#slow civil war

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The elephant in the room.   ::  January 18, 2023

Robert B. Hubbell

         The radicalization of the GOP is the elephant in the room of American politics. Most days, the media discusses the Republican Party as a legitimate participant in American democracy. It is not. Occasionally, the veneer of its respectability falls away, and we see it for what it is: An organization that uses violence and intimidation as political tools, has adopted deliberate falsehood as the lingua franca of politics, and peddles dangerous conspiracy theories to dupe, defraud, and incite its gullible base.

         On Tuesday, three stories collided in the news to remind us of the elephant in the room—the politically motivated shootings in New Mexico, Kevin McCarthy’s legitimization of George Santos by appointing him to two congressional committees, and the right-wing’s most recent lies about the COVID vaccine allegedly causing cardiac arrest. If the media was doing its job, it would rise in unison to say that the GOP is a terrorist organization masquerading as a major party in American politics. To be fair, some news organizations did raise the alarm on Tuesday, but most spent the day engaged in “whataboutism” over Joe Biden’s document gaffes—a development that is not even in the same galaxy as the GOP’s offenses on Tuesday.

         It is both aggravating and enervating to constantly call out the outrageous behavior of the Republican Party that threatens the foundations of our democracy. But failing to raise the alarm is even more dangerous. Part of the Republican strategy is to grind us into submission, to exhaust us, to disgust us to the point that we will look away. To preserve our mental health, we cannot—indeed, we must not—maintain a constant state of agitation over the GOP’s actions. But when circumstances warrant, we must tell friends, neighbors, and complete strangers, “This is not normal! As a nation, we are better than this. Our future depends on rising above the hate, lies, and ignorance that has become the stock in trade of the Republican Party.”

         To be clear, it is not enough to complain about the conduct of the GOP. We must take action to persuade others that the GOP’s actions are wrong and dangerous—and that anything less than active condemnation is complicity. Strong words, I know. But that is where we find ourselves on Tuesday evening. I wish it were otherwise.

         Let’s look at the latest developments as we continue our dedication to the truth and defense of democracy.

Failed GOP candidate for state legislature in New Mexico arrested for shooting at homes of Democratic officials.

         A failed GOP candidate for the New Mexico state legislature hired four accomplices to shoot at the homes of Democratic state and county officials. In at least one instance, the failed candidate pulled the trigger on a shot aimed at a residence. In that instance, a bullet passed through the bedroom of the daughter of a Democratic legislator. The alleged perpetrator, Solomon Pena, is a MAGA extremist who attended the Stop the Steal Rally on January 6th and followed Trump’s playbook by refusing to concede that he lost his bid to become a member of the New Mexico legislature. See Washington Post, Solomon Peña's plot to shoot Democrats' homes was motivated by false claims of a stolen election, New Mexico authorities say.

         Per the Post,

In an interview, Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said he has no doubt that Peña was motivated by Trump’s false claims of election fraud following the former president’s 2020 defeat. Medina said Peña regularly expressed extreme views on social media and boasted of attending Trump’s Stop the Steal rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.

         On cue, Republicans in New Mexico expressed shock and dismay that someone would resort to violence in pursuit of a lunatic conspiracy theory about a stolen election��oblivious to the irony that Pena was following the GOP’s template established by Trump on January 6th. But belief in “rigged elections” has become part of Republican orthodoxy. A majority of the current House GOP caucus voted against the electoral slates of Arizona and Pennsylvania—as did GOP Speaker (McCarthy) and GOP Majority Leader (Scalise). When GOP congressional leaders are election deniers, it can be no surprise that the rank and file follows suit.

         Indeed, the belief that the 2022 midterms were “rigged” is rampant among Republicans. A CBS / YouGov poll taken last week shows that a whopping 72% of Republicans do not believe that Democrats “legitimately won control of the Senate in the midterms! (See page 71 of polling crosstabs.)

         Let’s reflect on that statistic for a moment. Nearly three-quarters of Republicans believe that the 2022 congressional midterms were rigged because Democrats retained control of the Senate. Nearly the same percentage of Republicans (76%) either approve of the insurrectionists’ actions on January 6th (15%) or do not want their congressional representatives to condemn the insurrectionists (61%).

         Pretending that Pena’s actions are “shocking” or “unexpected” is ridiculous. His actions are consistent with beliefs held by three-quarters of Republican voters. Pena’s actions align with the core beliefs of the Republican base. Unless and until Republican leaders condemn the January 6th insurrection and disabuse their followers of the notion that any Republican loss is evidence of a rigged election, we will get more of the same.

