#seriously he makes trump look like a democrat

[beatrice-otter]

You’re seriously still blaming Trump on “Bernie Bros”? Time for democrats to start taking responsibility for putting up shitty candidates and deflecting blame toward everyone else, for once

Trump was elected by a very narrow margin. And there was a ton of polling and data crunching and statistical modeling going on during and after the election, so we actually know what the factors that tipped the needle Trump's direction are.

One of the biggies is leftists who thought Hilary was insufficiently far left. If every leftist who loved Bernie and disliked Hilary because she wasn't perfect enough had held their nose and voted for Hilary, Trump would have lost. They're not the only demographic that's true of; there are a number of others who, if they had turned out in force, would have turned the tide of the election. For example, if a higher percentage of Black women had voted, Trump would also have lost. You know what the difference is between your average Bernie Bro and your average Black woman? Your average Bernie Bro is white and thus a hell of a lot less likely to have his vote suppressed. He is a hell of a lot more likely to find it easy to vote. This is not me saying this because I don't like them, or because I think Hillary was a perfect candidate. This is me saying that when you look at the actual numbers, leftist ideologues who refused to vote for a candidate who was not their perfect choice was one of the main reasons Trump got four years in the White House.

In general, regardless of the candidates involved, if 55% of American adults vote in a national election, the Republican wins in a landslide. If 60% of American adults vote, the Republican wins by a bare margin. If 65% of American adults vote, the Democrat wins by a bare margin. If 70% of American adults vote, the Democrat wins by a landslide. If 75% of American adults voted--and voted regularly in every election--the Republican party would cease to be a significant force in American politics.

This has been known for decades. Republicans will show up and vote no matter what; a very high percentage of Democrats and left-leaning voters will only show up if the candidate in question is perfectly in line with their views. That's why we have a Congress that is dominated by Republicans despite most of the country not liking them, and that's why we have most of the political problems that they do. By waiting for a political candidate who is good enough, you are directly ceding power to the people who are making the world worse.

Elections are decided by the people who show up. If you do not show up to vote, your vote does not get counted. If politicians want to get re-elected, they have to listen to the people who will vote for them. If they try to listen to the people who don't regularly vote, they are far more likely to lose re-election than if they listen to the people who show up every election. And conservatives show up every election. If liberals and leftists changed our voting habits and voted in every single election--voted for the furthest left candidate in the primary, and whoever got the Democratic nomination in the general election--we would prove ourselves to be a voting bloc worth listening to and the party would move left in response.

You want a candidate who perfectly fits your vision and ideals for what America should be? That doesn't happen in a vacuum. That takes work, and the most basic level of that work is showing up to vote now and every time there's an election to vote in.

[littlematchagirlll]

one of my friends (also a leftist) said that because we live in utah, it doesn't matter who he votes for, and there's no way he will vote for a "fucking cop who was complicit in genocide."

he is telling his friends in utah that they have zero say in who is president, so they shouldn't vote for harris.

and, i love him, but i think that line of thinking is really damaging.

if the stakes were lower for this election, then sure! i'm all in favor of third parties, and i do think that should be more normalized. it would be great to get to a point where we have more viable options than just democrats and republicans.

but this election is against trump. if trump wins, we get project 2025.

this isn't your father's republican party that just wanted to lower taxes and have more free trade. we are looking at rights being taken away for several marginalized communities. major changes that will set us back decades. there is too much on the line, and harris needs every single vote she can get.

saying you won't vote for harris because you live in a red state and don't think your vote will count... like a vote for a third party will??

you're really just saying that you don't mind trump winning, or if you do, you aren't willing to actually do what it takes to stop it.

as for being complicit with the genocide, aren't we all? our tax money is going to the genocide. we are complicit, whether we like it or not.

and harris has openly advocated for a ceasefire! also, do you think trump won't be complicit in the genocide? do you not think he would actively support israel? i'd rather have a president that calls for a ceasefire than one who doesn't. i'd rather have a president who is willing to push back on israel than one who be pushed around by israel.

there's more hope for a ceasefire with harris than there is with trump, and that's worth something.

my friend said "when people look back at your history, don't let them see your name next to a war criminal's."

honestly? in this election, i would rather have my name seen next to harris because that shows i understood that the future of our country and the safety of its citizens was more important than my personal moral superiority.

i don't just vote to make a fucking point. i vote because it impacts people's lives.

it seriously feels like some people are okay with watching the country burn, as long as they feel morally superior.

[thebreakfastgenie]

If Harris' campaign was faultless is that you saying that you support genocide or like, that you didn't know about her pro-genocide stance?

You know I've kept quiet about this for various reasons but I think that was a mistake.

Referring to the Harris's position as a "pro-genocide stance" is a bad rhetorical trick. The left has done it before, calling people COVID-deniers and climate-deniers for not sharing your exact position. It's not helping your cause. Most people don't see "support for Israel in line with the mainstream status quo" as a "pro-genocide stance." I don't believe that deep down you really think Harris's position is identical to full-throated support for genocide. Only one candidate has said he wants Gaza turned into a parking lot. That candidate won, so come January you're probably going to find out what full-throated American support for genocide looks like. People who don't agree with your description of Harris's policies as pro-genocide think you sound absurd. They think you're a crank with fringe positions. Whether you're right or not always using the most extreme possible language is only alienating more people and making fewer people take you seriously. Having observed this for a while now, I don't believe most cases are people trying to make a sincere moral argument. Most cases I see, like your message, are bad faith shock value. I see this happen so much, you confuse radical politics with base edginess.

It's not doing anything to help Palestinians. Your screaming at people that they support genocide because they won't want Trump to be president hasn't worked. Now the guy with a settlement named after him is going to be in charge and he's already said he'll let Netanyahu do whatever he wants. If I turned around what you say to Democrats on you, and said you need to do a better job of persuading people and not alienating them, you'd probably say "but there's genocide on the line!" But... that's exactly it, isn't it? If making rhetorical concessions and saying things you found cringe, or you generally feeling kinda bad, was the price of stopping a genocide, wouldn't it be worth it? This kind of messaging comes from people who are more invested in the moral high ground of yelling at people about genocide than in doing anything about it. I don't respect that.

[qqueenofhades]

Hello, qqueenofhades!

I just want to say, that ever since I discovered you in the week following Biden stepping down, you've actually made me not dread talking about politics. I look forward to your thoughts on what's going on, and I want to thank you for that.

I would love to know: What do you think of the apparent exhaustion from Republicans/MAGA about Trump? People leaving his rallies (and that's not even covering how few are even coming at all or his supposedly needing to pay people to come), and the slew of formers we see at the DNC openly talking about their change in sides. Do you have any ideas about what might be causing this shift? Was it Harris? Was it Jan. 6th? Was it one singular reason, or multiple at once?

Hope you're having a good day.

I think it's a lot of reasons. First, as I said earlier, the whole theme of the DNC is about reclaiming the USA FREEDOM message from the Republicans, who have had a monopoly on it for the past three decades at least and used it to justify even more antidemocratic fascist militant theocratic hard-right turns. The scenes of joyful people talking rousingly about hope, compassion, morning in America, and breaking out into regular USA! USA! chants appeals a lot to the average American, who doesn't want to hear constant violent and negative bile from the Orange Felonious Traitor, because that is literally the only thing he has to offer and it's getting openly more deranged and dangerous every day. The whole Tough Talking Populist Outsider shtick worked in 2016, when Trump didn't have four years of incompetent chaos as the actual president and was just a theoretical concept who a lot of people thought would "smarten up" and take it seriously if he actually won. Likewise, the backlash of white grievance against Obama and the complacency that Trump didn't actually stand a chance was able to be leveraged against the decades of smears that the GOP had already leveled on HRC. Of course, Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million-plus, but the Electoral College did what it's designed to do and he snuck in anyway. But it wasn't a rousing landslide or a thumping victory.

