#to be clear: fuck Donald trump if you voted for him I hate you

[asexualasshat]

Reblog for sample size

[caterpillarinacave]

I absolutely cannot fathom how any man with a daughter could vote from trump

[the-firebird69]

Election 2024 results: AP declares Trump the winner after victory in Wisconsin | AP News

The fighting on the bases are indicative of fighting elsewhere and they usually start elsewhere and end up on the basis in the USA and elsewhere. United States bases are all over the world at this time and they're very big and they're fighting over them and Trump's people are losing as they usually do but now they're losing completely and people do not want him in office. It is translated to other areas of life and it goes to the food industry distribution water all sorts of threats Trump is levying are being negated by people and he is being physically removed from a lot of facilities nuclear facilities power generation and it's because of what he's saying and having those people say and trying to do and it is wide scale he's trying to do another coup and he is getting creamed he's also trying to get to his stashes and caches and bja has engaged him at half of those that he has cordoned off and he is crushing Trump and he does not have a chance to defeat VGA because he is ill and thinks he has Dave's computer and oxymoron in the first place and it's worse now because the computer is most likely gone.

Allegiant Air is not a private company and is owned by shareholders and Trump doesn't hv controlling share. And allegiant owns the luxury hotel Trump forced our son to and restricts his movements and food purchases and reduced the time of stay is basically a jackass to him we hit him here pull him out use it. His president attitude and his plan to dominate Earth. On him and his now. And yeh your a fuck up trump by being there having won apparent, yet, they mentioned it several times polling stations were not clean. And charges will be filed today by Harris and Tom and to claim the victory and in many key states. Tons of crimes. Threats and all well taped witnessed they are not going to hand it to you they hv Thier fleets in heavy out armies up. And will hit you shortly too. This a.m. out west and more here. in the east too. They hv several targets yousyvwant to know about. All your bunker complexes to get you back. All your computers to shut you up. And most cities. Strongholds in them. Most all cities yes. And clears bases. Anywhere he goes psuedo empire attacks. Now too.

Thor Freya

And I'm mad hate ppl can't stand it here or anywhere I'm president I win ok.

Trump

Haha your an idiot Trump

Hera Zues

Fine so I die so what ok

Trump

That's the idea still working yup

Mac daddy out then idiot

No I won't you can't mk me and I stand behind my conviction

Trump

You arexa criminal we don't recognize you as our president no we don't. We shall send formal papers your act is atrocious. And move to remove you shortly.

Hera

And begin an aggressive program to reverse the fake results as my son has picked up the assignment and his wife. Savage Oppress

Zues

Goid

Hera

Great. We do this had a team in place but calls me to kick it off great good. Another feather in my cap I needed it yesterday. We do this and will be successful. Yes.

Savage Oppress

Awesome

Hera

Us too yes of course but we see him dig in now what do we hv and we work what a vulgar person this Trump is ok all vulgar

Olympus

We work now. Trump defeated call over calls troops we respond flatten him and other groups are too

Thor Freya

He forced his way in. Joe didn't is a good president this oaf tried to take it by force all night is a dead man

Mac daddy

Oh ok I see I'm dead and no ppl don't try what I do. Why am I dead ok cando it will I see. So I'm president lol elect and try now so I can and will nobody said I had to be in office. Oh

Trump

We said you die as Lincoln but that was cheeseman yes he takes the role over. Loses but you die prior to January 20th seen in Lost in space the movie and dated by the outfit and things on set. Etc

Mac daddy

No no your wrong I hit him he left ok onto the bus hits me oh you can see him ok

Trump

Out then Imbicile no

Your so lame we hit you trrump

Bill lund

Olympus

[sometimesiammybpd]

i'm worried and nervous.

i don't want to make this stupid politically or whatever because tumblr right now is the only space i have that ISN'T that, but i can't keep it in my head. it's almost 5 am for me and today is election day. the big day between trump and harris. and it's so conflicting and depressing and scary and all the emotions. i voted for harris the first chance i got because i obviously am a very left person politically. and no, i don't support her in the slightest. the only good policy that she's made note of that i am in full agreeance with is the legalization / decriminalization of marijuana nationally. whether she actually means to do anything about that or if it's a typical political false promise designed to get her into office but also be something she had no point had any intention of acting upon is to be seen . . . assuming she wins.

somehow, for how bat-shit, off the walls crazy donald trump has become, his cult's feelings about him are the same as they were in 2016 or 2020. and yeah, it's not surprising. but it doesn't make it any less terrifying. the man has promised to be a "dictator on day one." a literal fucking dictator. he's promised to do a mass deportation on day one, regardless of the person's immigration status. half the shit he's promised is out of project 2025 (which legitimately has a part in it about how donald trump should not acknowledge his involvement with the project as it'll be better for his chances of winning). and y'know, being fearful over my friend's lives because they're afab and there's a 50% chance that by the start of next week, it could be determined that they'll lose their right to vote and choose. that their lives will no longer be in their control. and of course i have to mention LGBTQ+ rights too as that applies directly to me. and there's trump's endless threats about arresting or killing anyone who protests him or his regime. tell me all you want that he's not actually going to be able to do these things. go ahead. i won't believe you because he has already proven he will do whatever he feels necessary to get what he wants. look at what happened on january 6th. the "day of love" he refers to all the time. the day of love where people died. where his followers tried to hang his fucking vice president because he wouldn't do something he had no power to do. a day of love that was hyped up for months with trump promising his followers he'd be marching down pennsylvania avenue with them. well, except for the part where he wasn't. where he was on his phone and twitter and watching the rampage happen from the safety of being anywhere else. how this race is an even fucking split is beyond me. the man shits himself at rallies. he's worse off than biden at times mentally and somehow everyone on the right is conveniently not battling an eye.

