#task sanders

[frosteee]

Remember when Shining Knight almost decapitated a guy for daring to lay a hand on his BFF?

I do. And I love it.

[justjanusthings]

[delimeful]

give me mercy no more (1)

G/t July Day 1: Enchanted

(Full Prompt List)

patron prompt: virgil hugging a crying janus!

warnings: arguing, tension, betrayal, mentions of assassinations, offscreen character thomas, it's a g/t fic but i didn't actually get to the g/t yet LOL, self sacrifice, crying, angst

-

“You can’t do this.”

Janus paused for the briefest moment at the sound of his closest friend’s voice, before continuing to pack away rations.

“Can’t I?” he asked airily, not turning around to face Virgil.

He’d known this confrontation was inevitable since they’d come up with the only possible solution to their kingdom’s problem. He hadn’t realized how unprepared he’d feel even now, with the hour of tribute rapidly approaching.

“It’s not right. Thomas needs you,” Virgil insisted, stepping closer.

Without even looking at him, Janus could picture the scowl he was wearing. Terrified and defiant in the face of impossible odds, as always.

Bringing up the heir apparent was a low blow, however.

“Yes, he does,” Janus snapped, a bite to the words. “Do you think anything else on this continent or any other could possibly move me to do something like this?”

A short, stagnant pause as Virgil struggled to find a retort.

“His Highness will be alright,” Janus added, softer. “Of course he will. You’ll be there at his side.”

A year ago, the idea of trusting any of the knights of this kingdom would have been laughable at best. The Sanders kingdom was a pit of vipers, and Janus had blended in with the best of them, climbing the ranks to the position of advisor through means that would make any moral man weep.

He’d still only barely been in time to prevent Thomas from perishing in a political assassination, one initiated by the same mage faction that had orphaned the young boy originally.

Janus didn’t have to do any investigation to learn that particular tidbit; it was an illuminating and concerning letter from the queen, an old friend of his, that had brought him back to the kingdom.

He’d been too late to save her. He’d made sure that the same couldn’t be said for her son.

Back then, he and Virgil had constantly been at each other’s throats, both expecting the other to betray the prince at any moment. Virgil saw right through Janus’ sly facades, and Janus knew that the rank and file of the kingdom’s army were only loyal to the highest bribe.

That was what they’d thought, anyhow.

When the next attempt rolled around, Virgil had been forcefully diverted from his usual patrol route, and was halfway across the grounds when the alarm was raised.

He’d torn through any opponent in his way in a desperate frenzy, and burst into the prince’s quarters expecting to see the worst.

Instead, he’d found Thomas whole and unharmed, positioned solidly behind Janus, who stood ready with two narrow, poisoned blades. The room already had a handful of would-be assassins collapsed on the ground, some in the same exact livery Virgil wore.

“Come and try,” Janus had hissed, keenly aware of the slash along his side and the way blood was already darkening his doublet.

Virgil, bigger and stronger and less winded even after a sprint across the kingdom, had taken two steps forward and knelt before him, head bowed.

The fool. Janus had almost stabbed him on reflex alone.

“Thank you,” he’d said, the back of his neck well and truly exposed, “for protecting him.”

Janus wasn’t used to being trusted. It had thrown him off for long enough that he’d stayed his blade, and before he knew it, Virgil had managed to worm his way under his defenses and become not only a trusted ally, but a snarky, paranoid, invaluable friend.

They grew to be called the Two Hands of the Future King, a title probably invented by some of the more pretentious court nobles. Virgil hated the attention, and Janus leaned into it just to annoy him.

They’d have to come up with something different, after Janus was gone. He wondered if his death would be referred to as something garishly insensitive, like The Amputation. Hopefully not; Virgil might actually come to blows if he heard that sort of thing.

He dragged his mind out of the past, sliding another ration he would likely never eat into his bag with the same smooth calculation he’d done everything else in his life.

“Besides, there’s no cause to be dramatic. I’ll be fine,” he said, voice full of a certainty he didn’t feel.

He held his breath as Virgil stood silently at his back for a long moment. His lies had never worked on the knight, but now he silently begged that for once, Virgil wouldn’t shatter the illusion. That he wouldn’t make this harder than it needed to be.