As such, a lot of Reagan Republicans are now turning to the Democrats as the actual pro-USA party, because Trump trash-talks America, calls it a shithole third-world country, bellows about WWIII and the Great Depression, cozies up to foreign dictators, etc etc. Reagan also pitched the sunny message of America as the shining moral hero of the world (he in fact used the Make America Great Again slogan that Trump repurposed), and that likewise resonated with people after the chaos and unrest of the 1970s. Now, we all know that I hate Reagan's ass and I hope he's burning in hell for so many reasons, but his message was effective because it gave people a soaring rhetorical vision to believe in (even while he was often stripping away their economic prosperity in particular behind the scenes, all together now, FUCK REAGAN). But the Republicans who joined the 1980s party are now seeing Republicanism become a tawdry cult centered on, as Geoff Duncan (GOP former Lt. Gov. of Georgia) put it yesterday, the worship of a felonious thug. Trump is wildly anti-America; he only uses it as a vehicle to get what he wants, because Donald Trump is all that Donald Trump cares about. Yes, there are still plenty of brainwashed cultists in numbers great enough to make this election far, far closer than it should ever be in any sane universe, but increasingly even his own cultists don't want to hear it anymore. They keep leaving before the event is over and he's drawing far smaller crowd sizes than in 2016, which as we know is pretty much all he cares about. He has a desperate need for attention and approval to feed his damaged narcissistic-sociopath dementia-riddled brain, and he's just not getting it, while the very real prospect looms that if he loses this election (and it looks more and more like he will) he will go to jail for the rest of his life. Terrifying.

That's why we have the unprecedented spectacle of lifelong Republicans and former Trump voters flocking to Harris in large numbers. We've had Republican speakers at the DNC every night, and they keep playing video montages of former Trump voters disavowing him or explaining that they won't vote for him. If you consider what propelled Trump in 2016 -- conservative white grievance against a black guy named Barack Obama -- the willingness to unhesitatingly embrace a black/mixed-race WOMAN named Kamala Harris is incredible. Many of them were already planning to vote for Biden before he dropped out, but it was no certain thing that they would move from being willing to vote for an establishment old white guy to also being willing to vote for a woman and a person of color. The fact that we've had so many high-profile affinity group Zoom events for Harris, including from truly unbelievable quarters (Republicans for Harris, Mormons for Harris, EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS for Harris), shows that there is a country-wide exhaustion with Trump's poisonous selfish grievance performances, where he's willing to do anything to anyone and turn the USA into a fascist dictatorship if it will exempt him, personally, from the consequences of his odious actions. That is not a message that any sane person can support, and more and more, they don't. As I have said before, that is why fascist movements always sow the seeds of their own destruction. They work for a while, but eventually they're boring, they're mean, they're exhausting, and they offer nothing for anyone but being angry all the time at everyone. Most humans don't like that, and eventually, they drift away.

I also think that part of the reason Kamala absolutely nailed it with Tim Walz as VP is because Walz is the literal anti-MAGA in every way. We have seen a lot of similar straight white military-vet football-coach-type Middle America older men drift into MAGA grievance politics because it offers a home for guys like them and feeds on fear of the future and fear of the other. They feel like they're being heard and understood, even if they aren't, and they vote Republican because they've grown up with Republicans being the pro-America party (however defined). But because Walz is a straight white married military-vet football-coach guy who actually models a joyful and compassionate masculinity, an openly emotional and supportive masculinity, who talks movingly about his love for his wife and children, who is a hunter and gun owner who nonetheless loves kids more than guns, who has taken his small-town rural-America values and become an effective and genuinely progressive politician focused on making ordinary people's lives better, he offers a total antidote to MAGAism. He shows that it is possible to be a traditionally manly American straight white guy who is not a gibbering conspiracy theory-addled shitbag dedicated to trampling on everyone else out of reactionary fear. He shows those guys that they can embrace the diverse future and not have to fear it, and he gives them a permission structure to vote for Democrats because it's the right thing to do AND feel that the Democrats are now the real pro-America party.

Basically, right now, Walz is the most popular member on either ticket, and he's crushing Vance into oblivion (there's something like a 27-point difference in their favorable/unfavorable spreads) because Vance is a horrible robotic hateful gremlin and Walz is an authentic and genuine person who a lot of traditionally Republican-affiliated men (and women!) can identify with. He's also the guy who came up with the devastating "weird" attack line that the GOP can do nothing with except splutter and whine, like playground bullies, that no YOU'RE THE WEIRD ONE. He models that it's actually normal to want your leaders to be compassionate human beings who want to use power to make your lives better, and not hateful fascist alt-righters dedicated to making you also hate everyone and be steeped in doom and gloom. That is why people responded so well to Obama in 2008 after the turmoil of the Bush Jr. years, and why this feels even more monumental than Obama. We won't know until the votes are counted, but this giant tsunami just rose out of nowhere when Harris took over, and it's speeding forward in a really incredible way. We've got to do the work and we've got to vote, but if we do, we could absolutely pulverize Trump and MAGA to smithereens in a way that means it wouldn't be able to come back for a good long while, and oh, what a glorious day that would be. So yes.

[poorrichardjr]

You are in a cult

So, I want to show you a few images. The first is something that normal people found stupid and hilarious about a political candidate back in 1988. People thought this picture and the accompanying meaning were so cringe that the man tanked his entire political campaign.

That is the democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. The reason this photo op was so reviled is because he would have been the last person to actually step foot into a tank. This was just so stupid that even democrats said he can't be president.

I point this out because no democrats were dressing up in fatigues and defending this dumbass. We understood he was an idiot and we said nope.

With that in mind, I ask you are these next photos really any better?

I understand why he did these photo's. He felt he had to pander to the people that his supporters generally believe are really far beneath them. You know, the "servants" that most of his follower's think are lazy, stupid, and unworthy of a living wage.

Seriously, though, ask yourself if this is any better than the first one? None of these pictures are realistic. Trump isn't going to work at McDonalds, and he didn't do anything that day except get a photo op to try and make him more relatable. The same goes for the second photo. He did no actual work, and he really couldn't give a shit about the people who do these sorts of jobs except as far as their votes benefit him. He is never going to make their lives better. It is simply a fake attempt to look like something he isn't. Just like Dukakis.

As bad as those photos of Trump are, they pale in comparison to his followers.

I wouldn't normally say anything bad about normal people, but there is a reason I brought these up. Imagine if any of these people were Biden or Harris supporters who did this sort of thing. Normal people would look at them and wonder what was wrong with them. Cultish behavior would be the least of the comments that would come up. We all know the vitriol that Trump supporters are fond of spewing at the least little thing. Take a moment and turn that bile inward and examine your orange god and the "people" who are not only willing to wear garbage bags and diapers but are for some inexplicable reason, proud of it.

The people of the world are hoping you soon come to your senses.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Michael de Adder, Halifax Chronicle Herald

* * * *

Trump promises to eliminate future elections

July 29, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Last Friday, Trump told Christian rally-goers that “You won’t have to vote any more” if they elect Trump in 2024.

