#the next american president election

[canadiancryptid]

Really wish I wasn't living during ANOTHER historical event today. Really wish I wasn't living through an attempted assassination of a former US president today.

Really wish I wasn't going to have to see the results of someone trying to shoot Donald Trump and missing by centimeters. Really wish I didn't have to see how he'll use this as a platform to say he's the only one you should vote for.

Really wish that if I was going to hear someone finally got pissed off enough to shoot him, I had to find out they fucking missed.

[biggestqiblifan]

I'm sorry,

YOU COULDN'T AIM A LITTLE MORE TO THE RIGHT?!

They fucking missed, goddamit.

[welcometoqueer]

I haven’t really seen any of the more recent U.S. election news hitting tumblr yet so here’s some updates (now edited with sources added):

There’s evidence of Trump cheating and interfering with the election.

Possible Russian interference.

Mail-in ballots are not being counted or “recognized” in multiple (notably swing) states.

30+ bomb threats were called in and shut down polling stations on Election Day.

20+ million votes are still unaccounted for, and that’s just to have the same voter turnout as 2020.

There was record voter turnout and new/first-time voter registration this year. We definitely should be well over the turnout in 2020.

U.S. citizens are using this site to demand, not only a recount, but a complete investigation into election fraud and interference for the reasons stated above:

Here is what I submitted as an example:

An investigation for election interference and fraud is required. We desperately need a recount or even a revote. The American people deserve the right to a free and fair election. There has been evidence unveiled of Trump cheating and committing election fraud which is illegal. There is some evidence of possible Russian interference. At least 30+ bomb threats were called in to polling places. Multiple, notably swing states, have ballots unaccounted for and voting machines not registering votes. Ballots and ballot boxes were tampered with and burned. Over 20 million votes that we know of are unaccounted for. With record turnout and new voter registration this year, there should be no possibility that there are less votes than even in the 2020 election.

Sources (working on finding more links but if anyone wants to add info, it’s appreciated):

FBI addressing Russian interference and bomb threats:

Emails released by Rachael Bellis (private account, can’t share original tweet) confirming Trump committing election fraud:

Pennsylvania's Centre County officials say they are working with their ballot scanner vendor to figure out why the county's mail-in ballot data is "not being recognized when uploaded to the elections software:”

Wisconsin recount:

[ID:

Multiple screenshots and images.

The first is a screenshot with a link and information for contacting the White House directly regarding election fraud. The instructions include choosing to leave a comment to President Joe Biden directly and to select election security as the reason.

The screenshot then instructs people to include any or all of the following information in a paragraph as a comment to the president:

32 fake bomb threats were called into Democratic leaning poll places, rendering polling places closed for at least an hour.

A lot of people reporting their ballots were not counted for various reasons.

This all occurred in swing states.

This is too coincidental that these things happen and swing in his favor after months of hinting at foul play.

Directly state that an investigation for tampering, interference, fraud is required, not just a recount.

The second image is from the FBI Twitter account that reads:

The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains. None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far. https://t.co/j3YfajVK1m — FBI (@FBI) November 5, 2024

The next four Gmail screenshots of an email sent to Rachael Bellis from Chris T. Spackman that read together as follows:

Dear BELLIS, RACHAEL E., The Dauphin County Board of Elections received a challenge to your absentee ballot you applied for in the November 5, 2024 General Election. The challenge argues that a provision of the Pennsylvania Election Code takes precedence over the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which requires states and counties to permit U.S. citizens who move overseas to vote by absentee ballot for federal offices based on their last U.S. residential address.

The full text of the challenge that was filed appears below this email.

You may respond to the challenge in any of the following ways:

1. Call the Bureau of Registration and Election at (717) 780-6360;

2. Email a statement to the Bureau at Election election@dauphincounty.gov. Any statement you submit regarding the period during which you lived in Dauphin County, any family or connections that you still have here, and why you are now residing abroad would be read into the record.

3. Appear in person at a Board of Elections hearing scheduled for Friday, November 8 at a time to be determined in the Commissioners Public Hearing Room, 4th floor of Dauphin County Administration Building, 2 S 20d St, Harrisburg, PA 17111. The meeting is also likely to be livestreamed on Facebook on the Dauphin County channel.

Sincerely,

Christopher T Spackman

TEXT OF CHALLENGE BEGINS

Dear Dauphin County Board of Elections,

I am submitting this challenge to an absentee ballot application pursuant to 25 Pa. Stat.

3146.8(f).

25 Pa. Stat. 3146.8(f) Any person challenging an application for an absentee ballot, an absentee ballot, an application for a mail-in ballot or a mail-in ballot for any of the reasons provided in this act shall deposit the sum of ten dollars ($10.00) in cash with the county board, which sum shall only be refunded if the challenge is sustained or if the challenge is withdrawn within five (5) days after the primary or election. If the challenge is dismissed by any lawful order then the deposit shall be forfeited. The county board shall deposit all deposit money in the general fund of the…

The rest of the forwarded email is cut off.

The last image is a screenshot of the official statement from the Centre County, Pennsylvania Board of Commissioners released on November 6, 2024 that states:

Centre County Working with Ballot Scanner Vendor to Export Election Results.

(Bellefonte, PA) -Centre County Elections Office is working continuously to provide mail-in ballot data in order to post unofficial results.

To this point, all ballots have been scanned, including all mail-in ballots.

Centre County's Election team and IT team have identified that the data are successfully being exported from the mail-in ballot scanners, but that the data is not being recognized when uploaded to the elections software.

Centre County's Administrator, John Franek, Jr. stated, "We have not stopped working, and we will continue to work until unofficial results are posted and reported to the Pennsylvania Department of State."

