#there IS going to be another presidential election

[prigorie]

For my non-Romanian followers, here's why you might see Romanians on social media losing their minds:

(Context: we have a semi-presidential state and a 2 round presidential election system. if nobody has above 50% in the first round, the two candidates with the most votes go in the second round, 2 weeks after the first. in a spectacularly stupid move, we also have the parliamentary elections on the 1st of december (the romanian national day) (right between the 2 rounds of the presidential elections))

until the counting of the votes was finished, literally every poll showed the current prime minister (marcel ciolacu) (a corrupt idiot) to be on the first place. the second place was being fought for by:

1. elena lasconi - leader of the usr party (centre-right liberal)

2. george simion - leader of the aur party (far-right nationalist populist)

surprise suprise! the first place was won with over 2M votes by călin georgescu, an independent candidate. he's an ultra-nationalist, anti-eu, anti-nato, pro-russia, openly supported the legionarists (romanian fascists), openly believes in bizarre conspiracy theories (water is not h2o, the moon landing was fake, coke and pepsi have microchips, coronavirus isn't and was never real). this is doubly insane because another candidacy (diana şoşoacă) was invalidated by ccr due to her statements that opposed constitutionary values

the second place was won by lasconi, at a difference of 2740 votes from ciolacu

since monday, there have been anti-fascist and pro-democracy protests all over the country

today/yesterday (thursday), the constitutional court (ccr) decided that the votes will have to be recounted until friday at 14:00. this is an insane deadline and everyone in the country except ccr thinks so. also, independent observers aren't allowed, and we still don't know what will happen if the order of the candidates will change. ciolacu announced that he will step down from the race even if it turns out that he got 2nd place. the options are: re-do the 1st round, go forward with georgescu vs lasconi, go forward with georgescu vs ciolacu. i sincerely hope that an automatic georgescu win isn't an option. this confusion also comes after one of the 14 (!!!) candidates stepped down days before the 1st round and announced his support for lasconi but the ballots were already printed and the votes for him counted.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot of things because this has been a frankly insane week. Romanians, feel free to add whatever you want

tl;dr: the romanian public institutes are profoundly undemocratic

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Audio reveals Brazilian military discussing 'civil war' to keep Bolsonaro in power

The messages were shared among high-ranking military personnel after the second presidential round in 2022

Audio recordings obtained by the Federal Police and published by the press show that high-ranking military officers were prepared, after the second round of the 2022 presidential elections, to start a civil war to prevent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party) from taking office and to keep former president Jair Bolsonaro (Liberal Party) in power.

In one of the recordings, from November 29, 2022, reserve brigadier general Roberto Criscuoli discussed the possibility of a civil war in a message sent to reserve general and former executive secretary of the Secretary General of the Presidency of the Republic Mário Fernandes.

“If we don't take over things now, I think it will worsen later. It will be a civil war now or later. Except for the fact that the civil war now is significant – the people are in the streets, we have massive support. Soon we're going to enter a civil war because, in a few months, this guy is going to destroy the Army. He's going to destroy everything,” he said.

In another audio message sent to Mário Fernandes, Colonel Reginaldo Vieira de Abreu said that the country was at war and, therefore, advocated a coup. “Sorry for using this expression, sir, but ‘four lines of the Constitution’ is my ass. We're at war [and] they're winning. It's almost over and they [military personnel] haven't fired a shot because of our incompetence,” he said.

Continue reading.

[statisticalcats2]

I feel like there's a good amount of people who are like... genuinely upset at the very idea that we're not living in the worst case scenario. Whether it's because believing it's all doomed to irreparably go to shit absolves them of having to even try to do anything even slightly meaningful or because they think the world needs to completely burn down before anything meaningfully good can happen, I don't know, but like, some of you are really upset at the idea that actually, no, we're not living the worst case scenario.

[true-bluesargent]

i know the state of the democracies in the uk and in the us right now are terrible, but i can't even fathom being able to vote and NOT doing it. people fought and died for these rights! there are people all over the world right now who can't vote at all or who don't live in a free democracy! and people who have the right and the ability to vote who live in two of the most privileged countries in the world are going to let the opportunity pass? what is wrong with you all? i can't even believe it

[cyarskj1899]

they did this. remember them.