i fully believe in the idea that within trump's first two years in office (again), they will invoke the 25th, remove him, put vance in his place, and then REALLY start their "reshaping" of the united states. and keep in mind, on the biggest issue that isn't happening in the us, they both are fucking awful and disgusting. kamala plays it neutral while very much still supporting the sending of weapons and aid to israel while trump outright is telling netanyahu to not go for a ceasefire and promising to even encourage him to be more aggressive and dangerous once in office. i think they both shouldn't be allowed in office based on this alone. however, and i hate this take so much but it's unfortunately true, voting for kamala at least ensures that should she win, you'll have the right to protest against her administration and against her policies. trump's made it clear how he'd respond.

all of this shit scares me because i am not even 22 yet and after the next few days, i might lose what's left of my country. i might lose my freedom or be arrested or worse. my friends might be arrested or worse. they'll lose their rights. and because people are so ignorant and stupid that they believe above all else that kamala didn't do enough as vp . . . who is literally just the tiebreaker, basically, they are voting for trump. and because he'll get as racist as possible, the reasoning is also that she is choosing to be black when she isn't, she isn't allowed to run because she's not a real citizen, and more. i want to live to see this country survive. i don't want donald trump in office, but it all feels so fucking hopeless. it's really hard to keep myself calm knowing that one option would turn the united states into a modern day nazi germany (trump wanted hitler's generals after all).

if you're as stressed as i am, get off social media for the day. stay away from the news and do whatever is your favorite hobbies or activities. put yourself in your own world where for even just a little, none of this has to matter. don't stress about where the polls are at and how close it is. the polls cannot tell you anything at this point other than that it's that close. everything else is as estimate or a guess.

*puts hand out* grab my hand. we'll tackle this together. because election season as a whole is a bitch. but election day is worse. so much worse. i got adventure time on the tv and a bong with a shitload of weed. we'll get through it :)

[psychotrope777]

trump opinions

i have a lot of complicated feelings abt donald trump for one he is an objectively evil man and i want to make my stance clear on him first and foremost hes a racist, xenophobic, imperialist, capitalist pedophile & serial rapist; i am NOT a centrist i dont want anyone walking away from this post taking away anything irt my feelings on him besides that i think time in alcatraz would be too lenient a punishment for him i think he needs to be slathered in peanut butter and thrown in a ring full of starving dogs and the footage of him being literally torn limb from limb broadcast on national tv, i think what he did to those girls on little saint james is enough to warrant him being executed by firing squad and knowing that they saw him not only getting away scot free but also being president of the fucking united states in spite of it because hes rich and white makes me hope he gets an inoperable cancer in his brain.

i think the fact that he was elected in and of itself, the fact that the electoral college (infernal invention to begin with) overrode a majority vote in front of the entire country in favor of literally one of the most hated men in modern times, should have pushed democrats way left but that would have required them challenging their beliefs about america. also the average us president is a racist, xenophobic, imperialist, capitalist pedophile & serial rapist and literally the only difference between trump and any of the other fucking american figureheads is his willingness to voice his opinions. it pisses me off that trump has become a sort of boogeyman not because he isnt evil but because hes like almost this cartoonish caricature of american policy that democrats now have someone to posit as the Big Bad and make their own incredibly racist capitalist warlords look "morally upstanding" in comparison, the fact that im still seeing people insist you vote for biden makes me want to scrape my face off on the tar. it doesnt matter to them that biden's politics are not meaningfully different from trump's, it doesnt matter that obama's presidency (under which biden was VP) laid the groundwork for trump's aggressive and bloody immigration policies and that obama and previous presidents are responsible for not codifying the laws that the trump administration would later overturn, it doesnt matter that biden is actively funding an alt-right ethnostate's imperial crusade and genocide of the indigenous people of the levant, it doesnt matter that biden has his own library of sexual abuse allegations under his belt and that he was a segregationist in recent memory. because democrats are not leftists, they dont give a fuck about progress, they care about saving face for the state, their modus operandi is dodging threats to the status quo and maintaining enough plausible deniability that any american president can be falsely posited as the face of empowerment and social progress while ordering drone strikes and maintaining military bases in overseas countries. biden smiles for the camera and shakes hands the way hes supposed to its all a fucking puppet show and no one gives a fuck as long as they feel like the peace is being kept. got away from me a little bit here but like i feel like donald trump's election peeled the facade back on what a fucking evil and rotten country america is and maybe thats part of the reason he's become this mythical figure to democrats despite not really being meaningfully different from any other president in terms of his beliefs and policies

again it lkinda got away from trump for a second but his cult following is another thing. like yes trump is in his own right a cult leader but it's like... he's not a bill gothard. he's not a joseph smith. he's not a jim jones. because donald trump is a very obviously unintelligent man and hes also either senile or the years of cocaine use and medical cocktails have fucked up his brain to the point of being barely functional. and i mean its not like there havent been cult leaders or fundamentalist juggernauts that were incredibly stupid or insane. look at mark driscoll or kenneth copeland or fuck honestly even people like charles manson or roch theriault. but trump lacks charm. do you know what i mean? he lacks grace or prose. hes not well spoken he can barely string together a fucking coherent sentence. i believe the only reason hes gained the following he has is because of the power afforded to men like him by our society. i mean fuck even elon musk has a similar thing going on despite the fact he is also observably unintelligent and has an incredibly unlikeable personality. donald trump grew like a weed out of the poison soil of reagan-era economics and we all know money is power in america. honestly i cant even believe he was able to like, apply to run for president. there's not a point where you're like, considered psychologically unfit to hold a position of power? can literally anyone be president? can i be president? fucks sake didnt jim bob duggar run for president... what a fucking nightmare

[rockyavelli]

What a lot of people are forgetting when they make this argument is that Trump isn’t just trying to get control, he’s trying to stay in control.