As a next step, Centre County has begun working with the equipment vendor to adjust configurations to make the two systems-the mail-in ballot scanner and the elections software where data are uploaded -compatible with one another.

We will provide updates as we make progress.

/end ID]

[administer-distractions]

.

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #13

April 5-12 2024

President Biden announced the cancellation of a student loan debt for a further 277,000 Americans. This brings the number of a Americans who had their debt canceled by the Biden administration through different means since the Supreme Court struck down Biden's first place in 2023 to 4.3 million and a total of $153 billion of debt canceled so far. Most of these borrowers were a part of the President's SAVE Plan, a debt repayment program with 8 million enrollees, over 4 million of whom don't have to make monthly repayments and are still on the path to debt forgiveness.

President Biden announced a plan that would cancel student loan debt for 4 million borrowers and bring debt relief to 30 million Americans The plan takes steps like making automatic debt forgiveness through the public service forgiveness so qualified borrowers who don't know to apply will have their debts forgiven. The plan will wipe out the interest on the debt of 23 million Americans. President Biden touted how the plan will help black and Latino borrowers the most who carry the heavily debt burdens. The plan is expected to go into effect this fall ahead of the election.

President Biden and Vice-President Harris announced the closing of the so-called gun show loophole. For years people selling guns outside of traditional stores, such as at gun shows and in the 21st century over the internet have not been required to preform a background check to see if buyers are legally allowed to own a fire arm. Now all sellers of guns, even over the internet, are required to be licensed and preform a background check. This is the largest single expansion of the background check system since its creation.

The EPA published the first ever regulations on PFAS, known as forever chemicals, in drinking water. The new rules would reduce PFAS exposure for 100 million people according to the EPA. The Biden Administration announced along side the EPA regulations it would make available $1 billion dollars for state and local water treatment to help test for and filter out PFAS in line with the new rule. This marks the first time since 1996 that the EPA has passed a drinking water rule for new contaminants.

The Department of Commerce announced a deal with microchip giant TSMC to bring billions in investment and manufacturing to Arizona. The US makes only about 10% of the world's microchips and none of the most advanced chips. Under the CHIPS and Science Act the Biden Administration hopes to expand America's high-tech manufacturing so that 20% of advanced chips are made in America. TSMC makes about 90% of the world's advanced chips. The deal which sees a $6.6 billion dollar grant from the US government in exchange for $65 billion worth of investment by TSMC in 3 high tech manufacturing facilities in Arizona, the first of which will open next year. This represents the single largest foreign investment in Arizona's history and will bring thousands of new jobs to the state and boost America's microchip manufacturing.

The EPA finalized rules strengthening clean air standards around chemical plants. The new rule will lower the risk of cancer in communities near chemical plants by 96% and eliminate 6,200 tons of toxic air pollution each year. The rules target two dangerous cancer causing chemicals, ethylene oxide and chloroprene, the rule will reduce emissions of these chemicals by 80%.

the Department of the Interior announced it had beaten the Biden Administration goals when it comes to new clean energy projects. The Department has now permitted more than 25 gigawatts of clean energy projects on public lands, surpass the Administrations goal for 2025 already. These solar, wind, and hydro projects will power 12 million American homes with totally green power. Currently 10 gigawatts of clean energy are currently being generated on public lands, powering more than 5 million homes across the West. 

The Department of Transportation announced $830 million to support local communities in becoming more climate resilient. The money will go to 80 projects across 37 states, DC, and the US Virgin Islands The projects will help local Infrastructure better stand up to extreme weather causes by climate change.

The Senate confirmed Susan Bazis, Robert White, and Ann Marie McIff Allen to lifetime federal judgeships in Nebraska, Michigan, and Utah respectively. This brings the total number of judges appointed by President Biden to 193

[qqueenofhades]

Okay guys. Bidengate is over. Veepstakes are over. We have an incredible progressive and historic ticket that is not just the only choice to defeat Trump, but chock full of real accomplishments and priorities that will represent an actual step forward in SO many ways. Y'all have NO excuse not to vote now, so let us show up, show out, and show Trump the goddamn door (of a prison cell) once and for all.

LET'S GOOOO!!

[wilwheaton]

President-elect Donald Trump will come into office next year with four extra slots to fill on the federal bench, thanks to a deal Senate Republicans struck with Democrats. Republicans agreed to relent on their procedural warfare waged in recent days in an attempt to thwart the confirmation of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees to lifetime appointments in his final weeks in office. In exchange for the GOP allowing lower-level district court nominees to receive quicker votes, Senate Democrats will not move forward with confirming four higher-level circuit court picks and saving the positions for Trump to fill. Both sides spun the arrangement as a win-win: Republicans will guarantee slots for Trump judges, and Democrats will save valuable floor time on fighting for nominees they were unsure could be confirmed.

Trump scores win on judges from Senate GOP despite attendance problems

I’m old enough to remember Democrats “keeping our powder dry” during the entirety of the GW Bush years, while the entire — literally the entire — Democratic base was screaming for them to do anything to reign him in.

So when I see Durbin pull this shit, I am both entirely unsurprised, and also furious. They all told us, again and again, that if Trump wins, our entire country and everything it means will be destroyed. I happen to believe that is true, but I don’t know that they did (or care that they will be affected, too).

Because if they did believe that the entire American Experiment was on the line, they would be doing what the GOP in North Carolina is doing, and what Republicans do every single time they lose their majority: exploit every loophole, push every boundary, use every single tool, no matter how cynically, to push through as much of their agenda as they can, and make it as hard as possible for the incoming majority to enact their agenda. Use the tools you have to protect and expand your policies, and let the winners complain about it, because policy is what matters.

Instead, we get a bunch of Model UN dorks who want to write stern letters and wring their hands at the lack of comity, while the Republicans are walking around setting the entire building on fire.

