#political //

[deathtokillian]

“Your body MY choice”

My knife YOUR life

[tofutama]

I don't normally reblog such outright political content as I know we're all stressed, and I just kinda wanna keep Tumblr a place where I can chill.

But goddamn is this satisfying to watch.

[davidaugust]

[troythecatfish]

[kiddbegins]

Elections • A. Hotchner

A/n: this is self indulgent and heavily politically charged. I need to get how I’m feeling out in one way or another. So. …

There was only one thing you didn’t want to wake up to today. Weeks of going out and spreading the word. Hours of pacing, worry, anxiety, fear, filling you from the tips of your toes to the halo a top your head.

Election Day had never been this difficult. Usually you could see a light at the end of the tunnel but not this time. This time it felt like you were going to wake up drowning if the wrong side won.

Aaron was working. He had to be. You were home alone, everything spotless thanks to the anxious cleaning you did.

He’d been keeping tabs, knowing how much this was getting to you. You’d cried into his arms a few times already so it was no wonder that he was trying to get home to you now.

Because the first thing you and all Americans did the second they woke up was check the polls. 209 - 277.

He won.

Again.

Bile immediately grew in your throat, barely making it to the bathroom before it came out of your mouth. Retching with fear, anger and anxiety.

This meant horrible things. That you, a woman, were going to be the target of negativity for at least the next four years.

Your phone was ringing but it wasn’t audible over the higher pitch in your ear. The news wasn’t on and you were so glad it wasn’t because what exactly would that pull from you?

More tears? Screams?

It felt like hours you’d sat there on the tile floor, eyes starting to burn and thoughts running back and forth.

Leaving was always an option. But maybe not when your husband worked for the government.

Sterilization, except you were 34 and have no biological kids.

Abstaining, the most likely option at the moment but you’d miss the way Aaron held you before, during and after.

You didn’t hear the key in the door downstairs or the footsteps cracking the wood of the steps. The only sign someone was home was the bathroom light flicking on and the LED lights replacing the small bit of natural sunlight to hit your eyes.

“Oh sweetheart…” Aaron’s voice was so soft and warm it immediately brought another strong wave of tears out.

For you, for any possible child you’d have, your friends. Everything.

“I know…” he held you to his chest, knowing… knowing there was little he could do now. That anyone could do.

It took a small while before you got a calm spot. Eyes too tired to create anymore.

“Let’s get you up.” His voice gentle as he flushed the puke that still sat in the toilet and helped you up. Your body was numb.

Both from your emotions and position.

“We’ll figure something out.” He tried to make you feel better but how could he? How? You felt like someone shot you dead without ever pulling an actual trigger.

“You can’t.” Your voice raspy and full of congestion.

“Like hell I can’t. We are going to figure this out. As a couple. As a family, a country. We. Will fix this. And I would burn anything down that tried to get to you.” His voice was so firm, so full of his own fear for you that it made your heart lurch.

“This is just day one of a fight. I have no right to tell you this, but today you mourn, and tomorrow, if you can, you get back out there and you fight as hard as you have to. And i will have your back.”

“We all will.”

“Don’t do that. I am SO angry Aaron. I want to fight NOW.”

You take a breath.

“I want to scream and cry and get into a fight with everyone that voted the way they did. It’s like I have a huge bag of flames in my stomach that I want to spit out at anyone I talk to…”

“Everyone. I’m angry.”

I’m not even gonna promo down here or tag anyone. I’m just so devastated and wish I had this.

[lookinglass-fic]

As the lovely and talented Maria Bamford says, if you stay alive for no other reason, do it for spite.

*gripping your shoulders and shaking you* you gotta promise me one thing, if nothing else. you have to promise me to live, do you hear me. and if it's for nothing else but spite, LIVE. donald trump wants you to feel defeated and alone. let's show him and all the americans who voted for him that we will not stay quiet, we will not be devided and we will LIVE. we will survive that 78-year old asshole, we will OUTLIVE him. so please reach out to friends and family, reach out to each other and STAND TOGETHER.

PLEASE, LIVE!

[deathtokillian]

“It’s only 4 years”

And how much damage is he going to do in 4 years?

“You guys are over reacting”

People worried about their future is not “over reacting”

“They are not try to take your rights away”

THEY LITERALLY ARE! They are actively trying to take woman’s rights and lgbt rights away, and you put a cult leader in office again

[d347h0nl1ne]

Either way I’m leaving lol

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

deAdder

* * * *

[from Robert B. Hubbell]

Blaming Democrats for losses in 2024 is not helpful, fair, or accurate

I spent much of the day drafting responses to readers who forwarded articles / posts claiming that Democratic losses in 2024 were due to the fact that they had “lost touch” or “alienated” or “failed to listen to” working class voters or male voters. I won’t link to those articles / posts. They are ubiquitous.