It is his plan to dismantle or reorganize every government bureaucracy institution that can limit his power. And the ones he can’t get rid of he will fill with people who are loyal to him not the country. He has stated that is his plan in very clear terms.

He wants to remove limits to presidential power, up to and including term limits. Many people forget that those limits are not written into the constitution so they would not require a 2/3rds majority to remove.

We know because of what happened on January 6th he is more than willing to insight policial violence to stay in power and is using claims of unregistered voters to put greater limits and control on voting. Voter suppression is the only way republicans can win but unfortunately they are incredibly practiced at suppressing voters, they have been doing it for years.

Donald Trump will do everything in his power to remove our ability to make any positive change in the future. Donald Trump will do everything in his power to turn America into a dictatorship. The truly terrifying thing is how little barriers there are to keep him from doing exactly that.

I understand the cynicism. I really and truly do given that Joe Biden is also a colossal piece of shit. But the idea that they are at all the same level of bad for the FUTURE OF THE WORLD is completely false. I understand that the lot of the people already in awful situations will not be better if Joe Biden wins, but at least the man will not be actively trying to remove our ability to make positive change in the future with our votes.

Donald Trump knows that by 2028 millennials and genz will make up the majority of the voting population, and he is terrified of that and will absolutely do everything he is politically able to do to suppress our votes.

Please understand that now more than ever our local elections matter. Because our local elected officials have the ability to stand up for the rights of their constituents and if you don’t pay attention to these positions they WILL be filled by Trump loyalist republicans because young people are less likely to participate in local elections.

That being said. Please, for the love of all that is good in this world, look into what I have described because policial scientists have been warning us since 2020 that this is the trajectory the Republican Party is on and that this is their end goal.

I hate Joe Biden, I really fucking do, but please, we cannot make historically significant decisions in a vacuum where none of what I said matters because it absolutely does.

This isn’t just about what they talk about on the news, this isn’t about me being “uncomfortable” seeing the shit Donald Trump is doing. This is about the very real and very possible plan the republicans have to eventually turn America into a 1 party system through extreme voter suppression.

I do not care if I get hate for saying this, because people need to hear this and think about it.

I want to say in very clear terms I am not a democrat who is fear mongering. I’m a socialist who is terrified how many people are missing the big picture of the republican plan and how genuinely close they are to achieving it.

I don't think people really understand that even if Biden wins (I'm telling you though, he's definitely not going to. I'm certain of this. Regardless of what you say about "psyops". He would have lost even before this) the people who will be most affected by BOTH Trump and Biden will still have to live their lives nearly the exact same way. The difference is that you just won't hear about it every second of every day if Biden were to win.

Like I'm not trying to be defeatist or seem hopeless, I just genuinely don't understand how you see a difference between the two. How has the past few months not completely obliterated any doubts you had about the intentions of the democratic party. There is no way you can see what's happening on a world scale and think "well it could be worse." What? Do you hear yourself? There is a whole economic and political system that thrives on subjugating and erasing the most vulnerable people in South West Asia, and Africa, and just all around. And they're not shy about it! They willingly and brazenly participate in it!

Are we voting... for what. Like honestly what are we voting for at this point. Whether or not CNN blasts 24 hours of Trump news? Whether or not our guy knows how to be polite while he massacres? What even is the point of any of this if it leads to so much destruction.

[mrs-nate-humphrey]

So not to be dramatic, but if you could get a degree in discourse-ology, the topic of my master’s thesis would definitely be “Which political candidates did the characters of the CW’s Gossip Girl (2007-2012) support?” I’m doing this in order from most to least obvious, and considering both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

[ little ivy interjection here: i haven’t changed ANYTHING, except adding a screencap of the title + the submission, because that made me laugh & more people deserve to see it, and putting this under a read more because that’s how i generally try & organise stuff on this blog. so this submission is exactly as it was when i received it! also while we’re at it, anon, this MADE my day.]

Blair Waldorf: “Hillary Clinton is one of my role models. I do not break treaties, you ass!” (04x13) There’s no question that Blair would go hard for Hillary in 2016, she praised her on multiple occasions throughout the series. Blair’s a classic American neoliberal, third wave Democrat-type: she’s decently progressive when it comes to social policies, and would be decidedly supportive of causes like gay marriage, racial equity, and women’s reproductive rights, but she’s still very much in favor of maintaining the status quo when it comes to capitalism and the hegemonic structure of power that, lets face it, heavily favors her own class interests. To use the American healthcare system as an example: Blair would have been all for the Affordable Care Act, and is largely supportive of the idea of creating a public option - but single payer, nationalized health care? It just wouldn't work in a country like the United States for “X” reason (although the real reason, deep down, is that she doesn’t want to see her tax rate go up in any meaningful way). So she’s thoroughly for Clinton in both the 2016 primaries and the general election, she maybe even comes out with a line of high-end “I’m With Her” merchandise if she’s still CEO of Waldorf Designs, and is personally heartbroken when Clinton loses.