“Tell me how you plan to convince them,” Virgil finally said.

Janus let out a breath, his shoulders sagging in relief. “I already went over my strategy at the council meeting, didn’t I?”

“I was too pissed off to pay attention,” Virgil replied bluntly. “Tell me again. The way you’ll tell the beast.”

It was a rare occasion for Virgil to want to embrace a lie instead of the painful truth. Janus could grant him that, at least.

“With the damages from the invasion, we find ourselves unable to provide our usual tribute without starving to death ourselves,” Janus began, the speech long-memorized in the agonizing past week of waiting. “In order to preserve the existence of our kingdom, and by extension, the existence of your future tributes many years to come, we have provided an alternative offering that we hope will please you.”

He turned and spread his hands in an elegant flourish, his posture loose and pointedly unwary. “Along with precious heirloom riches, you are offered His Highness's own most trusted advisor, with vast wisdom and knowledge gathered from this continent and others.”

To do with as you please, he completed silently in his head. That would be no comfort to Virgil.

After all, everyone knew what most dragons pleased to do to humans that inconvenienced them.

Virgil stared at him with a deep wrinkle in his brow for a moment, and then snorted. “I should have guessed that you would flatter yourself even in a time like this.”

Janus smirked, repeating his favorite retort. “I speak only the truth, Honored Knight, and I’d thank you not to imply otherwise.”

Virgil smiled despite himself, but as the silence stretched it collapsed into an expression much more desolate.

“I’ll be perfectly fine,” Janus lied, and then, after a beat of hesitation, lifted his arms in a wordless offering.

Virgil crashed into the hug with enough force to nearly bowl Janus over, but he didn’t bother with a single complaint, only savored the warmth of his best friend safe in his arms.

He was doing this for both of them. His two most important people.

They stood like that for a long moment, and then with a low, pained sigh, Janus began to pull back.

Only to find that his limbs had gone strangely numb.

A jolt of surprise went through him, but all Virgil did was slowly shift them over to the nearby armchair, giving him somewhere to sit heavily as the prickling feeling spread further through his body.

“Something’s wrong,” he managed through lips he could barely feel.

Virgil, usually so quick to check him over at even the slightest sign of injury, spent a moment longer with his head tucked over his shoulder before withdrawing.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his eyes were eerily lit up from within by magecraft. “But we both know who Thomas needs more. And it’s not me.”

The enchantment didn’t hurt. It settled soft and heavy on him like a blanket with the weight of stone, keeping him stuck in place even as his mind began to shriek.

“How?” he managed.

“I was born into a bloodline with the gift. Got kicked out. I didn’t want anyone to know,” Virgil said, letting a few sparks flick off his fingers. “I probably could have told you, I was just… afraid, I guess. I know it’s not fair to ask, but don’t tell Thomas? I don’t want to bring back bad memories for the kid.”

Janus had moved rapidly from shock to anger, not at the secret of Virgil’s nature, but at what exactly he planned to do with it.

“Don’t,” he said, a desperate tilt to the word even as it came out slightly mangled.

“You were right, Jay,” Virgil said with a wry tilt of his lips. “You’ll be fine. So take care of him, okay?”

Janus managed the slightest shake of his head, and whatever expression he was making was enough to make Virgil’s own composure crack slightly.

“You hypocrite,” he said, voice choked, and pulled him into another hug.

Janus hadn’t wept when he’d realized that the only way to keep Thomas safe was to sacrifice himself.

Now, with Virgil’s arms wrapped around him, he felt his stinging eyes spill over.

His breath hitched, the only version of a sob that could make it through his body’s current stasis.

“I know,” Virgil murmured, clutching him tightly. “I know. I won’t change my mind, but I’m sorry. I don’t— I don’t want to leave. But I have to.”

He couldn’t do anything to stop this, Janus realized blankly. He could only clutch back at his best friend’s arms with the barest curling of his numb fingers. He could only see the slight tremors that shook through Virgil’s frame, the pallid cast to his skin.