Let that sink in. A presidential candidate promised to eliminate future elections.

The media yawned.

Actually, the media ignored the story (except for The Guardian) until commentators on social media and the Harris Campaign shamed journalists into acknowledging Trump's antidemocratic threat—which they did in a dismissive, begrudging manner.

It is tiresome to highlight the media’s failings, but this incident is so egregious that it is important on many levels. Most importantly, it underscores that Democrats cannot relent in their effort to warn the American people that Trump hopes to end fundamental democratic norms—like the peaceful, regular transfer of power as prescribed by the Constitution.

Among the issues that should drive voters to the polls in 2024, Trump’s repeated promises to end democracy should be the most alarming. But concepts like “democracy” and “tyranny” strike many voters as “abstract.” Taking away the right to vote is not abstract; doing so would render all other rights illusory.

Let’s turn this incident against Trump by convincing voters that Trump really, truly wants to eliminate the right to vote after 2024. And we must not let him (or his surrogates) weasel out of the plain meaning of his words.

What did Trump say?

 At a rally in Florida on Friday, Trump said,

Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it any more. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians. I love you. Get out – you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.

See The Guardian, Trump tells supporters they won’t have to vote in the future: ‘It’ll be fixed!’.

Like most of Trump's statements, it is simultaneously inscrutable and blazingly obvious. He is promising the end of democracy if he is elected. “In four years, you won’t have to vote again.”

The same words uttered by most other politicians might be susceptible to innocent interpretations. But those words uttered by this president can mean only one thing: He wants to eliminate elections in America. He tried to override the will of the people in 2020 by canceling their votes through coup and insurrection. He says he will do so again if he is re-elected. We should believe him.

To repeat: A presidential candidate has promised that 2024 will be the last time that Americans will vote because “everything will be fixed.” That is the equivalent of a five-alarm fire for democracy.

How did the GOP, the media, and the Harris campaign respond? You can probably predict their responses, but let’s look for ourselves.

The GOP response

In typical GOP fashion, the GOP response was (a) he didn’t mean what he said, (b) he said the opposite of what you think you heard, and (c) Trump says weird things all the time, so chill out!

The typical Republican response was delivered by New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who laughed off the statement by saying, (a) it was “hyperbolic,” (b) Trump was trying to make the point that “We want everyone to vote in all elections,” and (c) it was a classic “Trumpism.”

Saying that the statement was hyperbolic and “a Trumpism” are. not serious responses because they do not address the substance of what Trump actually said. Trump incited an insurrection by telling people to “Fight like hell” moments before the attack on the Capitol.” We are long past claiming that Trump's words should not be taken seriously and literally.

Claiming that Trump's statement means the exact opposite of what Trump said is depraved. Sununu’s interpretation of “We want everyone to vote in all elections” vs. Trump's “You’re not gonna have to vote again” is depraved. The depravity of Sununu’s perverse interpretation is not diminished because Sununu delivered the lie with a hearty laugh.

Other Trump apologists (on social media) argued that Trump was saying only that Republicans would not need Christian evangelical votes after 2024 because Trump would do such a great job of fixing all problems in America, “you’re not gonna have to vote.” That explanation makes no sense; even if Trump “fixed” all the problems in America in the next four years, the Constitution still requires an election in 2028.

There is simply no reasonable interpretation of Trump's words other than his declaration that in four years, he intends to eliminate elections (if he can).

The media’s response

As noted above, The Guardian gave serious coverage to Trump's statement. US media outlets, not so much. See, for example, Lucian K. Truscott IV’s description of the NYTimes’ pathetic response. As Truscott notes in his Substack, the Times relegated the statements to “a few lines in a wrap-up piece about what’s happening in the presidential campaign . . . and they buried it on the Times website.” The Times then breezily moved on to pedestrian coverage of the campaigns as if they were reporting the details of an itinerary rather than one of the most shocking statements ever by a major-party candidate for the presidency.

Perhaps even worse was the pathetic interview of Chris Sununu by Martha Raddatz on ABC. Raddatz asked Sununu, “What the heck did he [Trump] mean there [in the statement]?” As noted above, Sununu responded,

(a)  The statement was hyperbolic; (b)  Trump meant that everyone should vote in every election; and (c)  That statement is a Trumpism.

Sununu’s pathetic response was enough to satisfy Radattz, whose follow-up question was, “Ok. Let's turn to President Biden and Kamala Harris.”

I won’t pick on Raddatz (much). Almost every journalist on mainstream media is as pathetic as Raddatz. The inability to ask follow-up questions to ludicrous rationalizations of attacks on democracy is staggering. Most are entertainers, not journalists. Their presence on “news” shows is insulting to their viewers.

Raddatz’s failure to challenge Sununu’s answer and her immediate transition to a question about President Biden and Kamala Harris demonstrates the media’s dangerous addiction to mindless “balance” and false equivalency. Nothing Kamala Harris did over the weekend deserves to be in the same news block as a story about a presidential candidate promising to end the need for elections. Nothing.

Having watched the media fail miserably for seven years with Trump, nothing should surprise us. But the guy tried to overturn one election already and is saying he will do it again. What will it take for the media to realize that Trump is a unique threat to democracy who deserves coverage that applies only to aspiring dictators?

Even if the Times and Raddatz believed that Trump's remarks had a benign explanation, they failed to acknowledge the more plausible, malign interpretation. Instead, they were willing to assume that Trump's remarks were harmless “Trumpisms.” They are not. We saw what happened after Trump told his followers on January 6, 2021: “We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.”

So, continue writing those letters to the editor and comments to stories highlighting the media’s failings. And become a messenger for Harris by amplifying her campaign’s messaging. Read on!

The Harris Campaign’s response

Kamala Harris’s campaign organization has been reacting to Trump's missteps and threats like a rapid response force to each. Early Saturday morning, the Harris campaign posted a clip of Trump's comments and attached the following statement:

Statement on Trump's Promise to End Democracy When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it. Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump: After the last election Trump lost, he sent a mob to overturn the results. This campaign, he has promised violence if he loses, the end of our elections if he wins, and the termination of the Constitution to empower him to be a dictator to enact his dangerous Project 2025 agenda on America. Donald Trump wants to take America backward, to a politics of hate, chaos, and fear —this November America will unite around Vice President Kamala Harris to stop him.

The Harris campaign’s statement is spot-on for several reasons. First, the campaign issued the statement just after noon on Saturday morning, showing a willingness and ability to rebut Trump quickly. By responding within the same news cycle, the Harris campaign shaped the social media response, which ultimately prodded the major media to acknowledge Trump's threat.

Second, the Harris campaign identified Trump's threats in plain language, including

“Trump's Promise to End Democracy.” “Last election Trump sent a mob to overturn the results.” “He has promised violence if he loses” “He has promised the end of elections if he wins” “He has promised to terminate the Constitution” “To become a dictator” “To enact dangerous project 2025”

Dangerous threats demand plain language. The Harris campaign rose to the challenge.

The campaign’s statement was strong in another respect: In identifying Trump as a threat to democracy, it identified Kamala Harris as the point of unity to stop Trump. A very smart move! Kamala Harris is giving Democrats the antidote to Trump's cult of personality. The campaign is fashioning Kamala Harris as a champion of democracy. And it is working!

