#to be clear when my brother told me to vote for trump i basically told him to fuck off. just thought i should mention that

[jinxedshapeshifter]

I haven't really talked about this but I think I should, I don't think it's a coincidence that I got hyperfixated on Ace Attorney when I did and that it's been going strong for 4 or 5 months.

I got hyperfixated on Ace Attorney in September or October (I don't really remember which, and I can't be assed to check). I'd been playing the original trilogy for a few months at this point because I bought it on my phone after getting a new one in June. What was going on in September and October, you ask? The presidential race was in full swing in America.

Also important context, I am a trans guy living with my Mormon conservative grandparents in suburban Wyoming who don't see any problem with what's going on in America right now because they live in a conservative echo chamber (by which I mean they refuse to listen to news that isn't Fox News or similar news outlets). My brother, who told me I should vote for Trump, was living out of his camper on my grandparents' property up until last month. My anxiety's been through the roof for at least two years now.

You might be asking what all that has to do with my Ace Attorney hyperfixation and the timing of it. A lot, actually. I've actually known since I bought The Great Ace Attorney why that specific hyperfixation hit me so fucking hard. I bought TGAA the Friday after the election. I was stressed out of my fucking mind, and to cope with this, I finished TGAA in a week and started replaying it almost immediately (although the hyperfixation on TGAA specifically did calm down significantly after the first playthrough).

In the middle of December, I started playing Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice. I started Dual Destinies on the 18th and finished Spirit of Justice on Christmas Eve, and Spirit of Justice's story, especially Nahyuta's arc, is something that continues to hit incredibly close to home for me.

At the beginning of January, I decided to play Ace Attorney Investigations. I think I finished that in less than a week too.

I don't think any of this is just me being hyperfixated on a video game (because if it was, I would've finished the original trilogy faster than I did). I think timing has almost everything to do with how fast I finished these games. All of this, or most of it at least, was me coping with something I knew would lead to corruption by playing games featuring corruption.

We've known Trump was going to run as a convicted felon for weeks. Months, even. Americans have seen failure after failure of the justice system because the justice system favors people who can buy their way out of a conviction.

Playing games where that doesn't happen — and this is especially true for The Great Ace Attorney, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, and Spirit of Justice, where the final culprits are in incredible positions of power and still face justice — gave me some level of hope, and still does, that what we're seeing in America isn't the end. That we can still do something to stop this. I've had multiple instances of wanting to tell other people to play Ace Attorney specifically because of what's going on in America right now, because I think Ace Attorney's messages and stories are incredibly important right now; hence, extreme hyperfixation.

It's not a coincidence that my Ace Attorney hyperfixation is as intense as it is when America is paralleling 1933 Germany far too much for my mental wellbeing, and I think Spirit of Justice and The Great Ace Attorney specifically are things I'm going to keep in mind over the next however long this lasts. The messages and stories in Ace Attorney are keeping me sane.

It is not a coincidence that my current hyperfixation is focused on a series of visual novels that has multiple cases and entire games dedicated to dealing with corruption in government and the justice system.

[phoenix]

So, just as my mental health check in, and for those who don’t follow me everywhere, here’s what’s been going on with my sister.

Short version: Shit exploded, I spent a lot of my time since yesterday off and on in tears.

Warning: This is a rambling incoherent mess trying to condense back and forth between a dozen people over a 100 replies.  I should probably delete it, but eh.

Half a week ago or so, I posted one of those, “You can’t say you love someone and then cast a vote for someone who will hurt them”  I’m sure we’ve all seen that sort of thing floating around.

(I might munge up some of the details, the order of stuff mostly, but the gist is there, and I’m not quoting verbatim)

A few days later, my sister replied, “That’s right, and that’s why I’m voting for Trump”

Me and a bunch of others chimed in with well, that’s pretty shitty, he’s hurting people, and telling people you’re voting for him kinda makes you look bad.

Her sole reply after some early replies was just TRUMP 2020!

There was a few of those, and I explained to her that, when people are trying to explain to you why this president is harming people, to shout back TRUMP 2020! is a really shit thing to do, a virtual slap in the face.

She said he’s not hurting anyone, he’s just trying to help everyone, prove how he’s hurting people.  So links were provided, stories, much evidence.

I’m sure you can imagine how that went.  She denied the stories, said they don’t count for any number of reasons...pretty typical “Prove it to me so I can ignore actual evidence because it goes against my narrative”

One or two people genuinely put forth a well written, well thought out plea for understanding, trying to see how they could help her understand.  That went pretty much nowhere, because she won’t hear any counter evidence.

She kept trying to change the subject to how she “tries to help me but I won’t accept it” or something, and THAT is a level of bullshit which needs it’s own separate post.

I told her to stop being a shitty manipulative person, yanked the topic back on track, to this is about what Trump is doing to marginalised groups, and how her repeatedly responding “Trump 2020!” is a tacit support of his violence and hate.

And I even slid back to, if she WANTS to make this about me never asking for help, we can go there, because that is EXACTLY what I’ve been doing, her own sibling, asking people to not vote for this person who, through his very clear statements to end the funding for social security (I am disabled and literally it is my only source of income), so here I am, asking for help, by not voting for him, and all she does is throw “WOOO FOUR MORE YEARS!  SUCK IT UP SNOWFLAKE!!” so it sure does seem like she doesn’t give one single shit about her own family.

Lots more back and forth, lots of support from pretty much everyone, sister asked me, more or less, why do I care, he hasn’t done anything to me aaaadnd THERE it is, isn’t it?

That whole attitude of “It’s not harming me absolutely directly, so why should I care if he’s hurting others?”  I tried explaining that to her, and AGAIN that it is, for me, a “yet”.  He has outright stated, well you know by now.

She finally reaches her limit, says we hate Trump, we’re not going to change our minds, and of COURSE we’re not going to suddenly being okay with him attacking and hurting people, YOUR OWN SIBLING INCLUDED, nor should we have to forgive the person abusing us.

To which she replied, and I quote;

“TRUMP 2020 PEACE OUT LOSER“

And I have been crying off and on ever since.

Because after all that, after all this explaining from her own brother, how yelling Trump 2020 at me and then adding in the loser part just...

It hurts.

It hurts SO FUCKING MUCH to know you matter so little to your own family.  That they will spit in your digital face after days of gaslighting, and basically say “I hear your in pain, suck it pup, I hope you suffer.”

And that’s where I’m at right now!  Yay!

To circumvent any incoming questions of why I am putting myself through this still; stubborn, familial bonds, part of it is our parents would want me to  But mostly stubbornness, and I WAS going to ride things out to the election, continue to plead my case, but I might have to cut that short.

One of the biggest things I’ve been dreading, aside from the obvious four more years of horror, is if Trump wins, how she would be all gleeful and mocking and “SUCK IT UP LOSERS!” and...she kinda jumped the script by two weeks.

Another part of the reasoning I still keep it open, is because I want her to see everything that happens to me, see the consequences of her actions, and she can’t do that if I block her.

I am just...crushed.  I...yeah I’m gonna wrap this up.

And this is all even before she knows I’m transgender, and she’s shown plenty of transphobic traits before, so yeah.

[jswdmb1]

Identical

I don't just know you, I've grown like that too...

If I don't dislike you, I'm withdrawn, unrighteous too...

I’m no prophet, I'm your friend

Take my advice, make your mistakes”

- Phoenix

Every four years, the PBS series “Frontline” presents an episode called “The Choice”.  It presents the two candidates running in that particular presidential election.  But, it is not a show about the current campaign, policy issues or even the politics behind the particular candidates.  It is instead a personal biography of each candidate up to the point of the current election told chronologically.  The show portrays each individual’s story back and forth as the years go on that allow the viewer to both understand the people behind the front their campaigns present, but also provides a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the two candidates.  I have watched this particular episode of Frontline in every presidential election dating back to 2000, and I find it to consistently be the single best source of information for me to decide (or confirm) which candidate I am to support in that year’s election.