Durban, Schumer, and all the elder Democrats have got to go. We’ve tried it their way since the 90s, and look where it has gotten us. Get out of the way and let younger Democrats who aren't afraid of being disinvited from country club parties and fancy DC dinners do the work we sent you all to Washington to do.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The true, tactical significance of Project 2025

TODAY (July 14), I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! NEXT SATURDAY (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

Like you, I have heard a lot about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's roadmap for the actions that Trump should take if he wins the presidency. Given the Heritage Foundation's centrality to the American authoritarian project, it's about as awful and frightening as you might expect:

https://www.project2025.org/

But (nearly) all the reporting and commentary on Project 2025 badly misses the point. I've only read a single writer who immediately grasped the true significance of Project 2025: The American Prospect's Rick Perlstein, which is unsurprising, given Perlstein's stature as one of the left's most important historians of right wing movements:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-10-project-2025-republican-presidencies-tradition/

As Perlstein points out, Project 2025 isn't new. The Heritage Foundation and its allies have prepared documents like this, with many identical policy prescriptions, in the run-up to many presidential elections. Perlstein argues that Warren G Harding's 1921 inaugural address captures much of its spirit, as did the Nixon campaign's 1973 vow to "move the country so far to the right 'you won’t even recognize it.'"

The threats to democracy and its institutions aren't new. The right has been bent on their destruction for more than a century. As Perlstein says, the point of taking note of this isn't to minimize the danger, rather, it's to contextualize it. The American right has, since the founding of the Republic, been bent on creating a system of hereditary aristocrats, who govern without "interference" from democratic institutions, so that their power to extract wealth from First Nations, working people, and the land itself is checked only by rivalries with other aristocrats. The project of the right is grounded in a belief in Providence: that God's favor shines on His best creations and elevates them to wealth and power. Elite status is proof of merit, and merit is "that which leads to elite status."

When a wealthy person founds an intergenerational dynasty of wealth and power, this is merely a hereditary meritocracy: a bloodline infused with God's favor. Sometimes, this belief is dressed up in caliper-wielding pseudoscience, with the "good bloodline" reflecting superior genetics and not the favor of the Almighty. Of course, a true American aristocrat gussies up his "race realism" with mystical nonsense: "God favored me with superior genes." The corollary, of course, is that you are poor because God doesn't favor you, or because your genes are bad, or because God punished you with bad genes.

So we should be alarmed by the right's agenda. We should be alarmed at how much ground it has gained, and how the right has stolen elections and Supreme Court seats to enshrine antimajoritarianism as a seemingly permanent fact of life, giving extremist minorities the power to impose their will on the rest of us, dooming us to a roasting planet, forced births, racist immiseration, and most expensive, worst-performing health industry in the world.

But for all that the right has bombed so many of the roads to a prosperous, humane future, it's a huge mistake to think of the right as a stable, unified force, marching to victory after inevitable victory. The American right is a brittle coalition led by a handful of plutocrats who have convinced a large number of turkeys to vote for Christmas.

The right wing coalition needs to pander to forced-birth extremists, racist extremist, Christian Dominionist extremists (of several types), frothing anti-Communist cranks, vicious homophobes and transphobes, etc, etc. Pandering to all these groups isn't easy: for one thing, they often want opposite things – the post-Roe forced birth policies that followed the Dobbs decision are wildly unpopular among conservatives, with the exception of a clutch of totally unhinged maniacs that the party relies on as part of a much larger coalition. Even more unpopular are policies banning birth control, like the ones laid out in Project 2025. Less popular still: the proposed ban on no-fault divorce. Each of these policies have different constituencies to whom they are very popular, but when you put them together, you get Dan Savage's "Husbands you can't leave, pregnancies you can't prevent or terminate, politicians you can't vote out of office":

https://twitter.com/fakedansavage/status/1805680183065854083

The constituency for "husbands you can't leave, pregnancies you can't prevent or terminate, politicians you can't vote out of office" is very small. Almost no one in the GOP coalition is voting for all of this, they're voting for one or two of these things and holding their noses when it comes to the rest.

Take the "libertarian" wing of the GOP: its members do favor personal liberty…it's just that they favor low taxes for them more than personal liberty for you. The kind of lunatic who'd vote for a dead gopher if it would knock a quarter off his tax bill will happily allow his coalition partners to rape pregnant women with unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds and force them to carry unwanted fetuses to term if that's the price he has to pay to save a nickel in taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#tolerable-racism

And, of course, the religious maniacs who profess a total commitment to Biblical virtue but worship Trump, Gaetz, Limbaugh, Gingrich, Reagan, and the whole panoply of cheating, lying, kid-fiddling, dope-addled refugees from a Jack Chick tract know that these men never gave a shit about Jesus, the Apostles or the Ten Commandments – but they'll vote for 'em because it will get them school prayer, total abortion bans, and unregulated "home schooling" so they can brainwash a generation of Biblical literalists who think the Earth is 5,000 years old and that Jesus was white and super into rich people.

Time and again, the leaders of the conservative movement prove themselves capable of acts of breathtaking cruelty, and undoubtedly many of them are depraved sadists who genuinely enjoy the suffering of their enemies (think of Trump lickspittle Steven Miller's undisguised glee at the thought of parents who would never be reunited with children after being separated at the border). But it's a mistake to think that "the cruelty is the point." The point of the cruelty is to assemble and maintain the coalition. Cruelty is the tactic. Power is the point:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars

The right has assembled a lot of power. They did so by maintaining unity among people who have irreconcilable ethics and goals. Think of the pro-genocide coalition that includes far-right Jewish ethno-nationalists, antisemitic apocalyptic Christians who believe they are hastening the end-times, and Islamophobes of every description, from War On Terror relics to Hindu nationalists.