Flash forward to the 2020 primaries. Blairhates Donald Trump, like emotionally, viscerally hates him - his misogyny, his incompetence, and his blatant tackiness are a direct repudiation of her beliefs, and the fact that he’s representing Manhattan society and the Upper East Side to the world in such a godawful way is frankly embarrassing. So in a certain sense, her strategy, like frankly many Americans at the time going into the 2020 Democratic primaries is, “Which one of these candidates has the greatest chance at beating Donald Trump?” I see Blair being rather conflicted at first, but ultimately going for either Amy Klobuchar or Kamala Harris. She has a certain admiration for Elizabeth Warren given her professional background, but her policies are a bit too progressive for someone like Blair. Buttigeg is fine, but not especially thrilling. Biden, quite frankly, doesn’t seem like he has any real chance at winning, although I think he’d be Blair’s third choice after Harris and Klobuchar. I can see her leaning more towards Harris ultimately - although, after the “Amy Klobuchar throws staplers at her interns!!” rumors start spreading, Blair cannot help but, at a personal level, kind of respect her for that. When Biden unexpectedly takes South Carolina and then the Democratic nomination, Blair is a bit disappointed, but not overly so, and quickly marshals her financial resources into supporting and fundraising for him for the remainder of the election. At least it’s not Sanders - or Bloomberg. As a New Yorker, of course Blair’s opinion is “Fuck Michael Bloomberg”.

Chuck Bass: Now here’s where it gets interesting. Chuck, as you said, isn’t stupid - there’s no way he falls for the “build the wall” crap or any of Trump’s rhetoric, he knows it’s a bullshit farce and sees right through it. But you know what he definitely is? Deeply greedy and deeply selfish. I’m hardly the first person to point this out, but Chuck Bass is, in many ways, the fictional equivalent of the Donald Trumps and Michael Bloombergs and Brett Kavanaughs of the world - new money billionaire who inherited his wealth from his father working in the real estate industry, who despite his lack of business acumen and deeply problematic history with women, has managed to coast through life failing upwards with absolutely no social or legal accountability? I mean, back in 2010, Forbes Magazine actually did a real interview with the fictional Chuck Bass in which they outright compare him to Donald Trump. I couldn’t tell you if the Gossip Girl writers meant to write Chuck as their Trump analogue - I mean, they did invite Jared and Ivanka onto the show, after all - but the parallels are just too strong to ignore. All of which is to say, not only did Chuck Bass vote for Donald Trump, he held exclusive political fundraisers for him and was probably a substantial donor to his campaign. Now, did Chuck distance himself publicly over time as the political climate became increasingly caustic and public sentiment towards Trump plummeted even further? Perhaps, perhaps not. It really depends on if the board of Bass Industries felt like being connected to Trump was a liability or an asset - but privately, I imagine Chuck once again voted for him in 2020, because the one policy Donald Trump did effectively execute during his tenure in office was massive tax cuts for billionaires, and for someone like Chuck Bass, that’s the only political policy that really matters. He wouldn’t wear a red hat and wouldn’t be caught dead within sniffing distance of a MAGA rally and the hoi polloi, but dude is basically the image of what the kind of rich conservatives backing the Trump administration for personal gain look like. On the off chance that the distastefulness of it all got to be a little much for even Chuck post-2016, perhaps he might switch his vote to Bloomberg. But I highly doubt Chuck would be politically invested in anything other than his own wallet to such an extent that he wouldn’t vote for Trump, no matter how much it would no doubt completely infuriate Blair.

Dan Humphrey: As the unofficial king of the hipsters, Dan has been a Sanders supporter since before it was cool. Seriously, Bernie Sanders appeals to Dan intrinsically on every level - his policies, his rhetoric, even his aesthetic - the rumpled old man with wild hair wearing mittens and railing against the upper class is the sort of thing that’s basically political catnip for someone like Dan Humphrey. Not only would Dan vote for Sanders in both the 2016 and 2020 primaries, he’d go out and be one of the celebrities campaigning for him. This would definitely lead to him butting heads with Blair, and she would no doubt call him out on supporting someone like Sanders when Dan himself is now a millionaire, who made his money from writing stories about the upper class. The fact that in 2017 he apparently gets married to Serena, a billionaire heiress, and may or may not have been engaged to her back in 2016 when the Democratic primaries were happening might cause him a bit of cognitive dissonance, but really, just because he’s climbed up the socio-economic ladder now doesn’t mean his values have really changed, have they? (Debatable.) In any case, in both the 2016 and 2020 general elections, Dan would definitely vote for Clinton and Biden respectively - although he’d be significantly more disgruntled about it than Blair would be switching from Harris to Biden. I don’t think Dan would be a “Bernie bro” in the way that term is used, but he’d definitely chafe against Clinton’s past policy decisions, and would probably make some snippy Tweets about her during the election. Nevertheless, once it became clear that Trump was going to be the Republican nominee and was a serious threat, I think Dan would change his tone and start encouraging his fans and followers to vote for Clinton. Likewise, in 2020, Dan would probably become one of the Sanders supporters doing outreach for Biden, having become more politically pragmatic following the experience of living under the Trump administration.

Vanessa Abrams: Much like Dan, Vanessa is a progressive, although unlike Dan, Vanessa’s activism is more focused around specific issues and less around specific politicians. I can see Dan and Vanessa being in roughly the same place in 2016, and given that the only real choices were between Sanders and Clinton in the primaries (RIP to Martin O'Malley), Vanessa would no doubt go for Sanders. Whereas Dan might campaign for Sanders directly however, Vanessa would instead focus her time and resources around advocacy for specific causes that are important to her, like climate change and racial justice, and would probably use her platform as a filmmaker and documentarian to advance those causes. I could very much see her getting involved with movements like Black Lives Matter and organizations like the Sunrise Movement, and taking part in protests, marches, and sit-ins. When the 2020 Democratic primaries come around, I could see her possibly switching from Sanders to Warren for a while (and Dan would definitely argue with her about it if she did), but I can also see her switching back to Sanders after Warren amended her support for single-payer, “Medicare for All”. She’d definitely vote for Clinton and Biden in the generals, but not enthusiastically.