I was going to pass on this year’s version as I didn’t think there was anything I could learn about either man, and my choice is already made, but I watched anyway.  I have to admit that I was surprised to pick up nuggets of information that were new to me such as that Joe Biden’s first wife and daughter were killed six weeks after his election to the Senate for the first time, or that Donald Trump’s mother fell ill when he was very small and was effectively absent for his nurturing years.  Those are facts that seemingly are unimportant when weighing which man to support in a presidential election, but I think we have all found out in the last four years that an individual’s personality, temperament, and morality are just as important as their stance on any issue or their knowledge of the inner workings of government.  In the example of this year’s election, it finally crystallized the stark difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump that has made my decision for whom to vote so easy.

Let’s start with the challenger Biden.  If there are two things that are clear about Joe, it is 1) he makes a lot of mistakes, and 2) he has overcome quite a bit of adversity of the years whether they are of his own doing or not.  You can watch the show to see the examples of both, but Biden’s approach to problems in his life has been remarkably consistent.  First, he acknowledges the problem exists and that he has responsibility to address it.  Next, if it was a problem of his own doing, he owns up to it.  Often times, he does this quite clumsily and occasionally makes things worse, but he does, at a minimum, take responsibility.  Finally, once it is out there, he puts his head down and gets to work with an amazing ability to ignore the long odds that he may face or the chirping he hears in the background about how badly he messed up and/or how he will never make it right.  He simply has a fundamental belief that humans make mistakes and he is no exception to that rule.  At times, it would be refreshing if he demonstrated better that he learns from some of these mistakes so as not to repeat them, but there is at least a good faith effort even if the execution at times is mediocre.

There is no need to go into detail how Trump behaves whenever he is faced with a problem and it is well documented that he never admits to making a mistake (and likely doesn’t even believe he has ever made one).  There are daily examples of this behavior and running through the list at this point is massively unappealing.  What I do find interesting is why he is this way.  The show goes into great detail about the influence three men have had on his life. The first is his father Fred.  We all know his background and his ruthlessness in business and within his personal relationships and this was applied to each of his sons.  The first, Fred Jr., bristled at the notion of going into the family business, and became an airline pilot instead (a decision for which both father and brother Donald would mock him mercilessly and drove him to alcoholism and an early death).  Fred Sr. then set his sights on son #2 who was more than willing to take up the cause.  After a stint in military school that hardened his outlook on life and reduced what little emotional capacity he had, he moved into his father’s footsteps and practiced the approach that personal gain is everything and little else matters.

The second man was a lawyer named Roy Cohn.  Cohn rose to fame in the 1950s as Joseph McCarthy’s hatchet man in the blacklisting of innocent American citizens for unfounded (and mostly false) accusations of communism.  Despite the shame eventually brought upon him for that role, he rose to become one of the most powerful attorneys in New York.  A client of his was a young Donald Trump and Cohn taught him three things that helped him rise from the ashes: 1) deny anything that makes you look bad as even having happened 2) attack those that bring these things up and deflect the blame elsewhere, and 3) never take responsibility for your actions unless there is a transactional gain that serves you.  This has been Donald Trump’s blueprint his entire life and it can be found in his business, his marriages, and certainly his presidency.  He literally has never operated in a manner that is different in any aspect of his life, so the fact that this has come through during his time in the White House should be surprising to no one who witnessed him before his election.

The final man was the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale who was the pastor at the church Donald Trump attended for over 50 years.  Peale’s claim-to-fame was the publishing of a book The Power of Positive Thinking and the Trumps followed it like their bible.  Boiled down, the main tenant of the book was that one must think positively at all costs and negative thoughts must be barred from the mind or success cannot be achieved.  That seems okay on the surface, but it becomes a problem when situations require more effort than simply a good thought and a wish that it goes away.  This clearly explains Trump’s complete inability to handle the COVID-19 pandemic.  Even though he obviously intellectually understood the severity and danger of the virus from his recordings on the Woodward tapes, this brainwashing of Peale on the Trump family made it impossible for Donald to acknowledge that the problem existing in any way.  When combined with Cohn’s teachings on taking no responsibility and Fred Sr.’s example of bulldozing past anyone who disagrees with you (like a scientist or doctor), the end result of his response makes a lot of sense.  It’s why even when catching the disease himself, he views it as a positive event that only he could dream up.

I do find it curious that I spent three long paragraphs on Trump with only one brief paragraph on Biden, but that meshes with each approach they have on the basic issues of life as a human being which is confronting adversity and accepting that we do make mistakes.  Biden’s approach is simple and to the point, sometimes to a fault.  Trump has this complicated troika of mad men’s teachings running through his head when problems come up and it is no wonder he is paralyzed with inaction when it comes time to do something about it.  For me, this is the defining trait between the two men that seems to tower over everything else about them personally or this election in general.  The question then is what do we do with this information.

I’m certain it is obvious which way I am going to go, but it may surprise you why.  You see, I have struggled myself with some of these same issues that each man has faced.  Up until a few years ago, I actually would describe myself as really being more Trump-like in my approach to life than I really care to admit.  I rarely acknowledged I was wrong and often blamed others for problems that were within and could only be solved by the guy responsible for them in the first place – me.  This attitude prevented me from seeing what was the real root of my unhappiness and depression and did not allow for me to acknowledge that my drinking and moderate drug use had become a problem.  It wasn’t until everything broke down and I ended up in an intense six-week program of therapy and deep soul searching that I discovered that mistakes we make are what builds us up and not what tears us down.  Granted, we need to learn from those mistakes to become better people and achieve great things, but admitting responsibility is the only path to doing either of those things.  I know now after a few years that I will never get things totally right, but I can get up each day and at least try to improve on the one before.  At a minimum, I strive to not make things worse, and it all gives me strength to fight whatever demons I have head on.  It’s a trial-and-error approach for sure, but I don’t see how it can be done any other way.

And given where things are at now, I don’t see how any other approach can help us overcome the enormous problems we face at this time whether it be COVID-19, or the economy, or global warming, or any other massive threat we face right now.  There is no amount of positive thinking that will help us overcome any one of these things and clearly wishing the problems away (or denying they even exist) is not going to work.  We need someone who understands this and there is no doubt the current president has no ability to do so. ��Joe Biden may not be perfect, and he is not going to get us all of the way there on likely any one thing, but we have to start somewhere.  And, if there is one thing that he is good at, it is looking at a big hill, putting his head down, and climbing up.  It’s not pretty, and it isn’t the easy thing to do, but it is what we need right now more than anything.  

That is a tough pill to swallow for many Americans who think their freedom is a birthright that requires no effort, but that fantasy has been squashed.  In three weeks, the choice is clear about what needs to be done and the decision is up to you: are you going to acknowledge fault and accept responsibility for our collective actions that have led us to this point and vote for Joe, or are you going to give Trump another four years by simply wishing that all our problems away (spoiler alert – they don’t)?  The politically correct thing to say at this point is that either way you decide please make sure you vote, but I cannot apply that here.  The stakes are too high and the path is too obvious – either vote for Joe or don’t vote at all.  That second option may be tough for some people to take, but consider it your first step on a long road to recovery and redemption not just for yourself but our nation.

Good luck, everyone, we are going to need it.

-        Jim

[berniesrevolution]

In the early summer of 2017, a little less than a year after his Presidential campaign had ended, Bernie Sanders spent a few days on a speaking tour in England, to promote the European version of his book “Our Revolution.” The Brexit resolution had passed twelve months earlier, a general election looked likely to consolidate the conservative hold on the country, and Sanders’s audiences—in the hundreds, though not the thousands—were anxious and alert. I was at those events, talking with the people who had come—skinny, older leftists and louche, cynical younger ones—and they were anticipating not just the old campaign hits but a broader explanation of why the world had suddenly gone so crazy and what could be done. Sanders had scarcely talked about foreign affairs in his 2016 campaign, but his framework had a natural extensibility. Under way in the world was a simple fight, Sanders said. On one side were oligarchs and the right-wing parties they had managed to corrupt. On the other were the people.

