#republican relatives

[contemplatingoutlander]

If you are going to appeal to your Republican relatives at all (although it is NOT advised to do so at dinner--and it is probably a good idea to do so AFTER the holiday) appeal to them with emotion and invoke your common heritage.

Talk about how your great-grandparents (or however many generations back) voted for the New Deal because the way Republicans had run things before the New Deal's social safety net was established was terrible for the little guy. Explain that the Republicans actually want to take that away, including eventually even Social Security and Medicare.

The "deep state" that Republicans rail against are actually the agencies that provide us with our social safety net, that regulate businesses to make sure that workers are treated fairly, and that make sure that factories don't contaminate our air and drinking water, and that our food is safe to eat.

In other words, the "deep state" is what protects the little guy from the exploitation of corporations and the oligarchs.

Remind them that their relatives risked their lives in WWII fighting fascism. Ask them how their ancestors would feel if they knew they were supporting a fascist for president. Then explain to them exactly what fascism is and why Trump is a fascist.

Poster (before edits/additions) via source

SOME FRIENDLY ADVICE FOR A MORE ENJOYABLE HOLIDAY: This Thanksgiving, limit the amount of time and energy you spend confronting your Republican relatives with facts. If facts mattered to them, they wouldn't be Republican.

[mutopians]

for a party that sure loves to pretend this country is full of only christians, republicans sure are excited to give the country a government shutdown as a christmas present

[thebreakfastgenie]

My dead best friend's dad who as far as I know is a Republican (and has previously held local elected office as a Republican) made a post last month about wishing people cared about Haitian children and he made another post that mentioned eating at a Haitian Creole restaurant. He seems to be really (and correctly!) appalled by the racist xenophobic attacks. I don't know how he's voting and I'm not going to ask but it is an interesting and potentially heartening data point!

[essentiallychaotic]

I think one of the things that just has me tired with listening to all the bs around this election season is the number of people who say “i just dont like [insert person up for office]”

My dudes, you do not need to like them, you need to read their fucking policies and decide whether you think they are the best choice for the community. I’m so sick of “likeability” being an active part of politics. I routinely vote for candidates who I don’t particularly like, but who I trust to consider their constituents and vote in their best interest because They Have Done It Before.

Hearing “I don’t like them” given as the reason to not vote for someone usually just tells me the person did not do their research on the candidate or are just mindlessly consuming propaganda about them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[bagofpikachus]

peak anxiety

[sixtysixproblems]

hilarious when people say smth transphobic or transphobic adjacent to my loved ones, and when my loved ones bring me up, they go "oh but he's different." like, girl, really?

bestie the only thing different about me compared to other trans people is youve actually met me and decided I'm a human person deserving of courtesy, and not a fox news headline boogeyman. I have 600% more hoodies then pants, am far too emotionally attached to children's cartoons during the year I start to vote, and am going to get a blahaj as a very late birthday present. the only "difference" I have between other trans people is the fact all trans people are different and have unique experiences! and also that they dress better then me!

[altruistic-meme]

so my sister called me at 4am today to tell me about how she had been added to a group chat with a bunch of our extended family to talk about potentially having a family reunion and i literally didn't get added 🙃 it's not even like "oh well maybe the person who made the chat isn't friends with me on fb" bc one of the First People in that chat was our other sister who could have told i wasnt in the chat 🙃🙃🙃 and like im only bitter about being forgotten, i don't actually really WANT to be in the chat but it's still like. jee thanks guys.

[fiyerotigelaarr]

ST Twitter stays insane...

[grimm-the-tiger]

Found the Republican. 

[fohatic]

me scrolling my dash on this most inauspicious morning

[autumnrory]

i honestly just never wanna hear from these "voting doesn't matter" and "both candidates are the same" losers ever again

[girlwhowasntthere]

For those of us with US family members who are Republicans but (thank god) anti-Trump, are there any lesser evils for them to vote for? Any good that can be done with a Republican ballot? Maybe a list of people by state who aren't Trump puppets (if there are any)? Thanks!

