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whitehotharlots · 4 years ago

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Previewing the 2024 Democrat Primary

Within a couple weeks of his being sworn in, just about every person on earth will wish Joe Biden was no longer president. Sure, the few surviving John B. Anderson voters will be thrilled to see 4 years of crushing austerity and half-assed attempts at Keynesian stimulus. But most people will begin dreaming about a brighter future.

Good news! The 2024 Democratic primary field is going to contain dozens of options. Bad news! They are all going to be disgusting piles of shit.

The “top tier”

While it’s too early to do any handicapping, these are the candidates the media will treat as having the most realistic chances of securing the nomination.

Kamala Harris

Kamala did not win a single primary delegate in 2020. This is because she dropped out before the first primary, and that was because no one likes her. She has no base beyond a few thousand of twitter’s most violent psychos. Her disingenuousness approaches John Edwards levels: any halfway incredulous person can see immediately beyond her bullshit. She has no principles whatsoever, and while that may be par for the course for Democrats, she lacks even the basic politician’s ability to intuit anything that might, hypothetically, constitute a principle.

Even better: she is an awful public speaker. She sounds like how a talking dog would speak if he were just caught stealing people food off the kitchen table. She communicates in weird grunts and faux sassy squeaks, which is how she imagines real black women sound like, but something about her is unable to sell the bit. She begins her sentences in halfhearted AAVE, stops and panics halfway through as she realizes that maybe this sounds fake and offensive, and then reminds herself oh wait, no, this is okay since I’m black. This doesn’t happen once or twice per speech. This is how every single sentence sounds.

Kamala is like Nancy Pelosi in that no sketch show will ever impersonate her correctly, because anything that came close to authenticity would be considered far too cruel. This might benefit her in the primaries, as she exists in the minds of Democrats as someone and something she absolutely is not in reality. Nominating her would be like allowing your child’s imaginary friend to attempt to drive you to the store.

Andrew Cuomo

Easily one of the 50 worst people alive, Cuomo has a solid chance because Democrats, same as Republicans, are unable to differentiate between electability and self-serving ruthlessness. Cuomo used the deadliest public health crisis in American history as a pretext for cutting Medicaid and firing 5,000 MTA workers, and his approval rating increased. New York Dems are little piggies who love eating shit. If we assume that the political media will continue their habit of refusing to discuss the legislative history of right wing Democrats, Cuomo might well cruise to the nomination and then lose to literally any human being the GOP nominates by an historic margin.

Joe Biden

The party loves him because he is a right wing racist. “Progressives” tolerate him because black primary voters over 40 supported him, and their opinion is supposedly a magic window into god’s truth. Everyone else can tell he is manifestly senile. I don’t put it above the DNC to pick a candidate who is in horrible health, dying, or even dead--whatever the financial sector wants, they’ll get. But I would be shocked if his approval rating is above 39% by mid-2023, and by that point deep fake technology will be advanced enough they’ll put out a very lifelike video in which the Max Headroom version of Joe explains he’s proud of his accomplishments--that budget’s almost balanced already--but, man, I gotta abd--I gotta abdica--, uhh, I gotta, I, uhh, I gotta move down, man.

Wild Cards

These candidates would have all have a chance if they ran, but they could all much more easily retire to Little Saint James off of kickbacks they’ve gotten from Citibank and I.G. Farben.

Rahm Emanuel

Rahm is going to receive some hugely influential post in the Biden administration. Let’s say he becomes Secretary of Education. His signature achievement will be replacing all elementary school teachers with Amazon’s Alexa, which saved the taxpayers so much money we were able to quadruple the number of armed police officers we put into high schools. This will give him several thousand positive profiles on network news programs and the near-universal support of the Silicon Valley vampires who will own 99% of the country by the time Biden’s term ends. They will use their fancy mind control devices to convince geriatic primary voters that Rahm’s the one who will bring Decency back to the white house. His candidacy will be the paragon of wokeness, as expressing concern toward the fact that he covered up the police murder of a black guy will get you called a racist.

Rahm has a bonus in that Jewish men are now Schrodeniger’s PoC. When they are decent human beings, they are basic, cis white men who are stealing attention from disabled trans candidates of color. When they love austerity and apartheid, they become the most vulnerable people of color on earth and criticizing them in any way is genocide. No one will be able to mention a single thing Rahm has ever done or said without opening themselves to accusations of antisemitism, and that gives him a strong edge against the rest of the field. The good news is that an Emmanuel candidacy would result in over 50% of black voters choosing the GOP candidate--which, I guess that’s not really good but it would certainly be funny.

Gavin Newsom

Newsom is every bit as feckless as Cuomo, but he doesn’t put off the same “bad guy in an early Steven Segal movie” vibes. He will mention climate change 50 times per speech and no one will bother to mention how he keeps signing fracking contracts even though his state is now on fire 11 months of the year. If anything, this will be spun into an argument about how he’s actually the candidate best suited to handle all the water refugees gathering on the southern border. Look for his plan to curb emissions by 10% by the year 2150 to get high marks from Sierra Club nerds. He’s also a celebate librarian’s idea of what constitutes a handsome man, so he’ll have some support from the type of women who claim to hate all men.

Larry Summers

I mean, why not? Larry, like most members of the Obama administration, has politics that are eerily similar to those of Jordan Peterson. In normal circumstances, this makes a person a dangerous fascist who should not be platformed. But if that person has a D next to their name this makes them a realistic pragmatist who has what it takes to bring suburban bankers into our tent. If current trends in Woke Phrenology continue apace, Larry’s belief that women are inherently bad at STEM will be liberal orthodoxy by 2023, and his dedication to the Laffer Curve could see him rake in massive donations. Seriously, I’m not kidding: cultural liberalism is now fully dedicated to identity essentialism and balanced budgets. Larry is their ideal candidate. If he were black and/or a woman, I’d put him in the very top tier.

Jay Inslee

Unlike Newsom, Inslee’s attempt to crown himself the King of Global Warming won’t be immediately derailed, since his state is only on fire because of protestors. This, however, poses a different problem. He’s going to be a good test case for the Democrat’s uneasy peace with the ever increasing share of the electorate who become catatonic upon hearing a pronoun. On the one hand, you need to take their votes for granted. On the other hand, they’re not like black people or regular gays: most voters actively, consciously despise wokies, and associating yourself with them will ruin a campaign even in deep blue areas. There’s still gonna be riots in a year. Biden’s gonna announce the sale of all our nation’s potable water to the good folks at Nestle and some trans freak named Sasha-Malia DeBalzac is going to use that as an opportunity to sell their new pamphlet about how it’s fascist to not burn down small businesses. No matter what Inslee does in response, it’ll end his career.

AOC

I’m not one of those “AOC is a secret conservative” weirdos, but I am aware enough of basic reality to know she has zero chance of coming close to the nomination. The right and the center both regard her as a literal demon. The party is already blaming her for the fact that a handful of faceless Reagan acolytes failed to flip their suburban districts even though they ran on sensible pragmatic proposals like euthanizing the homeless. The recriminations will only get more unhinged when the Dems eat shit in the 2022 midterms. She will be a Russian, she will be white male, she will be a communist, she will be a homophobe: any insult or conspiracy theory you can name, MSNBC will spend hours discussing. Her house seat challenger will receive a record amount of support from the DNC in 2024 and it’ll be all she can do to remain in congress.

Larry Hogan

Don’t be dissuaded by the fact that he’s a Republican. Larry is the DNC’s ideal candidate: a physically repulsive conservative who owes his entire career to appealing to the most spiteful desires of suburban white people. He’s an open racist in a material sense--if you’re old-school enough to think racism is a matter of beliefs and actions, rather than the presence of cultural signifiers--but his is the beloved “never Trump” style of racism that Dems covet. He’s also a Proven Leader who thinks the role of government should be to finance the construction of investment property and give police the resources they need to run successful drug trafficking operations. Few people embody the Democrat worldview more than Larry.

The Losers Bracket

These people will have at least a small chance due solely to the fact that the Democrats love losing. They have lost in the past, and in the Democrat Mind that makes them especially qualified.

Joe Kennedy

The man looks like a mushroom-human hybrid from a JRPG. Trump proved that physical hideousness need not doom a presidential bid, but a candidate still needs some kind of charm or oratorical abilities or, god forbid, a decent platform. Joe aggressively lacks all of these things. A vanity campaign would be a good way to raise money and perhaps secure an MSNBC gig, so Joe might still run.

Mayor Pete

I am 100% convinced that Pete’s 2020 run was a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. I am also 100% aware that Democrats are dumb enough to enthusiastically support a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. If we have some sort of military or terror disaster between now and 2023 the Dems are sure to want a TROOP, and wait wait wait you’re telling me this one is a gay troop? Holy hell there’s no way that could lose!

Stacy Abrams

Never underestimate the power of white guilt. She lost the gubernatorial race to Gomer Pyle’s grandson, and her spiritual guidance of the Dems saw the party lose black voters in Georgia in 2020. Nonetheless, she is regarded as a magic font of fierceness within the DNC. She might stand a chance if she can establish herself as the most conservative non-white candidate in the field, but there’s going to be stiff competition for that honor.