He could only watch as Virgil released him, picked up his bag and walked to the door, stopped to look at him with fear and stubbornness in equal measure.

“I’ll see you around,” he said simply, giving him a simple salute and a small smile.

And then he was gone.

[riveatstoes]

assigning the sanders sides my liked songs

i’ve wanted to do something similar to this for a while. i did this (kind of) with just taylor a few weeks ago but this is DIFFERENT! so basically the rules were that i had to assign EVERY song in my liked songs on spotify to one of the characters, and then i shortened the lists for brevity. the criteria wasn’t very strict so it came out,, as well as you’d expect it to. there’s also a few at the end that are pairs/groups of characters rather than just one.

the criteria:

general vibes of the song/artist

lyrics (most of the time i cherrypicked the lyrics HARD though)

projecting my own hcs onto them using the songs as tools to do so

one of logan’s is only there because of an animation meme.

also some of these can be taken as prinxiety/logicality/intrulogical based because they’re rotting my brain.

Logan

- The Dark Of The Matinée, Franz Ferdinand

- Bang Bang, K’NAAN, Adam Levine

- Delicate, Taylor Swift

- Birds, Thomas Sanders

- Scott Street, Phoebe Bridgers

- Fortnight, Taylor Swift, Post Malone

- Antisocial, Anthrax

- Powers, boygenius

- Chinese Satellite, Phoebe Bridgers

- Here We Go Again, Paramore

Roman

- Souvenir, boygenius

- Applause, Lady Gaga

- Crazy In Love, Beyoncé, Jay-Z

- You Spin Me Round (Like A Record), Dead Or Alive

- Self Esteem, The Offspring

- Sad Beautiful Tragic, Taylor Swift

- love is embarrassing, Olivia Rodrigo

- The Night Begins To Shine, B.E.R.

- On My Own, Ross Lynch

- I Want You Back, *NSYNC

Patton

- Hard Times, Paramore

- Waiting Room, Phoebe Bridgers

- Get The Funk Out, Extreme

- Thick Skull, Paramore

- Pocketful Of Sunshine, Natasha Bedingfield

- Fire Flies, Gorillaz

- That’s When, Taylor Swift, Kieth Urban

- Graceland Too, Phoebe Bridgers

- Black Hole, boygenius

- Still Into You, Paramore

Virgil

- Green Eyes, Red Face, Lucy Dacus

- Dancing With Our Hands Tied, Taylor Swift

- Second Chance, Shinedown

- Moon Song, Phoebe Bridgers

- ballad of a homeschooled girl, Olivia Rodrigo

- Salt In The Wound, boygenius

- Thick Skull (Re: Julien Baker), Paramore

- All The Things She Said, t.A.T.u.

- I Know The End, Phoebe Bridgers

- Mean, Taylor Swift

Janus

- Ignorance, Paramore

- Rolling In The Deep, Adele

- Stick Season, Noah Kahan

- Build God, Then We’ll Talk, Panic! At The Disco

- Feather, Sabrina Carpenter

- Potential Breakup Song, Aly & AJ

- Ain’t It Fun, Paramore

- Angel Of Small Death And The Codeine Scene, Hozier

- Big Man, Little Dignity, Paramore

- COPYCAT, Billie Eilish

Remus

- Misery Business, Paramore

- Maneater, Nelly Furtado

- The Kids Aren’t Alright, The Offspring

- This Fire, Franz Ferdinand

- Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High, Arctic Monkeys

- Motion Sickness, Phoebe Bridgers

- I Ain’t Got Time!, Tyler, The Creator

- The Bitch Is Back, Elton John

- Don’t Threaten Me With A Good Time, Panic! At The Disco

- EVIL, Melanie Martinez

Bonuses!