The notion that Democrats “failed to listen to” or “lost touch” with the middle and working classes is demonstrably wrong. Virtually every policy promoted by VP Harris was designed to help the middle class, blue-collar workers, and the working poor:

Childcare tax credits, earned income credits for the working poor, lower prescription drug prices, protecting affordable healthcare, increasing the minimum wage, protecting unions and workers’ rights, providing for in-home care for elderly and homebound, subsidizing first-time homebuyers, building affordable housing, student loan forgiveness, prosecuting price gouging, and a middle-class tax cut.

To the extent that the Democrats speak through policies, virtually all Democratic policies seek to improve the lives of the middle class, working class, and working poor. On a policy level, the assertion Democrats “forgot” or “abandoned” the working class is wrong and corrosive.

What, then, is the source of the false notion that Democrats have “forgotten” the working class? I don’t know for certain, but I have a guess. (I invite others to weigh in; I was an English major and a securities litigation lawyer. I claim no expertise in political analysis.)

Many (not all) in the middle and working classes disagree with Democratic support for women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, equal voting rights for Black citizens, and the fight against human-caused climate change. To the extent that Democrats have parted ways with the cultural and social views of many in the working class and middle class, those groups feel “alienated” and “ignored.”

But it is no answer to those feelings of abandonment and alienation to abandon the struggle for full equality for women, LGBTQ rights, voting rights for Black citizens, and protection of the environment.

So, yes, there is a growing gap between Democratic policies on social issues and many (not all) in the middle and working classes, especially males.

Case in point: Despite unprecedented support for unions by Biden and Harris, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters refused to endorse Kamala Harris. The only rational course of action for unions is to support Kamala Harris. Why, then, did the Teamsters refuse to do so?

My belief: A majority of Teamsters—largely male working-class voters—disagreed with Kamala Harris and Democrats on social issues, like women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, Black voting rights, and efforts to fight human-caused climate change.

So, the fiction that Democrats have “ignored” the working and middle classes is wrong on the merits. It is only on social issues at the core of the Democratic Party’s commitment to social justice that there has been a divergence of opinion.

The answer to the above conundrum is not to abandon the social justice values that are at the core of the Democratic Party but to expand the voting base that is the backbone of the party.

If anyone tells you that Democrats lost in 2024 because they “abandoned” the working class, ask them specifically how Democrats did so. Be prepared to list Kamala Harris’s policies designed to improve the lives of the working class. Ask them how extending the GOP tax cut for millionaires and corporations will benefit the working class. Ask them how the GOP plan to kill Obamacare will help the working class. Or how imposing a 10% tariff on all imported goods will help the working class.

The fiction that Democrats “abandoned” the working class is designed to set Democrats against one another. It is beginning to gain traction because gullible media is willingly spreading the lie. Don’t be seduced by the fiction. Democrats must remain loyal to their roots of social justice and dignity for all. It is the right thing to do. It is the only thing to do. Political victory without justice for all would be hollow and bitter. We are better than that.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[just-ray]

^ The pbp homie when I yap about ff but we still chill

useless ray of goddamn sunshine

[sophieinwonderland]

Many Americans I have seen: *Says they are pro freedom and democracy.*

Also many Americans: *Votes for a guy who doesn't believe in democracy when he doesn't win, and who literally wants to be a dictator and has taken great measures (like what he did with supreme court) to ensure he becomes one.*

Maybe it's just me, but I, a non-American, can't comprehend the logic here lol...

Well, here is one thing that I can clear up. Republicans don't support democracy.

At least not over the past few elections.

You could see this most notably whenever the topic would come up of the electoral college. Democrats would point out the fundamental problems with the winner of the presidency being somebody who lost the popular vote by 3 million votes and how undemocratic it is. A popular response then became that America is not a democracy. That we are a "republic."

This is an incredibly stupid talking point because a republic is a representative democracy. The idea behind a republic is just that the people elect representatives to represent them rather than voting on legislation directly. It does not somehow make it anymore logical to have a president who was elected by a minority of the population.

But the anti-democracy talking points have been big with Republicans ever since the 2016 election.

To get more to the point... Rural Republicans feel threatened by the fact that the country's policies are being decided by large cities. They believe that because they occupy the most land, that they should be the ones in charge of the country rather than these concentrated areas with the densest population.