Elizabeth Warren

Liz is probably angry that the party so shamelessly sold her out even after she was a good little girl and sabatoged Bernie’s campaign for them--yet another example of high ranking US government officials reneging on their promises to the Native American community. Smdh. The fact that this woman hasn’t been bankrupted a dozen times over by various Wallet Inspectors genuinely astounds me. So Liz is probably going to run again, and her campaign will be even sadder the second time around.

It might surprise you to hear this if you don’t work at a college or NGO, but Liz diehards actually do exist. She’ll get even less support this time because there will be no viable leftist in the field for her to spoil, but she’ll still hang in long enough to make sure the very worst possible candidate beats out the second worst possible candidate. Maybe she’ll fabricate a rape accusation against Sherrod Brown. Maybe she’ll spend her entire allotted debate time doing a land acknowledgment. With Liz, anything is possible--so long as it ends in failure.

Amy Klobuchar

Amy was the most bloodthirsty of the 2020 also rans. She will double down on the unpopular failures of the Biden administration, explaining that if you weren’t such a selfish idiot you’d love the higher social security retirement age and oh my god are so such a moron you think you shouldn’t go bankrupt to get a COVID vaccine? There’s a non-unsubstantial segment of the Democratic base that’s self-hating enough to find this appealing, but it won’t be enough to make her viable.

Martha Coakley

She lost Ted Kennedy’s senate seat to a retarded man who was pretending to be even more retarded than he actually was. Then she lost a gubernatorial race to a guy who openly promised Massachusetts voters that he would punish them for electing him. Her record of failure is unparalleled, making her perhaps the ideal Democrat standard bearer for the twenty twenties.

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schraubd · 4 years ago

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ACES Wild

Last we encountered the "Alliance for Constructive Ethnic Studies" (ACES), they were pushing fabricated evidence and wild screeds against "critical race theory" in a failed attempt to derail the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum after it was reformed in accord with tremendous efforts by a range of California Jewish (and non-Jewish) organizations.

Now they're back in action, and this time their target is California's new draft Mathematical Framework. What horrors are contained inside? Let's look!

The first draft of the California Mathematics Framework is out for review, and it includes as a resource "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction," a guide that labels teaching practices like "addressing mistakes" and "focus on the right answer" as "white supremacy culture."

This is critical race theory.

This is discrimination.

(Is this "critical race theory"? Nope, not going to get sucked into that).

Unfortunately, as was the case in the ESMC debacle, we are given only the thinnest possible citations to the primary sources for the alleged offending content. The link to the CMF draft goes to a website offering a thirteen chapter document, all in separate documents, comprised of hundreds of page, with no indication of where in the morass the "Pathway" document is included. The link to the Pathway itself, for its part, goes to a site that contains five separate documents, again totaling hundreds of pages, with nary a clue as to where this language about "addressing mistakes" might be found. All of this, I suppose, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Well, I may not be a math expert, but I have gotten familiar enough with the strategies of ACES and its friends to know better than to accept what they say on faith. So I went in search of this resource and this language, to see if it is as scary and offensive as they say.

I want to begin with some good news: unlike the Ethnic Studies case, ACES and its allies do not appear to have completely fabricated the inclusion of the putatively offensive material. Congratulations, ACES! This is a big step forward for you as an organization, and you should give yourself a hearty pat on the back.

Alas, if we ask for more than "not fabricated" and stretch all the way out to "not abjectly misleading", things get dimmer.

Start with the CMF draft. From what I can tell, the section they refer to (where the Pathway document is "included as a resource") is on page 44 of chapter two (lines 1010-13). Here, in its totality, is what's included:

Other resources for teaching mathematics with a social justice perspective include... The five strides of Equitable Math.org: https://ift.tt/3qNG3O2

That's it (The website "Equitablemath.org" is titled "A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction"). It is mentioned, unadorned, in the "other resources" conclusion -- and as far as I can tell, nowhere else. Wowzers. I can feel the racial divisiveness cracking up from here.

One thing I'll observe on this is that often times one hears critics of "critical race theory" (or whatever random buzzword they're using today to connote "scary left-wing idea with a vaguely identity-politics kick") say that their problem isn't that the idea is included, but only that its indoctrinated -- it's not one perspective of many, it's the only perspective on offer. This protestation was always rather thin -- the many many bills banning "critical race theory" are decidedly not about ensuring viewpoint diversity -- and one sees just how hollow it is here. The raw, unadorned inclusion of the Equitable Math resource -- as part of a broader whole, not even quoted from directly -- is too much for these people to tolerate. This is not about ideological heterodoxy. This is about censoring ideas, full stop.

But maybe Equitable Math is such an awful or inane document that it would be wrong to include it, even as one resource among many. The way it's described, after all, makes it sound like Equitable Math is a group of hippies saying "2+2 = 4 is the white man's answer, man! Fight the power!" Is that what's happening? Is this a fever dream of post-modernism where nothing is true and everything is permitted?

Once again, I had to dig for myself to figure out where this content was so I could see it in context. The answer appears to be the first document on the site, titled "Dismantling Racism in Mathematics", on pages 65-68. Do they deny that there are such things as "right" answers in math? No: "Of course, most math problems have correct answers," but there are math problems (particularly word problems, but also data analysis) that can be interpreted in different ways that yield different "right" conclusions, and students and teachers should be attentive to that possibility. Do they say one should never "address mistakes"? No again, but mistakes should not simply be called out flatly but rather used as "opportunities for learning" with an emphasis on building on what the student does understand to lead them to recognize what they misapprehend.

I don't teach math, obviously, but there are many occasions where I'll say "such-and-such is the doctrinally correct answer -- but if we look at the problem from this other vantage, doesn't this other position become more plausible?" So when the Equitable Math site suggests, as an alternative to obsessive focus on the one correct answer, classroom activities like " Using a set of data, analyze it in multiple ways to draw different conclusions" -- well, that doesn't seem weird to me. Certainly, as someone who is also trained as a social scientist, I can say confidently that it's quite valuable to anyone who has seen how the same dataset can be deployed by different people with different priors to support different agendas.

Even more than that, the suggestions around "addressing mistakes" resonate with how I try to teach in my classrooms. Sometimes my students say something wrong. When they do so, for the most part I don't say "bzzzt" and move on, instead I try to guide them to the correct answer by having them unpack their own thinking. There's a lot of "I see what you mean by [X], but suppose ..." and ask questions which hone in on the problems or misunderstandings latent in what they're saying. And eventually they get there, hopefully without feeling like they've just been put inside an Iron Maiden for daring speak up.

Admittedly, I've never thought of what I'm doing as "dismantling White supremacy" -- I just viewed it as good pedagogy. But then again, that's kind of what I've always thought when asked about such subjects -- we act as if there's this deep magic to fostering equity and inclusion in the classroom, when really it's employing the basic strategies of being a good teacher, one of which is declining to engage in a measuring contest where you prove you know more than the student does. Obviously I know more than the student does. I don't need to prove anything. So if they say something wrong, I do not gleefully pounce on them for it, I do my best to build on what they do know to get them to a position of right. Is that so outrageous?

Finally, ACES in its tweet identifies one other area of crazy-lefty-craziness in this resource: "the incorporation of 'Ethnomathematics'". What does that mean? They don't say, correctly surmising that fevered imaginations will produce something far worse than anything they might quote. So I'll do the quoting for them (this comes from page 8):

Center Ethnomathematics:

• Recognize the ways that communities of color engage in mathematics and problem solving in their everyday lives.

• Teach that mathematics can help solve problems affecting students’ communities. Model the use of math as a solution to their immediate problems, needs, or desires.

• Identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.

• Teach the value of math as both an abstract concept and as a useful everyday tool.

• Expose students to examples of people who have used math as resistance. Provide learning opportunities that use math as resistance.

I know, I know -- we're all going to pitch a fit about challenging "capitalist views". But apart from that, this seems ... very normal? We all know, to the point of cliche, that a barrier to getting kids interested in math is that they fail to see how it's useful to them or "in the real world". So they advise that math be taught in a way that resonates with real world experience. And likewise, sometimes, for some people "in the real world", math can feel like an enemy (think "am I just a statistic to you?"). So figure out ways to name that and challenge that. For the most part, "ethnomathematics" just reads as a particular social justice gloss on "being a good teacher", as applied to teaching in diverse communities.

Now perhaps one disagrees with these concepts as pedagogical best practice. I'm not a math teacher, I'm not going to claim direct experience here. But that goes back to the intensity of the backlash -- that these ideas need to be banned, that they are outright dangerous and unacceptable and neo-racism. Can that be right? Surely, these ideas are not so outlandish that we should pitch a fit about their being (deep breath) single elements of an 80 page document which is itself part of a five part series being incorporated as a single "see also" bullet point in the second chapter of a thirteen chapter model state framework. Seriously? That's where we're landing? That's what's going to drive us into a valley of racial division and despair?

It's wild. The people engaged in this obsessive crusade to make Everest size mountains over backyard anthills are nothing short of wild.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/39P79OA

#academia #education #math #racism

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butchharrydalton · 6 years ago

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New Blog!

Hello everyone!

I've recently started a sideblog at autismfeminism.tumblr.com

This blog is dedicated to inclusive intersectional feminism, focusing on Autistic women, queer people, POC, etc.