Nate Archibald: For someone whose family business is politics and who, in 2017, is apparently a candidate in the New York City mayoral election, Nate seems to be rather removed from politics. As Vanessa puts it in 02x19, “The only thing Nate’s ever voted for is American Idol.” Still, as Editor-in-Chief of The Spectator, Nate kind of has to have an opinion, and in that respect, I see him gravitating towards the type of center-left “establishment” candidates that he and his family would no doubt have close ties with. In the Gossip Girl universe, the Vanderbilts are portrayed as being a lot like the Kennedys, and I think Nate’s policies as a mayoral candidate would really reflect that. In 2016, he would vote for Hillary Clinton in both the primaries and the generals without much of a second thought - after all, she’s the obvious choice, and there’s no way a candidate like Donald Trump could actually beat her, right? Actually, optimistically, maybe that’s why Nate decides to jump into the mayoral race in 2017 - previously, he had been for all intents and purposes politically apathetic, but seeing someone as genuinely vile as Donald Trump ascend to the office of the presidency stirs him out of that apathy, and he wants to make a positive difference in the only way an incredibly privileged white man from a politically prominent family knows how. So he runs as a Kennedy-esque center left candidate, further left of someone like Hillary Clinton, but more moderate than someone like Elizabeth Warren - sort of like Kamala Harris, now that I think about it. I have no idea if he would actually be able to beat Bill de Blasio given the major incumbency advantage de Blasio would have, but who knows. Come the 2020 Democratic primaries, I think Nate would probably just vote for whoever he believed was most likely to beat Donald Trump. I don’t see him having any sort of clear preference - maybe he would gravitate towards Biden on the basis of him being the most established candidate, or maybe he would gravitate towards Harris on the basis of her campaigning as the “moderate progressive” candidate. I could also seeing him liking Andrew Yang, come to think of it. In any case, he would most definitely support Joe Biden in the generals. How involved he’d be in supporting him really depends on whether or not Nate actually gets elected to mayor - if he was the mayor, he’d definitely endorse him and probably donate to him, but I think he’d be too wrapped up in his own political responsibilities to really do much more than that. If, however, he lost the election and was still the Editor-in-Chief of The Spectator, I can see Nate getting more involved alongside the rest of his family, officially endorsing him in The Spectator, hosting political fundraisers for him, and maybe even campaigning for him. The Vanderbilts in the Gossip Girl universe (I have no idea what the family’s actual political beliefs are in real life) definitely seem to me like they’d be Biden supporters, and I imagine they’d use their political clout to try and get Biden in, and more importantly, Trump out.

Serena van der Woodsen: Oh Serena. Look, she knows it’s important, okay? It’s just, she’s been really busy lately, and she doesn’t really like to think about politics, and hey, remember that fundraiser she did with her mom for last month’s philanthropic cause du jour? Serena’s a Democrat, vaguely, but if you tried to really pin her down on her political beliefs she’d probably just change the topic. So who does she vote for in 2016? The truth is, she doesn’t. Not in the primaries, not in the general, not at all. She meant to, okay, Blair’s definitely been pestering her to send in her mail-in-ballot for weeks, but she just got distracted and forgot. Serena really strikes me as the kind of person who doesn’t enjoy thinking or talking about politics, save for perhaps a few specific issues, and she has a sense that everything will work itself out eventually and she doesn’t really need to participate. And then the 2016 election happens, and holy shit, she didn’t vote. Blair and Dan might have spent early 2016 bickering with each other over Clinton versus Sanders, but the one thing they can definitely agree on is “What the fuck, Serena?!?!” They both reminded her like, a million times, how could she possibly forget?! Serena feels really bad about it - she didn’t think it was such a big deal, she didn’t think Donald Trump could actually win! - and so she starts overcompensating whenever the topic of politics comes up, maybe even joins Vanessa at a few protests and marches, even though she’s still sort of clueless about the actual issues at hand. She does vote in the 2018 midterms, although only in the general election - straight blue ticket, all the way down. She takes a picture of herself at the voting booth wearing an “I Voted!” sticker and posts it on Instagram, tagging both Dan and Blair in the post (who already voted weeks ago using mail-in ballots, but it’s the thought that counts). Flash forward to 2020, and she really needs to make a decision about who to vote for in the primaries… but there’s just so many choices. Everything seems so scary and stressful and real in a way now that it didn’t back in 2016, and she can’t just ignore it and assume things will work out for the best like she did back then. So who does she vote for? Well, Serena always wins, so she votes for Biden. Conspiratorially, both Dan and Blair privately wonder if her voting for Biden isn’t on some cosmic level the reason for his unexpected victory, even if they know there’s no logical way that’s possible, right? But it would be such a Serena thing to do… In any case, Serena’s just happy her candidate won, and would probably host political fundraisers for him with her mom’s circle of philanthropic friends. Assuming she and Dan are still married at this point, she offers to help him do political outreach to Sanders supporters to get them to vote for Biden, which he sweetly dissuades her from given that most Sanders supporters would probably dislike her on principle.

So that’s how, in my opinion, the main cast would vote, ordered roughly in how confident I am about that analysis. You could make the argument that perhaps some characters would vote or act differently based on whether or not they’re dating or married at the time - like, would Chuck openly fundraise for Trump when Blair is a dyed-in-the-wool Clinton supporter if they’re married? (He totally would.) But I tried to consider them purely on the merits of their personalities and values, and not on the particularities of their situations at the time (with the exception of Nate, just because him being in office or not would obviously make a huge difference in regards to how politically involved he’s going to be).

I wish I put as much effort into my actual university essays as I did on Gossip Girl political analysis.

[gay-jesus-probably]

I’m not American so maybe I’m not looking at this from the same perspective, but like. Voting is literally the bare minimum. Don’t get me wrong, I hate Biden too, but we’re a bit beyond that point now. You’re either going to spend the next four years under President Biden or President Trump 2: Electric Boogaloo. That should not be a difficult decision. There are many, many things that you can and should say about Biden and Harris, but at least they give one iota of a fuck about democracy.