There is a lot more being voted on than just Trump/Biden!! Would love some help keeping his loyalists out also!

[cookinguptales]

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

[cuntwrap--supreme]

Did some Instacart shit today. Delivered to an older lady with a severe neurological condition that made it to where she could no longer move without falling. I offered to put her groceries away for her and she cried and said no one who delivered her food had ever offered to do that before. Which is disgusting. Literally what kind of person do you have to be to see a feeble old lady and decide to not at least ask if she needs help. I know some people are more independent than others, but she said she usually just waits for her kids to come by. She had ice cream and other frozen shit. I'd be a horrible person if I let this food spoil because I wanted to do another order.

[ravenkings]

Bernie is wrong. He has always been wrong and is still wrong. The flaw in his theory is what he deems the “wealthy elite” versus what everyday Americans consider them to be. Voters don’t see all billionaires as the elites. They see college-educated liberals on the coasts, some of whom are billionaires, as elites.

Bernie-style populism didn’t land because billionaires figured out long ago they could undermine it by being socially right-wing, and the working class would forgive their wealth and privilege. That’s why this same demographic is willing to make it rain for grifters like Joel Osteen and Pat Robertson. That’s why they worship the wealthiest man on the planet like a God and consider him some real-life Tony Stark. People dismissed Donald Trump as a shameless attention-hungry New York oligarch until he called Mexicans rapists. Then he shot up to the top of the GOP primary polls. The working class didn’t think much of Elon Musk until he said “pronouns suck.” Then he became their hero. A scion of working-class Pennsylvania lost his US Senate seat last week to a hedge fund manager from Connecticut. West Virginia elected their richest man to the Senate after electing him governor – as a Democrat and later a Republican. Ohio tossed out their longtime Democratic senator, known for his strong support of labor rights, for – literally, no joke – a used-car salesman.

You can’t tell me the working class in America thinks being a billionaire alone is what makes one a “wealthy elite.” There are significant factors at play here Bernie is either oblivious to or purposely ignorant of.

In college, a professor once told me that Communism never succeeded in the United States because we are too religious and proud as a country. Religion, traditions, and culture were never widely discredited the way they were in Europe and Asia, where the clergy and nobility kept the bourgeoisie in figurative chains for centuries. The relative ease of social mobility made America unique compared to its Western counterparts. Historically, American progressivism has been focused on expanding social mobility – initially limited to only white men – to identity groups who had been denied it at the start: blacks, women, and immigrants. We have done it, with various amounts of success. While it may seem counterintuitive, Americans pride themselves in being the nation that pioneered the idea that wealth and status can be achieved through ingenuity and hard work and not just based on a lucky roll of the genetic dice, as it was in the Old World. It doesn’t mean we don’t have generational wealth in our country; we do, but since it isn’t the sole way to achieve wealth and power, we don’t care nearly as much about destroying all of it. Further, we will happily endorse it if the oligarchs and the aristocrats vow to promote and protect the social values we care about and the social hierarchy that benefits us.

It’s one of the reasons I believe Bernie could never beat Trump. If you ask working-class people what they want: an anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual billionaire or a Vermont socialist backed by kids from Harvard and UC Berkeley who hate our traditions and customs, the working class will always back the billionaire.

–Nick Rafter, "Bernie Sanders Can Take a Seat"

[an-imaginary-person6]

Read my tags. I stg read my damn tags.

Both candidates may kill your family however one is to convince to stop doing that than the other. And I am not being sarcastic. To add on, neither one has presented any care to BIPOC.

Fascism is bound to continue which is why organizing and having a presence is crucial.

Also one correction: Biden is supporting a genocide it is not that his position are shit. He went against a constituents who voted him into office and sided with genocide. People have lost their families in Gaza.

This is not a shit position, this is a genocidal position and we need to address the weight of that. Because this is intimate. This is violence of the status quo.

Additionally if Trump is elected into office I need y’all to know that we do not stop. We keep pursuing what we fight for.

All power to all the people.

sorry but i want to hit every american talking about not wanting to vote democrat anymore with hammers. lol