However, I can't run this blog alone.

I'm looking for Autistic people willing and able to write articles and reblog relevant posts for the site. There's no pressure to join if you don't want to, and even if you do join only write or reblog when you can and when you want to.

I'm looking mainly for people who have other identities in addition to Autism, because autistic activism and visibility is so heavily placed on cishet white boys that people with those identities have become the face of who we are.

Other Identities may include:

- Minority religion (Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, etc.)

- Minority/Marginalized Gender (Nonbinary, transgender, two spirit, woman, agender etc)

- Person of Color Identity (Black, Asian, Pacific Islander, Indigenous American, etc.)

- Latinx ethnicity

- Being fat

- Being physically, sensory or intellectually disabled outside of Autism, including mental illness

- Marginalized Sexuality (lesbian, gay, bi, pan, ace, aro, etc.)

- Intersex conditions

- Undocumented status

- Economic disprivilege

Being a mod of this blog might be for you if:

- You have the time, energy, and emotional capability to engage in activism

- You are Autistic and 1 or more of the listed identities or another unlisted oppressed identity

- You enjoy writing and/or art and possess some level of experience or skill in blogging and applying these abilities to activism

- You are a feminist and supporter of minority liberation groups such as Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Black Lives Matter, etc.

- You are able to reflect on and admit your privilege where you have it and allow people with different identities to speak without derailing

- You are looking for a supporting community of other Autistic people and a place to share your experience and thoughts

Being a mod is not for you if:

- You are neurotypical/allistic

- You are a TERF, SWERF, transmed, acephobe or other exclusionist

- You disagree with feminist and pro-disabled ideology

- You are a MAP

Please note that we have nothing against self dX and encourage seld dX people to apply.

If you can't be a mod, there's also an open ask box and a submit posts section if you want to add without the commitment.

To apply, reblog with a short bio about yourself to put on the blog. Don't feel pressured to disclose personal details and identity.

Allistics - feel free to reblog and signal boost!

I can't wait to start this up! Thank you everyone!

#intersectional feminism #feminist #feminism #inclusive feminism #intersectional social justice #social justice #actually autistic #actuallyautistic #autism #autistic #long post #text post #signal boost #reblog #new blog

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trendercore-aesthetic · 5 years ago

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I finally made an about me

It's more of an FAQ, but whatever.

It’s a page on my blog, and it’s linked in my bio. Don’t feel like clicking on either of those? Here’s a link. Still not appealing? It’s under the cut too.

Who the FUCK am I?

Oh? You wanted to know more about me? Here are some details.

I’m Ryan

I’m 17

Gender: FTM

Sexuality: Panalterous Asexual (What this means - panromantic means attracted to all genders. Alterous means someone who can’t be described as neither being (entirely/completely) platonic nor romantic, & is an attraction best described as wanting emotional closeness without necessarily being (at all or entirely) platonic &/or romantic)

Religion: Jewish

Race: I’m mixed as fuck, but the best way to describe it would be afrolatinx and native.

My hair: Blonde, because I bleached it. It’s naturally red though.

Other things: I’m autistic, and have eyes that barely allow me to drive (don’t feel like opening that can of worms)

What’s trendercore?

okay so trendercore is essentially the reclamation of the idea of the word ‘transtrender’ and surrounds the aesthetic of people commonly called ‘transtrenders.’ this usually means:

- bright colors

- pride (rainbows, flags, being excited/happy about your identity)

- soft things

- gender noncomformity

but really though you don’t have to do any of that stuff to be trendercore. trendercore has that as like a general aesthetic but really, all you need are two things:

1. The belief that you do not need dysphoria to be trans

2. The belief that policing other people’s identities and presentations is wrong

And there you go. You can trendercore. Trendercore is meant to be super accessible meaning you can pull it off anyway you feel comfortable. Personally, I find it really hard to float with gender nonconformity, so I just really rock the other stuff.

I know way before @uwumars made a whole fuckign guide about this. In fact, if I’m correct, Mars inventened trendercore.

How often do you post?

My queue is currently at 50 posts per day. I post in between there too. So…a lot?

Why is the title on your blog Captain Pottymouth?

Someone derailed one of my posts and proceeded to call me captain pottymouth because I swear. Fuck them. Who the fuck cares about swearing?

What do I use to alleviate my dysphoria/help in my transition?

I am, at my most basic level, a twink. Let’s talk my transition.

My height dysphoria (5’ 3" lmao), is, hilariously, my worst dysphoria. I use lifts. Specifically, these lifts right here: https://peecockproducts.com/peecock-height-increase-insole.html

On the other hand, I am d e s p e r a t e for top surgery, so this is the binder I use. it works pretty well: https://www.gc2b.co/products/nude-no-2-tank

Packers? Of course: https://www.toolshedtoys.com/stp-fitz-stp-fitz-20-stand-to-pee-packer-mr-softie.html

Closet? I’ll update this later with the clothes that I buy but H&M is amazing.

Wanna learn more about me or see asks?

Search ryanspeaks or ryan speaks on my blog. You’ll see it all.

Hey, I tagged you in something and you didn’t answer!

It’s probably because my notes are usually pretty crazy. It’s best that if you tagged me in something, that you also send an ask mentioning it. I’ll have to find it, and it might take a minute, but it’ll get handled.

You reblogged something I made. Can you take it down?

I have shitty eyes so I tend to miss DNIs. I’m super sorry if I did. PM me or put an ask in. I’ll remove it. No reasoning necessary, just send the post. Even if you just send your username I can remove it pretty quickly.

What is your DNI?

I like to think that if you read my bio, which has no DNI, you would already know if you weren’t welcome here. But since ya don’t:

Acephobes (yes that means you, ace exclusionists), arophobes (yes, that means you, aro exclusionists), biphobes and panphobes (that means you, bi and pan exclusionists), cis bootlickers (that means you, transmeds and truscum), selective allies (that means you, cishets who have decided to pick and choose who to support), pedophiles and pedophile apologists (that means you: MAPs, ageplayers, DDLG, and anyone who supports those communities), transmisogynists (that means you, TERFs, radfems, and anyone who uses their ideology), gay men fetishists (hello, fujoshi. get the fuck off my blog), lesbian fetishists (do i have to make it any more obvious?). Don’t bother if you’re a fascist (aka Trump supporters).

Hopefully that’s it. Don’t make me add more.

Is it worth saying that this doesn’t apply if I discourse with you? If I’m discoursing, interact at your own risk. It’s not my fault if you end up looking stupid.

Can I submit a post?

You can so long as you don’t participate in any of the above. Also make sure your username doesn’t include anything triggering like the r slur or the f slur. Pretty much anything from discourse to art is allowed

#ryan speaks #ryanspeaks #finally #took me long efuckingnough #yes I swear in it #the link is a swear too lmao #at this point #saying fuck is part of my personality #there will never be a let Ryan say fuck post ever

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afrodesiaq · 6 years ago

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and here's the thing, i don't want to make this whole deal specifically about one person. one popular nonblack jewish blogger said something that was antiblack, deleted it, w/e. people say messed up shit all the time, it's a fact of life, for damn sure none of us myself included is perfect and we all mess up. that's almost beside the point for me at this point.

what happened next is extremely telling though. because in the face of lots and lots of black people, including black jewish people, speaking up about the antiblackness both of the film and of the immediate reaction of "black people are too ignorant to understand how this isn't racist, and also only are reacting like this out of antisemitism & homophobia", the overwhelming response from many jewish bloggers on here has been "yup! black people are just being hateful and antisemitic for calling out racism, y'all need to shut up and listen to jewish people about antisemitism" -- which was in context such an incredibly disingenous derail.

i fully acknowledge that the way in which this has blown up, there have been people who have said antisemitic things in response. but it's a complete and outright fiction that this whole thing began because of black bloggers being antisemitic. that's an after the fact justification of the racist backlash that ensued. this thing began specifically because a number of people were calling black people racist and ignorant for criticising ezra miller & sol guy's short film on the grounds that because miller was jewish, clearly that was the reason we were "attacking" him and not the fact that the film was racist. and then when black people pointed out the antiblackness of the responses, rather than acknowledge that even in any small way someone you like could say something wrong, everyone just doubled down on "clearly black people are bigots, that's the only explanation."

since posting about the harmfulness of the film, i've gotten people in my inbox saying that i'm antisemitic, that i'm goysplaining and speaking over jewish people, that i'm just joining the mob in attacking a jew of color (nevermind that through most all of this, until my most recent post on the matter, my posts were explicitly about the film and not about tikkunolamorgtfo -- but people were still insisting that i was ATTACKING HER literally for voicing a contrary opinion) and i'm not the only one who has gotten this treatment for speaking up. it's extremely transparent how for many people, black jews are only conditionally welcome in jewish community -- the moment we speak up about antiblackness, suddenly people feel as though our jewishness can be revoked, cancelled out because we stepped out of line.

and the thing is, this isn't happening in a vacuum. this is so very far from happening in a vacuum.

it's happening in an environment where jews of color, and especially black jews, are constantly interrogated and questioned as to the validity of our jewishness. where many MANY nonblack jews treat us as though we never really belong anyway. it's happening in an environment where all black jews are assumed to be converts, and where all converts are looked on with suspicion and skepticism, our jewishness conditional and revokable.