This is quite an improbable coalition, and while I deplore its goals, I can't help but be impressed by its cohesion. Can you imagine the kind of behind-the-scenes work it takes to get antisemites who think Jews secretly control the world to lobby with Zionists? Or to get Zionists to work alongside of Holocaust-denying pencilneck Hitler wannabes whose biggest regret is not bringing their armbands to Charlottesville?

Which brings me back to Project 2025 and its true significance. As Perlstein writes, Project 2025 is a mess. Clocking in an 900 pages, large sections of Project 2025 flatly contradict each other, while other sections contain subtle contradictions that you wouldn't notice unless you were schooled in the specialized argot of the far right's jargon and history.

For example, Project 2025 calls for defunding government agencies and repurposing the same agencies to carry out various spectacular atrocities. Both actions are deplorable, but they're also mutually exclusive. Project 2025 demands four different, completely irreconcilable versions of US trade policy. But at least that's better than Project 2025's chapter on monetary policy, which simply lays out every right wing theory of money and then throws up its hands and recommends none of them.

Perlstein says that these conflicts, blank spots and contradictions are the most important parts of Project 2025. They are the fracture lines in the coalition: the conflicting ideas that have enough support that neither side can triumph over the other. These are the conflicts that are so central to the priorities of blocs that are so important to the coalition that they must be included, even though that inclusion constitutes a blinking "LOOK AT ME" sign telling us where the right is ready to split apart.

The right is really good at this. Perlstein points to Nixon's expansion of affirmative action, undertaken to sow division between Black and white workers. We need to get better at it.

So far, we've lavished attention on the clearest and most emphatic proposals in Project 2025 – for understandable reasons. These are the things they say they want to do. It would be reckless to ignore them. But they've been saying things like this for a century. These demands constitute a compelling argument for fighting them as a matter of urgency, with the intention of winning. And to win, we need to split apart their coalition.

Perlstein calls on us to dissect Project 2025, to cleave it at its joints. To do so, he says we need to understand its antecedents, like Nixon's "Malek Manual," a roadmap for destroying the lives of civil servants who failed to show sufficient loyalty to Nixon. For example, the Malek Manual lays out a "Traveling Salesman Technique" whereby a government employee would be given duties "criss-crossing him across the country to towns (hopefully with the worst accommodations possible) of a population of 20,000 or under. Until his wife threatens him with divorce unless he quits, you have him out of town and out of the way":

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Final_Report_on_Violations_and_Abuses_of/0dRLO9vzQF0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22organization+of+a+political+personnel+office+and+program%22&pg=PA161&printsec=frontcover

It's no coincidence that leftist historians of the right are getting a lot of attention. Trumpism didn't come out of nowhere – Trump is way too stupid and undisciplined to be a cause – he's an effect. In his excellent, bestselling new history of the right in the early 1990s, When the Clock Broke, Josh Ganz shows us the swamp that bred Trump, with such main characters as the fascist eugenicist Sam Francis:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374605445/whentheclockbroke

Ganz joins the likes of the Know Your Enemy podcast, an indispensable history of reactionary movements that does excellent work in tracing the fracture lines in the right coalition:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/when-clock-broke-106803105

Progressives are also an uneasy coalition that is easily splintered. As Naomi Klein argues in her essential Doppelganger, the liberal-left coalition is inherently unstable and contains the seeds of its own destruction:

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

Liberals have been the senior partner in that coalition, and their commitment to preserving institutions for their own sake (rather than because of what they can do to advance human thriving) has produced generations of weak and ineffectual responses to the crises of terminal-stage capitalism, like the idea that student-debt cancellation should be means-tested:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/03/utopia-of-rules/#in-triplicate

The last bid for an American aristocracy was repelled by rejecting institutions, not preserving them. When the Supreme Court thwarted the New Deal, FDR announced his intention to pack the court, and then began the process of doing so (which included no-holds-barred attacks on foot-draggers in his own party). Not for nothing, this is more-or-less what Lincoln did when SCOTUS blocked Reconstruction:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

But the liberals who lead the progressive movement dismiss packing the court as unserious and impractical – notwithstanding the fact that they have no plan for rescuing America from the bribe-taking extremists, the credibly accused rapist, and the three who stole their robes. Ultimately, liberals defend SCOTUS because it is the Supreme Court. I defended SCOTUS, too – while it was still a vestigial organ of the rights revolution, which improved the lives of millions of Americans. Human rights are worth defending, SCOTUS isn't. If SCOTUS gets in the way of human rights, then screw SCOTUS. Sideline it. Pack it. Make it a joke.

Fuck it.

This isn't to argue for left seccession from the progressive coalition. As we just saw in France, splitting at this moment is an invitation to literal fascist takeover:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/melenchon-macron-france-left-winner

But if there's one thing that the rise of Trumpism has proven, it's that parties are not immune to being wrestled away from their establishment leaderships by radical groups:

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

What's more, there's a much stronger natural coalition that the left can mobilize: workers. Being a worker – that is, paying your bills from wages, instead of profits – isn't an ideology you can change, it's a fact. A Christian nationalist can change their beliefs and then they will no longer be a Christian nationalist. But no matter what a worker believes, they are still a worker – they still have a irreconcilable conflict with people whose money comes from profits, speculation, or rents. There is no objectively fair way to divide the profits a worker's labor generates – your boss will always pay you as little of that surplus as he can. The more wages you take home, the less profit there is for your boss, the fewer dividends there are for his shareholders, and the less there is to pay to rentiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/19/make-them-afraid/#fear-is-their-mind-killer

Reviving the role of workers in their unions, and of unions in the Democratic party, is the key to building the in-party power we need to drag the party to real solutions – strong antimonopoly action, urgent climate action, protections for gender, racial and sexual minorities, and decent housing, education and health care.