They view the very concept of democracy as tyranny of the majority. The irony being missed is that what they are actually supporting is a tyranny of the minority.

And let me say... I can understand where some of them are coming from. You come up to rural Oregon, for example, and one of the biggest issues is the logging industry regulations.

Oregon has been a logging state since forever. Heavy environmental regulations have destroyed countless jobs throughout the rural parts of the state. And these regulations haven't been coming from the places that are actually affected. They are coming from the big cities where forests aren't something you live near and around, but are a rare novelty you get to see when you travel.

I am not saying that environmental protections are bad. But the people who passed the environmental regulations didn't replace the jobs they destroyed with anything. If families in rural communities go hungry or lose their homes because logging restrictions destroyed their industries, that's not going to be a problem to anyone living in the city. They wouldn't even know about it, but if they did, they probably wouldn't care much.

So democracy, to Republicans, really just means that people who are living far away from them get to decide what happens to their communities.

But... Having pointed out some of the reasoning for why Republicans feel the way that they do, I also need to point out how much worse they actually are in this regard.

Their problem with the perceived tyranny of the majority isn't the tyranny. It's that the other guys get to be the tyrants.

Because while it is true that decisions made by people who aren't living in the areas affected can unintentionally be harmful to those areas... Much of the current Republican mentality is designed intentionally to hurt people and exert control.

When a Republican area needs disaster relief, this isn't a partisan issue. If part of the country is hurting, we mobilize and do what we can for them. But when people like Trump threaten to cut funding to fight wildfires in California and just let it burn, he is met with resounding applause from his base.

For as much as they claim to be against a tyranny of the majority... Republicans would happily cut off all disaster relief funding from liberal areas just out of pure spite.

As another example of conservative opinions on Democracy and freedom, you might look to this quote which they love to misattribute to Ben Franklin.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for dinner. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote”

That certainly sounds reasonable... until you spend more than a few seconds thinking about it.

If the lamb is the only one armed, then what is there to stop the lamb from imposing his will on others? For all the flaws democracy has... "liberty is using threats of violence to impose your will on the majority" sounds like the worst form of government. It's a military dictatorship.

There's also another version of the quote, one from the Los Angeles Times in 1992, that conservatives desperately need take a look at.

Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.

The point of this quote is that freedom requites acknowledgment that some rights need to be protected and are too important to leave up to the majority.

Freedom requires that those be preserved.

But Republicans aren't a party that care about freedom for anyone but themselves. Much of their platform is designed around taking rights from people. Especially from marginalized communities. Limiting the ability to vote, to marry, to have autonomy over your own body, even to use the bathroom of your choice!

This was a long post, but the TL;DR is this: Modern Republicans openly hate Democracy, and only pretend to support freedom while actively trying to strip people of their liberties.

[fluffitanuki]

BITE THE HAND THAT CAGES YOU ! ! !

[lookinglass-fic]

Not to mention the ABSOLUTE FUMBLE with the pandemic. The refusal to wear masks and suggesting you inject yourself with bleach and take horse medicine. How many people died or became chronically I'll or disabled when they didn't have to?

If I have to see one more “we survived him before we can do it again” post I’m going to scream.

So many people didn’t. So many more people are going to die. Women are going to bleed out in parking lots because doctors are scared to give them the abortion they need. Migrates are going to die in detention centers. Kids are going to have their parents ripped away in mass deportations. Potentially millions of people are going to lose their healthcare.

Yes, we keep fighting, but don’t say we survived before. A lot of people didn’t.

[shego1142]

Okay so… I don’t really want to make this post, mostly because I feel like I’m always the one wearing tin foil hats on tumblr

But listen… I understand being upset and sad and afraid right now

But yall some of these posts are going beyond doomerism

Some of these posts

A lot of these posts, actually

Look quite a bit like demoralisation

So many of these posts I’ve seen look very much like purposeful targeted demoralisation

And I do hope everyone can understand very quickly how bad demoralising people right now is.

I do hope everyone can very quickly understand just how much people in power stand to gain from demoralising us.

I mean, you know, not that I’m saying that there’s a psyop taking place on the website that has routinely had multiple proven right wing/conservative/white supremacist psyops take place or anything

You know, that would be bonkers.

But all of these blogs out here saying that everything is hopeless and nothing will ever get better and we are all doomed and we should just tear each other apart and play the blame game?

That’s a little fishy.

Especially given that now more than ever is a time to stand with one another and hold on to hope and start organising together.

All of these blogs just blind faith accepting the election results as they are and not even considering any bad acting is at play? Just rolling over without any hint of a fight and implying that everyone else has to as well?