it's happening in an environment where this is so regular as to be basically expected by now -- if a black person, jewish or otherwise, speaks up in any way about racism coming from a jewish person or the jewish community as a whole, this pile-on is swift and immediate. i've seen people post talking about black people critiquing racism as a "mob", characterizing our anger as "aggression" and "attacks", and then subsequently accusing black people of antisemitism again for extremely rightfully pointing out the racist stereotypes underlying these characterizations.

it's a repeated pattern, and it's exhausting. i am in no way going to say that there isn't antisemitism in the black community, of course there is. but i'm a freaking loudmouth, i don't shut up basically ever about the things i care about that affect my communities. when black people say some fuckshit about jewish people, i am not quiet about it. and i will say literally unequivocally that i have never in my entire life brought up antisemitism in the black community and been met with the specific type of vitriol that i get if i talk to jewish people about antiblackness.

i have never had black people telling me i'm not one of them anymore, i've never had people acting as though talking about this means that i am no longer black. my attempts to talk about antisemitism don't always GO anywhere; people have been unwilling to listen, have ignored me, have decided i'm just plain wrong, have said other antisemitic things in response, but they do not get vicious and act as though speaking up as a black jew means my blackness is negated.

in contrast, i have never once entered a discussion in online jewish spaces about antiblackness and NOT had these things happen. EVERY TIME i speak up about antiblackness, people will drop in to tell me that i am hateful, antisemitic, don't belong here, etc. every. time.

it's not a coincidence. so many of y'all like to put front and center in your bios that you care about intersectionality, that racists aren't welcome, but those are just buzzwords if this is an expected pattern in the community. throughout all of this, i've only seen a scant handful of nonblack jewish bloggers even reblogging the words of black people (including black jews) in support, and even fewer speaking up for us. the rest have been adding to the chorus of how we're an aggressive, angry mob who only form opinions because of the inherent bigotry of the darkies.

i'm probably speaking into the void by this point -- i'm extremely aware that most of the most visible and popular voices on jumblr have made it pretty clear where they stand on this -- but y'all should really scrutinize the treatment of black jews and why, as a community, we are consistently so quick to listen to anyone except black people on black issues. why the community is so lightning quick to believe the worst about black people, why those opinions are so often put forward in extremely racist stereotyping language. why black jews are so frequently sidelined in jumblr -- trotted out frequently as tokens if nonblack jewish people want a black voice to back them up, demonized if our opinions don't align.

i'd genuinely appreciate it if other jews, especially nonblack jews, could reblog.

#jumblr #jewish #black jews #antiblackness #racism #goyim don't touch

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evilwickedme · 6 years ago

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In your post about punching Nazis, would it be okay to comment that it’s important to do that for black people and talk about racism as well since black people are in just as much danger from Nazis or would that be derailing? I figured I’d ask first before doing it because while it’s important to remember that black people are also one of the main targets for Nazis and that that seems to get ignored a lot in posts about who needs to be protected from Nazis, I want to stay in my lane.

The answer is yes, that would absolutely be derailment, for two reasons.

One, it is absolutely not true that anti-Nazism has skipped black people. There was just now an anti-Nazi rally in DC where they focused on black people more than they did Jews, and had black speakers, etc, etc. If anything, the posts I see on tumblr will usually mention every minority but Jews and Roma; so black people, and lgbtqa+, and all other people of color, but not Jews or Roma. Literally dozens of posts with thousands of notes each, just completely skipping the people who lost the most during the Holocaust.

Two, the entire point of the post is that nobody talks about antisemitism or antiromanyism. Anti-black racism has an entire movement behind it (#blacklivesmatter). Not a day goes by I don’t see a post on tumblr that mentions racism, slavery, etc; my queue is full of them. Before I ever started posting about antisemitism, I was posting about anti-black racism.

It’s not that Nazis don’t target black people; it’s that nobody’s defending Jewish people (or Roma, but I’m probably not doing a good job of that, not being Romani myself). It’s that when a neo-Nazi targeted a Jewish gay kid, nobody talked about the fact that he was Jewish (except Jews). It’s that nobody (except Jews) talked at all about the very visibly Jewish guy that got stabbed in NYC. It’s that when Charlottesville happened, people weren’t talking about the fact that they were chanting JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US (except Jews). It’s that antisemitism is one of the main forms of bigotry in the world right now, and it’s on the rise, and nobody’s talking about it. Every time a goy posts about antisemitism, I celebrate, because that’s a noteworthy event, and it happens about once in a blue moon. I post articles and statistics and proof and I get nada; when my posts do blow up, every other reblog is somebody doubting my easily googleable words, or twisting them so they mean something else, or the fucking Christmas discourse.

It’s not that anti-Nazism has skipped black people. It’s that social justice has skipped Jewish and Romani people.

So, yes. You would be derailing.

#jew tag #jumblr #antisemitism #judaism #jewish #racism #neonazis #nazism #charlottesville #antiromanyism #i'm not perfect. i know i did my own derailing just last year #and i still regret it absolutely and i apologized at the time #but the social justice movement has failed my people and the romani people and all i was trying to do was point that out #that was the entire purpose of that post #and i'm not angry at you for asking because i understand where you're coming from #but it's just entirely the wrong approach to this issue and that post #anonymous #ask

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rootsooman · 6 years ago

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Acknowledging the Beauty of European Tribal Roots: Yes you can be Proud without being "racist"♡ And how does Animal Identity Veganism apply here + help fight oppression?

There is nothing inherently wrong with or racist about being proud of ones roots. The Vikings, Celts, Saami etc were/are tribal people who, interestingly, never took part in the Corporate Industrial created Chattel Slavery and Colonialism that England, France, Spain and Portugal etc did. Before being tainted by the poisons of Supremacy, which pits women, animals and other "races" on the bottom rungs of an imaginary ladder, there were Europeans who were deeply in touch with nature, spirituality and respect for other life. I do believe that if colonialism and Racism were never imposed on the world by the British and their American colony the USA in the 1700s, that the Celts and other European pagan tribes and many West African tribes would have been trading freely and even joining forces against larger powers if they had known about each other, just like Bini nations of West Africa traded with the Portuguese before the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

The only reason why someone shouting "white pride" is considered racist (which includes speciesism and environmental destruction) is because the "white" identity was a construct invented by imperialist colonizers, not the nature-adoring European tribes that were stripped of their sovereignty and cultures by imperialists. No one identified as "white" until colonizers invented a "black" race. Color obsession was not a thing.

Some similarities between Viking mythology and Yoruba mythology are so glaring, that the deities Thor and Shango would have probably been seen as the same force manifesting itself in different ways to different peoples in their own images. I do believe that a *misuse* of Abrahamic religions helped this Supremacy Paradigm to fester into what it is today. Not to say there wasn't tribal warfare & degeneracy amongst pagans, but the approach was completely different, and the amount of power the "backwards" nations had was not bolstered on a belief that they were divinely Superior or a "chosen" group based on Science or Religion.

Integration and exchange usually took place between the conqueror and the conquered, and slavery (indentured servitude) was often finished with normal integration into the captor's society. This was the norm before American (Colonizer) Chattel Slavery, the predecessor to factory farming and hyper-capitalism.

Also, not all Christian societies are ongoing imperialist: examples of peaceful Christians are the Egyptian Copts, Ethiopia and post-classical Greece. So Christianity is not the culprit. "White" Christianity is. There is a difference between the "white" identity and strong, beautiful European identity, which in the past was NOT color-based but ethnicity based.

Tribal people despite their hunting traditions, had a deep LOVE and respect for non-human animals and a deep reverence for life and spirit. Even the Vikings who were known to pillage and raid always left behind something useful and never totally enslaved or wiped out other people with the same arrogance and science-religious angle of the imperial powers. They never created a Racial Hierarchy or Scientific Racism to justify their actions. That is the key difference.

Imagine how peaceful and green the world would be, and how easily veganized it would be too in this modern era, if all these non-colonizer European groups had never had to inherit the baggage of their colonizer neighbors? There is a beauty in embracing the ancient wisdoms of people who live in accordance with the environment. Even today in modern times, the places of the Celts, Vikings and Roma have some of the most welcoming and ecologically sound countries, with a right to maintain them. But they are suffering the consequences of their neighbors' destructive history. England deserves to be changed in the same way it permanently changed Africa, America and Australia. Deal.

Not all people of European descent subscribe to supremacy paradigms, so I want to call out any of my fellow vegans of color who mistakenly group all "white" people into that colonizer category. Tell me when in history a Finnish Saami has ever colonized you? Never. These are our allies in that they to this day face similar struggles (Celtic groups have been oppressed by Anglo groups etc) and so it would actually do better if we could see beyond the farce and dig to the root of modern systems of oppression, which is the colonial-industrial corporate matrix that relies on subjugation to thrive. This matrix hates self-sustaining societies that opt out of the "free market" and instead choose localized lifestyles. Not to say globalization doesn't have its perks. Technology and such have allowed me to use Tumblr, so I always see the positive in the negative as well. That is the holistic approach to life. We can use what chaos gave us and turn it into something better for all. Example: electric cars, or using computers to spread awareness.