Concluding Thoughts

Trump's threats present a dilemma. Should we take them seriously? Or does our attention give them credence and heft they do not carry on their own? As with most things in life, there is tension in truth. We must take Trump's threats literally and seriously. But we must not ascribe superpowers to Trump or self-executing inevitability to his threats. By taking his threats seriously, we can prevent them from coming to fruition. So, do not despair or cower in fear. Raise the alarm as we work to defeat Trump and stop his dark plans.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to rally around Kamala Harris. She held her first fundraiser in Pittsfield, MA at the Colonial Theatre. The event was sold out, with an overflow crowd in front of the theater. Kamala Harris spoke after an all-star warm-up that included former Governor Deval Patrick, Senators Warren and Markey, Rep. Neal, and Heather Cox Richardson.

According to those in attendance, the evening was “electric.” The crowd was so enthusiastic, Kamala Harris had difficulty quieting the cheers so she could say “Thank you.” She gave a great speech and pumped up the crowd even further.

In eight short days, Kamala Harris has unified and inspired Democrats in a way that has defied expectations of pundits and career politicians. She is doing so at the precise moment that Trump's veneer of invincibility is cracking. We need to sustain the wave of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris and spread it to others—so that we can push Trump’s downward trajectory past the tipping point of no return. We can do that!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

As a resident of a completely different country and from an outsider's point of view, at this point I honestly think US democracy is done for, no matter who wins. As much as I love the libertarian party & other third parties fighting for a recognition, they have absolutely no chance in this election or the next ten.

If Harris wins this one, that'll strengthen Democrats' hold on their voter base because look, we did it, we saved democracy ! It won't be as apocalyptic as republicans say, but it's gonna be much easier for them to win voters just by saying "After all we did, you're not seriously gonna go back to the orange guys, right ?", leading to a (multiple) decades long string of increasingly incompetent democrat politicians. After Biden, they have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to competency anyway.

If Trump wins, it won't be as apocalyptic as democrats say, but there's definitely going to be a lot of rioting, enough to bring significant economic damage and fun statistics to blame on Trump. Considering he's also kind of an idiot, he'll also feed the trolls like a 10 year old discovering online forums, so the media will make it sound exactly as bad as they said it would be.

Then you'll have republicans going full on contrarian no matter what happens, and you end up with an incredibly polarized country that's impossible to put back together. Probably not a Yugoslavia repeat, it's gonna stay one very dysfunctional country.

"If Trump wins, it won't be as apocalyptic as democrats say, but there's definitely going to be a lot of rioting"

Yes, by democrats, and the groups of people the democrats whip up into hysteria.

I just think that the last chance America has of clearing house of some of the machinations of the deep state and military-industrial complex, as well as the blatant weaponizing of the legal system to try imprison the leading candidate for election... the only hope of any of these being challenged is for Trump to get back in. Regardless of how one feels about the man himself, he has a vested interest in directly challenging that corruption, which no previous president has ever had.

A vote for the democrats of today is just a vote for endless wars, division and hatred, globalism, gender insanity, population replacement, cultural destruction and an end to freedom of speech. Trump is the only plausible figurehead pushing back against all that, and, with America still being the world empire, the rest of the world is very much focused on what happens, as what befalls America will likely befall the rest of us, very soon after.

Every election someone says "this is the most important election of our lifetime", but I really think this one is, for all the above reasons.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ben Appel

Published: Nov 15, 2024

Over the past eight years or so, we’ve heard a lot of stories about people being canceled for daring to express ideas that deviate from the prevailing, batshit crazy orthodoxies around race and gender. They’ve been publicly shamed, had their lives threatened, and quite a few of them have lost their jobs. Many people who typically vote blue had become so repulsed by the Democratic Party’s progressive wing that they either withheld their votes last week or decided to cast them for Trump.

Having borne close witness to woke’s destruction,1 which I wrote about in last week’s newsletter, I’m one of those Democrats who didn’t vote. And, as I also said in that newsletter, I can’t help but feel relieved that the Democrats lost. It’s like a spell has been broken. (Well, almost.)

A lot of people feel very differently. They’re calling it the end of democracy. The arrival of fascism. “Last week was America’s last presidential election,” I’ve heard.

I’m friends with a lot of these folks on Facebook, which looks like the polar opposite of my feed on X, where many are saying they feel similarly to me. My Facebook friends are grief-stricken—as grief-stricken as they were in November 2016, if not more so. And I empathize with them. I worry, too, about the next four years. But, unlike them (it seems), I’ve completely lost faith in the party that, as a “good, liberal gay person,” I’m supposed to blindly support. And I’ve completely lost faith in the liberal media that props that party up. I mean completely and utterly lost faith. I read impassioned write-ups in legacy media outlets about the problem with Trump’s latest cabinet picks and I think, OK, yeah, you could very well be right. But do you seriously expect me to take your word for it? Do you actually think I would still believe a single thing you say, after all the lies you’ve shamelessly told? I mean, come on. You even deny the reality of sex!

Countless conservatives have been screwed over by woke, but many good, hardworking, liberal Americans who cast their vote for Harris last week have too. Liberal Americans who can’t be entirely blamed for signing off on the excesses of the illiberal left. Why do I think they can’t be blamed? Well, for one, everyone is so goddamn busy. They’re busy with kids and spouses and jobs. They have health scares and parents with Alzheimer’s and cars making weird noises. If you think about it, it’s kind of a big ask to expect everyone to know that most if not all of the news outlets and institutions they’ve venerated for decades had been captured by a backwards ideology. Yes, maybe some of these ideas sounded nuts to them. Maybe somewhere in the back of their minds, they periodically thought, Well that doesn’t seem right. But then it was 8pm and the dishes were piled up in the sink and their youngest hadn’t even started his homework yet.

Not to mention that, day after day, woke scolds were hammering into their brains that if they didn’t go along with these ideas and promote them to others, they were “very bad people.” This is what “good” is now. “Good” is telling little boys who like Barbies they’re actually girls and then giving them the same drugs that are used to castrate sex offenders. “Good” is telling a young black boy that the entire world is against him and that he could keep trying, sure, but he’ll probably end up dead or in jail anyway. “Good” is telling 15-year-old girls that, yes, it’s totally normal for you to want a mastectomy, let’s go see if we can make that happen. “Good” is convincing vulnerable white people they’re inherently evil.

On top of that, they were shamed for dating or befriending or even liking the social media posts of anyone who doesn’t follow the orthodoxy. Those people are transphobes. They’re white supremacists. Every minor objection was a “right-wing dog whistle.”

It’s the oldest trick in the cultists’ playbook: Cut off your followers from all outsiders and their ideas.

People talk about the cult of Trump, and there is a cult of Trump. Watching nearly the entire GOP collapse around him on bended knee has been a strange thing to witness.2 But a lot of people who voted for Trump didn’t vote for Trump. They voted against the Democratic Party. They voted against woke.

It’s that damn Newton’s law again. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The woke cult and the cult of Trump. The cult of Trump and the woke cult.

Back and forth, back and forth. Left and right are pushed further and further apart, each side fighting to drag the center along with them.

So what’s the solution?

Break the cultists’ rules. Befriend and date people on the other side. Dare to (gasp!) like their social media posts. And talk to people. Believe it or not, there might be a lot of reasons why a Latino voter chose Trump other than, “Oh wow, turns out Latinos are racist.” A Brooklyn mom who wants universal healthcare isn’t necessarily an anti-American commie. And the white lady who doesn’t want her 19-year-old daughter to have to compete against males in sports might not actually want to ��eradicate all trans people.” She might just know what fairness is. And she might just love her daughter.