[the-yearning-astronaut]

I think I'm going to be sick

[insignificantstrawberry]

hey other canadians…instead of sending thoughts and prayers and positive vibes why don’t you instead start learning about the ridings in your local districts.

who is running for the member of parliament? who is running for the member of the provincial parliament? who represents your house of assembly? what is the majority party in your area?

don’t give into the smugness. don’t be a bleeding heart. do something productive and get informed. you have many choices in federal parties, i suggest you familiarize yourself now instead of waiting until the day of an election.

[randum-famdoms]

People complain about whatever asshole cursed us to live in interesting times, and they’re right, but man posts like this remind me that at the very least we aren’t living in the most interesting times.

Can you fucking imagine living in the timeline where the Trump assassination is successful and like a week later Biden keels over of Covid

[boreal-sea]

Putting this as a meme so maybe y'all will actually read it.

Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.

And this is why we cannot let Trump win another term: he now has complete immunity for any acts he "officially" performs as president. You thought he was bad before? Now he will have zero fear. He will do whatever he wants. And what he wants is outlined in Project 2025.

[cyarsk52-20]

Well, I guess the consequences of this election are already being felt.

A story about Trump voters in Pennsylvania.

The owner of a large company called a meeting for all his employees.

He informed them that they won't be getting their Christmas bonuses this year.

He explained that the company has to buy a year's worth of product before the Trump's tariffs hit in January.

They said they thought the tariffs were paid by the foreign companies.

He then explained to his employees that the tariffs are paid by the American companies who import these foreign goods.

Sometimes, you get exactly what you vote for.

And I can't say I feel bad for anyone at Find out stage of their decisions. Elections have consequences. thank God they’re suffering! They deserve it! Life is whipping them all from the back! Fuck them up life, let them all receive the rude awakening!

[einaudis]

.

[prozach27]

It’s wild the number of posts I come across where people act like voting for or supporting Harris and Walz in the election is tantamount to implicitly supporting genocide. You know what actually helps genocide? Doing nothing while pretending you have the moral high ground. America is deeply tied to Israel and there will be no candidate who is as critical of their actions as we want them to be. We as private citizens do not have the power to make the USA suddenly cease all activity with Israel and demand an uncompromising ceasefire deal. Instead, we have to get our hands dirty and decide what path forward will mitigate as much harm as possible. You have one presidential candidate saying Israel needs to finish the job and another saying that we can’t ignore the tragedies in Gaza while vocally supporting a temporary ceasefire. These are your two picks. Thinking any third party candidate has a shot when none have any wide-reaching name recognition less than 100 days before the election is a fever dream.

The question then becomes, are you willing to say you voted “correctly” by voting for someone who has no shot of winning but is most closely aligned to you? Or are you going to vote for who will do the least harm? The idea that voting for a president involves liking them is a fairy tale. The establishment will always be the enemy of civil rights and safety. You’re voting for which opponent you want in office. The writing is on the wall about which candidate will be less of an uphill battle to fight against, and sidestepping the responsibility of making that decision by throwing away a vote isn’t moral or intellectually groundbreaking - it’s cowardly.

[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

[andhumanslovedstories]

Eight years ago I was so deeply invested in the American presidential election, I listen to multiple weekly podcasts, I was on twitter, I checked the polling updates, read the articles, watched the news, I could tell you the political happenings of every week of 2016, and we were on the road for a large portion of it so we had to work for it. We watched one of the presidential debates in a Las Vegas Panera before heading back to our campsite. I did something similar for the 2020 election because jesus christ what a fucking Historical Year. Now it’s 2024, and gearing up for the grind once more is such a dismal feeling. I don’t want to have to have an opinion on Nicky Haley’s viability as republican candidate. I don’t want to follow another twelve Trump trials. I don’t want to watch everyone even slightly left of center once again devour each other as we polarize about it’s a bigger war crime to vote for Biden or not vote for Biden. Everything is going to get so unpleasant and it’s so important and the stakes are so high and it’s gonna suck the whole time. I’m trying to think of one funny thing that could plausibly happen that would fill me with joy and not terror for the future of America and also the world, and so far I’ve only come up with Jeb Bush giving a presidential campaign another go.