Now,

This does not mean it is okay to derail intersectional voices in veganism though, nor is this the Oppression Olympics, because we all know only 1 set of "races" are considered animals (African, Australian & Melanesian types) by the Supremacy Paradigm. Only 1 set of races were oppressed in the name of legitimized institutions (Science, Religion, Anthropology) to this day on a MASS scale for 500+ years. This also does not ignore the Holocaust, but again, different issue (similar animalization scheme though, which is VERY important here).

The acceptance of veganism comes naturally to those who seek to reconnect with their roots and protect the planet we all call home. The real desire is to get back in touch with nature and live harmoniously and harmlessly with other beings. The only issue is that modern incarnations of primitivism do not have the same amount of reverence or respect for non human animals as indigenous tribes worldwide had. But we can use the vibe of paleo as a gateway that can present sustainable hunting a good alternative to factory farming, the way native Amerindians have done it for years.

Along this journey, I invite people of all walks of life to partake in animal identity veganism if they know how to use their voice for abused and oppressed animals while acknowledging the animalization of humans that has resulted in parallel abuses. Animal Identity veganism can be embraced by any religion, any color, any creed, any lifestyle. If you are Pagan or Christian or Jewish, that's not the issue. If your heart feels at peace when you connect yourself to those who suffer in an attempt to liberate, you have a right to walk this path but know that you cannot be the face of it, because you are already free.

The poisonous ideas that were seeded within the powerful empires of Europe and tainted innocent people, who, presented with scientific and religious justifications for racism, were tricked into putting their anger and problems onto people groups who wanted nothing to do with their world, are the driving force behind division.

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bacchantis · 3 years ago

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Hey, I'm begging people not to generalize NYC. I keep seeing it done, and I get it, it's one of the queerest places in the U.S. (fun fact DFW has biggest LGBTQIA population tho) , full of our history, and for certain circles one of the openest places but that's very much the opinions of outsider who don't live here or ...honestly? Queer people who move here to gentrified neighborhoods and don't interact with people who have grown up here who are largely of color and/or immigrants or first gen with some other marginalizations.

I get it, I get the tone of this post I'm not trying to derail but I am so tired of this specific trope when there was a big twitter screenshot 2 years back about how it was so common after pride to see people wipe their makeup off as they went into their actual neighborhoods because they feared being beaten or killed.

It's not normalized. It's been more than 10 years but me taking the Q train back home in my unisex/masc uniform and shaved head got me attacked and called an it by a middle aged woman as an entire subway car of people watched her tear down a 14 year old. A few years ago a friend and his boyfriend were attacked once they left the touristy part of Coney island to head to the projects where the boyfriend lived.

My home neighborhood pretty much has its own pride parade - why? Because I lived in the area with the largest amount of refugees and immigrants from the Former Soviet Union outside of the FSU and that means about two dozen or so of us every May try very hard each each year to make as much noise as possible to bring to the light we cannot live our own community. We stand there for like an hour on the boardwalk as the Russians laugh us for even trying to remind them we exist The whole reason RUSA even started Brighton Beach Pride was because a queer refugee from Russia was outed as gay at work, and like many immigrants had only found employment and housing in the area, and was beaten bloody by his co-workers. When I worked at a liquor store near my house I had to change the pronouns I referred to my ex gf with because I was scared of my coworkers hurting me or treating me badly.

There's a bunch of testimonies online on the utter hell it is to grow up queer/trans in Orthodox Jewish communities here in the city. There's two movies, Pariah and Naz and Malik that address what it's like to be queer and black here, with the latter also addressing the experiences of gay Black Muslim boys. Islan Nettles was murdered in Harlem in 2013, the same year I went to CUNY Hunter where our QSU room was also used, secretly, by members when their parents kicked them out for being queer. 3 people had this happen in one semester.

In my friend group full of born New Yorkers the experience of coming home and seeing that your mother has tore up your gnc clothing and ruined your makeup is absolutely normal. A Drag Queen named Madam Vivien V who works at House of Yes as their Mistress of Ceremonies has a story she likes to tell of walking, in 'boy drag', around Bushwick near where she lives where she was beaten bloody by two assailants that the only way she was able to stay alive is because she threw herself in front of a passing car, who mercifully stopped and rescued her. I'm partially worried about transitioning because I don't want to get assaulted again and it's why I've been femme-presenting for years.

I'm begging you, stop using us as your monolithic Queer Utopia. Yes, we have Greenwich and Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen and those are now considered safe, but you're also forgetting that the majority of us don't live in those areas. That the majority of the queers who grew up here are from places like Brighton Beach, or Wakefield, or East NY, or Satmar Williamsburg or Boro Park, or Flushing or the Rockaway or Howard Beach or all of Staten Island. We do not have the privileges of wealthy white Midwestern transplants who get to choose to live in little Queer Oasis like the East Village, we live with our parents or in places where we can afford where the surrounding area is dangerous for us. When your erase our experiences to validate your pain you erase us, meaning you're erasing a city full of queer and trans who have had just as bad or worse as you have in your suburbs or small towns. Who absolutely know the pain of their families and communities shunning and exiling them because that happens so often in our ethnic enclaves. Please don't use us to make your points when you don't even know us.

maybe this is bc i’m from the south and not fuckin uhhhh new york or wherever the hell but like. it is still not really normalized for a man to wear makeup or nail polish. women with short hair still get offensive comments about their appearances. like even small acts of gender nonconformity can still be scary and dangerous in 2021 and i feel like so many people just live in this progressive bubble where they think that all dudes being Remotely “feminine” in some way are like homophobic tiktok e-boys doing it for clout or whatever and that’s uh. fucking stupid. like i can PROMISE you that the vast majority of gender nonconforming people are not trying to do something that’s never been done before, nor are they claiming to do so, they’re just trying to live their lives and look the way they want to look. you aren’t helping anybody by trying to police who has the right to be wearing skirts or painting their nails or doing their hair a certain way.

anyway this is ur daily reminder that gender nonconformity is not a trend and it’s gross to attack people for being gender nonconforming in a way that you think “has been done before” or “isn’t that special” or whatever the fuck. like i’m sorry but it’s just cruel and hateful! being gender nonconforming still takes bravery and courage. people still face discrimination and harassment. whose cause do you think you’re helping by attempting to be the gatekeeper of nontraditional gender expression? genuinely, who do you think benefits when you attack people for stepping outside of the bounds of traditional gender expression? who? because it certainly fucking isn’t gnc people.

#sorry its just constantly like this and im exhausted #exhausted of peoppe not understanding nyc isnt just its tourist areas #40% of city are immigrants do the math on how much of the population must be first gen #now get some perspective on how we grow up #i rarely know anyone who hasn't been attacked or kicked out here #and its frustrating that lucky transplants from other places are controlling the narrative of how good it is here

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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Who Lies More Democrats Or Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/who-lies-more-democrats-or-republicans/

Who Lies More Democrats Or Republicans

But When You Watch The Republican In The Media Being Attacked The Majority Tend To Handle It With More Grace Then The Majority Of The Democrats

I dont think its because the Republicans have more money because the Democrats tend to be the wealthier group. The majority of the richest people in the world are Democrats or Liberals. Yet, they sure dont look like a happy group of folks . I think a lot of people who are rich were their happiest when they were working hard coming up through the ranks and earning their money. I also think sometimes the social issues they get caught up in when they become wealthy can be frustrating causing many people to lose their tolerance over time.

The Lies The Gop Told Me About Democrats

I have been a Democrat for nearly one year. A GOP friend of mine asked me about the differences between the parties. He is thinking of leaving the GOP as well. Many have followed me out and read my column loyally knowing I will let them know if the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans have told us.

A political party should attract and maintain members based on the inherent good of the partys ideals. The Republican Party has derailed regarding goodness these days. I am ashamed to say it, but I had a hand in the derailing of the party in the late 1970s through the 2012 Presidential Election. I helped perpetuate the myths, a polite way of saying spread the lies, the GOP had to tell to keep the rank-and-file in line.

I spent forty-two years as a member of the Grand Old Party, and thirty-eight years in that period as a propagandist and party sycophant. I made a good living serving my Washington, DC, masters. When one pretends they are working for the greater good, it makes serving ones self at the expense of society as a whole easier to swallow, if one has even a sliver of a conscience.

I witnessed men and women who had sworn to protect and defend The Consitution of the United States sit and hatch plans to strip Muslims of their rights under the law, and call it patriotic.

What are the stories the Republicans tell that are not true about the Democrats?

Of course, if two sides will not compromise, then we get the mess we have today.

The Flawed Statistically Silly New Study That Calls The Republican Party More Dishonest

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A new study out today proclaims that the Republican Party is much more dishonest than the Democratic Party. To which I say, meh.

The report, from George Mason Universitys Center for Media and Public Affairs, captured lots of headlines, and the group did a lot to make the conclusions sizzle, by using phrases like Republicans lie more and Republicans are less trustworthy than Democrats in the press statement announcing the study.

Beneath all the hype, though, this report struck me as one of the silliest statistical analyses Ive seen in a long time. While I do think that the truthfulness of the G.O.P. has sunk terribly in the era of Tea Party delusions, studies like this one detract from the real job of trying to keep politicians honest.