In the thirty months since Sanders’s 2016 campaign ended, in the petulance and ideological strife of the Democratic National Convention, he has become a more reliable partisan, just as progressivism has moved his way. He begins the 2020 Presidential campaign not as a gadfly but as a favorite, which requires a comprehensive vision among voters of how he would lead the free world. In 2017, Sanders hired his first Senate foreign-policy adviser, a progressive think-tank veteran named Matt Duss. Sanders gave major speeches—at Westminster College, in the United Kingdom, and at Johns Hopkins—warning that “what we are seeing is the rise of a new authoritarian axis” and urging liberals not just to defend the post-Cold War status quo but also to “reconceptualize a global order based on human solidarity.” In 2016, he had asked voters to imagine how the principles of democratic socialism could transform the Democratic Party. Now he was suggesting that they could also transform how America aligns itself in the world.

In early April, I met with Sanders at his Senate offices, in Washington. Spring was already in effect—the cherry blossoms along the tidal basin were still in bloom but had begun to crinkle and fade—and talk among the young staffers milling around his offices was of the intensity of Sanders’s early campaign, of who would be travelling how many days over the next month and who would have to miss Easter. It was my first encounter with Sanders during this campaign. Basic impression: same guy. He shook my hand with a grimace, and interrupted my first question when he recognized the possibility for a riff, on the significance of a Senate vote on Yemen. His essential view of foreign policy seemed to be that the American people did not really understand how dark and cynical it has been—“how many governments we have overthrown,” as Sanders told me. “How many people in the United States understand that we overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran to put in the Shah? Which then led to the Revolution. How many people in this country do you think know that? So we’re going to have to do a little bit of educating on that.”

One condition that Americans had not digested was the bottomlessness of inequality. “I got the latest numbers here,” Sanders said. He motioned, and Duss, who was sitting beside him, slid a sheet of paper across the table. “Twenty-six (Continue Reading)of the wealthiest people on earth own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population. Did you know that? So you look at it, you say”—here he motioned as if each of his hands were one side of a scale—“twenty-six people, 3.6 billion people. How grotesque is that?”

He went on, “When I talk about income inequality and talk about right-wing authoritarianism, you can’t separate the two.” No one knew how rich Putin was, Sanders said, but some people said he was the wealthiest man in the world. The repressive Saudi monarchs were also billionaire Silicon Valley investors, and “their brothers in the Emirates” have “enormous influence not only in that region but in the world, with their control over oil. A billionaire President here in the United States. You’re talking about the power of Wall Street and multinational corporations.” Simple, really: his thesis had always been that money corrupted politics, and now he was tracing the money back overseas. His phlegmy baritone acquired a sarcastic lilt. “It’s a global economy, Ben, in case you didn’t know that!”

When Sanders’s aides sent me a list of a half-dozen foreign-policy experts, assembled by Duss, who talk regularly with the senator about foreign policy, I was surprised by how mainstream they seemed. Joe Cirincione, the antinuclear advocate, might have featured in a Sanders Presidential campaign ten or twenty years ago. But Sanders is also being advised by Robert Malley, who coördinated Middle East policy in Obama’s National Security Council and is now the president of the International Crisis Group; Suzanne DiMaggio, a specialist in negotiations with adversaries at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; and Vali Nasr, the dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced Studies at Johns Hopkins and a specialist in the Shia-Sunni divide.

Few of these advisers were part of Sanders’s notionally isolationist 2016 campaign. But, as emergencies in Libya, Syria, and Yemen have deepened, the reputation of Obama’s foreign policy, and of the foreign-policy establishment more broadly, has diminished. Malley told me, “Out of frustration with some aspects of Obama’s foreign policy and anger with most aspects of Trump’s, many leaders in the Party have concluded that the challenge was not to build bridges between centrist Democrats and centrist Republicans but, rather, between centrist and progressive Democrats. That means breaking away from the so-called Blob”—a term for the foreign-policy establishment, from the Obama adviser Ben Rhodes. DiMaggio said, “The case for restraint seems to be gaining ground, particularly in its rejection of preventive wars and efforts to change the regimes of countries that do not directly threaten the United States.” She and others now see in Sanders something that they didn’t in 2016: a clear progressive theory of what the U.S. is after in the world. “I think he’s bringing those views on the importance of tackling economic inequality into foreign policy,” DiMaggio said.

Since the 2016 campaign, Sanders’s major foreign-policy initiative has been a Senate resolution invoking the War Powers Act of 1973 in order to suspend the Trump Administration’s support of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen. Mike Lee, a libertarian Republican from Utah, and Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, co-sponsored the resolution; on April 4th, it passed in the House and the Senate. It was the first time that Congress invoked the War Powers Act since the law’s creation, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. When we met, Sanders said that he thought the Republican support for the resolution was significant, in part because it reflected the strain of conservatism that is skeptical of military interventions. It also demonstrated, he believed, “a significant mind-set change in the Congress—Democrats and Republicans—with regard to Saudi Arabia.” He added, “I don’t see why we’d be following the lead or seen as a very, very close ally of a despotic, un-democratic regime.”

Sanders was warming to a broader theme. Our position in the regional conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran should be rebalanced, he said. There has been, he went on, “a bipartisan assumption that we’re supposed to love Saudi Arabia and hate Iran. And yet, if you look at young people in Iran, they are probably a lot more pro-American than Saudis. Iran is a very flawed society, no debate about it. Involved in terrorism, doing a lot of bad things. But they also have more democracy, as a matter of fact, more women’s rights, than does Saudi Arabia.” As President, Sanders said, he imagined the U.S. taking a more neutral role in the countries’ rivalry. “To say, you know what? We’re not going to be spending trillions of dollars and losing American lives because of your long-standing hostilities.”

Sanders turned to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, which he described in similar terms; he wanted to orient American policy toward the decent people on both sides, and not to their two awful governments. “While I am very critical of Netanyahu’s right-wing government, I am not impressed by what I am seeing from Palestinian leadership, as well,” he said. “It’s corrupt in many cases, and certainly not effective.” He mentioned the United States’s leverage in Israeli politics, because of its alliance and economic support. (“$3.8 billion is a lot of money!”) I asked if he would make that aid contingent, as some Palestinian advocates have suggested, on fuller political rights for Palestinians. Sanders grew more cautious here. “I’m not going to get into the specifics,” he said. He was worried about the situation in Gaza, where youth unemployment is greater than sixty per cent, and yet the borders are closed. (“If you have sixty per cent of the kids who don’t have jobs, and they can’t leave the country, what do you think is going to happen next year and the year after that?”) But he also said that he wanted to “pick up from where Jimmy Carter was, what Clinton tried to do, and, with the financial resources that we have of helping or withdrawing support, say, ‘You know what? Let’s sit down and do our best to figure it out.’ ” He seemed to want to strike an earnest, non-revolutionary note. “I’m not proposing anything particularly radical,” he said. “And that is that the United States should have an even-handed approach both to Israel and the Palestinians.”

(Continue Reading)

[deathlygristly]

So like I’ve said before, Quora’s algorithms are showing me more conservative stuff. Which I guess overall is good, because it breaks my bubble a bit, right?

One thing I found today was a white working class Southern dude who said that he voted for Trump because of the stereotypes about white working class Southerners.

I am a white working class Southerner. I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s on supposedly liberal forums. I saw the classism and the sexism and the racism and the denial and avoidance of the racism by scapegoating poor white Southerners for it. I called people out on it too.