         Two weeks ago, a reader sent a note criticizing me for painting all Republicans with a broad brush of complicity in MAGA extremism. She pointed to the Republican Governor of Vermont, Phil Scott, who has opposed Trump for the last six years while he otherwise supports the Republican Party agenda. With respect and admiration for Governor Scott’s stance against Trump, Scott lends legitimacy to the Republican Party by remaining associated with a party whose members overwhelmingly support election denialism and support (or excuse) the violence of January 6th. As I wrote above, “anything less than active condemnation is complicity.”

         I expect to receive criticism and pushback from (some) readers on my strong position on this subject. But we would be having an entirely different conversation if the stray bullet that entered the bedroom of an 11-year-old girl had not missed but had instead killed her. We cannot afford to wait until the next violent attack by a MAGA supporter who is acting on beliefs widely shared in the Republican Party. Anyone and everyone who maintains their association with the GOP in hopes of saving or reforming it should leave the Party and let it fail. Anything less is to ignore the elephant in the room—the radicalization of the Republican Party.

-Robert B. Hubbell

[notbecauseofvictories]

man, the world seems terrible and full of bad things, and then you read about the Chicagoan who started developing ramen recipes with meticulous (even obscene) attention to detail, or an Irish hurler who decried state-sponsored spending for sports complexes live on air, or well-considered analyses of films or animated television shows and whether they are narratively/dramatically coherent, and it's....well, it's okay to be here. I like it here.

[hauntedjellyfishwitch-blog]

He's wanted her almost his entire adult life, after all she's been his best friend for pushing twenty years, but it had been a lot easier to ignore before she lived there.

In which Tony pines, tells her he loves her, accidentally, to her face and starts a whole new, terrifying kind of adventure.

Tony Stark/OFC

[walkininawincestwonderland]

John vaguely remembers a quote from an old picture book about the civil war Sam had stolen from the library, towns and towns ago, when he was still a single-digit kid.

“You get hit anywhere? Arm or a leg and I can carry you back to camp, but if it’s a belly shot I’m gonna have to leave you.”

Belly shot, he think hysterically. It’s a belly shot, and they’re gonna have to leave me. It’s this thought that pulls him out of his own head, back into the pants and the grunts and the salt and the sweat and the splattered liquid on his knuckles that might be the dying gasps of his aorta or might be the tears that keep lining up on the long-lashed lower lids of Dean’s eyes, welling up behind each other and pushing each other off the brink into free fall like lemmings off a cliff.

[grants-blue-eyed-stare]

Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy according to Abraham Lincoln, President of the US

"Well, I have got that job husked out. That is the largest shucking for so small a nubbin that I ever saw." - Abraham Lincoln after meeting with Alexander Stephens who had on a coat way too big for him that made him seem extra small when he took it off

[hauntingblue]

Episode 8 I am so scared....

[ace-ghostss]

ADELIA ROWE

An abolitionist turned disguised Union cavalry soldier, Adelia met her death after succumbing to an infected gunshot wound from a small-scale battle against Confederate sympathizers broke out on the land that would become the Woodstone property. In death she’s accompanied by her devotedly loyal stallion, Freedom, who was shot down during the battle.

Adelia is of about medium height, with short, scruffy hair cut into a masculine look. She has a fair complexion with freckles on her face, along with a few scars and gunpowder residue on the corner of her mouth. Her eyes are a deep brown with darkened circles underneath them, smudges of dirt and gunpowder littered across her skin. She still wears her cavalry uniform with deep blue fabric, a bloody wound beneath the right side of her ribcage wrapped half-heartedly with white bandages beneath her undershirt. She has her saber hoisted on her belt with bronze shoulder guards to protect from saber slashes, her pants and boots muddied from the earth.

In life, Adelia was nothing short of passionate and headstrong. A fierce abolitionist, she was raised in a relatively wealthy household in Upstate New York, and for a woman of her time she was well-read and intelligent, as well as athletic with a deep love for horses since her family bred racehorses. She knew and read about the injustices occurring in the South with the cruel system of slavery, and sought to be a factor in it’s eventual destruction - but was held back by her social status and gender. But once the Civil War broke out, Adelia made the choice to disguise herself and leave her family behind to join the Union Army, believing the war was the final turning point in dismantling slavery once and for all.

To her unit she was known as Sargent Adam Rowe, a fierce fighter with a deep loyalty to his fellow soldiers. And although Adelia would live to see the Emancipation Proclamation, she wouldn’t live to see the final takedown of slavery, dying in March of 1864 at the age of 23, making her the fourth oldest ghost.