- Janus & Patton: Who Are You, Really?, Mikky Ekko

- Roman & Virgil: Electric Touch, Taylor Swift, Fall Out Boy

- Logan & Remus: I Can See You, Taylor Swift

- The Dark Sides: Not Strong Enough, boygenius

- Logan & Patton: Oh No!, MARINA

[a-side-character]

Never underestimate the healing properties and power of a comfort media

[danglovely]

Taskmaster Location Task Settings

Series 8: Buckinghamshire Railway Centre Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire

[cloudberrylane]

Team Task. Catch all the red balls in things from the shed. Catch all the yellow balls in clothing. Don't let the green balls touch anything other than the grass. Catch the blue ball in something from the kitchen. Red balls are worth 1 point; yellows, 2; the blue is worth 5. You lose 2 points for every green ball that touches anything other than the grass. You may not touch the ball machines. Any non-green ball that touches the ground at any point will not count. Highest score wins. The balls will start firing in 2 minutes from now. (+Sian's cheating)

[jaratedeguadalupe]

The reason I make janus useless at everything Is because I like my wee men pathetic  

[mythrianalpha]

Shoutout to fever brain for giving me one of the funniest meet-cute-esque ideas. I think the context was Remus seeing a nervous Janus in Picani’s waiting room and trying to make him feel better, and Picani wondering why his next meeting hasn’t shown up despite being checked in. Totally works if ‘too incredulous to feel anxiety’ counts as a success, though I imagine most initial interactions with remus feel like getting hit with a frying pan.

“Everything alright out here?”

“We locked eyes and he saw the truth. He simply could not handle his own accursed swaglessness in the face of my fly vibes. That’s okay though; the true swag is all the branded shit we’re gonna steal from the mall at 5.”

“Did you just call me fucking swagless and invite me shoplifting?”

[soysaucevictim]

Some neurospicy Gymrat!Creativitwins shit - both of them are prone to time blindness and insomnia.

Both aren't a huge fan of analog clocks (though Remus would prefer the 24>12 hr ones.)

With Roman it's a double hitter of time blindness and moderate dyscalculia. Boy's gonna stare at the thing for a good few minutes to decipher the hours and minutes from each other and into a useful piece of information (like logging things at work).

With Remus, he don't have trouble with that information. Its always mixing AM with PM that trips him up. His sleep habits are so topsy turvy, he has to do double takes on what side of the day he's looking at. (In theory, boy knows the difference... in practice, it's a whole other problem.)

[istherewifiinhell]

give me a task that requires a power sander ANYDAY over the shit i had to do today. like sure the physical strain but i feel like the mental entertainment is... clearly apparent to anyone whose used one/can picture it and its the right kind of pervert with a real can do attitude.

[cherryblossomshadow]

Run a Left Wing Democratic Primary Candidate in 2028. No Matter What.

Stopping the party's rightward drift means having a real primary.

Hamilton Nolan Oct 06, 2024

Excerpts:

The scariest possible outcome of the 2024 presidential contest is a Trump victory. The second scariest outcome, however, is a scenario in which center-right, anti-Trump voters pour into the Democratic Party and elect Kamala Harris and then proceed to pull the Democratic Party to the right. This scenario is extremely plausible. Back to the Clinton era we go!

.

This is not theoretical. This process is unfolding right now.

Harris is not just accepting the support of these Republicans. She is leaning into it.

She did not just accept Dick Cheney’s vote; she did a rally with Liz Cheney and thanked Dick Cheney for “what he has done to serve our country.” … the FT reports that “Two finance executives close to Harris said they had been reassured by her that she could appoint new officials to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission who would take a less aggressive stance than current chairs Gary Gensler and Lina Khan,” which would be a catastrophic loss. And her economic plan, though still vague, is notably less oriented towards the perspective of strengthening labor, and more oriented towards consumer-centric policies that do not attack the dangers of concentrated economic power at its roots.

.

When Joe Biden was running in 2020, I expected him to exhibit this sort of centrist drift as president. In fact, he did the opposite, appointing Lina Khan at the FTC and Jennifer Abbruzzo at the NLRB and carrying out the most progressive and pro-worker economic agenda of any president in my lifetime. Why did lifelong moderate Joe Biden, the credit card industry’s favorite senator, end up doing so much good economic policy? One major reason is that after a tightly contested 2020 primary campaign that Bernie Sanders looked for a time like he might win, Biden made the choice to bring the left wing of the party into the fold, rather than slamming the door in their face.

He created a formal “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force” that hammered out a set of policy recommendations for his term.