Heres whats wrong with the study. Well, almost everything is wrong with the study.

To make its assessment, C.M.P.A. relied on a fact-checking group known as PolitiFact, which examines political statements for their accuracy. The center then selected a periodJanuary 20 through May 22 of this yearand reviewed 100 political claims examined by Politifact during that time. That included 46 statements by Democrats and 54 by Republicans. Then it toted up the number of statements deemed by PolitiFact to be false.

In other words, meh.

Wow: Radical Leftists Are Mainly Supported Bywhite Radical Leftists

Michael Barone of The New York Post writes,

The split among Democrats is clear. Left-wing policies may be supported by hipster whites with adolescent enthusiasm, but gentry liberals increasingly have abstract questions about them, and they are rejected roundly by people of color blacks, Latinos, Chinese out of concrete concerns.

Barone continues, There the cry to defund the police is not an abstract matter, as it is still to affluent Manhattanites, or an adolescent rallying cry, as it is to the cash-strapped hipsters in gentrifying Queens and Brooklyn neighborhoods just across the East River from Manhattan.

Black and Latino homeowners with families and jobs know their neighborhoods can be destroyed and their lives ended by violent criminals. They want more, rather than less, policing in their neighborhoods.

Instead, the hardcore leftists threw in heavily behind Maya Wiley the former DiBlasio staffer, Civil Rights Activist, and MSNBC Analyst turned Mayoral Candidate. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Wiley, a candidate who can center people, racial justice, and economic justice.

Adams seizing on the opportunity lit her up in a scathing statement saying that leftists like Wiley and AOC want to slash the police budgets at a time when Black and brown babies are being shot in our streets, hate crimes are terrorizing Asian and Jewish communities, and innocent New Yorkers are being stabbed and shot.

Modeling The Universe’s Biggest Monsters

A video clip showing the model in action at different scales allowing the viewer to see how gas makes its way towards the accretion disk surrounding the black hole.

Older models that tried to show how supermassive black holes interacted with their galaxies ran into a couple of problems.

Large-scale simulations are very good at handling what is going on across an entire galaxy, but they become problematic at smaller scales. When one tries to look too closely at a black hole using such models, uncertainty abounds. On the other hand, “zoom-in” simulation models can provide a great idea of what is going on next to a black hole, but they fail to describe what is going on in the rest of the galaxy.

Combining the benefits of the two into a single model is vital, as the interplay between the processes at the larger and smaller scales is key to understanding the co-evolution of supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies and that of the galaxies themselves. The new model aims to bridge the gap between these older models by starting from the Feedback in Realistic Environments project and adding in details from the large-scale simulations to produce a model that can zoom in as far as a tenth of a parsec as well as model other occurrences at a galactic scale.

Study: Politifact Says Republicans Lie More

05/29/2013 08:01 AM EDT

The fact-checking organization PolitiFact has found Republicans to be less trustworthy than Democrats, according to a new study.

Fifty-two percent of Republican claims reviewed by the Tampa Bay Times fact-checking operation were rated “mostly false,” false or pants on fire, versus just 24 percent of Democratic statements, according to George Mason University’s Center for Media and Public Affairs. By the same token, 54 percent of Democratic statements were rated as “mostly true” or “true,” compared to just 18 percent of Republican statements.

The CMPA looked at 100 statements — 46 by Democrats, 54 by Republicans — that were fact-checked by PolitiFact between January 20 and May 22. The study’s findings are similar to a previous CMPA study, which found that PolitiFact gave more negative ratings to the Romney campaign than the Obama campaign in 2012.

See their complete findings here.

PolitiFact rates the factual accuracy of specific claims; we do not seek to measure which party tells more falsehoods.

The authors of this press release seem to have counted up a small number of our Truth-O-Meter ratings over a few months, and then drew their own conclusions.

We’ve rated more than 7,000 statements since we started in 2007. We are journalists, not social scientists. We select statements to fact-check based on our news judgment — whether a statement is timely, provocative, whether it’s been repeated and whether readers would wonder if it is true.

Democrats Or Republicans: Who Has The Higher Income

In the end, many people assume Republicans are richer based on these figures. Although, this is only a look at the richest families and politicians in America though. In everyday American households, it seems that Democrats have a higher mean salary. Its true that many of the wealthiest families in the country are contributing to Republican campaigns. On the contrary, families registered as , statistically speaking.

These findings still have some loopholes in them, of course. For instance, the data was collected over the last 40 years or so. Moreover, it is only based on the most recently collected information. As you know, demographics are constantly changing. These figures may have been affected as well. There is also a margin of error with every type of data collection like this. So, what do you think? Who is richer? Democrats or Republicans?

Why Democrats Lose On Social Media While Republicans Lie And Win Big

If youre baffled that nearly half of the United States could look at the past four years and say, I want more of that, you arent alone. But thats also not quite what happened.

What did happen is that much of the US electorate lives in a social media echo chamber saturated by disinformation, with climate change and the Green New Deal prime examples. Conservatives have turned the term Green New Deal into an emotional weaponpart of their overall narrative of Democrats as extremist, elitist socialists. It isnt fact-based, but as Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral economics, explained, No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.

The irony is that there is a compelling, positive story to tell about the Green New Deal that should appeal to a broad base of voters. At a time when the pandemic has thrown millions of people out of work and spawned miles-long food lines, a Green New Deal would create millions of jobs that cant be outsourced overseas. Americans would be put to work installing solar panels, building wind turbines, replacing leaky windows and outmoded appliances with energy-efficient alternatives, restoring farms and forests to store carbon, and undertaking a thousand other climate-friendly activities. With government investment priming the pump, a Green New Deal would boost revenues for business as well, paying for itself through the resulting increased tax revenues.

Why is that?

The Gops New Orthodoxy: Big Lie Or Bust

Rep. Liz Cheney is no closet Democrat or even a political moderate. The 54-year-old Wyoming Republican, the elder daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is an arch conservative who has in the past accused environmental groups like the Sierra Club of supporting U.S. adversaries and defended the birther movement that wrongly insisted Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Her views would seem well suited for the 21st century GOP except for one thing: She could not stomach Donald Trumps claim that the 2020 election was rigged and that he was the rightful winner or, as its is commonly known, the Big Lie. And for this unforgivable sin, the congresswoman is poised to lose her place in party leadership Wednesday as House Republican Conference chair, the third highest position in the caucus.

Its telling that Ms. Cheneys replacement is likely to be Rep. Elise Stefanik, an ideologically flexible New Yorker formerly associated with the partys centrists who has recast herself as a Trump loyalist. And in recent interviews, she has signaled that whatever the message of Republicans in the House, that will be her message, too. That may be how one gets ahead in that increasingly dysfunctional political party but its not in the interests of a nation in desperate need of integrity and reason from that side of the aisle.

The Party Thats Actually Best For The Economy

Many analyses look at which party is best for the economy. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Democratic presidents since World War II have performed much better than Republicans. On average, Democratic presidents grew the economy 4.4% each year versus 2.5% for Republicans.

A study by Princeton University economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson found that the economy performs better when the president is a Democrat. They report that by many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large. Between Truman and Obama, growth was 1.8% higher under Democrats than Republicans.

A Hudson Institute study found that the six years with the best growth were evenly split between Republican and Democrat presidents.

Most of these evaluations measure growth during the presidents term in office. But no president has control over the growth added during his first year. The budget for that fiscal year was already set by the previous president, so you should compare the gross domestic product at the end of the presidents last budget to the end of his predecessors last budget.

For Obama, that would be the fiscal year from October 1, 2009, to September 30, 2018. Thats FY 2010 through FY 2017. During that time, GDP increased from $15.6 trillion to $17.7 trillion, or by 14%. Thats 1.7% a year.

The chart below ranks the presidents since 1929 on the average annual increase in GDP.

President

1.4%

A president would have better growth if he had no recession.

The Big List Of Alleged Malefactors

Each person identified as indicted, from 56 years of Executive branch investigations, is listed in Figure 4. Figure 5 provides the numbers, thus far, for the Trump administration. Two years into his term, President Trump has already proved greater than all but one of the previous 10 Presidents in number of indictments the Administration has scored. Congratulations Mr. Trump, you are the Greatest! Of course, the information in Figure 5 that is accurate in the morning may be out of date by the afternoon.

The Final Reports of the 28 Special Prosecution, Special Prosecutor, and Independent Counsel investigations between 1973 and 1999 are the go-to source for who was indicted for what. Before an investigation closes down it will be clear if the indictment itself survives legal challenge; cases will go to trial; there will be decisions. But the independent investigation may well close down before appeals are heard and decided. Therefore, the final reports are not, in some cases, the last word on total convictions and jail time. That still required further research of court records, news stories, and obituaries.

It is not necessary to read the many hundreds of pages of most of these documents for the raw numbers. There are, though, many engrossing distractions in the tales of greed for power or money, ambition, obstruction, arrogance, loyalty, ideological zealotry, duplicity, error and incompetence the reports lay out in generally careful legal language.

