used the same kind of language at about the same time. He called his opponents the “enemies of the people,” implying that they were not citizens and that they enjoyed no rights. He portrayed them as vermin, pollution, filth that had to be “subjected to ongoing purification,” and he inspired his fellow communists to employ similar rhetoric. In my files, I have the notes from a 1955 meeting of the leaders of the Stasi, the East German secret police, during which one of them called for a struggle against “vermin activities” (there is, inevitably, a German word for this: Schädlingstätigkeiten), by which he meant the purge and arrest of the regime’s critics. In this same era, the Stasi forcibly moved suspicious people away from the border with West Germany, a project nicknamed “Operation Vermin.”

This kind of language was not limited to Europe. Mao Zedong also described his political opponents as “poisonous weeds.” Pol Pot spoke of “cleansing” hundreds of thousands of his compatriots so that Cambodia would be “purified.”

In each of these very different societies, the purpose of this kind of rhetoric was the same. If you connect your opponents with disease, illness, and poisoned blood, if you dehumanize them as insects or animals, if you speak of squashing them or cleansing them as if they were pests or bacteria, then you can much more easily arrest them, deprive them of rights, exclude them, or even kill them. If they are parasites, they aren’t human. If they are vermin, they don’t get to enjoy freedom of speech, or freedoms of any kind. And if you squash them, you won’t be held accountable.

Until recently, this kind of language was not a normal part of American presidential politics. Even George Wallace’s notorious, racist, neo-Confederate 1963 speech, his inaugural speech as Alabama governor and the prelude to his first presidential campaign, avoided such language. Wallace called for “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” But he did not speak of his political opponents as “vermin” or talk about them poisoning the nation’s blood. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which ordered Japanese Americans into internment camps following the outbreak of World War II, spoke of “alien enemies” but not parasites.

In the 2024 campaign, that line has been crossed. Trump blurs the distinction between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants—the latter including his wife, his late ex-wife, the in-laws of his running mate, and many others. He has said of immigrants, “They’re poisoning the blood of our country” and “They’re destroying the blood of our country.” He has claimed that many have “bad genes.” He has also been more explicit: “They’re not humans; they’re animals”; they are “cold-blooded killers.” He refers more broadly to his opponents—American citizens, some of whom are elected officials—as “the enemy from within … sick people, radical-left lunatics.” Not only do they have no rights; they should be “handled by,” he has said, “if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes. “I haven’t read Mein Kampf,” he declared, unprovoked, during one rally—an admission that he knows what Hitler’s manifesto contains, whether or not he has actually read it. “If you don’t use certain rhetoric,” he told an interviewer, “if you don’t use certain words, and maybe they’re not very nice words, nothing will happen.”

His talk of mass deportation is equally calculating. When he suggests that he would target both legal and illegal immigrants, or use the military arbitrarily against U.S. citizens, he does so knowing that past dictatorships have used public displays of violence to build popular support. By calling for mass violence, he hints at his admiration for these dictatorships but also demonstrates disdain for the rule of law and prepares his followers to accept the idea that his regime could, like its predecessors, break the law with impunity.

These are not jokes, and Trump is not laughing. Nor are the people around him. Delegates at the Republican National Convention held up prefabricated signs: Mass Deportation Now. Just this week, when Trump was swaying to music at a surreal rally, he did so in front of a huge slogan: Trump Was Right About Everything. This is language borrowed directly from Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist. Soon after the rally, the scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat posted a photograph of a building in Mussolini’s Italy displaying his slogan: Mussolini Is Always Right.

These phrases have not been put on posters and banners at random in the final weeks of an American election season. With less than three weeks left to go, most candidates would be fighting for the middle ground, for the swing voters. Trump is doing the exact opposite. Why? There can be only one answer: because he and his campaign team believe that by using the tactics of the 1930s, they can win. The deliberate dehumanization of whole groups of people; the references to police, to violence, to the “bloodbath” that Trump has said will unfold if he doesn’t win; the cultivation of hatred not only against immigrants but also against political opponents—none of this has been used successfully in modern American politics.

But neither has this rhetoric been tried in modern American politics. Several generations of American politicians have assumed that American voters, most of whom learned to pledge allegiance to the flag in school, grew up with the rule of law, and have never experienced occupation or invasion, would be resistant to this kind of language and imagery. Trump is gambling—knowingly and cynically—that we are not.