That’s a little fishy.

Especially given that:

The election results are not certified until December 25th and the House and Senate do have the power to object to the electoral college votes (especially if enough pressure is put on them to do so)

Especially given that it took a long time before we were sure who won in the last presidential race and it looked like Trump had won that first week back then too

Especially given that Kamala Harris’ Concession speech is not legally binding, and if it is found out between now and December 25th that she has won, then that will still be considered a legal win.

Especially given that many states, including battleground states, are already doing a recount and many more states are presumed to follow (So far Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada are recounting the ballots and Arizona and Texas are considering)

Especially given that there has already been proven minimal forms of tampering with the election process including multiple burnt absentee ballot boxes, bomb threats at polling places, as well as just plain human error whether malicious or benign.

So… you know… anyone posting on here saying that hope is dead and that we should all hate each other and everyone should just fuck off and stop caring about everything and stop supporting each other?

That seems a little bit fishy, doesn’t it?

That seems a little bit fucking sus, doesn’t it?!

Especially given that, even after all is said and done, even if he 100% did win and there’s no doubt that it’s legitimate

He’s still being sued for multiple charges and violations of conduct, he could still end up in jail

Especially since even if he doesn’t, even if he is sitting as acting president one January:

We have 2 and 1/2 months to mobilise

2 and 1/2 months to organise

Sure would be convenient for Trump and the 1% and the right wing pundits to make everyone feel like everything is hopeless and tragic and to pit leftist against democrats and what not

Sure would be useful to them if we were all just sad and hateful to each other these next coming months

Like I’ve seen many posts tying to do.

You can feel your feelings but if you start advocating for us to attack one another, for women to fight and hate leftist men who voted for Kamala, for black people to fight and hate other people of color, for leftists to hate democrats for not “going far enough” and for democrats to hate leftists for “going too far”

And all this bullshit in-fighting

I’m just going to assume you’re a bad actor and block you

This isn’t the time for the blame game, there’s no fucking one to blame other than Trump and most likely Elon Musk’s money.

Now isn’t the time to give a shit about why the election results are what they are.

Now is a time to stand together, united, to make our communities better, safer, sanctuaries.

Now is the time to talk to one another, to not strive for perfection but for safety.

Call your representatives

Get your passport

Print out as many copies of books (especially banned ones) as possible and fill your local little libraries with them, fill it with zines about community building too,

Check out these links:

Talk to the queers and the people of colour and the disabled people in your community

Book a meeting room in your local library

Talk to your librarians, talk to your teachers and health care workers

Talk to your local conservationists.

Don’t just talk to leftist spaces either, remember:

There is Power in Making Friends, Not Winning Battles - reach out to your community and find out what the real issues are, it’s very rarely actually just hate, it’s usually fear and poverty.

Do nice things for your community in the name of Queerness - in some places you can adopt a road and make it beautiful, so this with a group of queer friends and get a plaque that says “This Road Was Adopted by The Queer Community”

Get together with your minority friends and figure out how to open a soup kitchen (easiest than you think and registering as a non profit is actually a great way to stay safe for many reasons)

Have your community see you as a part of it, not a threat to it.

Speak at schools

Fundraiser for the library

If you’re included to do so, you could partner with different religious groups as well, especially since there are in fact religious groups that are inclusive and welcoming and supportive.

Make your community know that the “threat” of the “lgbtqia” is non-existent

Don’t make yourself less queer, less a person of colour, less disabled, etc, don’t fade into the background

Become a shining beacon of positivity and goodness that everyone in your community can see as an asset to the community.

Give back more than you e ever gotten.

I know how difficult that can be but trust me, it will be worth it. Work with the leaders in your community to lobby for more rights just in your town and then you can lobby for more rights in your state.

Just like how many states have now said that if Trump tries to do mass deportations they will stop him, work to create that solidarity within your own communities.

Do not sit quietly in fear doing and saying nothing but hopeless things for the next two months.

Do not let anyone convince you that it’s over.

Do not become another statistic.

[batboyblog]

President Biden's plan for the first 100 days of his next term:

—Restore Roe v. Wade

—Sign John Lewis Voting Rights Act

—Expand Social Security and Medicare

—End all medical debt

—Raise the minimum wage

—Pass the PRO Act for workers

—Ban assault weapons

—Lead the world on clean energy

—Permanent child tax credit

—$35 insulin cap for all

—Build more housing

—Invest in child care and elder care

you want that? FIGHT! for it, check if you're registered to vote and then find a way to volunteer, everyone can make a difference everyone!