Literally nobody is saying you should vote and then kick back and let our lord and saviour Joe Biden fix everything. They’re saying you should vote for Biden, and then continue with the protests and petitions and activism, because there’s actually a chance that Biden will be held accountable for his actions. Trump, not so much.

The fact that this is even an argument says a lot about America’s culture of toxic individuality and puritanism. Joe Biden will be a better president than Donald Trump, and we’ve already seen literally all the evidence we need to prove that. Y’all remember 2016? Y’know how in the middle of that clusterfuck of an election we were joking about wanting Obama and Biden to stay for a third term, and it was just meme material because literally everybody knew that Obama and Biden would be stepping down without any problems. Well, does anybody genuinely believe that Donald Trump is going to leave the White House of his own free will? Because if Trump had lost the election in 2016, we all knew there was no chance in hell he’d give a concession speech. And if he loses the election in 2020, it’s pretty clear he will refuse to step down. And god help us all if he does get a second term, I really fucking doubt Trump’s going to pack up and go home in 2024.

So yes, Joe Biden will be a better president than Donald Trump. Biden could start every day by drop kicking puppies into woodchippers and bathing in orphan blood and he’d probably still be better than Trump. Because Biden’s a piece of shit, but he’s a piece of shit that’s not going to try and declare himself Dictator For Life. And he’s not going to try and get fucking ad revenue out of the Oval Office. And he won’t go golfing every weekend at his own resorts and force the Secret Service to pay him thousands of dollars to follow him onto said golf courses. And he won’t give all his children cabinet positions or make his son in law one of the most important people in the country.

You’ve had four years to get over yourselves and accept that the democrat candidate in 2020 would inevitably suck shit. but still be better than the alternative. It’s 2020, Biden sucks shit, but he’s still better than Trump. Grow the fuck up and vote for him. Because if Trump wins in 2020, you might not get to vote at all in 2024.

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

IF Joe Biden wins, and IF Donald Trump concedes, and IF there’s a peaceful transition of power, there’s going to be a corrupt bargain behind it.  The most likely scenarios are that Trump will pardon himself, or he’ll resign on January 20th at 11:59 and have Pence pardon him in his 1 minute in office.  Less likely but possible, Trump convinces Biden to pardon him as part of his “exit package.”  I’ll go quietly if you pardon me, I’ll go full nuclear if you don’t.  Even less likely than that, our friend Donny takes a page out of Snowden’s book*, and takes a permanent vacation to a country that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States.  It would almost certainly be daddy Putin’s Russia, but I wouldn’t rule out Saudi Arabia, North Korea, or maybe even China (the animosity between Trump and Xi is a joke, nothing but a dick measuring context between two authoritarian brinkmen; remember, in 2017 we thought Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un hated each other, until they didn’t.  He and Xi will reconcile when it suits them personally, mark my words).

These scenarios rely on a lot of ifs.  What I actually believe is gonna happen is that Trump will win the electoral college and lose the popular vote, again, and congressional Democrats will whine about it and do nothing all the way to January 20th.  They’ll probably keep the House, but that doesn’t mean anything anymore because their only real power was subpoenas, and Trump has decided that the president doesn’t have to obey them anymore; the real power comes from the Senate, which has to confirm any and all cabinet and judicial appointments, though this too is up in the air because if the Democrats tried to hold his appointments hostage like the Republicans did to Obama, Trump would just make recess appointments.  Or more likely than that, he would just continue writing executive orders to sidestep Congress, which would be legally binding until Congress or the Supreme Court overturned it.

I don’t see any universe where this man faces consequences for anything.  Even if Biden wins AND Trump gets charged for any number of his federal, state, or local crimes, he’ll never go to prison; no judge in the country is going to sentence a former president to anything but time served, a halfhearted slap on the wrist at best.  If a judge tried, Trump’s lawyers would appeal it all the way up to the Supreme Court, which would rule 6-3 in his favor, possibly even 7-2, or hell, it could be a unanimous ruling, because the liberal justices wouldn’t want to appear “political.”  They’d come up with some BS explanation about precedent or impropriety, something about “healing,” “moral fabric,” “retribution,” blah-dee-fucking-blah, acquittal, move onto the next case.

There are no legal means to “punish the bad guys,” and I definitely DON’T condone the use of, shall we say, “extralegal” means.  Besides, one person alone couldn’t change anything, it would take the organization and coordination of a large number of people in cities all over the country, fueled by the systemic injustice and divisive rhetoric that the bad guys use to remain in power.  Why, if such an undertaking were possible, I think we would have seen some signs of civil unrest this summer, signs that would only be amplified by the controversial outcome of another disproportional election (the third in 20 years).

Rome didn’t fall in a day.

*I want to be clear that I am not equating Edward Snowden with Donald Trump; Snowden is an American hero and Biden should issue him a full pardon if he becomes president, I’m just saying that Trump will probably have the same idea to leave American jurisdiction

[cobieeliseforsh]

I'm getting pretty annoyed with the amount of bullshit in the media right now. I just read an article about the "antisemitic" conspiracy theory Qanon. Calling Qanon antisemitic is like calling the KKK a group opposed to the career of Will Smith - technically true, but clearly a small subsection of a greater whole.

So, to remedy this...

COBIE'S FRUSTRATED GUIDE TO QANON FROM SOMEONE WHO LOVES CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND WISHES THIS ONE WOULD FUCK OFF BECAUSE IT IS BORING AS SHIT BUT NOT FIZZING WITH ENERGY, EVEN ON A MOLECULAR LEVEL, BECAUSE IT IS A DUMB AND LAZY REHASH FROM THE 80S OR EARLIER!