Which note that I AM NOT saying that poor white Southerners aren’t racist, because they hella are. It’s just that rich white people from other regions of the country like to pretend that poor white Southerners are the only racist white people, and that they themselves are pure and untouched by history and there aren’t any black people getting shot and killed by their police, oh no, and there aren’t any ghettos in their cities, and they were very nice and welcoming to Dr. King and his marches up north.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-mlk-chicago-20160118-story.html

Fifty years ago this January, King embarked on a less-remembered chapter from the final years of his life, a battle that ultimately went unfinished — a campaign against poverty and de facto segregation in the North that was met with institutional resistance, skepticism from other activists and open violence.

"I have never seen, even in Mississippi and Alabama, mobs as hateful as I've seen here in Chicago," King told reporters that day, stripping off his tie and vowing to continue demonstrating. "Yes, it's definitely a closed society. We're going to make it an open society."

Every single group of humans has bigots and assholes in it. Bigotry and bias and prejudice and ignorance and judging of groups that you’re not familiar with is the basic human state, and it’s something that people have to make an effort to grow out of, and the more privileged they are the more effort they have to make. The US only has two political parties and 325 million or so people, so you’re going to find every possible permutation of human personalities in both parties.

I call liberals out on their classism, but I’m not going to throw everything away and vote for people who are even more bigoted just because some rich white person on Smirking Chimp said that the South should be nuked. I am not going to make it even easier for the health insurance companies to kill my mother because she’s too old and worn out by years of hard labor in factories to turn a profit for the capitalists anymore just because some asshole said something ignorant about people they don’t know anything about. I’m not going to vote for people who don’t believe in climate change and let the world burn just because someone insulted people who are into NASCAR.

I try to be as polite as I can when I reply to these people, and I try to put on my best empathy face, and I make it clear that yes, I’m one of you, I grew up in a small town and my mother boarded socks in a factory, and my father did something in a factory but I’m not sure what because he died when I was seven, and I grew up listening to NASCAR races on the local country music station and my brother would go hunting and sometimes bring home deer or rabbit to eat and I won a rifle in a neighborhood raffle when I was little. I know you. I get you. I grew up the same way you did. But damn it, get over yourself. 

Your bruised pride is not worth fascism. It’s not worth my mother not being able to afford healthcare. I hope you don’t think it’s worth your mother not being able to afford healthcare. It’s not worth all these mass shootings. It’s not worth all this hate and destruction and violence and death. It’s not worth refusing to do anything to try to mitigate the immense suffering caused by climate change making the planet unlivable for a great deal of the life currently on it just because hey, someone who buys into classist stereotypes about people like me also wants to do something about climate change.

That’s just...I don’t know, man.

I don’t say this in my replies to them. I really do try to be polite and empathetic and to show that I get them, that I belong to their group and that I see the elitism and they are telling the truth about it and their anger about it is valid, and then I try to gently share why I feel differently about things, and I hope it at least makes them think.

But goddamn it’s frustrating.

[witchyinthekitchen]

This is a Vent Post about my Mother, Please do not reblog

This post is probably gunna be all over the place/time with things that I can remember/recall so bear with me here.

-Being told to make my own food bc mom was too busy with brand new baby (I was between 5-6 so poptarts were about all i could manage. I'd asked for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.) (my brother was a VERY finniky baby. If you weren't holding him he'd scream till his face went purple.))

-Tried to share interests in Anime/manga with her, when I asked her what she felt about it she said she couldn’t get into it and that it felt like a chore. (13-15 ish)

-Told her I needed therapy bc I was having suicidal thoughts. She took me, but then took me out once I started getting upset about the things i’d been talking about in therapy with my therapist because I'd come home in a bad mood.(15-16 ish)

-Went to Mother Daughter Group Therapy with her (there were other mother daughter combos) and she stormed out in the middle of it saying that we were only attacking her and not my dad too. (was 15-16 ish)

-Got into an argument about who i was voting for in the 2016 election while on vacation at Disney World (Hint it wasn't Trump like she wanted)(24 ish)

-Tried to gaslight me about trying to get everyone together to talk wedding stuff saying how she tried but that it all fell apart. (I have texts of her canceling it the day before we were all supposed to get together.)(26)

-Gets super defensive/upset any time I talk about “other mothers” in my life (MIL, BM)

-Has been super hot and cold with me during wedding planning and making passive aggressive comments about everything: Tell him to buy new pants for the engagement shoot 'bc I dont want him wearing baggy clothes -SO's Lost over 20lbs+ for the wedding and i'm so fuckin proud of him- “I don’t want to pay for hard alcohol for SO and his friends to drink at the wedding.” As if ½ the people invited weren’t all just her friends? ((All our friends live out of state/country so half the wedding is family and HER friends/neighbors.)) "I’m sure H*(SIL) and K*(MIL) have good counsel for you on _____," (Why would you say this when i'm asking for YOUR opinion? If i wanted their opinion i'd ask them.)

-4 months before the wedding she’s trying to talk me out of my venue saying we need to go look at the ones SO and MIL had suggested.

-Wants me to keep (BM)'s relation to me a secret even though i’m pretty sure 85% of the people who know me and are coming to my wedding know i'm adopted.

-Angry that I was moving out of the house at 21 with my SO she told his mother she hoped we’d fail. (In her defense she'd just been diagnosed with breast cancer and I'd done poorly in my last semester of college so parents thought it would be a good idea to take me out of college for a semester so i could live at home and basically be at my moms beck and call while also being expected to work 2 jobs (they'd told me the instant that the semester was over that i was expected to work 2 jobs) -That's at least how I was viewing that whole situation before I moved out- )

-As a kid I remember wanting to run away a lot. (Never away to a friends house but always to a park to live under a bridge like the goblin I am (lol)) (is it obvious I use self depreciating humor to get through things that I'm uncomfortable with? haha)

-I'd always hide things from her, even small things like a puzzle book i'd bought myself from the elementary school book fairs. i even began writing my diaries in code so she couldn't read them. Not that i ever caught her reading my diaries or what not but thats how afraid i was.

-The only things that stopped me from killing myself was the distressing thought that my mother would be more upset with blood on the floor than me being gone. (It was a constant worry of mine when I was having ideations.)

-When i was getting close to graduating high school the librarians told me they had a bunch of excess old books they were getting rid of and one of them happened to be the "Toxic Parents" book i've seen several other posts refer to. I took no other books besides that one. I hid that from her too. Looking back through it i remember there was a checklist in the book and i'd filled some of it out when i was younger. I most definitely am a people pleaser.

-We've never really been able to "talk" about things together like how my dad and i do and i think she's really jealous about it.

-The only way I feel comfortable talking to her is Via Email/Text because then that way i have a copy of all the things she's said. because i often forget things. (I honestly don't know how bad my memory is or if its gaslighting but i hope its just me being forgetful and not the latter...)

-I literally cannot let my SO do the dishes because my Mom would always do the dishes/clean when she was mad and bang pots around loudly and just even those sounds set me on edge.

-Her telling me that the careers i wanted to get into (IE: the Arts/Theater/Music) wouldn't make enough money and that they'd be fine as Hobbies but not as careers.

-She's continually trying to push me into a Customer Service Job because i'm so good at making other people happy. (talked to dad about this and he says i'm a very big people pleaser who doesn't like conflicts -cue nervous laughter about wedding planning-)

-Being around her for long periods of time is so physically/emotionally draining. I know that's probably a result of always being on edge with her and I always feel bad that I feel that way.

-Because she's said she hoped I'd fail (me and my So when I first moved out) I'm terrified of telling her anything personal going on in my life for fear that she'd take it out on me or use it against me (i got super anxious/scared when she came up to see me on my end of town once because we'd be stopping at the mall where i used to work and i hadn't yet told her that I'd quit that job.)

-I want to have a relationship with her. I want us to do fun Mom& Daughter things but at the same time I'm scared of letting her get too close to me again just to have it fall apart again.