The alternative to a worker-led Democratic Party is a Democratic Party run by its elites, whose dictates and policies are inescapably illegitimate. As Hamilton Nolan writes, the completely reasonable (and extremely urgent) discussion about Biden's capacity to defeat Trump has been derailed by the Democrats' undemocratic structure. Ultimately, the decision to have an open convention or to double down on a candidate whose campaign has been marred by significant deficits is down to a clutch of party officials who operate without any formal limits or authority:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-hole-at-the-heart-of-the-democratic

Jettisoning Biden because George Clooney (or Nancy Pelosi) told us to is never going to feel legitimate to his supporters in the party. But if the movement for an open convention came from grassroots-dominated unions who themselves dominated the party – as was the case, until the Reagan revolution – then there'd be a sense that the party had constituents, and it was acting on its behalf.

Reviving the labor movement after 40 years of Reaganomic war on workers may sound like a tall order, but we are living through a labor renaissance, and the long-banked embers of labor radicalism are reigniting. What's more, repelling fascism is what workers' movements do. The business community will always sell you out to the Nazis in exchange for low taxes, cheap labor and loose regulation.

But workers, organized around their class interests, stand strong. Last week, we lost one of labor's brightest flames. Jane McAlevey, a virtuoso labor organizer and trainer of labor organizers, died of cancer at 57:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/jane-mcalevey-strategy-organizing-obituary

McAlevey fought to win. She was skeptical of platitudes like "speaking truth to power," always demanding an explanation for how the speech would become action. In her classic book A Collective Bargain, she describes how she built worker power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

McAlevey helped organize a string of successful strikes, including the 2019 LA teachers' strike. Her method was straightforward: all you have to do to win a strike or a union drive is figure out how to convince every single worker in the shop to back the union. That's all.

Of course, it's harder than it sounds. All the problems that plague every coalition – especially the progressive liberal/left coalition – are present on the shop floor. Some workers don't like each other. Some don't see their interests aligned with others. Some are ornery. Some are convinced that victory is impossible.

McAlevey laid out a program for organizing that involved figuring out how to reach every single worker, to converse with them, listen to them, understand them, and win them over. I've never read or heard anyone speak more clearly, practically and inspirationally about coalition building.

Biden was never my candidate. I supported three other candidates ahead of him in 2020. When he got into office and started doing a small number of things I really liked, it didn't make me like him. I knew who he was: the Senator from MBNA, whose long political career was full of bills, votes and speeches that proved that while we might have some common goals, we didn't want the same America or the same world.

My interest in Biden over the past four years has had two areas of focus: how can I get him to do more of the things that will make us all better off, and do less of the things that make the world worse. When I think about the next four years, I'm thinking about the same things. A Trump presidency will contain far more bad things and far fewer good ones.

Many people I like and trust have pointed out that they don't like Biden and think he will be a bad president, but they think Trump will be much worse. To limit Biden's harms, leftists have to take over the Democratic Party and the progressive movement, so that he's hemmed in by his power base. To limit Trump's harms, leftists have to identify the fracture lines in the right coalition and drive deep wedges into them, shattering his power base.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

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/2024/07/14/fracture-lines/#disassembly-manual

[grison-in-space]

you know what else fucks me up about the US election? one of the things that has left me reeling in bewilderment and grief this month?

I'm a scientist, y'all.

That means that I am, like most American research scientists, a federal contractor. (Possibly employee. It's confusing, and it fucks with my taxes being a postdoctoral researcher.) I get paid because someone, in the long run ideally me, makes a really, really detailed pitch to one of several federal grant agencies that the nation would really be missing out if I couldn't follow up on these thoughts and find concrete evidence about whether or not I'm right.

Currently, my personal salary is dependent on a whole department of scientists convincing one of the largest and most powerful granting agencies that they have a program that is really good at training scientists that can think deeply about the priorities of the agency. Those priorities are defined by the guy who runs the agency, and he gets to hire whatever qualified people he wants. That guy? The Presidential Administration picks that one. That's how federal agencies get staffed: the President's administration nominates them.

All of the heads of these agencies are personally nominated by the president and their administration. They are people of enormous power whose job is to administer million-dollar grants to the scientists competing urgently for limited funds. A million dollars often doesn't go farther than a couple of years when it's intended to pay for absolutely everything to do with a particular pitch, including salaries of your trainees, all materials, travel expenses, promoting the work among other researchers, all of it—so most smart American researchers are working fervently on grants all the time.

The next director of the NIH will be a Trump appointee, if he notices and thinks to appoint one. NSF, too; that's the group that funds your ecology and your astroscience and your experimental mathematics and physics and chemistry, the stuff that doesn't have industry funding and industry priorities. USDA. DOE, that's who does a lot of the climate change mitigation and renewable energy source research, they'll just be lucky if they can do anything again because Trump nigh gutted them last time.

Right now, I am working on the very tail end of a grant's funding and I am scurrying to make sure I stay employed. So I'm thinking very closely about federal agency priorities, okay? And I'm thinking that the funding climate for science is going to get a lot fucking leaner. I'm seeing what the American people think of scientists, and about whether my job is worth doing. It's been a lean twelve years in this gig, okay? Every time the federal government gets fucked up, that impacts my job, it means that I have to hustle even harder to get grants in that let me support myself—and, if I have any trainees, their budding careers as well!—to patch over the lean times as much as we can.