PART 1: DA FUCQ IS QANON?

Qanon is a grooming organisation for the Christian Far Right Death Cult that has held the Republican party in its sweaty hands since the ascent of Reagan in the 1980s. They believe in some bullshit I won't reprint here because I have no intention of spreading their ideology, but if you've heard of the Satanic panic, this is Satanic Panic 2: Now With Pizza!

Qanon is, by definition of their own supporters attacks on Muslim terrorism, a terrorist organisation. And, though it seems impossible, they're stupidier than ISIS ever were, because at least there was some twisted logic behind ISIS: poor young men fighting revolutionary wars against what they see as corrupt and immoral authorities and ideologies is nothing new. Qanon is literally the powerful declaring war on those without power out of fear that those without power (Satanists) live only to physically abuse their ugly, fat, prejudiced, stupid children. Despite the statistically most likely people to abuse them being them themselves, and there being plenty of evidence that many of these hypocrites have done that in the past (numerically many - one thing I believe Qanon followers on is that the majority are gullible Maud Flanders types, so statistically it won't be that many).

Donald Trump supports them over the "violent" Antifa (Antifa haven't killed anyone since 1993 (and that was a suicide), aren't actually an organisation, and are against facism, which Trump also claims to be against), despite Qanon followers carrying and firing weapons regularly, having shot up a pizza place in a terrorist act, refusing to wear masks, and other acts of violence designed to terrorise people.

PART 2 WHO DO THEY HATE?

Um... like, 98% of people.

Qanon is primarily an Apocalyptic Christian Far Right Death Cult. They believe in what they call SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse) which happens at such a low frequency as to make it as serious a problem as being invaded by pookas. You might find anecdotal evidence here and there, but the majority of cases are hearsay spread by people who weren't there who were a part of or raised by people who were a part of the Satanic Panic. If you hear about it, it's likely bullshit. Just look at the West Memphis 3: accused of Satanic Ritual Abuse, they were sent to prison for wearing black clothes and being teenagers without any evidence. Now, whoever killed those boys is still loose, because Qanon, like all right-wing groups, is about being obeyed, not about justice.

So, with Satanic Ritual Abuse being fucking vapour, they can accuse ANYONE. And if there is no evidence, they cry COVER UP. There is no way, at all, to prove this mindset is wrong as it always self corrects, because being religious in origin, it is driven by BELIEF, not evidence.

So, whoever they believe is evil, is, as far as their reality tunnel goes.

Muslims? Evil child abusers. "But there is no evidence of that. In fact, the Muslim community is actually very protective of their children and other children. They're amongst the kindest people you can meet, even if their political leaders in their own countries are jerks." Well, says Qanon, that's because their community covers up the abuse. There wouldn't be any evidence. But my cousin went to school with a girl who was groomed by a Muslim. It's clear it is something all Muslims do. "But that's stupid. That's like saying that because Ted Bundy, a heterosexual white Republican, murdered loads of women, all heterosexual white Republicans want to murder women!" Now, says Qanon, you are just being silly. Besides, I believe Muslims are bad and Republicans aren't. You can't question my beliefs.

But we can, and we should.

Qanon followers use this vague structure to create complex webs that link up various conspiracy theories, but they aren't a complex web. They're just a list of petty grievances they have from living in their own personal echo chamber.

They hate women, they hate girls, they hate boys who don't conform to their expectations, they hate men who vote left-wing, they hate gay people, bi people, really anyone who isn't heterosexual, they definitely hate trans people (see: trans people want to use bathrooms to abuse children as merely an extension of the Satanic Ritual Abuse claims), they hate people with coloured hair, bright clothes, they hate Jewish people, they hate Muslims, they hate anyone from a fringe religion that doesn't look right, they hate foreigners, black and brown people... anyone they define as different. And to back this up, they claim to be "the majority" being dictated to be a "minority" - they aren't. They're a minority of gobby cunts, a Karen of Nazis (Karen being the best collective noun to describe these childish crybabies who were so desperate to remain in a state of childlike innocence they embraced both religion and then keep insisting their imaginary friend, Jesus, is following them everywhere, like a psychotic stalker ghost).

PART 3 WHERE DOES THEIR BULLSHIT COME FROM?

This is probably the most important part. Not what they believe, but where these ideas come from, and why they aren't new.

Qanon is a mixture of young-and-edgy YouTube/8chan influencer, white supremacist religious manipulation, pro-Capitalist Protestant religious "life is shit, embrace misery" ideology, pedophile hysteria, and "we hate the idea people have rights because we're power mad, but we're going to frame this as a backlash, normal people making their voices heard, a culture war, or whatever else we can rebrand PREJUDICE because even we don't want to admit we are bigots".

So, first of all, the angry white online teenagers: have always existed, will always exist. Their parents don't give a shit about them unless they cause trouble. So, they learn quickly that the best way to get attention is to cause trouble, which leads to kinship with other troubkemakers, forming an echo chamber of escalating troublemaking. But they're also angry, and often poor (in their eyes, or in actuality), so they're drawn to outrage, and like causing it. They're attracted to movements like this because they believe it's a chance to get some attention, someone to notice them.

And who notices them? White supremacists are always on the lookout for recruits. They feed their need for outrage and attention by misrepresenting everything. They take puff-piece news articles and shoddy journalism and further twist them into movements around positions that have no basis in reality. Vaccines? Designed to hurt you. "Uhhh, no," you say. "That's literally the opposite of what a vaccine does." I don't believe that, they say, and you can't question my beliefs. BLM? Terrorism. "No, they just want to not be shot." No they don't, they want to take over and put the Jews in power, and you can't question my beliefs! "You have no evidence!" COVER UP! they scream.