So maybe start there? It’ll be uncomfortable, sure, but that’s the easy part. The hard part comes when you have to admit where you were wrong.

-

1 I considered not using “woke” to describe what I’m talking about here but it’s just so damn succinct and everyone knows precisely what I mean when I say it.

2 I am absolutely not saying that all Trump voters are cultists, just like I would not say that all Democrats are cultists.

==

The Dems will keep losing until they learn this lesson.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana

[mama-qwerty]

Okay, I'm gonna get political here.

I've been seeing some alarming posts going around, in which people seem to think that Biden is somehow as bad as, or worse than, Trump. And a lot of the reasoning seems to come down to how he's dealing with Israel. He's not doing enough to stop Israel and is actively supporting them. Which, he has to, because the US is Israel's ally.

Is it ideal? Is it great? NO. It absolutely sucks, and we really should not be involved, and be doing more to stop them.

But that seems to be the single issue most people mention when talking about not voting for him. And my question to them is, do you seriously think Trump will handle it any better??

And let's put Palestine aside right now. I know it's terrible, I know it's my privilege to look away for a moment, but I implore you, I fucking BEG you to remember that the US president affects laws and policies here, which affects each and every American who lives here.

This post lists, in a convenient little checkbox format, what each candidate is for and against. As you can see, Trump will support Israel, too. Moreso than Biden. But he will also remove rights and destroy protections for countless other groups.

Both candidates are absolutely NOT THE SAME. Biden, while not perfect, has done a lot of good for the country, it's just not reported because negative things get more views than positive. He had A LOT of cleanup to do after Trump finally dragged his ass out of the White House. And he's done what he could.

I get that Biden isn't ideal. He's not who I would want, either. But he's the Democratic candidate, and we absolutely cannot afford to "send Washington a lesson" by abstaining or voting third party. We are a two party system, and with Trump on the ballot, we cannot, CAN FUCKING NOT afford to split our forces.

Every Republican will be out in droves, casting their vote for Trump. One vote for a third party candidate, is a vote for Trump. If you do not vote for Biden, you are essentially handing Trump the victory.

This country will not survive another Trump presidency.

I sincerely believe that. The damage he did the first time around was bad enough, when he didn't know what he was doing. But now? Now he's had 4 years to scheme and plot and work behind the scenes with his cronies so that when/if he gets back into office, he can go all in on gutting the government, stacking the Supreme Court, enacting whatever laws he likes, and simply declaring himself dictator and never leaving office again.

And the Republicans will help him.

Every one of those spineless bootlickers will be trailing behind him, nodding like a fucking bobblehead, agreeing with whatever asinine idea tumbles out of his third grade brain.

"For the good of the country," they'll cry, as they gut support for the poor.

"For the helpless little babies," they'll weep, eliminating health care services for women and removing any help for families.

"Make America Great Again," they'll chant as they send the military to drag children away from parents and lock them in cages because they dared come to the US--a country that was founded on the backs of immigrants--for a better life.

Republicans only care about keeping themselves rich and in power. They don't care about the poor. They don't care about women or minorities or LGBTQ+ rights. They don't care about YOU. They only care about themselves. They've proven it time and time again, yet they always try to convince their base that it's really the Democrats and radical Left who are the bad guys. Because they constantly want to *checks notes* make sure people are safe, healthy, and cared for.

And that's not the America the Republicans want.

I am begging all US voters to look past Palestine, for just a moment, and realize that choosing the wrong man in November will have very, very, VERY long lasting repercussions for this country. We can't afford to "send a message". We can't afford to simply not vote. We can't afford to throw out the old "they're all the same" line.

THEY'RE NOT.

Please, please, please. Think about the people who will be hurt under another Trump administration. Think of those who will lose their support, lose their aid, lose their protections. Think of those who can't protect themselves.

The only message we need to send to Washington this November is NOT TRUMP. NEVER TRUMP.

[roguekhajiit]

The real reason we can't stand you magatards.

Before the winner was even decided, you were celebrating.

Now, we can't even go online without "cope" and "Cry more libs" littering the comments. (Bring it on)

But to be honest, the worst thing about a Trump presidency is his insufferable cultists. It hasn't even been a day, and you magats are already calling for a third term. Seriously, the guy is 78. What makes you think he'll even live the next four years without a McDonald's induced heart attack taking him out?

Then there's this delusional "Now you know how it feels" shit. Like we didn't deal with this in his last incarnation? It's been 9 years of Trump flags, Trump hats, Trump bibles, Trump shoes, and endless cult convoys blocking highways.

You have his picture in your back passenger window. You wrap your cars with his full body (gross) image. You fly his flags below the American flag or even in place of it. You haven't taken the signs down for 9 years. Can you name one democratic president who received this much cult worship? No. Because while we went about our daily lives without so much as sparing a thought for Biden, you guys couldn't shut the fuck up about him.

In fact, MAGA was the largest purchaser of Biden themed items, sticking his face on everything.

You love to scream TDS anytime we talk shit about your hivemind behavior. But the real examples of Trump Derangement Syndrome are exhibited by his cultists. You guys have to make him a part of your everyday lives, going so far as to throw your toddlers a Trump themed birthday party. Sorry folks, but I don't think Little Joey is gonna look back on that day fondly. He might even want to burn the pictures when he's older.

You call us hateful, but you are the ones nicknaming women in power hateful, disgusting, misogynistic names. You are incapable of addressing them by their legal given names.

You are in the comments calling for women and minorities to be put in chains.

And you are proud of your hatred.

So let me reiterate this one last time cause I know it's difficult for you to read this far, and you probably won't make it past the first paragraph.

It's not Trump who we hate. No, because we know he's old and showing signs of dementia. Instead, it's the people who put him in power and deify him that we can't stand.

You are so afraid of progress that you will even try to overthrow your own government to keep your man-god in power. How very patriotic of you.

[mariacallous]

Whatever happens next, one day historians will have to explain why a candidate who earlier this year had been presented as disciplined started to veer off into unrestrained racist rhetoric and dancing for 40 minutes to his own playlist. Was it age, as plenty of commentators have speculated? Was it a brilliant attempt to balance dehumanizing attacks on minorities with an effort to make himself look human?

A much more sinister explanation must be taken seriously. We still assume that we are witnessing two campaigns for the presidency. But what if we are witnessing one campaign and one slow-motion coup, whose organizers need to go through the motion of campaigning for the plan to work? Since winning at the ballot box does not matter, taking a break to listen to Pavarotti isn’t a problem; conversely, a festival of racism and conspiracy theories, as at Madison Square Garden, is not about convincing any undecided voter, but motivating committed Trumpists to go along with another coup attempt.

To be sure, this can also sound like conspiracy theory. The point is not prediction, but to call for preparedness. After all, there is an overwhelming number of reasons why, should Trump lose, he will once more try to take power anyway. His followers have long been primed to assume that evil Democrats will steal the election. The unchecked racism fits into a logic of far-right populism more generally: far-right populists claim that they, and they alone, represent what they call “the silent majority” or “the real people” (the very expression Trump used on January 6 to address his supporters).