He gave progressives like Elizabeth Warren significant input into staffing decisions for parts of his administration.

After watching Democratic presidents freeze out the left for decades, I failed to anticipate Biden’s willingness to allow the left some real policy power. It was a political decision, and it doesn’t mean that Biden himself is a resounding progressive, but that doesn’t matter.

What matters is that the Biden presidency produced hugely important tangible victories for progressive economic values.

There is no reason to think that this is the new normal. Political parties are coalitions that are always shifting. It is extremely possible that a Kamala Harris administration would see the pendulum swing back towards neoliberalism, as a result of more right wingers seeping into the Democratic Party, and as a result of Harris greedily seeking out the support of disaffected parts of the traditional Republican base. Rather than just wringing my hands about this possibility, let me suggest a useful response:

If Harris wins the presidency, the left wing of the party needs to start planning now for a primary campaign against her in 2028.

What was the biggest factor pulling Biden to the left? Bernie Sanders’ strong primary showing.

What is allowing Harris to drift right with ease? The fact that the only counterpoint to her in the public mind is Trump.

Strong primary campaigns serve to demonstrate the power of various parts of a party’s coalition. They create political risk for the other candidates and force them to try to adapt to win the support of those other candidates’ voters. Think about RFK Jr., for fuck’s sake: a true unhinged lunatic, a man who should be listened to for nothing but comedy value, and yet one who has managed to make his priorities a part of Trump’s platform just by being the only real challenger floating around at the moment.

.

Primaries are the proper and designated place for this sort of contest of intra-party factions to play out.

(I advocated a leftist primary challenge of Biden centered on Gaza in particular for this very reason.)

.

Bernie Sanders never won the presidential nomination, but the fact that he garnered so much support in two consecutive campaigns did a great deal to force the party left, and laid the groundwork for the successes of the progressive agenda during Biden’s term. Now, as all of the Democratic candidate’s positions get compared to Trump’s fascism rather than to Bernie’s progressivism, we can see that the backsliding to the center is set to begin anew. This year, I hope, we will beat Trump. As soon as we do, start thinking about who to run in 2028. No need for the left to cower in the corner for four years. This is how democracy works.

.

One handy fact to note is that organized labor could fold its 2028 general strike right into a 2028 Shawn Fain For President campaign. Dare to dream, my friends.

[an-organized-confusion]

Recent adulting adventures had me thinking of Prudence again (one of my own “Sides“.)

And how functionally Prudence is kind of a Virgil/Logan/Janus fusion. And I was thinking it like a Garnet situation (from SU).

When shit gets bad in the mental health department - Prudence probably splits up. When Anxiety-Brain (clearly Virgil-adjacent) needs to be actively talked at by Rational-Brain (mostly Logan-esque, w/ dash of Janus) to temper my expectation/appraisal/response of/to Problem(s).

Usually, when I’m at my best Prudence is in control. :,D

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Pizzaburger Presidency

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

The corporate wing of the Democrats has objectively terrible political instincts, because the corporate wing of the Dems wants things that are very unpopular with the electorate (this is a trait they share with the Republican establishment).

Remember Hillary Clinton's unimaginably terrible campaign slogan, "America is already great?" In other words, "Vote for me if you believe that nothing needs to change":

https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/758501814945869824

Biden picked up the "This is fine" messaging where Clinton left off, promising that "nothing would fundamentally change" if he became president:

https://www.salon.com/2019/06/19/joe-biden-to-rich-donors-nothing-would-fundamentally-change-if-hes-elected/

Biden didn't so much win that election as Trump lost it, by doing extremely unpopular things, including badly bungling the American covid response and killing about a million people.