So I've been reeling this week thinking about how funding agency priorities are going to change. I work on sex differences in motivation, so let me tell you, the politics reading this one for my next pitch are going to be fun. I'm working on a submission for an explicitly DEI-oriented five year grant with a cycle ending in February, so that's going to be an exercise in hoping that the agency employees at the middle levels (the ones that know how to get things done which can't be replaced immediately with yes men) can buffer the decisions of those big bosses long enough to let that program continue to exist a little while longer.

Ah, Christ, he promised Health & Human Services (which houses the NIH) to RFK, didn't he? We'll see how that pans out.

I keep seeing people calling for more governmental shutdowns on the left now, and it makes me want to scream. The government being gridlocked means the funding that researchers like me need doesn't come, okay? When the DOE can't say fucking "climate change," when the USDA hemorrhages its workers when the agency is dragged halfway across the country, when I watch a major Texan House rep stake his career on trying to destroy the NSF, I think: this is what you people think of us. I think: how little scientists are valued as public workers. Why am I working this hard again?

This is why I described voting as harm reduction. Even if two candidates are "the same" on one thing you care about, they probably aren't the same level of bad on everything. Your task is to figure out the best person to do the job. It's not about a fucking tribalist horse race. A vote is your opinion on a job interview, you fucks. We have to work with this person.

Anyway, I'm probably going to go back to shaking quietly in despair for a little longer and then pick myself up and hit the grind again. If I'm fast, I might still get the grant in this miserable climate if I run, and I might get to actually keep on what I'm trying to do, which is bring research on sex differences, neurodivergence and energy balance as informed by non-binary gender perspectives and disability theory to neuroscience.

Fuck.

[fairuzfan]

Would you rather have a president that enables a genocide? Or would you rather have a president that vilifies immigrants, promotes facism, dismantles the rights of women and minorities, emboldens white nationalists, worsens the wage gap, defunds vital services, AND enables a genocide?

It's an unfair and unreasonable question to ask. I know. Unfortunately those are our choices for president. It sucks, but it's a 2 party system. And until any change is made where a 3rd party vote is no longer equivalent to not voting at all, it's better to just vote blue for the presidential election. Not because Democrats are the "lesser evil", but because NOT having a Republican president will prevent further suffering of Americans and will lessen the risks of minorities' rights being threatened and revoked.

The president chooses the members of the supreme court who hold lifelong positions and whose legal decisions have decades-long ramifications. Trump picked 3 of the 11 current members who currently hold a Republican majority. It was that supreme court that overturned Roe V Wade and that decision is harming thousands of people today in multiple states.

Biden already nominated one SCOTUS, and in his next term he could appoint 1-2 more Democratic members who would work to protect rather than erode American rights.

The Trump administration was lethal for thousands of Americans for a multitude of reasons, including his failure to properly respond to and then proceeded to politicize the COVID-19 pandemic.

As awful as it sounds, as hard as it is to believe in the moment, ESPECIALLY with the atrocities Biden is perpetuating in Palestine right now, don't believe for a moment that this genocide would be even slightly less cruel under Trump. The difference is Trump's cruelties would extend to Americans as well— especially immigrants.

The point I'm making is the only ethical choice for this election is to vote for Biden, but at the same time that vote is not the same as condoning his actions. Don't let voting be the end all for political action, and I hope you understand why this choice is necessary in an unfair voting system. Please participate in your local elections, Call your representatives. Continue demanding a permanent ceasefire and an end of Israel's occupation over Palestine. And please keep helping Palestinians.

I think it's quite wild to say people domestically haven't been dying under Biden. Hundreds of thousands disabled people have died during the Biden presidency due to covid. I myself only got covid because people around my family stopped masking. Even some of my family members stopped masking because of the CDC thing. There have been countless other things that I'm too tired to list as well that directly contributed to the death of people.

I'm sorry I don't know why you sent this I'm not going to change my mind. I'm not voting for the man that killed people I know and lied to our faces about it.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

Reasons why we know there's something wrong with Grandpa:

• believes immigrants are eating their neighbors pets because he heard someone say it on TV (without any evidence) • thinks injecting disinfectant into our veins might be a good idea. (It's definitely not, don't try it.) • claims America's F35 fighter jet is completely invisible, even if you're right next to it (like Wonder Woman's plane)

• praises white supremacists and KKK members who were chanting antisemitic hate speech, calling them "very fine people" • focuses on imaginary issues like preventing children from changing gender while at school, but ignores real problems like school shootings • thought it was a good idea to give away our desperately needed Covid test machines to our adversary ("Grandpa, what have you done?" — he can't be left alone for a minute) • decided to believe Putin's lies, but dismiss findings from America's intelligence agencies • claims America had airplanes during the Revolutionary War

• believes in the Nazi ideology that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country," and says some migrants are actually subhuman "animals" • insisted that the U.S. would have fewer coronavirus cases if it conducted less testing (yes, a U.S. president in charge of controlling the crisis, actually said something this inept, repeatedly) • due to his incompetence and lies during the Covid crisis, the U.S. had one of the highest rates of Covid deaths in the world • thinks windmills cause cancer and kill whales • speaks endlessly about his concerns re: dying by electrocution from a boat battery or being eaten by a shark

• thinks he's above the law and, as president, should be able to commit as many crimes as he wants • is a billionaire who whines about how badly he's been treated, then he's chauffeured to his private jet • likes to discuss Arnold Palmer's penis • after NINE years of repeatedly promising to unveil his Healthcare Plan "very soon," he admits he still has no real plan —only "concepts of a plan" • has a bizarre attraction to the fictional cannibal and serial killer, Hannibal Lector (why? no one knows —and everyone's afraid to ask)