If far-right populists do not win elections, the reason can only be that the majority of the electorate was silenced by someone (liberal elites, of course). Or, for that matter, people who are not “real people” – fake Americans – must have participated in the election to bring about an illegitimate outcome. This explains the Republican obsession with finding proof of “non-citizen” voting.

Dozens of lawsuits have already been launched to put election results into doubt. As in 2020 and early 2021, Trump is likely to make sharing his lies a test of loyalty.

Here analogies with other far-right populists are again illuminating: it is doubtful that all followers of the far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland truly believe that relatively liberal prime minister Donald Tusk had colluded with Russians to have the country’s president, a member of PiS, killed in a plane crash in Smolensk in 2010. But professing the Smolensk conspiracy theory was not about making an empirical statement; it became a means to signal membership of a political tribe.

In theory, Republicans could seize the chance at last to break with Trump, who, after all, has only delivered defeats to the party. He has stated that he will not run again (though it would of course be naive to take any of his promises at face value). Yet there were already plenty of incentives to get rid of Trump in early 2021, and still Republicans did not disown, let alone impeach, him.

Most worryingly, Maga members have been primed to resort to violence. Trump and his allies – including the world’s richest man, who just happens to be a rightwing extremist – have framed the election as an apocalyptic battle. If Democrats win, Musk has claimed, there will not be any proper elections ever after; they will bring in more foreigners to secure a permanent majority. It is already half forgotten that Trump held his first major rally this election cycle in Waco, Texas.

Who knows whether Trump can really mobilize large numbers of people on the streets; it might be enough to prolong a sense of chaos. Vance has claimed that the 2020 election was problematic, because so many citizens had doubts about its “integrity” and Democrats prevented a “debate” which the country needed to have (never mind that Republicans had created the doubts in the first place). How long a debate would Vance like, exactly? Incidents like the infamous Brooks Brothers riot, where rightwingers in fancy suits stopped a recount in Florida in 2000, might accompany this debate. After all, as Jack Smith has claimed, Trump campaign operatives in 2020 already issued the order: “Make them riot.”

The hope may well be that, if decisions are kicked to the correct court, things could still go Republicans’ way. Trumpists know from the US supreme court’s decisions about ballot access and immunity earlier that some parts of the judiciary have given up on any conventional legal logic; they are likely simply to deliver whatever benefits Trump. The conservative justices’ decision this past week allowing the removal of voters from the rolls in Virginia so close to the election – a clear break with precedent – might well have been a preview of what a court captured by Trumpists is willing to do.

To be sure, the system as a whole is less vulnerable than in 2020. What is officially known as the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022 makes it harder to challenge results in Congress; the theory that legislatures could overturn the outcome – popular among Trumpists in 2020 – has not found much legal support. But since Trump has everything to lose (including his freedom, given the charges still pending), there’s every reason to think that he’ll try everything.

[theculturedmarxist]

I'd really like all trans people to understand how American politics work, and how they're likely going to work for the foreseeable future.

First things first: "both" parties are working together. The Republicans and Democrats as individuals have a working relationship. After work they meet and socialize together. Their kids go to school together. They run in the same social circles and have the same friends and more or less the same values. Them acting otherwise is all kayfabe.

Second, the parties as entities are also working together. The primary reason is because they both operate in the service of the same class interests. The government is a medium for litigating contradictions between discrete sections of the dominant class, but the overall purpose is to maintain the dominance of that class.

When Nancy Pelosi says "We need a strong Republican party" you can absolutely take her at her word. Any talk about defeating the Republicans, locking them out of government, whatever, is all just pap for gullible Liberals.

To make a long story short, the Democrats can't beat the Republicans because doing so would mean going against the interests of the class they ultimately serve. Defeating the Republicans is trivially easy: you just have to give people a reason to vote for you. The historical evidence is there. FDR didn't win three consecutive elections and set the standard for what it means to be an American president for the rest of the 20th century by doing nothing. No, he recognized the troubles of common people, promised to do something about them, then did. There's definitely a lot to be said about the how and the why, but what is incontrovertible is that he materially improved the lives of regular working people, and at the end of the day people aren't picky about the ideology of the ones that are keeping them housed and their children from starving.

The problem with this approach is that materially improving the lives of the working class fundamentally undermines the power of the ownership class. Without going into the details, the current American economy requires the increasingly severe impoverishment and exploitation of the working class not just to keep functioning, but to continue existing at all. The political, social, and economic power of the capitalists and their servants in government is reliant on people being as poor and oppressed as possible. Alleviating that in any serious, transformative way threatens everything which they need to keep being in power.

This is why the political establishment and media reacted so severely when Sanders ran in 2016. His message of mass empowerment and economic reform is anathema to their political needs. In spite of all the pearl clutching about the "dangers" of a Trump presidency, the one they were actually worried about beating was Sanders.

It's for this reason why the Democrats can't ever and will never defeat or seriously threaten the Republicans. They have nothing concrete they can actually offer people to try and win their votes. You can see this now in just how threadbare Harris's campaign is, but if you need more proof you can look back over the past 40 years and see for yourself.

The only thing they have to "offer" people is the threat of what the Republicans will do if they get elected, and the hollow promise that at least if you vote for them things won't get worse. I mean, Harris said it herself: "we're not going back." That pretty much encapsulates the Democrat political program. "Not backwards, but not forwards either." No, they leave the motion to the Republicans. Democrats do nothing until as a result people stop turning out for them and the Republicans gain power again, go hog wild using political power as they please, then when people get so fed up they vote Democrat again because what other choice do they have? Except when the Democrats achieve power again, they simply refuse to use it. I mean, they refuse to use it to undo anything the Republicans have done, or fulfill their campaign promises, or try and dismantle the Republicans in any real way, but they will use their power to protect the new status quo established by their supposed rivals.

We've seen how this has played out with the Biden administration, and the Harris administration, if it comes to pass, will just be an extension of that. In state after state Republicans have attacked trans rights and people and the Democrats haven't done anything about it. Just like with abortion rights, in spite of knowing full well what the Republicans intended, in spite of having seen in all the years since RvW Republicans going after it, in spite of knowing months in advance that the supreme court decision was going to happen, they just sat idly by and let it happen. Then they collected millions of dollars in donations on the promise that they'd "fight for" it again, as if we hadn't heard that one before.

There's every reason to believe that the same thing is going to happen again. Even if Harris herself doesn't take away your rights, the party she's a member of requires them to be threatened, and by necessity that threat needs to be real. The absolute best you can hope for is that you get a couple years of only partial oppression as the duopoly manage the national decline, but eventually your ass is going to be in the crosshairs, either from Democrats letting your state oppress you, or Republicans using Federal power to do so, or maybe even just Democrats decide you're more trouble than you're worth and take up the Republican position, as they've done countless times in this election cycle alone.

[clandestinegardenias]

Look, I understand the desire for a revolution. I do. And it’s possible I might be convinced that we need one, at some point. I am open to the idea that I might be wrong!

But…literal Marxist theory posits that the way you get to a communist society is by working your way through a democracy. That’s the first STEP. Then you move to democratic socialism, then socialism, then communism. Anything that moves us away from a democracy (as I’m concerned another Trump presidency would, that man wants to be a dictator so bad) is a step AWAY from a leftist agenda. Because sure, maybe you get your ‘glorious revolution’ if Trump is president because he literally makes living conditions so unbearable that it triggers widespread revolt but from a critical Marxist standpoint you’d be revolting to get back to a democracy so you can start at that step all over again! This is a big reason theorists posit socialism/communism in the Soviet Union fell apart; too big a change too quickly and skipping steps in between.