-When I moved out (21) i went VLC with my whole family before i even knew what VLC was. I barely saw them (except for certain holidays/events.) I didn't talk to my dad for about 3 years because of this and am just now recovering that relationship with him (been 5 years now since I moved out)

-After I get married my plan is to move to CO. During that time i don't remember if my mom has mentioned if she'd miss me, but i do recall she has made multiple points to tell me that my dad says he would miss me.

-I had to beg for a 16th Birthday Party. She finally caved half a year later after I'd talked to my Therapist about it.

-pretty sure i'm the SG of the family (possibly Cousin 1 being the GC because she went to same University my mom did)

-Other family members on her side have stepped in to provide financial help to me on the promise that i wouldn't tell anyone. (probably to stop any gossip of favoritism)

I Don't know if she's an N or just really bad at expressing herself but her hot and cold attitude really sets off my anxiety that i've done something to piss her off and that she won't talk to me about it for a few weeks and then acts as though nothing is wrong/nothing happened. Planning my wedding is the MOST contact we've had in 5 years since i moved out and went VLC and i've been trying to use this as a way to bond with her better but anytime i think i'm getting somewhere Something happens and she's upset again. A phrase i've found myself come into saying recently is "I can't fix something that I don't know is wrong." So i've tried to take that approach when it comes to her. I know she's an adult and can choose for herself if she wants to talk about whats on her mind. I can't force her to talk if she doesn't want to but the anxiety it causes when she gets into these moods is really debilitating. I'm terrible at letting things go (especially if i think its my fault)

I'm Not Her Therapist, but if she has an issue with me I wish she'd just tell me instead of the Silent treatment for a week.

Trigger Topics that I've learned to Avoid at All Costs:

Anything about "Other Mothers" in my life.

Politics & Racism

Anything in the Past that happened.

My moving out

Anything that paints her as a "Bad Mother"(aka this whole post probably)

This post is a mess and I'm rambling. Thanks for sticking through this Brain Dump while I process. 

-Edit 2:

More things i'm recalling: For Christmas one year in front of my whole family (I was between 8-10 ish) she got me a set of underwear with the days of the week labeled on them and told me in front of everyone that "Maybe this would help me remember [to change my underwear daily]..."

One of my final years in high school I somehow managed to get a Cold Sore. My First Cold Sore ever and my lip where it broke out swelled up HUGE. I woke up the day it appeared ( a weekend thank the gods) and horrified went downstairs to tell my mom about it. I don't recall any words of sympathy other than "Cold Sores are caused by Herpes." I just remember breaking down into tears.

I mapped out a "Quiet Walking Path" that avoided all the creaky floorboards and steps in our house.

I get extremely anxious whenever I would hear my parents footsteps coming up the stairs. It got to the point that I could distinguish their steps on Carpet.

I jump/flinch (visibly) at loud noises, even if I know they are coming (movies songs ect.)

Routinely friended/unfriended me on Facebook before deleting it entirely (due to 2018 spying/hacking allegations)

I don't know if she means for these things to be hurtful but as someone who doesn't enjoy confrontation and is extremely sensitive to others feelings it just hurts y'know?

-edit 3: Attempted to talk to mom about her saying she hoped we'd fail via email. went about as well as expected. =Well, that clears a lot of things up. We only wanted you to be independent and happy, and it appears you are. End of story!

And for what it’s worth, I’ve said a LOT of things over the past 6 years that you didn’t hear about. And I’m not really sure where you heard “I hope they fail.” But I’m sure your source is 100%, and certainly not something you’d want to clarify with me.

I hope you got your apartment all squared away in Colorado. You should be under the 60-day notice by now! Woo hoo!

Let me know when you all are coming to get your stuff out of the house.

I’ll have it packed and ready for you.

-Mom

Am i reading into this too much? because it sounds like she's being hella passive aggressive about this.

-Edit 4: 7-19-18 Been venting about wedding planning being stressful on fb away from my mom since she doesn't have one anymore. I didn't realize she had fms reporting to her about my posts as she just randomly mentions via text that she wants to help me have fun while planning and that she wishes she could make it a happy time for me.

Edit 5: 9-26-18 Wedding is over finally. had our honeymoon and got moved out of our apartment back into my MIL's house. During the move we had to put all of our stuff into storage which includes Wedding gifts and thankyou notes. So Mom has been hounding me about getting them done and i've informed her several times that all of that is in storage and i havent been able to yet. She said not an excuse go buy more thankyou notes and write them all. I asked if Emailing a thank you would work, she says no must be hand written and mailed out (also who's paying for 100+ stamps: Me) Well Tonight she informs me that she's doing all the ones from her/my side and that she doesn't care if we do them for DH's side since SIL didn't send any thank you notes either. Cue big long talk with DH about all of this and he says not to worry about her being passive aggressive like this. Go and check my Email to find she sent an Email to me only with writing saying

"Dear all,

Thank you so much for attending --- wedding. Your presence was so important to me, and I know to the kids as well. Thank you also for the lovely wedding gifts you sent or brought. I know they are appreciated and will be enjoyed by the newlyweds. It was very kind and generous of you!

Unfortunately, --- is unable to send thank you notes, but I did want you to know that your gifts, and your presence at the celebration, were very important to all of us, and very much appreciated.

Fondly,

MOM"

currently I'm choosing not to respond and I wonder how our relationship is going to be going forward from all of this... I was so happy that the wedding was over so i wouldn't have to deal with this petty drama bullshit anymore but I guess thats just too much to ask for.

-She's also unfriended me on facebook again. I'm tempted to just block her to stop this wishy washy stuff from happening again.

[anewpoliticalspin]

Did something happen to the Republican Party itself?

I became a Republican at some point in college. In high school I took a political science class that brought me into a rare something that just absolutely fascinated me. I love it because it involved people, it dealt with complex issues yet ones with immediate and visible consequences for what was right around us.

I decided I loved conservative politics. At least, I thought I did. My mom would tell you I did. So would my dad, and my little brother. Anyone who had ventured onto Facebook would too.

I stayed a through and strong fan. Like every idealistic early-20-something, I had dreams and passion of changing the world. My particular cause became the tenets of the Republican Party.

I thought I liked their commitment to personal responsibility, responsibility in general, accountability, “common sense”, morality, policies that were always effective, and a realistic view of the issues around us.

Liberals possessed naïveté and a lack of understanding of how the world truly worked. We would always chuckle to ourselves at College GOP and in conservative media.

I kept laughing too.

For a while, anyway.

I thought that better choices by its sufferers were the best solutions to poverty. I thought that the free market always provided the most optimum solutions to most economic problems. I believed that the healthcare crisis had simple, effective, free market solutions. I even, at some point, tried to convince myself that global warming did not have man-made causes.

My beliefs stayed unchanged for a relatively long amount of time.

Despite this, however, I sometimes noticed certain beliefs had, or statements made, that made me wonder whether conservatism in the United States had changed its direction.

I remembered a few statements made by Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in regards to issues of poverty and our social safety net. I give his statements in example, as the seemed to be a good representation of what much of the Party believed and the approach to issues it had taken.

Here were a few:

1) In regards to poverty: “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”

2) When asked about uninsured Americans, his answer was as follows:

“Well, we do provide care for people who don’t have insurance, people — we — if someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care.”

I wondered why as a major party candidate he wasn’t able to more easily point to other more basic forms of health coverage, such as preventive care or regular family doctor visits. Shouldn’t they already have been in place? If our nation was adequately providing this coverage, shouldn’t it have been easier to be able to explain how this is done?

3) In a private meeting with supporters, his emphasis on what he thought were a not insignificant number of people who would vote Democratic, only to be able to receive government assistance they felt they needed to receive.

In order to be able to have a clear picture of what the conservative movement believed and supported, it was also important to speak with everyday people who aligned with its views. What do they think? What are there views? What are they supporting? This shows what the conservative media is leading its viewers to believe, and what conservatives in general believe.

Many comments I heard were in regards to public assistance and poverty.

I remember a friend of mine who stated that there were people in need of welfare, but that the system isn’t well-run. She pointed towards recipients who would use assistance to purchase a television and not feed their children.