Biden's 2020 election victory was a squeaker, and it was absolutely dependent on compromising with the party's left wing, embodied by the Warren and Sanders campaigns. The Unity Task Force promised – and delivered – key appointments and policies that represented serious and powerful change for the better:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/#triangulation

Despite these excellent appointments and policies, the Biden administration has remained unpopular and is heading into the 2024 election with worryingly poor numbers. There is a lot of debate about why this might be. It's undeniable that every leader who has presided over a period of inflation, irrespective of political tendency, is facing extreme defenstration, from Rishi Sunak, the far-right prime minister of the UK, to the relentlessly centrist Justin Trudeau in Canada:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-29-three-barriers-biden-reelection/

It's also true that Biden has presided over a genocide, which he has been proudly and significantly complicit in. That Trump would have done the same or worse is beside the point. A political leader who does things that the voters deplore can't expect to become more popular, though perhaps they can pull off less unpopular:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-left-is-not-joe-bidens-problem

Biden may be attracting unfair blame for inflation, and totally fair blame for genocide, but in addition to those problems, there's this: Biden hasn't gotten credit for the actual good things he's done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoflHnGrCpM

Writing in his newsletter, Matt Stoller offers an explanation for this lack of credit: the Biden White House almost never talks about any of these triumphs, even the bold, generational ones that will significantly alter the political landscape no matter who wins the next election:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-does-the-biden-white-house-hate

Biden's antitrust enforcers have gone after price-fixing in oil, food and rent – the three largest sources of voter cost-of-living concern. They've done more on these three kinds of crime than all of their predecessors over the past forty years, combined. And yet, Stoller finds example after example of White House press secretaries being lobbed softballs by the press and refusing to even try to swing at them. When asked about any of this stuff, the White House demurs, refusing to comment.

The reasons they give for this is that they don't want to mess up an active case while it's before the courts. But that's not how this works. Yes, misstatements about active cases can do serious damage, but not talking about cases extinguishes the political will needed to carry them out. That's why a competent press secretary excellent briefings and training, because they must talk about these cases.

Think for a moment about the fact that the US government is – at this very moment – trying to break up Google, the largest tech company in the history of the world, and there has been virtually no press about it. This is a gigantic story. It's literally the biggest business story ever. It's practically a secret.

Why doesn't the Biden admin want to talk about this very small number of very good things it's doing? To understand that, you have to understand the hollowness of "centrist" politics as practiced in the Democratic Party.

The Democrats, like all political parties, are a coalition. Now, there are lots of ways to keep a coalition together. Parties who detest one another can stay in coalition provided that each partner is getting something they want out of it – even if one partner is bitterly unhappy about everything else happening in the coalition. That's the present-day Democratic approach: arrest students, bomb Gaza, but promise to do something about abortion and a few other issues while gesturing with real and justified alarm at Trump's open fascism, and hope that the party's left turns out at the polls this fall.

Leaders who play this game can't announce that they are deliberately making a vital coalition partner miserable and furious. Instead, they insist that they are "compromising" and point to the fact that "everyone is equally unhappy" with the way things are going.

This school of politics – "Everyone is angry at me, therefore I am doing something right" – has a name, courtesy of Anat Shenker-Osorio: "Pizzaburger politics." Say half your family wants burgers for dinner and the other half wants pizza: make a pizzaburger and disappoint all of them, and declare yourself to be a politics genius:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/17/pizzaburgers/

But Biden's Pizzaburger Presidency doesn't disappoint everyone equally. Sure, Biden appointed some brilliant antitrust enforcers to begin the long project of smashing the corporate juggernauts built through forty years of Reaganomics (including the Reganomics of Bill Clinton and Obama). But his lifetime federal judicial appointments are drawn heavily from the corporate wing of the party's darlings, and those judges will spend the rest of their lives ruling against the kinds of enforcers Biden put in charge of the FTC and DoJ antitrust division:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/judge-rules-for-microsoft-mergers

So that's one reason that Biden's comms team won't talk about his most successful and popular policies. But there's another reason: schismogenesis.