Lies And The Lying Liars Who Get Away

More recently, and more pertinent to this election: Hillary Clinton has lied about her e-mail scandal on a breadth unprecedented even within the Democratic Party. In many ways her lies about her e-mail server are more troubling and more consequential than Trumps scattershot dishonesty. You get the sense that Trump lies about things because hes not too bright and cant think very quickly. Clinton, on the other hand, lies about her e-mail server because she has most likely compromised American national security, endangered American lives, and wants to avoid going to jail.

She claimed to have turned over all of her work-related e-mails. That was a lie. She claimed she hadnt transmitted any classified information. That was a lie. She claimed she hadnt transmitted any information marked classified. That was a lie. She claimed that she had never been subpoenaed in regards to her e-mail. That, too, was a lie. She claimed the FBI had considered her account truthful. Another lie.

Oh, also: President Obama originally denied having any knowledge about Clintons private e-mail server. That was a big-time lie. Clintons e-mail scandal has been one gigantic lie from start to finish.

These are just a few examples of liberal dishonesty; plenty more could easily be produced. While it is true that newspapers and other media outlets have fact-checked many of these lies, it is impossible to argue that the responses from the media have been the same.

Yes Dictators Sometimes Cloak Themselves In Socialism But Tyranny Here And Elsewhere Is Always Right

Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump

The meaning today of the Big Lie almost always refers to the false claim by Donald Trump and his right-wing cronies that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen by the left and Joe Biden, with the help of foreign agents.

Not only is this claim false, it is absurdly false.

This is hardly the first Big Lie from the right. Not even close. The right has been promulgating Big Lies for decades.

In fact, lying is the only way the right wing can win elections. After all, its policies are profoundly unpopular with ordinary people because the right-wing favors the 1% rich over the 99% working and middle classes.

How in the world could 1% of the population ever win elections over the 99%? Simple. The 1% bamboozles the 99%. To win elections, the right must conceal its true intentions from the voters and instead engage in manipulative tactics, like lying and fearmongering.

The lies are not just little lies.They are whoppers. They are the complete opposite of the truth. They are 180 degrees from the truth. They are the polar opposite of the truth, like from the North Pole all the way to the South Pole. Hence the term Big Lie.

Yet, shockingly, many of these egregious lies actually work. They take hold. They create a false impression in the mind of the public.

Once again, this is the exact opposite of the truth. Dictatorships and fascism are right-wing, not left-wing.

Shockingly, this nonsense actually works.

How Increasing Ideological Uniformity And Partisan Antipathy Affect Politics Compromise And Everyday Life

Republicans and Democrats are more divided along ideological lines and partisan antipathy is deeper and more extensive than at any point in the last two decades. These trends manifest themselves in myriad ways, both in politics and in everyday life. And a new survey of 10,000 adults nationwide finds that these divisions are greatest among those who are the most engaged and active in the political process.

The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%. And ideological thinking is now much more closely aligned with partisanship than in the past. As a result, ideological overlap between the two parties has diminished: Today, 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.

Today 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican

Partisan animosity has increased substantially over the same period. In each party, the share with a highly negative view of the opposing party has more than doubled since 1994. Most of these intense partisans believe the opposing partys policies are so misguided that they threaten the nations well-being.

Many of those in the center remain on the edges of the political playing field while the most ideologically oriented and politically rancorous Americans make their voices heard

Republicans Lie More Than Democrats

In the current post-fact, hyper-partisan era of politics, its hard to separate accusations of dishonesty from political sparring. If the liberal mainstream media accuses a conservative politician of lying, the conservatives fight back by alleging that theres a bias, and vice versa.

Luckily, several fact-checking sites have attempted to rise above the fray, including PolitiFact.com and the Washington Posts Fact Checker. And while theyre nonpartisan in approach, a recent study of PolitiFact.coms results by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University reveals something that will please one party more than another: Republicans lie more than Democrats, as much as three times as often during Obamas second term. While this may not come as a surprise from a party that denies certain scientific basics , the study puts the two parties relationships with honesty into distinct relief:

While these stats are pretty damning, in the multi-channel era of media consumption, it may be harder than it should to get this information to the people who need to hear it: conservative or conservative-leaning voters.

About the author

Zak Stone is a Los Angeles-based writer and a contributing editor of Playboy Digital.His writing has appeared in TheAtlantic.com, NYMag.com, Los Angeles, The Utne Reader, GOOD, and elsewhere. Visit his personal website here.

Quiz: Let Us Predict Whether Youre A Democrat Or A Republican

Tell us a few details about you and well guess which political party you belong to. It shouldnt be that simple, right? Were all complex people with a multiplicity of identities and values. But the reality is that in America today, how you answer a handful of questions is very likely to determine how you vote.

This quiz, based on recent surveys with more than 140,000 responses, presents a series of yes-or-no questions to predict whether someone is more likely to identify as a Democrat or a Republican. It captures divisions that should make you worried about the future of American democracy.

We wont collect your answers.

The first question is the most important: Its about race. Asking whether someone is black, Hispanic or Asian cleaves the electorate into two groups. Those who answer yes lean Democratic; the others are split roughly evenly between the parties. Among those who are not black, Hispanic or Asian , the second most important question is whether the person considers religion important. If they answer yes, they are probably Republican.

Its not just race and religion, though. Party allegiances are now also tied to education, gender and age. Americans have sorted themselves more completely and rigidly than any time in recent history.

How demographics predict party affiliation

The group most likely to be Democrats are black women older than about 30.

Meeting in the Middle

Reliable Republicans

It Is Astonishing That Blacks Vote For Democrats At All

For the 100 years prior to Lincoln the democrats were historically the party that supported slavery in the south. In 1860 when Lincoln was elected the democrats elected a person who debated Lincoln and argued why the idea of freeing the slaves was stupid.

Lincoln won even though most of the nation knew that we were on the verge of the most horrible conflict in history. Lincoln wanted to avoid this war but the democrats wouldnt concede even the smallest point.

Lincoln drew a line in the sand. He wouldnt go to war and kill 6 million Americans to free the slaves as long as the democrat states would agree to not let slavery spread to any new states.

The democrats wouldnt accept that. Like todays democrats they were absolutely convinced and not very negotiating. They wanted their slavery and they believed in it.

They felt slavery would be imperiled if it wasnt allowed to grow. They wanted more slave owners to get more slave promoting voters like illegal immigrants today.

Lincoln went to war and adjusted for population 6 million Americans died. Even if you dont adjust for population the number who died in the war is more than the sum of all American deaths in all wars since.

The devastation was horrendous. One of the generals in the north practiced a burn it to the ground policy that denuded whole cities. The south was crushed.

To Get To The Truth About Jan 6 Democrats Need To Ignore Most Of The Republicans

Sometimes seeing is not believing. Or, so it seems as Republicans in Congress go about rewriting history by claiming that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was really a normal tourist visit by peaceful patriots. Millions of Americans saw the live broadcast, as insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, marauded through the House and Senate chambers, and chanted Hang Mike PenceMichael Richard PenceThe Memo: Will DeSantis’s star fall as Florida COVID numbers rise?Man charged in Jan. 6 assault of news photographerCan SpaceX’s Elon Musk help NASA get back to the moon by 2024 after all?MORE.

Yet now the Republican party leadership says that none of that really happened and theyre asking people to believe a series of lies about that days events.

This week, as the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol holds its first hearings, it is time for Democrats in Congress to say good riddance to Republican colleagues who engage in such denialism.

Over the course of the last several months, Republicans have attacked anyone in their party for example, Liz Cheney

First, Senate Republicans defeated efforts to create a bipartisan commission modeled after the one that investigated the 9/11 terror attacks. They did so despite the fact that Democratic leaders in Congress acceded to Republican demands about the commissions composition, powers, and the deadline for its work.

That is exactly the Republican goal.

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schraubd · 6 years ago

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The Problem of "Centering" and the Jews

Note: I wrote this piece quite a few months ago, shopping around to the usual Jewish media outlets. None were interested, and I ended up letting it slide. But it popped back into my mind -- this Sophie Ellman-Golan article helped -- and so I decided to post it here. While I have updated it, some of the references are a bit dated (at least on an internet time scale). Nonetheless, I continue to think a critical look at how the idea of "centering" interacts with and can easily instantiate antisemitic tropes is deeply important. * * * In the early 2000s, Rosa Pegueros, a Salvadoran Jew, was a member of the listserv for contributors to the book This Bridge We Call Home, sequel to the tremendously influential volume This Bridge Called My Back. Another member of the listserv had written to the group with "an almost apologetic post mentioning that she is Jewish, implying that some of the members might not be comfortable with her presence for that reason." She had guessed she was the only Jewish contributor to the volume, so Pegueros wrote back, identifying herself as a Jew as a well and recounting a recent experience she perceived as antisemitic. Almost immediately, Peugeros wrote, another third contributor jumped into the conversation. "I can no longer sit back," she wrote, "and watch this list turn into another place where Jewishness is reduced to a site of oppression and victimization, rather than a complex site of both oppression and privilege—particularly in relationship to POC." Pegueros was stunned. At the time of this reply, there had been a grand total of two messages referencing Jewishness on the entire listserv. And yet, it seemed, that was too much -- it symbolized yet "another place" where discourse about oppression had become "a forum for Jews." This story has always stuck with me. And I thought of it when reading Jews for Racial and Economic Justice's guidebook to understanding antisemitism from a left-wing perspective. Among their final pieces of advice for Jews participating in anti-racism groups was to make antisemitism and Jewish issues "central, but not centered". It's good advice. Jewish issues are an important and indispensable part of anti-racist work. That said, we are not alone, and it is important to recognize that in many circumstances our discrete problems ought not to take center stage. That doesn't mean they shouldn't be heard. It just means they should not be given disproportionate attention such that they prevent other important questions and campaigns from proceeding. Ideally, "central, but not centered" in the anti-racism community means that Jewish issues should neither overwhelm the conversation nor be shunted aside and ignored outright.