We also have to consider that getting to the point of full blown revolution would mean catastrophic levels of suffering for people with lower socioeconomic power—POC, the queer community, folks in poverty, people with disabilities, etc.

AND any US dictatorship or similar government has an entire industrial military complex to back it up. A successful revolution would necessitate either getting that military complex on board, in which case you often end up with a military dictatorship (you can imagine how well THAT goes) or beating it which…I’m sorry, even the entire civilian population of the US cannot do. The military is light years more advanced than it was in Marx’s time, rebellion is so so so so much more complicated. It also sets a precedent for violent exchanges of power that tend to set countries up for a decades/centuries long tailspin of military coups in which the people with the most gun power (again…usually not vulnerable groups) win control.

I’m not trying to be a fatalist, here. I actually think fatalism is a tool of the oppressor and we have to fight against it tooth and nail. I’m just trying to logic out what will happen if Kamala/Walz lose and Trump/Vance win. What does that really look like? What is the next step, the next outcome that will lead us to a better place? And I just cannot, for those reasons above, see a Trump presidency leading us anywhere good. That IS what we will get if people hold out on voting for Harris as a form of protest. I’m all for protest!!!!! But it needs to be in a different avenue, because you have to consider the real life repercussions not voting will have.

I mean, what are the options? What happens if people protest by not voting? (...this assumes you don't start from the position that Harris and Trump will be literally NO different in office, which, well, that's another post)

1. Harris wins regardless, but a signal is sent that people to the left aren’t appeased and democrats need to do more. How effective this would be in moving actual policy is debateable, and it also puts the moral onus/responsibility conveniently on others just so you can feel like your hands are clean while simultaneously risking a worse outcome. Not cool.

2. Trump wins. Far more likely because, as we saw in 2020, the country was nearly evenly split on Trump vs. Biden. Current polling shows more or less the same with Trump vs. Harris. If the left stays home, the likelihood Trump wins skyrockets. So, what happens next?

2.A. Trump wins, but the world doesn’t end. He doesn’t do anything too terribly awful. The left has ideally signaled they will only vote for a Dem if they are liberal enough. I seriously doubt Trump won’t do anything too terribly awful though—look at what his first presidency did!!! Look at Project 2025!!!!! So. Other option.

2.B. Trump wins and the world is on fire. He strips away womens’ rights, queer rights, he tanks the working class and worker protections, starts a war, starts a dictatorship, whatever. He already started a lot of this during his first presidency. In this case, either…

2.B.1. This is still not enough to trigger a revolution. Vulnerable people are hurt and die at a far greater pace than under a Democratic presidency. We go on as before, fighting to regain key protections. Perhaps the Dems put forward a more liberal candidate to try and beat him next time, if democracy still exists, but likely? We end up with a conservative centrist anyway.

2.B.2. Trump does trigger a revolution. All I can see is how many vulnerable people would suffer and die. The military HAS to be involved and either takes control of government (terrible start to socialism!!!!!) or kills revolutionaries en masse and the rebellion fails. If civilians somehow defeated the US military, which is an astronomically low possibility, then we set up a more liberal democracy...how, exactly? With all the conservatives and moderates still in our country? Honestly, HOW. Kill them? Try and make them ‘see the light’? That happens via education, not a civil war. We could try and go straight to communism but theory and history show us that doesn’t work—you have to work your way towards it through democracy.

It is SO much more efficient and would put so many fewer vulnerable people in grave danger to start by keeping the democracy we already have by voting in Harris and THEN working on our protests to shift the needle towards democratic socialism. We’ve seen that these protests CAN WORK!!!!! They got us Biden dropping out!!!!! Harris picked a VP far more appealing to a liberal mindset than many of her other top options! WE ARE ALREADY SHIFTING THE NEEDLE. Keep it shifting, don’t give in to fatalism, and remember that you have to go through the steps to have an actual, stable, reliable socialist or communist republic. Vote.

[crazy-pages]

People like you showing Biden and other democrats that even genocide won’t stop you from voting for them, no matter what, have destroyed this country.

Fucking genocide apologist.

Okay I'm gonna rag on you for a moment because you're dropping anon-hate and anon-hate always deserves that, but then can we talk seriously?

First of all, lol, this is hopelessly optimistic of you to think that Biden's loss would change the mentality of the Democratic party when Hillary Clinton's loss didn't. It makes me look fondly back on my childhood when I was fresh-faced and naive enough to believe that a presidential loss could change the trajectory of a political party whose election officials, party apparatus members, and most of their elected officials will remain unchanged regardless of the outcome of a presidential election. I know you think you're a cynic kid, but trust me you have levels deeper to dig. Get on my level.

But to move past ragging on you and to speak seriously-

Sometimes, there is no winning move in an election.

Let's talk about an issue a bit more abstract than genocide first. I would really like the United States' business system to function more in line with socialist principles, where holding any sort of position of authority over others in a company requires the voluntary and democratic buy-in of those they oversee. I think unions don't go far enough, I want business executives to be elected and constrained in their actions by internally enforced constitutions.

And there is no elected official I could vote for to make that happen. They do not exist. But I can make decisions about which elected official will be easier to organize under, to get closer to making that happen. Who's going to be easier to fight? I'm not talking about voting for someone I think can be pressured into giving me what I want, I'm talking about someone who will simply be less hostile to organizing efforts. Sometimes that's as simple as "which state officials will let me have a graduate student union at all in this state?" and sometimes it's a question of what Supreme Court precedent I expect to be set by a president's judges, and which will be easier to fight later through other non-voting actions.

So here's the horrible, awful, sad truth I have for you.

There is no voting option for USA citizens, including non-participation, which will save the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. We can hope for protests to continue to erode support and keep the issue in focus, we can use our financial positions to donate aid (as much as is allowed through), hell those of us with access can perform sabotage. But there is no voting option which will affect whether the genocide is permitted to continue by our officials, because this is a two-party oligarchy, not a genuine full democracy.

There is no voting option which will influence the long-term trajectory of the Democrats or the Republicans and whether they continue to be the kind of parties which will support genocide either. Neither is there a no voting or third party voting option which will replace either of them.

If you want that to happen, you're going to need to do organizing and disruptive actions outside the voting system. Maybe if we form enough connections at pro-Palestine protests, do enough organizing work, we can mimic the March on Washington and show up at Washington DC with a hundred thousand people and the implicit threat of "we are capable of putting this many people in the capitol, do not make us come back here". (It worked to get the Voting Rights Act passed).

But that organizing will not occur independent of our voting political system. Obviously not, Biden has been happy to give his seal of approval to police violence against pro-Palestine protests. But Trump's response to the Portland protests was worse. Much worse. He sent in federal troops who were even more violent than the college crackdowns and who black-bagged random people off the street to intimidate protestors, without even the fig-leaf of legal justification the college crackdowns have used (which is scary because it opens the door for even further escalation).

If you want to continue organizing outside the voting system, who is voted in is going to matter for that organizing. Biden is making it difficult, but it can be worse.

Also, Trump is going to make things much worse for a lot of different demographics, who will have much less available bandwidth to help with pro-Palestine organizing. One of my close friends is a trans woman living in California and right now she can and does help with the pro-Palestine movement. But if Trump is elected and passes federal anti-trans laws, that's not going to be possible for her anymore. She'll have to hunker down and go into defensive survival mode, just for the right to exist.