"Schismogenesis" is a anthropological concept describing how groups define themselves in opposition to their opponents (if they're for it, we're against it). Think of the liberals who became cheerleaders for the "intelligence community" (you know the CIA spies who organized murderous coups against a dozen Latin American democracies, and the FBI agents who tried to get MLK to kill himself) as soon as Trump and his allies began to rail against them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

Part of Trump's takeover of conservativism is a revival of "the paranoid style" of the American right – the conspiratorial, unhinged apocalyptic rhetoric that the movement's leaders are no longer capable of keeping a lid on:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

This stuff – the lizard-people/Bilderberg/blood libel/antisemitic/Great Replacement/race realist/gender critical whackadoodlery – was always in conservative rhetoric, but it was reserved for internal communications, a way to talk to low-information voters in private forums. It wasn't supposed to make it into your campaign ads:

https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/05/27/texas-republicans-adopts-conservative-wish-list-for-the-2024-platform/73858798007/

Today's conservative vibe is all about saying the quiet part aloud. Historian Rick Perlstein calls this the "authoritarian ratchet": conservativism promises a return to a "prelapsarian" state, before the country lost its way:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-05-29-my-political-depression-problem/

This is presented as imperative: unless we restore that mythical order, the country is doomed. We might just be the last generation of free Americans!

But that state never existed, and can never be recovered, but it doesn't matter. When conservatives lose a fight they declare to be existential (say, trans bathroom bans), they just pretend they never cared about it and move on to the next panic.

It's actually worse for them when they win. When the GOP repeals Roe, or takes the Presidency, the Senate and Congress, and still fails to restore that lost glory, then they have to find someone or something to blame. They turn on themselves, purging their ranks, promise ever-more-unhinged policies that will finally restore the state that never existed.

This is where schismogenesis comes in. If the GOP is making big, bold promises, then a shismogenesis-poisoned liberal will insist that the Dems must be "the party of normal." If the GOP's radical wing is taking the upper hand, then the Dems must be the party whose radical wing is marginalized (see also: UK Labour).

This is the trap of schismogenesis. It's possible for the things your opponents do to be wrong, but tactically sound (like promising the big changes that voters want). The difference you should seek to establish between yourself and your enemies isn't in promising to maintaining the status quo – it's in promising to make better, big muscular changes, and keeping those promises.

It's possible to acknowledge that an odious institution to do something good – like the CIA and FBI trying to wrongfoot Trump's most unhinged policies – without becoming a stan for that institution, and without abandoning your stance that the institution should either be root-and-branch reformed or abolished altogether.

The mere fact that your enemy uses a sound tactic to do something bad doesn't make that tactic invalid. As Naomi Klein writes in her magnificent Doppelganger, the right's genius is in co-opting progressive rhetoric and making it mean the opposite: think of their ownership of "fake news" or the equivalence of transphobia with feminism, of opposition to genocide with antisemitism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

Promising bold policies and then talking about them in plain language at every opportunity is something demagogues do, but having bold policies and talking about them doesn't make you a demagogue.

The reason demagogues talk that way is that it works. It captures the interest of potential followers, and keeps existing followers excited about the project.

Choosing not to do these things is political suicide. Good politics aren't boring. They're exciting. The fact that Republicans use eschatological rhetoric to motivate crazed insurrectionists who think they're the last hope for a good future doesn't change the fact that we are at a critical juncture for a survivable future.

If the GOP wins this coming election – or when Pierre Poilievre's petro-tories win the next Canadian election – they will do everything they can to set the planet on fire and render it permanently uninhabitable by humans and other animals. We are running out of time.

We can't afford to cede this ground to the right. Remember the clickbait wars? Low-quality websites and Facebook accounts got really good at ginning up misleading, compelling headlines that attracted a lot of monetizable clicks.

For a certain kind of online scolding centrist, the lesson from this era was that headlines should a) be boring and b) not leave out any salient fact. This is very bad headline-writing advice. While it claims to be in service to thoughtfulness and nuance, it misses out on the most important nuance of all: there's a difference between a misleading headline and a headline that calls out the most salient element of the story and then fleshes that out with more detail in the body of the article. If a headline completely summarizes the article, it's not a headline, it's an abstract.

Biden's comms team isn't bragging about the administration's accomplishments, because the senior partners in this coalition oppose those accomplishments. They don't want to win an election based on the promise to prosecute and anti-corporate revolution, because they are counter-revolutionaries.