[m0ther-of-p3arl]

at this point i will fully just be blocking anyone who says they're voting third party idk how to get it into your brains that by voting third party YOU ARE VOTING FOR DONALD TRUMP. if he wins, you're not getting another chance to vote, you're not getting another election, because he WILL become the dictator. he has smart people behind him, horrible people, but people who know what they're doing and know how to manipulate laws and twist them in ways where trump can do whatever he wants.

if you are voting third party, you are taking away our one chance at winning this thing.

kamala harris is a good candidate. she is the most pro-palestinian candidate we are EVER going to get who actually has a shot at winning this thing. she's a black and south-asian woman who understand the struggles that minorities face and does her best to fix them. she is smart, she is pro-abortion, she is literally the most liberal candidate we will EVER HAVE who has a remote chance at winning. she has a positive stance on lgbtq+ rights and worked to make sure the gay and trans panic defense was removed. she protected children and women and people of all kinds who were sexually assaulted. she made it so that children who were SEX TRAFFICKED wouldn't be prosecuted for BEING TRAFFICKED.

she is a good candidate. hell, she's a GREAT candidate. she's leagues better than biden, at this point i honestly don't know what you all are hoping for. we are never going to get the hyper-liberal, massively far left candidate some of you seem to be hoping for. that's just not a possibility: this is politics. you can't appeal to that tiny corner of the population and still hope to win. i wish you could, but that's just now how it works at this moment in time. kamala harris might be the best presidential candidate in the history of the united states.

and even if she wasn't: have you forgotten what 2016-2020 was like?! have you forgotten who we're fighting against?! because donald trump is a nightmare scenario. he is literally the opposite of everything that liberals and far-left people like myself stand for. when bush was running against al gore, the only reason that there was even a supreme court case that appointed bush was because too many people voted third party. you can't do that shit. i wish you could, i wish we had more options, but we just fucking don't.

so, yeah: come november, go out and vote, and when you do, vote for kamala harris. vote for her so we don't lose everything that we as liberals are fighting for, vote for her for those of us who are too young, vote for her for the best-case scenario that the palestinian people will ever have in this current political climate.

please. please, please vote harris. it's the only option atp.

(i will not be doing discourse in the replies or reblogs. don't even try it.)

[creature-wizard]

Addressing some anti-voter reasoning (and explaining why it's bad)

The reasoning most anti-voters are using is bad, and here's why.

"I plan to vote third party."

When it comes to presidential elections, third-party voting is dead in the water without massive election reforms, which Republicans will never allow if they have their way. By voting third party, you're effectively voting for Trump and Project 2025/Agenda 47. This might sound harsh, but it's just the truth right now.

"I would be complicit in genocide."

If genocide is what you're worried about, how would letting Donald J. "Finish The Problem" Trump become president help? Do you really think Donald J. Muslim Ban Trump isn't going to go after Palestinians already in the US? And what exactly do you plan to do for Palestinians in a Trump dictatorship when you've been imprisoned for "pornography" because you were trans in public, posted pictures of trans people or characters, or posted support for trans people? (Yeah, Trump and his buddies want to legislate so-called "trans ideology" as "pornography" and make it illegal.)

"It would be no worse than what POC are going through already."

However bad things are for POC in America right now, a Trump presidency would make them even worse. Using their suffering to justify letting Trump into the White House again is really, really messed up.

"White people have it coming."

White people won't be the ones who suffer the most. Again, POC will be disproportionately affected by Trump's policies. If you actually care about POC, why would you want to subject them to that? How does making things worse for them help anything?

"Bad things happened under Biden."

And a number of them happened because of Supreme Court members whom Donald Trump appointed, and because Republicans blocked his efforts to fix things. Furthermore, many good things happened under the Biden/Harris administration. Here's one post with examples. Here's another post. And here's another post. And here are some good things Kamala Harris has done.

One reason to vote for Harris is to balance the Supreme Court. If elected, she'll be able to appoint judges who aren't turbo-conservatives, which would help us immensely going forward. (It was a liberal Supreme Court that got us gay marriage, remember?) Meanwhile, if Trump is elected, he will appoint more turbo-conservative judges. We gotta think about the long game here.

"The Revolution would solve everything."

Leftists right now would never have tactical parity with, much less superiority over the US military, which Donald Trump would happily sic on all of you. At best, your "revolution" would actually be decades of insurgency. The genocide in Palestine would still happen, and the most vulnerable people in the US would suffer even more.

So basically, there's just no good reason not to vote at this point. Refusing to vote (or voting third party) is counterproductive to literally anything you want to accomplish, unless what you want to accomplish is "make things infinitely worse for everyone."