Yet it also overlooks an important caveat. Too often, any discussion of Jewish issues is enough to be considered "centering" it. There is virtually no gap between spaces where Jews are silenced and spaces where Jews are accused of "centering". And so the reasonable request not to "center" Jewish issues easily can, and often does, become yet another tool enforcing Jewish silence. Pegueros' account is one striking example. I'll give another: several years ago, I was invited to a Jewish-run feminist blog to host a series of posts on antisemitism. Midway through the series, the blog's editors were challenged on the grounds that it was taking oxygen away from more pressing matters of racism. At the time, the blog had more posts on "racism" than "antisemitism" by an 8:1 margin (and, in my experience, that is uncommonly attentive to antisemitism on a feminist site -- Feministing, for example, has a grand total of two posts with the "anti-Semitism" tag in its entire history). No matter: the fact that Jewish feminists on a Jewish blog were discussing Jewish issues at all was viewed as excessive and self-centered.

Or consider Raphael Magarik's reply to Yishai Schwartz's essay contending that Cornel West has "a Jewish problem".

Schwartz's column takes issue with West's decision to situate his critique of fellow Black intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates by reference to "the neoliberal establishment that rewards silences on issues such as Wall Street greed or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people." Magarik's reply accuses Schwartz of making the West/Coates dispute fundamentally "about the Jews", exhibiting the "the moral narcissism in thinking that everything is about you, in reading arguments between Black intellectuals about the future of the American left and asking: How can I make this about the Jews?" Now, Magarik is surely correct that the Jewish angle of West's critique of Coates is a rather small element that should not become the "center of attention" and thereby obscure "the focus [on] Black struggles for liberation." But there is something quite baffling about his suggestion that a single column that was a drop in the bucket of commentary produced in the wake of the West/Coates exchange could suffice to make it the "center of attention". If Magarik believes Schwartz overreacted to some stray mentions of Jewish issues in an otherwise intramural African-American dispute, surely Magarik equally brought a howitzer to a knife fight by claiming that one article in Ha'aretz single-handedly recentered the conversation about the West/Coates feud onto the Jews.

What's going on here? How is it that the "centering" label -- certainly a valid concern in concept -- seems to routinely and pervasively attach itself to Jews at even the slightest intervention in policy debates?

The answer, as you might have guessed, relates to antisemitism.

As a social phenomenon, antisemitism is very frequently the trafficking in tropes about Jewish hyperpower, the sense that we either have or are on the cusp of taking over anything and everything. Frantz Fanon described antisemitism as follows: "Jews are feared because of their potential to appropriate. ‘They’ are everywhere. The banks, the stock exchanges, and the government are infested with them. They control everything. Soon the country will belong to them.” If we have an abstract understanding of Jews as omnipotent and omnipresent, no wonder that specific instances of Jewish social participation -- no matter how narrow the contribution might be -- are understood as a complete and total colonization of the space. What are the Jews, other than those who are already "everywhere"?

Sadly, the JFREJ pamphlet does not address this issue at all. When "central" crosses into "centering" will often be a matter of judgment, but while the JFREJ has much to say about Jews making "demands for attention" or paying heed to "how much oxygen they can suck out of the room", it does not grapple with how the structure of antisemitism mentalities often renders simply being Jewish (without a concurrent vow of monastic silence) enough to trigger these complaints. It doesn't seem to realize how this entire line of discourse itself can be and often is deeply interlaced with antisemitism. JFREJ's omission is particularly unfortunate since Jews have begun to internalize this sensibility. It's not that Jewish issues should predominate, or always be at the center of every conversation. It's the nagging sense that any discussion of Jewish issues -- no matter how it is prefaced, cabined, or hedged -- is an act of "centering", of taking over, of making it "about us." When the baseline of what counts as "centering" is so low, I know from personal experience that even the simplest asks for inclusion are agonizing. As early as 1982, the radical lesbian feminist Irene Klepfisz identified this propensity as a core part of both internalized and externalized antisemitism. She instructed activists -- Jewish and non-Jewish alike -- to ask themselves a series of questions, including whether they feel that dealing with antisemitism "drain[s] the movement of precious energy", whether they believe antisemitism "has been discussed too much already," and whether Jews "draw too much attention to themselves." Contemporary activists, including many Jews, could do worse than asking Klepfisz's questions. For example, when Jews and non-Jews in the queer community rallied against the effort by some activists to expel Jewish and Israeli LGBTQ organizations from LGBT conference "Creating Change", Mordechai Levovitz fretted that they had "promoted the much more nefarious anti-Semitic trope that Jews wield disproportionate power to get what we want." Levovitz didn't support the expulsion campaign. Still, he fretted that even the most basic demand of inclusion -- don't kick queer Jews out of the room -- was potentially flexing too much Jewish muscle. In this way, the distinction between "central" and "centering" collapses -- indeed, even the most tertiary questions are "centering" if Jews are the ones asking them. This is bad enough in a world where, we are told, oppressions are inextricably connected (you can tell whose perspective is and isn't valued in these communities based on whose attempts to speak are taken to be remedying an oversight and whose are viewed as self-centered derailing). But it verges on Kafka-esque when persons demand Jews "show up" and then get mad that they have a voice in the room; or proactively decide to put Jewish issues on their agenda and yet still demand Jews keep silent about them. Magarik says, for example, that Jews "were not the story" when the Movement for Black Lives included in its platform an accusation that Israel was creating genocide; we shouldn't have made it "about us". He's right, in the sense that this language should not have caused Jews to withdraw from the fight against police violence against communities of color. He's wrong in suggesting that Jews therefore needed to stop "wringing our hands" about how issues that cut deep to the core of our existence as a people were treated in the document. Jews didn't demand that the Movement for Black Lives talk about Jews, but once they elected to do so Jews were not obliged to choose between the right's silence of shunning and the left's silence of acquiescence. To say that Jews ought not "center" ourselves is not to say that there is no place for critical commentary at all. We are legitimate contributors to the discourse over our own lives. I'm not particularly interested in the substantive debate regarding whether Cornel West has a "Jewish problem" -- though Magarik's defense of West (that he "has a good reason for focusing on Palestine" because it "demarcates the difference between liberalism and radicalism") seems like it is worthy of some remark (of all the differences between liberals and "radicals", this is the issue that is the line of demarcation? And that doesn't exhibit some sign of centrality that Jews might have valid grounds to comment on, not the least of which could be wondering how it is a small country half a globe away came to occupy such pride of place?). The larger issue is the metadebate about whether it's valid to even ask the question; or more accurately, whether it is possible -- in any context, with any amount of disclaimers about relative prioritization -- to ask the question without it being read as "centering". The cleverest part of the whole play, after all, is that the very act of challenging this deliberative structure whereby any and all Jewish contributions suffice to center is that the challenge itself easily can become proof of our centrality.

But clever as it is, it can't and shouldn't be a satisfactory retort. There needs to be a lot more introspection about whether and how supposed allies of the Jews are willing to acknowledge the possibility that their instincts about when Jews are "centered" and when we're silenced are out-of-whack, without it becoming yet another basis of resentment for how we're making it all about us. And if we can't do that, then there is an antisemitism problem that really does need to be addressed. When discussing their struggles, members of other marginalized communities need not talk about Jews all the time, or most of the time, or even all that frequently. But what cannot stand is a claimed right to talk about Jews without having to talk with Jews. The idea that even the exploration of potential bias or prejudice lurking within our political movements represents a deliberative party foul is flatly incompatible with everything the left claims to believe about how to talk about matters of oppression. West decided to bring up the Jewish state in his Jeremiad against Coates. It was not a central part of his argument, and so it should not be a central part of the ensuing public discussion. But having put it on the table, it cannot be the case that Jews are forbidden entirely from offering critical commentary. One might say that a column or two in a few Jewish-oriented newspapers, lying at the tertiary edges of the overall debate, is precisely the right amount of attention that should have been given. If that's viewed as too much, then maybe the right question isn't about whether Jews are "centering" the discussion, but rather whether our presence really is a "central" part of anti-racism movements at all.

Drawing the line between "central" and "centering" is difficult, and requires work. There are situations where Jews demand too much attention, and there are times we are too self-effacing. But surely it takes more than a single solitary column to move from the latter to the former. More broadly, we're not going to get an accurate picture of how to mediate between "central" and "centering" unless we're willing to discuss how ingrained patterns of antisemitism condition our evaluations of Jewish political participation across the board.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2MjQd84

#anti-semitism #Jews #leftists

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