Adelia’s ghost power is similar to Pete’s, as she can also go past the ghost boundary - but only if she’s riding Freedom. If they’re off the property for too long, however, it can physically harm the both of them.

As for how she fits in the bigger ghost group, Adelia can come off as blunt and sarcastic, but she’s a passionate and genuine person once you get past the tough outer shell she’s built up from centuries of being a ghost. And while the other ghosts of Woodstone can get under her nerves, she’s definitely grateful to not have to spend her afterlife completely alone - and she’s even managed to find love in a particular punk ghost on the property.

[cxldtyrant]

Arcosian Headcanon: Clothing

Due to their ability to adapt under any sort of climate, as well as the fact their genitals are sheathed and therefore not visible, the Arcosian people don't actually need to wear clothing. In fact, the concept of clothing was only just a recent discovery to Arcos via King Cold's influence once he married Queen Froza, as his various conquests brought the planet all kinds of trades and intrigued the nobility, and thereby impacting the masses who sought to emulate them.

Therefore, if you were to attend a gathering with the nobility at the palace, you would find everyone dressed in various foreign fashions. The more expensive and intricate the outfit is, the more the noble will brag about it. Especially if its a rarity, such as the fabrics or style came from a planet whose populace was just wiped out or naturally went extinct, now making it a one-of-a-kind. To the Arcosian nobles, accusations of cultural appropriation or fetishism be damned, foreign clothing shows status and luxury, and they will gladly partake in it.

Because of this cultural trend, the other castes will attempt to emulate the nobles by purchasing more common fabrics or stitching together their own outfits from materials of their home-world's flora and fauna. For the middle class, such as merchants and military, you can occasionally see them in clothing from trades or their army uniform to show off their status and wealth. But for the people in the lower caste (or those who are outright casteless) It is common to see them without clothing.

Of course, there are some who just outright refuse to partake in the trend out of rebellion. Whether because their xenophobia towards foreign species is that strong, a growing resentment towards the nobility for indulging in expensive goods and flaunting it at the other castes, or simple decency to not glorify the appropriation a subjected planet's culture, it all very much varies.

While Cooler himself is not above bringing new crafts and trades to Arcos, he doesn't particularly care to wear clothing and only does so when attending an important royal gathering at his father's request. He finds them particularly restricting, and with how the nobles use them, an utter waste of resources when it could be distributed across all of Arcos, and not just its upper castes. This makes him come across as something of an eccentric individual to the nobility, while the lower castes see him as a cultural rebel and look upon him much more favorably.

[maaaahri]

Oh no I’m thinking about VtM npcs again

[themculibrary]

hey! I think my ask was eaten by tumblr given that it's been a few weeks, so I'll ask again. (If you just haven't found the fic I apologize for bothering you). Anyway, it was a time-travel fic that started off in Siberia right after the Civil War fight. It took Tony to the aftermath of the first Avengers. He kept feeling betrayedl at Steve. I know Natasha noticed something was off about him. It was loki/tony. Thanks!

Could it be this fic?

If You Had This Time Again (ao3) - dls loki/tony T, 268k

Summary: Tony Stark closed his eyes in a wrecked Siberian bunker and woke up on a demolished New York street. Four years earlier.

[izzysarchivedblogs]

The Dusty Toolbox -> Accepting All Meme // oh gosh @biitchcakes you just want to hurt us -> you haven’t called me that in years . (clint)

TWENTY THREE DAYS IN COURT. Several additional days before those days in court being in a holding cell. He wasn't allowed visitors, or he does not know if it was the other around. If no one was allowed to come in and see him. There was no phone call offered to him, and the fact that his hands haven't stop shaking.

Partly from minor withdrawal, and majorly because HE DID IT. Bruce Banner came to him and begged, pushed that arrowhead in his hand and told him what to do. VISION OF THE BIG GREEN. Clint followed him, waited in the trees and watched. He doesn't know if it was the right thing to do.

BRUCE ASKED. BEGGED. HE JUST WANTED THE HELP. NEEDED.

Clint knew what he would be doing; how he had to fight to explain why he broke the moral code of avengers don't kill. ULTIMATELY? He was someone who respected his friends wishes, who saw the desparation and did what they said would help.

It weighs too heavy on him, those twenty three days in court and he was looking for her because a conversation runs through his head over and over again.

CAN I TELL ANYONE?

No.

NOT EVEN JESS?

Especially not her.