Another woman told me in regards to the issue of poverty in the United States “Statistics say that if you graduate high school, have a job, and don’t become pregnant before marriage, your chances of living in poverty are incredibly low. So you may have to move into your parents house, or get an education, or make some other important choice, but it should ultimately be up to you to get out of poverty.”

Even more truthfully was a man who brought up public assistant and said that some people just needed to get a job.

There was a woman who is still a good friend of mine, but whose answer was that those in poverty needed to improve their own situations.

Lastly, an old friend who was against the health care bill because, it would have given health care to poor people. She explained how public assistance is often used for beer money by people on it, and that the best way to help poor people was to encourage them to help themselves.

Also, in general, a reaction by many to the topic of public assistance is that those on it need to get themselves off of it.

What might this show? Does it show that conservatives have not always given poverty attention as an issue, believed its sufferers responsible for their own condition, or believe our safety net to already be adequate to provide for the poor? May it also show some examples of wishful thinking surrounding the causes of poverty?

There were also beliefs about our then President.

I heard it often claimed that he was a socialist.

A good friend of mine from a club I frequented confided in me that he believed Obama was seeking to re-implement communism, in the same form the Soviet Union had attempted.

Another friend of mine shared a similar concern. She said that socialism doesn’t work and that her mom had seen it tried to be implemented (was this a history lesson? Had her mother lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union?). She believed he had plans to implement a form of socialism in which a doctor got paid as much a janitor.

Was this something many conservatives believed, that our President held communist beliefs?

Where did these beliefs come from? Everything comes from a source, and the media and prominent thinkers and spokesmen are where we get our information and what shapes our beliefs.

Reading conservative media, I read many conservative sites linking President Obama’s ideals to socialist ones. Not the socialism of Bernie Sanders, which is really a mixed economy that allows for a capitalist society while at the same time providing a public social safety net and increased regulation of businesses, such as minimum wage laws.

More like the dictionary-defined term, “a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole” (presumably by means of the national government owning full control of our economy).

A Washington Times article read “New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism”.

Several conservative authors and figures tried to find the source of his socialist ties, and Glenn Beck claimed he was inspired by his father, a supposed communist revolutionary, and thus had a sort of master plan to implement communism-well, he’s Glenn, but even still, he had many followers.

It seemed this was a view held by more than just a few, if not widely. While I wouldn’t be able to know precise numbers, when prominent media figures make these claims, you can believe much of their audience believe them.

When Donald Trump rose to prominence, I revisited some of my old thoughts.

I was dismayed to find that a party I had for so long believed in, could compromise on important principles. How could so many well-intentioned people support a figure so outwardly divisive, who seemed to exploit what seemed to be the worst of fears and prejudices that can be held by people?

I made sure to see the forest for the trees. Donald Trump was not only one of many Republican candidates. The Republican Party was the only party in which he would have been able to have success. High support for him did not seem to be found in the supporters of other political parties, but it did Republican voters.

Had the Republican Party changed in any important ways?

I did a lot of thoughtful reflection.

I realized how, over certain decades, starting with Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party had sometimes embraced certain fears and prejudices. I started to see many of the misguided beliefs and modes of thoughts that conservatives had embraced with greater fervor over time.

Such as:

1) Fear and blaming of the poor, as well as not taking poverty seriously as an issue

We’ve grown up on the American Dream and the belief in life and our destiny being within your control.

I would never say that hard work and determination haven’t brought prosperity to some of our best-known entrepreneurs. Of course, it does happen, and is worth celebrating.

But we have to take an honest look at the big picture, and not only focus on select stories of success.

14.5% of Americans live below the poverty line alone. Mind you, the poverty line has often been argued to be an inadequate measure of true poverty, and there are many who hover above in still often-exhausting conditions, sometimes even working 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet.

I’m sure there are some truly unmotivated to find work, but it is important for us to focus on the larger picture as regards to assistance. With so much of our population living in poverty, can it be said that poverty can always be prevented by hard work?

I can understand the argument that conservatives only discussing the minority that does abuse public assistance, without saying that all recipients abuse assistance or are not in need.

Yet why do conservative dialogue seem to focus more and more on those that abuse it, and there seems to be less discussion of those in need of it? Why is there a focus on the minority that abuses assistance instead of the majority that does need it?

When I was honest with myself, it seemed increasingly rare to hear conservatives discussing situations of true poverty beyond the control of those in it. It seemed that almost all discussion focused on either abuse of assistance, or poverty being a result of culture.

Why not?

Well, for one, the honest truth may be the painful one. To give an identifiable picture, what is easier to think about: the single mom who abuses assistance, buying herself items she doesn’t need, or the one who works long hours at a difficult job and goes home having to find ways to make ends meet and feed her children?

While discussion of the both personal decisions that can cause some to end up in poverty, as well as abuses of assistance, can be difficult discussions to have, I realized that discussions of uncontrollable circumstances leading to poverty can actually be harder ones to have.

We live in a world where a lot happens. It’s uncomfortable to realize that certain things can always happen. Yet we can’t be anything except honest about very real things.

While I would not say that all or even a majority of conservatives really believe that the poor are always at fault, I think it can create an unconcious mindset. We create many automatic responses that, when we don’t stop ourselves, can be mechanisms for our day-to-day decisions and responses.

When we are overwhelmed with stories of food stamps paying for lobsters, will our response suddenly change when we see children starving?

The American Dream and ideal of hard work have long had a stronghold in our minds. They are appealing and bring out our strongest ideals, but we need to also take a larger picture view of these issues.

Poverty can happen in America too. It seems that we like to think that America is a land of opportunity, and that while hard times hit many, true impoverishedness would not happen in our nation.

Yet why would it not?

If it is so common in many regions in the world, do we think it can’t be an issue within our nation too?

2) Our strongest fears and prejudices-as well as blame

President Obama seemed to always be blamed for any circumstance. His actions were seen as causing whatever the circumstance happened to be, even if the Republican Party may not have had better solutions. While yes, our economy did have a sluggish recovery, the Great Depression comparatively fared much worse.

He often seemed like a present-era Hoover for many of our nation’s problems. The rhetoric incorrectly labeling him a socialist seemed to in part be rooted in this viewpoint.

I saw rhetoric that was more and more rooted in anger than facts, such as that and others.

There was also a growing sentiment against Hispanic immigrants. While racism may seem unimaginable, something that we’ve learned a long time ago to be above, we need to realize that even good people can fall victim to prejudices we don’t fully know we have.

We may need to ask questions when a Presidential candidate is willing to say something directly. After all, candidates are generally aware of their audience.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

When Trump said this, his message sounded clear. A question to ask is what he believed to be on the minds of some of the voters he’s trying to reach. A candidate is always aware of their audience before they say anything.

A quote that really stood out to me was when I watched The Big Short, which told a story of the events that led to the US financial crisis and then commented on the public reaction in an economic downturn. “Of course, bankers will go to jail. Actually, people will do what they always do when the economy goes bad: they’ll blame immigrants and poor people.”

We must remember that it was a poor minority was blamed when the German economy went poorly in the first half of the twentieth century. That was a lesson that was never supposed to be forgotten.

[theconservativebrief]

“You sowed the wind for decades to come,” Brett Kavanaugh warned Senate Democrats during Thursday’s hearing on the sexual assault allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford. “I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwinds.”

It wasn’t the only threat he leveled at Democrats and the American people on Thursday. He and some Senate Republicans — most notably Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — cast the proceedings as a hit job by Senate Democrats in which Ford was little more than a pawn. If the tactic worked, they warned, then anyone and everyone in America would be vulnerable to accusations of sexual misconduct. The American people, they hinted darkly, would pay the price for Democrats’ behavior.

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz, John Cornyn, and Lindsey Graham chat during a break in the hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images

The message of Kavanaugh’s threats was clear: If he wasn’t safe, then no one was.