• advocates dangerous plots, like using the military against Americans who disagree with him, or using the DOJ to arrest them, or just telling people to "beat the crap out of them" and he'll pay their legal fees • thinks having a national day of violence is a good idea (we should never have let Grandpa watch "The Purge") • wants to be the "law and order president," yet this 34 time convicted felon incites people to riot and to commit criminal acts of violence • unable to take the loss of an election like a man, he had a temper tantrum like a toddler, that culminated in a treasonous insurrection

⠀This guy is so delusional, he claims he's a genius because he often speaks incoherently in something he calls "the Weave." Here are two examples: • "How disgusted were all when we see all of us are when we see three days ago when we viewed their parade." Asheboro, NC, 8/21/24 • When asked, "What specific legislation will you commit to, to make child care affordable?" He responded, “Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, you know; I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka, who was so impactful on that issue. ...But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that because the childcare is childcare, couldn’t, you know, there’s something you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.” New York, NY, 9/5/24 ⠀If this was anybody else's Grandpa, the family would be having discussions about who's going to go with Grandpa to the doctor to find out what's wrong with him, and who's going to be in charge of finding him a nice convalescent home to live in. ⠀My suggestion is that it might be a good idea to elect a president who has no cognitive impairment and can tell the difference between reality and delusions. Personally, I think that's a rather important quality in a president.

[welcometoqueer]

Some U.S. election news updates (as of afternoon November 7, 2024):

Many states, including major battleground ones, have started recounting votes on their own despite there still being no national call for a recount. Some of these states recounting or considering recounting as of November 7, 2024 include: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona (considering), and Texas (considering).

Most news outlets have been covering state laws regarding recounts and what a recount could mean. Notably, right-wing sources like Fox News have not mentioned the possibility of a recount or the high demand for one (hmmm).

In cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia, people took to the streets in a peaceful protest to demand a recount (wait, you can protest peacefully?? without starting an insurrection?? Crazy).

More information alleging Trump cheating has come forward, although many people are expressing their frustrations over there being little to no coverage of election interference by the mainstream media. Additionally, many Democratic voters are vowing to boycott news sources such as CNN and MSNBC due to their apparent tone-deaf and lackluster response to the allegations.

On Twitter, hashtags such as “Do Not Concede Kamala,” “Recount 2024,” “He/Trump Cheated,” and “Rigged” continue to trend nationally since election night.

Also in the Twitter hellscape, Elon Musk has been removing posts with resources, posts alleging Trump cheated, and posts with information on how to check your ballot and demand a recount. This is awfully suspicious and concerning behavior from someone who has also been accused of bribing voters, which is a federal crime.

Many people are also sharing their grief over the extreme likelihood of programs and services such as Social Security, Medicare, SNAP, the Department of Education, and others being diminished or fully gutted as many Republican lawmakers and Trump have promised to do. Already today (Nov. 7), House Republicans have proposed a bill that would reduce social security payments for U.S.Americans who receive disability benefits or a pension.

There are also concerns over imposed tariffs, the United States losing its NATO membership, and the potential dissolving of the United Nations.

Many MAGA Trump supporters have started to be more emboldened, not just in the Twitter space. Multiple parents have come forward to share that young boys at their children’s schools have also begun repeating the “your body, my choice” mantra, leaving other kids in distress.

Speaking of distress, nationwide, queer and trans people have been largely absent from work and school. Since election night, LGBTQ+ and other helplines have had long waits due to such high demand.

TW: suicide mention, skip the next paragraph

There’s been over 2000+ suicides of just LGBTQ+ individuals since election night and the numbers keep increasing drastically.

End TW

Politically, sitting President Joe Biden addressed the nation today to discuss a “peaceful transfer of power.” He addressed people questioning Donald Trump’s win and the election system saying: “It is honest, it is fair, and it is transparent, and it can be trusted, win or lose."

Needless to say, no one was pleased by his response and are still demanding an investigation or recount.

Other political figures such as Bernie Sanders and the Obamas’ released their own statements regarding the election.

The Obamas’ had a very professional yet disappointed statement.

Bernie Sanders however, took a different approach, sharing the mass sentiment among democratic voters and criticizing the Democratic Party based on their response to the situation. “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”

[ID:

Multiple videos and images with election news and updates.

The first video, posted to Twitter, is of an Anti-Trump protest in Chicago.

These should be peacefully taking place all over the country. This is what democracy is about, not storming Capitol buildings. Right MAGA? pic.twitter.com/lgzsP41Lze — Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) November 7, 2024.

The video shows people in the streets of Chicago and in front of Trump tower peacefully protesting in demand for a recount and investigation.

Protesters chants include:

“Donald Trump, you will see!”

“Racist, sexist, anti-gay! Donald Trump, go away!”

and “You’re not welcome in this town! Donald Trump, you fascist clown!”

The second video was also posted to Twitter by CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) on November 6, 2024. It’s a video from MSNBC reporting on the strange behavior of Trump leading up to the election where he repeatedly said he didn't need votes. These statements seem to imply that regardless of how people voted, he expected to gain power.

The next image is of the official statement regarding the election results by Barack and Michelle Obama.

The statement reads:

STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT AND MRS. OBAMA ON THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION NOVEMBER 6, 2024

“Over the last few weeks and through Election Day, millions of Americans cast their votes - not just for president, but for leaders at every level. Now the results are in, and we want to congratulate President Trump and Senator Vance on their victory. This is obviously not the outcome we had hoped for, given our profound disagreements with the Republican ticket on a whole host of issues. But living in a democracy is about recognizing that our point of view won't always win out, and being willing to accept the peaceful transfer of power. Michelle and I could not be prouder of Vice President Harris and Governor Walz - two extraordinary public servants who ran a remarkable campaign. And we will always be grateful to the staff and volunteers who poured their heart and soul into electing public servants they truly believed in. As I said on the campaign trail, America has been through a lot over the last few years - from a historic pandemic and price hikes resulting from the pandemic, to rapid change and the feeling a lot of folks have that, no matter how hard they work, treading water is the best they can do. Those conditions have created headwinds for democratic incumbents around the world, and last night showed that America is not immune. The good news is that these problems are solvable - but only if we listen to each other, and only if we abide by the core constitutional principles and democratic norms that made this country great. In a country as big and diverse as ours, we won't always see eye-to-eye on everything. But progress requires us to extend good faith and grace - even to people with whom we deeply disagree. That's how we've come this far, and it's how we'll keep building a country that is more fair and more just, more equal and more free.”