YOU KNOW THIS'LL MAKE TWO YEARS. I WAS LUCKY SHE TOOK ME BACK AFTER WHAT I DID FOUR YEARS AGO.

I'm sorry.

He didn't see her, and when he was released? He knew that he had to get out of New York as soon as possible. Partly because he couldn't be here, he couldn't stand this.

The government ⸺ politicians with an agenda and fearmongering ⸺ taking Ulysses' visions as their spearhead to a greater future; whatever they had on Carol to make her the face of this? HE'S ALMOST GLAD HE'S IN THE ASSIST ONE OF MY OLDEST FRIENDS KILL HIMSELF SEAT THAN HERS.

Those same types of people were the kind that tried to rig his trial, ensure that he got the death sentence. It still sends a chill down his spine thinking of his conversations with Murdock, but he's glad he made his trial fair.

He became the most popular avenger to the general public, with the fearmongering around the Hulk, and the least favorite avenger among all the people he was friends with. Clint wanted to blackout, forget all of this, but there's one hurt that weights almost as much as the Bruce Banner one.

HIS GIRLFRIEND. Clint's got one hundred percent accuracy that she's EX again. He really had been falling for her too.

Bruce Banner is dead now. It's a long shot, but he never said he couldn't tell anyone afterwards. So he calls her, at the very least, to explain himself or apologize, or simply to hear her one last time. TELL HER GOODBYE.

She picks up, probably because it's not a known number he is calling. ❝ WAIT, CUPCAKE! ❞ He says when she's about to hang up on the phone.

You haven't called me that in years.

OH SHIT! She's right. Not even this second try at their relationship, he's used that nickname in a while. She's been BABE and sweetheart. Not Cupcake. It got her attention.

❝ I know nothing I could say or do would make it better or change; I could tell you what he told me, give you the answers. They won't help. ❞ None of that was helping him out.

❝ I'm sorry, Cupcake, I should have told you but it went against his wishes. AND I KNOW YOU'RE MY GIRLFRIEND, and I loved- LOVE you. He really felt like this was what would help him.... ❞ Perhaps she should have came first over what Bruce Banner asked, but both Jess and Clint were people who stuck to their guns, stuck to morals. Regardless of people, respecting Bruce's wishes came in front of his girlfriends.

❝ I'm sorry, I wish I- I just wanted to tell you goodbye, I'm leaving. I asked him to write you a note, I stuck it under our table at our favorite burger joint. ❞ Clint begged Bruce to at least give her that, this had nothing to do with Jess and Clint's relationship. He begged him to at least write her a note, just for her, because she deserved that. She would be losing a lot already, he'd promise to deliver it after the arrow had been used.

❝ So, uh, that's it. Thanks for staying on the phone. ❞

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 10, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

“Good Lord, Who Among Us Hasn’t Paid For A Clarence Thomas Vacation?” David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo asked this morning. Kurtz was reacting to a new piece by Brett Murphy and Alex Mierjeski in ProPublica detailing Justice Thomas’s leisure activities and the benefactors who underwrote them. 

Those activities include “[a]t least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.” The authors add that this “is almost certainly an undercount.”

Thomas did not disclose these gifts, as ethics specialists say he should have done. House Democrats Ted Lieu (D-CA), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), Gerry Connolly (D-VA), and Hank Johnson (D-GA) have said Thomas must resign. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who has led the effort to extricate the Supreme Court from very wealthy interests for years, commented: “I said it would get worse; it will keep getting worse.”

Thomas’s benefactors, Murphy and Mierjeski noted, “share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence.” That ideology made Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who has been in the news for the release of his December 6, 2020, memo outlining how to steal the 2020 presidential election, speculate that Thomas was the Supreme Court justice the plotters could count on to back their coup. “Realistically,” Chesebro wrote to lawyer John Eastman, “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress, is from Thomas—do you agree, Prof. Eastman?” 

Last Saturday, Republican leaders in Alabama illustrated that their ideology means they reject democracy. After the Supreme Court agreed that the congressional districting map lawmakers put in place after the 2020 census probably violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a lower court ruling that required a new map went into effect. But Alabama Republican lawmakers simply refused. 

Alexander Willis of the Alabama Daily News reported that at a meeting of the Alabama state Republican Party on Saturday, the party’s legal counsel David Bowsher applauded the lawmakers, saying, “House Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy doesn’t have that big a margin, that costs him one seat right there. I can’t tell you we’re going to win in this fight; we’ve got a Supreme Court that surprised the living daylights out of me when they handed down this decision, but I can guarantee you, if the Legislature hadn’t done that, we lose.”