That message comes from a place of deep privilege. While women have never been safe when coming forward to report sexual misconduct, men like Kavanaugh — white, educated in the country’s most prestigious schools, groomed through high-profile jobs — have long been able to glide smoothly to the highest levels of our government and other arenas of power.

That may still be true; the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation on Friday. But increasingly, these men are not safe from the testimony of women who come forward to share their stories.

Many observers have remarked on Kavanaugh’s anger during Thursday’s hearing. But his shouts and threatening words may have revealed something else: the fear of a man whose rise to power has been interrupted — even if only briefly — by a woman.

If Kavanaugh is confirmed to a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court, Ford’s might be the last interruption he faces. But she won’t be the last woman to speak up about her trauma, and her courage may pave the way for others. No matter what happens with Kavanaugh’s confirmation, powerful people who sexually harass or assault others are a little less safe than they once were.

Kavanaugh and his supporters aimed to frighten the American people on Thursday with threats about what will happen if Ford’s allegations are taken seriously. But maybe they’re the ones who are afraid.

Kavanaugh’s larger argument during his tearful and angry opening statement on Thursday was that due to the allegations against him, anyone who tried to serve in public life would be vulnerable to smears and intimidation.

“The consequences will be with us for decades,” he said. “This grotesque and coordinated character assassination will dissuade confident and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country. And as we all know in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around.”

He even hinted that the loved ones of those present at the hearing could be next to be accused.

“If the mere allegation, the mere assertion of an allegation, a refuted allegation from 36 years ago is enough to destroy a person’s life and career, we will have abandoned the basic principles of fairness and due process that define our legal system and our country,” he said.

“I ask you to judge me by the standard that you would want applied to your father, your husband, your brother, or your son.”

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Melina Mara-Pool/AFP/Getty Images

To some degree, Kavanaugh’s threats sounded vindictive — if he couldn’t have a Supreme Court seat without an inquiry into his past, he implied, then no one else should either. But in another way, the threats signaled outrage that he, Brett Kavanaugh, could be accused of sexual misconduct.

“Throughout my 53 years and seven months on this earth until last week, no one ever accused me of any kind of sexual misconduct,” he told the Judiciary Committee on Thursday. “A lifetime of public service and a lifetime of high-profile public service at the highest levels of American government. And never a hint of anything of this kind.”

Graham articulated the message more clearly, setting the tone for the rest of the hearing to follow. Shouting and scornful, he heaped opprobrium on Democrats: “Boy, you all want power. God, I hope you never get it.”

At times seeming to forget Ford existed, he expressed his outrage at what Kavanaugh had been through.

“This is hell,” he proclaimed. “This is going to destroy the ability of good people to come forward because of this crap.”

“His integrity is absolutely unquestioned,” Graham said of Kavanaugh, noting that the American Bar Association had given him the “gold standard.” “He is the very circumspect in his personal conduct, harbors no biases or prejudices. Entirely ethical. Is a really decent person. Is warm, friendly, unassuming. He’s the nicest person.”

Of course, the version of Kavanaugh that Graham put forth is not the one Ford, Deborah Ramirez, Julie Swetnick, or some former classmates at Georgetown Preparatory School and Yale University say they knew. And the American Bar Association has called for a delay of Friday’s committee vote on Kavanaugh so that the FBI can investigate the allegations against him. But to Graham, Kavanaugh’s record in public life, as well as his reputation (“the nicest person”), means he deserves to serve on the highest court in the country.

“I hope you’re on the Supreme Court,” Graham said. “That’s exactly where you should be.”

Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) shouts during his questioning time. Gabriella Demczuk-POOL/AFP/Getty Images

That word, “should,” is key. For Graham, Kavanaugh deserves to be on the Supreme Court. The hearing Thursday wasn’t appropriate scrutiny directed at a man about to get a permanent job making life-or-death decisions for all Americans. It was an effort to take away from Brett Kavanaugh something America owes him.

Key to the threats from both Kavanaugh and Graham was the idea of safety. Someone like Kavanaugh — “the nicest person,” in Graham’s words — should be safe from allegations of sexual misconduct. If he isn’t safe, Kavanaugh and Graham implied, no one else is either.

This is a misrepresentation of how sexual misconduct works. Someone who is nice, who is friendly, even who is ethical in other areas of life, is still capable of committing sexual harassment or assault.

But more than that, the suggestion that Brett Kavanaugh in particular should be safe from sexual assault allegations was a perfect example of privilege at work. The implication of Graham’s remarks was that the American people essentially owed Kavanaugh a Supreme Court seat, and that the allegations by Ford and others were an unjust attempt to take it away from him.

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy points to a page from Brett Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook during Thursday’s hearing. Getty Images

This attitude has come forward in other public defenses of Kavanaugh as well.

“President Trump has nominated a stunningly successful individual,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week. “You’ve watched the fight, you’ve watched the tactics, but here’s what I want to tell you: In the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court.”

In the words of his defenders, Kavanaugh is “stunningly successful.” He’s nice, he’s friendly, he has (or once had) a stamp of approval from the American Bar Association, he has the right background and has held the right jobs. It’s time for him to serve on the Supreme Court. Anything that stands in his way is an outrage.

Brett Kavanaugh is a white man who went to a prestigious prep school and a prestigious university. He was a fraternity brother and a football player. He served as a White House lawyer and a federal judge. Now it’s time for him to be on the Supreme Court. For those in power in American society, that’s just how these things work.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on his nomination be an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Many have already offered wise analysis about Kavanaugh’s anger in Thursday’s hearing, about the power of rage “to bring men together, to reinforce their certainty about what is owed to them as men,” and about the judge’s testimony as a performance for Fox News viewers. And Clarence Thomas gave an angry statement to the Judiciary Committee in 1991 — and was confirmed soon after. But there’s another way to see the anger of Brett Kavanaugh, in particular: as the reaction of a man who had presumed his success assured, and then had to face the possibility that it might be taken away.

Kavanaugh probably doesn’t need to worry. Odds are still good that the Senate will vote to confirm him. But he and his supporters have glimpsed something real about this moment in history: Even the most privileged men in our country now have to answer for sexual misconduct allegations. The allegations may not be enough to change their trajectories, but more than ever, women feel able to speak, even if the man in question is in the running for one of the highest offices in the country.

As we saw in public reactions to Christine Ford’s testimony, those women are still vulnerable to shaming, smearing, and abuse. Unlike Kavanaugh, they’ve never been safe. But in the #MeToo era, more and more Americans are willing to support and believe them.

Someone like Kavanaugh, a nice guy with every one of American society’s advantages, isn’t safe anymore — he’s no longer safe from women who might come forward with their own stories to tell. Maybe what we heard on Thursday wasn’t just anger. Maybe it was fear.

Women gathered to protest on the day that Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford testified on Capitol Hill, on September 27, 2018. Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Original Source -> Brett Kavanaugh is terrified

via The Conservative Brief

[caredogstips]

5 Billionaires Who Attracted Some Monstrously ‘Rich Guy’ Moves

Have you ever seen those interviews where they ask lottery winners what they intend to do with their millions, and their rebuttal is something like, “I’m gonna get the air conditioner in my trailer fastened! ” because they don’t amply grasp the cruel power that is now in their hands?

You know who does comprehend it? Billionaires. Having long get endured with buying ordinary shit, these people know how to take it to the next, dreadful stage …

5

Howard Hughes Bought A Whole TV Station Just To Entertain Him

Howard Hughes was the guy who tried to see how far he could move principles of “wealthy eccentric” into the realm of straight-up mental illness. The explanation is “very, very far.” Earnestly, the guy actually actually needed assist, and he never got it because, well, rich people are just weird like that, right?

Example: One of his greatest affections was watching movies, and in standard Howard Hughes style, he gratified this hobby by spending months at a time in his private cinema, never leaving, peeing into bottles whenever he needed to go( you can use your curiosity when it comes to how he was shitting ). Who the inferno was going to stop him?