The last two images are Bernie Sanders’ statement on the election results, criticizing the response of the Democratic Party.

Sanders’ statement reads:

NEWS: Sanders Statement on the Results of the 2024 Presidential Election November 6, 2024 BURLINGTON, Vt. - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today released the following statement in response to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election:

“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right. Today, while the very rich are doing phenomenally well, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and we have more income and wealth inequality than ever before. Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago. Today, despite an explosion in technology and worker productivity, many young people will have a worse standard of living than their parents. And many of them worry that Artificial Intelligence and robotics will make a bad situation even worse. Today, despite spending far more per capita than other countries, we remain the only wealthy nation not to guarantee health care to all as a human right and we pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. We, alone among major countries, cannot even guarantee paid family and medical leave. Today, despite strong opposition from a majority of Americans, we continue to spend billions funding the extremist Netanyahu government's all out war against the Palestinian people which has led to the horrific humanitarian disaster of mass malnutrition and the starvation of thousands of children. Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign? Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing? Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful Oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not. In the coming weeks and months those of us concerned about grassroots democracy and economic justice need to have some very serious political discussions. Stay tuned.”

/end ID]

[alwayscozyy]

You know what’s bothered me? People viewing our president as some sort of celebrity. Especially someone that says they are a “fan” of a presidential candidate, just doesn’t sit right with me. These are real people governing our country, not a fucking magical being or a movie star. Politics nowadays is damn reality tv. This country is as mature as a high school, and the popular kids are fighting for control. I’m not religious much but this is what god means by “false idols”. Also, the fact I’ve seen people bet on the election or talk about it like it’s some sort of sporting event is quite outrageous and unsettling. This isn’t entertainment, this is supposed to be a commitment to democracy and creating equality and fairness in our country. It’s about making the proper changes to help better mankind and American lives. I think we need to start somewhere new. Our lives don’t change with a presidential election, change occurs within ourselves. It’s our mindsets that are hurting us. For the next four years we live with a decision, and after that, the same thing. That’s how shit works, and not everything goes your way sometimes, but that’s how life happened to turn out. It’s hard for me to trust anybody that worships a “presidential candidate” or obsesses over the idea of the election. All we can do is control what we do and how we act. We can’t better the world until we better the people that are capable of changing the world. Change is necessary, without it, we wouldn’t adapt, survival wouldn’t be possible, and evil would persist. Fuck trump and fuck Kamala. I never chose them as my candidates. Who said anybody is worthy of such a position of power anyways? But if you really are into politics and support someone, I get it, you’re doing all that you can do by voting for what you believe in. And I commend you for choosing that decision. Just remember there are more important things to consider than to obsess about your favorite “candidate” on your free time. And for the love of god, stop dividing this country.

[darkeagleruins]

Wisconsin: Poll Workers Being Banned From Wearing American Flags

I took my oath to be a poll worker tomorrow for the United States election”

Poll Center Says “You can't wear American flags.

And I said, why?

And she said, well, because one side tends to not like it that much”

— “They think you're trying to push your beliefs on them.”

— “I'm sorry. We literally live in the United States of America and we're voting on the next leader of our country. And you're offended that we wanna wear American flags?”

“Please don't vote for the wrong side of history, people. Please. Like, this is so insane”

“We are literally United States citizens voting for the United States president and we can't wear American flags to polls or it pisses one side off.

[traegorn]

Couple of takeaways from the notes of my recent political posts.

One, someone called me boring, which no one has ever done before in my 44 years on this Earth. That's not really important, but my ego has been dealt a mortal blow that it may never recover from. 😆

Two, there are really people arguing out there that the 2016 election interference wasn't real and/or that it wasn't that big of a deal. I have thoughts on that, but mostly I'm just exhausted on that bit.

Three, and this is the important one, a lot of people seem to really be negative about having to vote for Harris. Now, I'm not arguing with them because they're allowed to have a different opinion than I do, and in the end we're on the same side in this fight. We're voting the same way to try to keep Trump out of the White House.

So this next part isn't for them. If that's you? We're good. You can keep scrolling. This comment is for people who aren't reluctant in their choice to vote for Harris. This is for the people that want to vote for her.

You're allowed to be excited to vote for Kamala Harris.

Don't feel guilty about that if you do. If we win she'll become the first woman president. She'll be only the second person of color to hold the office. She'll be the second black president, and the first South Asian American president. It's a big deal.

Also, as I've said many times before, she's the most left presidential candidate we've seen in my lifetime. Presidential candidates will always be more centrist bits of the party (especially when the Republicans are running someone so far to the right), but she has some good bona fides! Is she my ideal candidate? No - but she's the best I've gotten a chance to vote for.

And people need to remember you can like someone or something and still be critical of it. Hell, in politics it's practically required.

I was really negative on Biden in 2020, but I voted for him anyway because at heart I'm a pragmatist. He pleasantly surprised me though. And Harris is better than Biden.

So, yeah, if you're voting for Harris -- great. We don't need to argue about your reasons. But if you're happy to? Don't feel ashamed of that.

We're in this one together.

...something something gimli/legolas dot gif