Paul Reynolds, the national committeeman of the party, went on: “Let me scare you a little bit more; Texas has between five and ten congressmen that are Republicans that could shift the other way,” he continued. “How could we win the House back ever again if we’re talking about losing two in Louisiana, and losing five to ten in Texas? The answer’s simple: It’s never.”

Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall added: “Let’s make it clear, we elect a Legislature to reflect the values of the people that they represent, and I don’t think anybody in this room wanted this Legislature to adopt two districts that were going to guarantee that two Democrats would be elected…. What we believe fully is that we just live in a red state with conservative people, and that’s who the candidates of Alabama want to be able to elect going forward.”

The determination of Republican officials to hold onto power even though they appear to know they are in a minority is part of what drove even Republican voters in Ohio to reject their proposal to require 60% of voters, rather than a simple majority, to approve changes in the state constitution. 

Meanwhile, today’s July consumer price index report showed that annual inflation has fallen by about two thirds since last summer, a better-than-expected number suggesting that measures to cool the economy are working without hurting the economy. Real wages have outpaced inflation for the last five months, and unemployment is at a low the U.S. hasn’t seen since 1969. 

At the same time, the country is ending one of the last pieces of the social safety net put in place during Covid: the rule that people on Medicaid could remain covered without renewing their coverage each year. That rule ended in April, and states are purging their Medicaid rolls of those who they say no longer qualify. In the last three months, 4 million people have lost their Medicaid coverage, mostly because of paperwork problems. (Texas dropped an eye-popping 52% of beneficiaries due for renewal in May.) 

Biden officials have tried to pressure states quietly to fix the errors—including long waits to get phone calls answered and slow processing of applications, as well as paperwork errors—but yesterday released letters it had sent to individual states to warn them they might be violating federal law. Thirty-six states did not meet federal requirements.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[oflgtfol]

the mandalorian should have been a planet-of-the-week style project showcasing different unseen backwoods parts of the star wars galaxy, with the overarching narrative being the development of din and grogu’s relationship, and moff gideon is occasionally there to add tension

they genuinely could have gotten so much out of this show this way because [noun] of the week styles really facilitate making more content. because theres so much more you can do with that. so if they wanted forever amount of seasons out of the mandalorian then this is how they should have kept it

BUT NO!! they needed endless cameos and they needed to push this stupid high stakes plot and just ruin what they had built. for what? now they want a bazillion mando seasons when its a plot driven show, not a character driven show like it had started out as, but you cant make endless content out of a plot driven show. as always they wrote themselves into a hole and ruined the potential it had and now we’re left with whatever the fuck the “Mandoverse” is supposed to be

[hauntedjellyfishwitch-blog]

Tony Stark/Original Female Character

How she came to live there, how they came to be, how she's always saved him. Now it's his turn.

[politicalstuffandantifascism]

I think it’s important to remember it’s like this because a few multi-billionaires/trillionaires would rather hold onto an amount of wealth they couldn’t spend in a lifetime rather than create a more equitable society for everybody.

We already know that a shorter workweek and working from home increases productivity, corporations just know that giving more free time and better quality would result ultimately to people working together to change society to make things better for everybody.

Which is why even though it’s pretty obvious that taking away the looming threat of starvation and homelessness would make for more productive workers (every study can prove that less chronic stress will lead to a healthier mental state and lead to greater productivity) corporations and the politicians that represent them (Republicans) will fight against changing that every step of the way.

But progress is being made.

Companies are experimenting with shorter work weeks and working from home (because greater productivity is good for corporations) and politicians are at least starting to talk about UBI.

And change is possible.

The government has shown time and time again that if the right people are elected: workers rights will be enshrined, companies will be regulated, monopolies will be busted, social programs will be passed, and working hours can be reduced (we used to work weekends)

I think the most important part is an informed society, because as January 6th proved, despite all of the corruption we still do have an actual functional democracy. And if our votes do matter, then we can change the system.

[mastcrmarksman]

secret starter call - @biitchcakes

He's piling noodles into his mouth, as his cell phone is squished between his shoulder and his ear. He makes a hum sound around the chopsticks, meant for Jessica to hear that he is in fact listening.

Currently, Clint finds himself at a Chinese restaurant in Utah, for what's become their thing. A nightly call over dinner, while he's still determined of traveling the forty eight states ending up where a superhero is need. This feels date-like, it might as well be, because he knows the way he's starting to feel about her all over again.

❝ No way that happened! ❞