Well, in his later years, Hughes moved to Las Vegas and hired a penthouse suite living a life in, merely to find there was just never anything good on TV. So, Hughes solved this trouble in the only way he knew how. He bought a local TV terminal and forced it to cater exclusively to one extremely niche demographic: Howard Hughes.

Hughes dictated the programming schedule of the network, insisted on being given a thorough synopsis of everything that was scheduled to be programme, and obliged them change anything he didn’t like. Should he ever be distracted and miss a TV demonstrate or movie or even a scene, he would call the studio and necessitate that they replay it.

According to Vegas entertainers of the day, a surefire lane were told that Hughes was in municipality was if you switched on the TV and verified that Ice Station Zebra — his favorite movie — was playing. It would broadcast almost every night, sometimes on a loop-the-loop until the early hours of the morning. And you would just know that Hughes was up there somewhere, pooping into an empty can of beans.

4

The Ultra-Rich Love To Treat Their Dogs With Inhuman Luxury

Here’s a question: Do rich bird-dog even know they’re rich? You could try to ask this one, but already she doesn’t look especially interested in her stack of brand-new iPhone 7s TAGEND Wang Jianlin

Also known as wealthy person Jenga .

That’s Coco, and she’s owned by Wang Sicong, the son of one of China’s richest beings, Wang Jianlin. And yes, the phones do reportedly “belong” to the dog. Wang Junior bought his Alaskan malamute eight iPhone 7s the week they came out and posted pics to social media, along with pictures of the dog wearing two Apple watches at the same time.

Wang Jianlin “I’m a hound, and even I know this constitutes me look like a douche.”

Of course, Wang is maybe smart enough to know that pups cannot use Apple makes even if they are willing to, so the most likely explanation here is that he’s merely a massive asshole. But it’s far from the only lesson of obscenely rich people idolizing on their pups in ways that are clear cases of mental projection.

Take Paris Hilton, who had a whole house built for her hounds, because of course she did, she’s Paris Hilton.

Life& Style

It’s a two-story villa with expensive furniture and treetop moldings, which everyone knows are a must for dogs. There’s a chandelier in what Hilton calls “The Doggy Mansion, ” because coin can’t buy you an imagery. And yes, it’s breeze conditioned.

Then there’s Mariah Carey, who in 2014 chartered a private spray for $175,000 just for her dogs, to send them to a $25,000 luxury used, too just for hounds. It’s called The Paw Seasons.

3

A European Billionaire Collects Ancient Trees, Has Them Shipped To His Personal Forest

Here’s the difference between you and the average billionaire: You will go out in sort and respond, “these trees are beautiful! ” The billionaire are as follows that up with, “Now scoop ’em all up and mail that shit to my house! “

Take Bidzina Ivanishvili, the prosperous former “Ministers ” of Georgia( the country, in case you’re thinking when U.S. commonwealths started electing Prime Ministers ), who likes to collect whale, ancient trees. So, he’ll accompany one, and then crews will have to delve them up and float them upright, King Kong-style, along the coast to his private villa which already includes his own cataract and menagerie of exotic animals.

This is much, much harder than we just made it sound. In 2016, Ivanishvili paid to have a 135 -year-old tulip tree barged to his property, though it was so heavy that it nearly effected the craft to drop, so they tried to build a road instead, which retained collapsing. In the end, it took almost a week to drag the massive tree exactly 40 kilometers and plonk it down in his cartoonish trophy forest.

He does insist that he will grow brand-new trees to replenish the space of the ones he’s taken, and that his acquisition of these historic trees is actually saving them( it’s like live animals sanctuary, but for trees !), which so far hasn’t done a great deal to appease the tide of analysi. But what are they going to do? They can’t vote him out again. Checkmate, assholes!

2

Computer Billionaires Love Paying Money To Thwart Driving Laws

A billionaire get a $150 hasten ticket is like the officers fining you precisely one part of the lint that’s currently in your front pocket. The only deterrent is the insight that they’ll have to suppress their grin for the duration of trafficking in human beings stop — such rules are but minor inconveniences.

For example, Bill Gates has an affinity for Porsches, the pearl of his collect being a Porsche 959, one of the rarest and most sought-after cars in the world. But there was a problem: He wasn’t have been able to introduce it to the United States, because it didn’t pass EPA guidelines. Entrances caused an eyebrow and added, “This law irritates me. Change it.”

Thus, his people lobbied the government to overtook the so-called “Show And Display Law, ” which basically just exists to allow really rich people to importation illegal gondolas if they promise they’re simply doing it because they’re really rich. Now Gates can drive around all he likes in his environmentally unsound car, simply because he has a improving full of lawyers that can bend legal reality to his will.

Meanwhile, Bill’s longtime frenemy Steve Jobs engaged in his own loophole-exploiting shenanigans for the sake of forestalling the troublesome laws the rest of us must heed. Jobs absolutely refused to drive a car with a license plate, for intellects not known to anyone but him( it may have been just one of his myriad idiosyncrasies, which also included soaking his feet in the toilet and ingesting exclusively carrots and apples ).

Lucky for Jobs, there was a rule in California that passed brand-new auto proprietors a six-month goodnes span before they were required get a license plate. So, rather than responding to the DMV and the pedestrian drudgery of crowding out some paperwork, Jobs would simply trade in his Mercedes for a new one every six months. The loophole has since been closed, but it won’t get into accomplish until 2019, which means that Jobs is maybe cackling in Rich Man’s Heaven about having gamed the system until the working day he died.

1

Henry Ford Collected Residence That Far-famed Parties Lived In( Even If They Actually Didn’t )

As we supposed, being mega-rich only wholly changes your notion of what can and cannot be purchased. It’s not only the uncommon trees we mentioned earlier — it’s kind of anything. When financier Henry Ford would go see some historic area, he’d pronounce, “I miss it! Shed it on the truck! ” When he’d visit, remark, the house where the Wright Brothers constructed their first aircraft, or the lab where Edison came up with his inventions, Ford would pay to have the whole damn happen endeavoured to a museum he called Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, which still exists today.

And he didn’t take “no” for an answer.

At one point, Ford became enamored with songwriter Stephen Foster who wrote “Way Down Upon The Swanee River, ” “Oh! Susanna, ” and many other public domain hymns you two are forced to play on your record-keeper in first grade.

He paid to have Foster’s childhood home relocated from Pittsburgh to Dearborn, but the mayor of Pittsburgh interjected and told him he bought the wrong mansion. This notion was seconded by Foster’s biographer, John Tasker Howard, who concluded that while Foster’s father had owned the estate where the members of this house stood, there was no evidence that Foster has really lived there, or even seen it before.

Ford travelled to Pittsburgh to make up his own psyche, and apparently decided that the views of a few locals trumped health professionals observes of historians, because he immediately said the house to be the real transaction, had it carried to Greenfield Village, and put a clue out the front that spoke “Birthplace of Stephen Foster.”

One of Foster’s nieces, Evelyn Foster Morneweck, wrote a circular that publically reamed Ford for ignoring overwhelming evidence that his Foster house was a fraud. Nevertheless, Ford decided to keep the home and continue to declare it historically accurate until his death, eternally cementing the notion that when you’re a billionaire, the truth is what you choose it is, damn it.

You can’t applied world prices on the interesting facts Markos posts daily here. Nathan Kamal lives in Oregon and writes there. He co-founded Asymmetry Fiction for all your story necessities. Orrin R, K. is a freelance journalist and pop culture novelist, his locate can be found here and will do the following for your fund . For more garbage of money us plebs will merely never understand, check out 9 ‘Smart’ Concoction Clearly Designed For Stupid Rich People and 9 Everyday Household Items( Merely Rich Idiots Would Buy ) . Subscribe to our YouTube canal, and check out 6 Fancy Rich Person Machine That Forget How Life Works, and other videos you won’t consider on the place !

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