The Democratic coalition has some irredeemably terrible elements. It also has elements that I would march into the sun for. The party itself is a very weak institution that's bad at resolving the tension between both groups:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

Pizzaburgers don't make anyone happy and they're not supposed to. They're a convenient cover for the winners of intraparty struggles to keep the losers from staying home on election day. I don't know how Biden can win this coming election, but I know how he can lose it: keep on reminding us that all the good things about his administration were undertaken reluctantly and could be jettisoned in a second Biden administration.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/29/sub-bushel-comms-strategy/#nothing-would-fundamentally-change

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Phillip Jackson at HuffPost:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced a bill Wednesday that would give federal and state officials more power to hold police departments accused of bad behavior to account. The Enhancing Oversight to End Discrimination in Policing Act, led by Warren and in the House by Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-Wash.), would strengthen the power of state attorneys general to launch investigations into police departments involved in civil rights violations if the Justice Department fails to act on them. The bill would also task the Justice Department with looking beyond “traditional law enforcement mechanisms” when providing reforms to selective police departments such as mental health support, civilian oversight bodies, and community-based restorative justice programs, according to Warren’s office.

Warren had introduced a version of the bill in 2020. This newest version of the measure would also revitalize the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, granting an increase in funding to pursue civil rights investigations into police departments and other government offices accused of discriminatory practices. It would increase funding for the civil rights division to $445 million per year over a 10-year period. (For scale, the 2023 budget for the division was $189.9 million.)

Warren first introduced her bill following the death of George Floyd in 2020. That earlier draft also called for Attorney General Merrick Garland to rescind a 2017 memorandum from his predecessor, Trump-era Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that limited the DOJ’s ability to initiate consent decrees on police departments — a key way of stopping bad behavior. (Garland rescinded that memorandum in April of 2021.)

Nine senators co-sponsored the bill: Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). Several civil rights organizations are backing Warren’s new bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League and others.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and 9 other co-sponsors in the Senate are supporting the Enhancing Oversight to End Discrimination in Policing Act to strengthen police accountability. Rep. Marilyn Strickland (D-WA) is pushing this in the House.

[meatonfork]

may i request more wholesome task force 141 but like with a gen z reader that’s constantly cracking outta pocket jokes and super self deprecating humor ect. and if not then more grim au would really soothe the soul thank you!!

ps. i love your writing sm you’re doing an amazing job 🙏

Platonic 141 x Gender Neutral Gen Z Reader

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ask and you shall receive :)

pairings: platonic 141 x gn!reader

warnings: self deprecating jokes, suicide jokes, reader being out of pocket

summary: just hc's :) this can also be applied to grim, as they are also gen z and self deprecating. so anything you see here, they have probably done

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you know that meme of ghost staring at you through the rear view mirror? that's exactly how he would look at you when you say one of your suicide jokes.

one time you noticed that price cleaned up his beard and told him he looked slay before walking out of the room.

"gaz." "yes sir?" "what the fuck does 'slay' mean, and why am i slaying?"

whenever you think one of the guys says something cool, or you agree with them, you just say 'real' with a nod of your head.

they just go along with it

constantly calling soap 'bestie'.

"hey, bestie. come here, i have to show you this sick new knife i got." and he will come running over like a puppy being told there's treats.

one time, on a mission, you got punched pretty hard and said something about it hurting less than when your dad hit you.

"how you feelin', kid?" "ah, my dad hit me harder than that guy on the regular. i'll be fine." gaz did not find this funny.

one night, while sitting in the commons room, soap decided to ask you what the stupidest thing you believed as a child was.

"that i would grow up to be happy." "dude, what the fuck."

you had a uti once, and instead of taking care of yourself, you asked price to bring in the firing squad to put you down.

"i don't really think this warrants this reaction." "it absolutely does."

telling gaz you have a mask kink, as a joke.

it wasn't a joke. he didn't know that.

he told ghost.

when ghost faced revealed to the whole team, you let out the deepest sigh of relief

he asked what that was about and you told him you were glad he didn't look like buff colonel sanders because he scares you

letting everyone know that when soap drives you are NOT the passenger princess, but instead a survivor.

calling price "mommy"

he cried the first time you said it

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a/n: i hope you enjoyed this! again, this goes hand in hand with grim :)