I know this probably sounds like me being derisive and saying, "Ohh, you're a single issue voter about genocide, tch, how naive!". But it's not. It's the practical reality of organizing. People who can commit hard, on the level necessary to affect change outside the voting system for people on the other side of the planet, are not people who are desperate and barely surviving. People who can help are people who are in a position to help others. And if Trump gets elected, a lot of people are suddenly not going to be in a position to help anyone but themselves, if even that.

As an extreme example, when Hitler came to power in Germany, well before the Holocaust got underway, he successfully killed socialist organizing in Germany. But not just because he was directly targeting them with police and the army. The previous regime had been doing that too and they hadn't successfully killed German socialism (hell they'd slaughtered socialists with cops after the socialists saved the freaking government from a coup, they were certainly no allies of socialism). But Hitler, by targeting Jews and disabled people and Romani and queer folk directly, hit populations who otherwise represented possible socialist allies. He made them hunker down and focus on purely self-defense, which allowed him to fully clean up socialist opposition before turning on minority demographics with the full force of the Holocaust.

Direct police violence against political opposition (what Biden has to offer) is less effective than that and a prejudicial campaign of dehumanization and oppression against demographic groups aligned with political opposition (what Trump has to offer).

If there's no voting option which will free Palestine (and there isn't), ask yourself the next question then. Is there a voting option which will free up people to help fight for Palestine's freedom?

If there is, and you're honestly more concerned about Palestinians than your own feeling of moral gratification, take it. Vote, get it over with, and then go back to doing the actual damn work.

[qqueenofhades]

I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to argue with people about the worthlessness of voting third party. They just keep insisting that the influence is worth it, and that I was a coward for daring to suggest that we don't HAVE any other options than Democratic. I even cited how voting third party likely played a part in Al Gore losing ffs.

There's no "likely" about it, Ralph Nader DID directly cost Gore the election. He ran explicitly on the same "both parties are the same, so leftists/liberals should vote for me instead" rhetoric that we are still seeing among the Online Left, and it was successful: he got, for example, over 97,000 votes in Florida. Bush won Florida (and thus the presidency) by a miniscule 537 votes, after the fuckery of Bush v. Gore and SCOTUS ordering the recount stopped in Bush's favor. If the tiniest percentage of those Nader voters had gone for Gore, we would have had a president who was arguing in favor of tackling climate change in the year 2000. We would have been incredibly ahead of the curve. We would, in all likelihood, have a president who took the CIA's warnings of an impending al-Qaeda attack in the US seriously. We would not have had the disastrous Afghanistan and Iraq invasions and the "War on Terror," the rampant Islamophobia, "No Child Left Behind," the 2008 economic crash, and everything else that Dubya and his band of bloodthirsty neocons inflicted on us in the early aughties. Look, I try not to look back too much, but having Gore instead of Bush as president would have reshaped the entire timeline we're living in to such an unfathomably better degree that every moron thinking of voting third party For The Protest should be sat down and forced to learn this history intimately. Of course, they already saw it happen in real time in 2016, but they didn't care about that either.

The good news is: there are plenty of persuadable voters out there, and you can do work to reach them and convince them to vote for Democrats! They're just not online, because all the Online Leftists are terminally brain-poisoned against voting anyway and trying to argue with them is generally a waste of time. Instead, what you should do is take a gander at the following links:

This is the one-stop shop page for volunteering to get Democrats elected. You can do in-person and remote work, there are tons of different ways to get involved (i.e. you don't have to go directly out and knock doors if that's not something you're comfortable with), and your local Democratic party will welcome the volunteer help. There is also a page for finding your state party website:

I went there, clicked on my state, opened the webpage, and there was a "Volunteer" link right in the header, with an easy and quick form to fill out to register your interest and explain the kinds of work you would be interested in doing. You can canvass directly, you can manage data on the back end, you can phone bank, you can send texts and postcards to voters who may need an extra nudge, you can otherwise work with your state party in lots of ways, and it will be so much more productive and make you feel so much better than arguing with online idiots who will never, ever change their minds. What you can do is reach out to voters in your own community, in your own state, and have conversations with people who actually ARE willing to listen, but might need a little more educating on the facts, what's at stake, the truth about this election, and the danger that Trump poses. All of this will convert into critically important Democratic votes, and you can actually put your desire to make a difference into action. So yeah. I would 100% suggest you do it this way instead. Good luck.

[gameshowtrainwreck]

An open letter to right-wing Tumblr

Nobody owes you a debate. Their refusal to interact with you isn't an attack on your free speech. Rights exist in the third-person perspective in ways just as solid and just as established as in when they are expressed in the first-.

What makes your right to say whatever you want without government penalty for having done so (except in a few, well-established, well-defined precedents that any reasonable citizen would agree with) any more sacrosanct than my right to exercise free assembly to say "fuck you, fuck this, I got a better life to live than to spend it listening to the same horseshit being argued over and over again?"

The court of public opinion holds a lower standard because it's ultimately the lowest stakes in anything we have the gall to call 'justice' in this nation-- every case is presented to every individual juror who sorted out their findings based on what they had available to them, and judged them one way or the other. Sometimes the cases reach conclusions like (as an example), "the right is more bent out of shape about trans people while also being really fuckin unwilling to do anything about the chimos operating within their own ranks" and found a reasonable consequence for that finding to refuse to consider conservatives in any other relationship besides adversarial.

If you don't like that, either present better info or find better beliefs. Nobody will hate you for changing your mind, everybody does it. It's okay to admit mistakes, and it actually shows a degree of maturity to accept that and take accountability for them.

(and before you try; fuckin don't. Democrats are just as fucking terrible-- y'all don't think Palestine is being raped hard enough while liberals try to tell everybody a little of it is necessary. Harris lost more than Trump won. Their best idea to run against a brain-damaged rapist was to find a brain-damaged rapist of their own and then bury #MeToo because sometimes presidential candidates are allowed little a rape, as a treat. Don't explain to me how democrats are bad, too, motherfucker, I actually chaired for the shiftless pieces of shit. the point is to be better than the other assholes, not to be even bigger assholes. They keep trying to muscle in on your brand and y'all keep sliding right in response. The matter of Epstein's death matter less than the idea that several powerful people availed themselves to his hospitality and nothing will ever be done about that because Republicans and Democrats both were involved. The majority of CSA cases are by people who the victim knew and trusted but y'all wanna tell everybody you think is too ugly to shit in a public restroom that you know better-- considering how much nuance Jim Bob Duggar found about child molestation when the world discovered he raised his own flesh and blood to be a serial toucher, are y'all just oblivious or trying to smokescreen your own predation? Half of y'all get real bent outta shape about age of consent laws for some reason)

The fact that you feel it in cumulative is on your own fuckin heads, assholes. You don't blame the people for the idea of messages spreading farther, wider, and faster than the time it took you to think not at all about it before you pressed 'post' any more the Democrats can try to blame voters for not supporting someone more unpopular in 2020 than a sociopathic racist CIA Blacksite dickhead (the rat-faced fuck) who tried to force the most cringe-worthy fucking meme of the election cycle before Hillary Clinton's fight song horseshit (no, seriously, look up the high hopes dance and tell me that ain't fuckin pathetic).

I would say better politics start with you, but taking the law of averages and the current state of the Overton window in American politics into consideration, some of you won't make your best contribution to American politics until you leave this world.