So it goes, so it goes.

Meanwhile, the Protestan work ethic of, "If you didn't suffer, you don't deserve it," goes on and on. They believe that shit things just happen, you can't stop them. Capitalism is founded on this very, very relugious principle: work should be pain for it to have value. This justifies promoting assholes, and making things difficult. But it also promotes the idea that you can't do anything to combat inequality, as that is natural, and you can't do anything to stop bad things happening, they always will, so why try? This lends Qanon a specific pattern: complain, do nothing, complain nothing is being done, still do nothing, repeat. It's wrong to intervene, you see. This allows them to say racism is bad, but God wants us to suffer so we deserve phony-heaven, a paradise they think is built on bricks of human misery... does that sound glorious to you? And if you have something, clearly you did suffer to get it, and so you are worthy, which is why Trump is a hero to them and they believe his every utterance of verbal diarrhea about him being persecuted (to be fair, he is, but he deserves it because he's lazy and incompetent).

Pedophile hysteria is also generally religiously motivated. Children should be protected, but they are not innocent angels. I've worked with children. Some are nice, some are sneaky, some are violent bullies, and so on. The one thing that unites all children is that they are ignorant. That's why we send them to school. And there are people who want to prey on children. The world we usually use to describe those who most often hurt, abuse and damage children is, "family". Promoting the idea of gangs of rampaging pedophiles snatching children into vans and harming them in shadowy rooms, or murdering them in some Satanic ritual, is laughable compared to the epidemic of children being harmed by those parents terrified the pedophiles are out there. Such fear motivates them to do untold harm to children, restricting their freedoms and their growth, teaching them that all sex is bad so they never enjoy it, forcing them to be things they aren't, and turning a blind eye to obvious abuse because those doing it are not the model of abuse being put out by the press and Internet communities. In that last way, Qanon is a driver of child abuse: it actively encourages Apocalyptic Christian Far Right Death Cult members to nit even ask the obvious question: if Epstein was abusing kids, and Epstein was hanging out with Trump, was Trump maybe involved in some way?

And then there is just the prejudiced crowd, most notably the American-exceptionalism delusional whack jobs. Let me be clear, all forms of exceptionalism are prejudiced, as they suggest that those who are exceptional are better and mire deserving than others, and the real world does not contain such hierarchies, just stuff that happens until it stops happening. A monkey may be the alpha, but one day they won't be. It's not a hierarchy, it's just a thing that happens that we project a power structure onto. Who knows what monkey culture is like? Maybe to them deference is more honourable and respected than being in charge. No-one has asked monkeys for their views of ideology or power structures.

This often manifests itself in ideas of, "We shouldn't be ashamed!" and that movements they don't like are, "Against us!" Well, if you're setting out to hurt people because you believe you are better than them, you should be ashamed. That queer Pakistani girl you keep out of college could have been the one to cure cancer! She might have had the unique perspective to make that breakthrough. And, yes, some of us are against Qanon, because Qanon is hurting people. That is the point of the movement: to harm its enemies, by denial if freedom all the way up to outright murder. It isn't a Pride parade or BLM demanding equality and an end to deaths, its a hate movement driven by a desire to punch down, and ultimately perpetuate the very system that isn't even working for those who follow its own ideology.

It's based on fear of the new, even if that new place is better than the old one, change can be scary. They think equality will hurt them, the way collective bargaining would hurt them. But we don't live in a system where resources are so finite you have to do without, we live in a system where resources are finite but we throw away an excess because capitalism couldn't make rich people richer by giving it to those who need it, so they dispose of it and introduce scarcity to drive up the cost. Working together would force them to stop doing that, which is why movements like this exist: to perpetuate a form of exceptionalism more like a cult, where only the leaders reap the rewards.

PART 4 WHAT IS THE END GOAL OF QANON?

It doesn't have one.

Qanon is a right-wing movement. Right-wing movements are about winning arguments now, and then feeling smug, even when the damage is undone later. It's about a sense of self-satisfaction, and not anything else.

Plus, Qanon has so many stake-holders who hate each other that the movement will eventually descend into cannibalism as all these things do.

Finally, being primarily religious in its design, it won't take long for many religious types to realise Q is kind if a God-like figure, a false idol, and when that happens, plenty if their leaders will become worried that their followers are so focused on Q they might "stray from the path" of donating all their money to their church.

Unless it turns out that Q is Q from Star Trek, in which case their end goal is to test Jean-Luc Picard.

PART 5 SHOULD WE FEAR QANON?

Nah. It's a group of fringe lunatics whose time in the spotlight will be fleeting. As I've already said, even their ideas aren't original - this is the Apocalyptic Christian Far Right Death Cult version of Fortnite stealing dances: everyone goes crazy about it for a bit, but it's so insubstantial in its original form, nevermind the cover band version, that almost all people with a lick of common sense will dismiss it. Plus, it doesn't serve any agenda: Trump could easily find himself on the receiving end of it, that one Qanon politician just elected will likely be marginalised the moment Trump vanishes, and having a single person won't sway any votes in such divisive times, which means they'll be proclaimed ineffectual soon enough, and with Epstein it is already showing that it isn't something which helps the powerful, meaning a lot of people who do have secrets will want it gone sooner rather than later lest it bite their own hands. Plus, they are actually harming people - and say what you like about the Republicans, they don't tend to respond well to the PR disaster of groups they side with directly attacking or killing people unless they are their own ACAB stormtroopers.

Plus, it's a bunch of saddos on the Internet. Chances are if you see someone screaming about Qanon and waving around a gun, they'd have done the same and screamed about lizards had it never got started.

PART 6 WHAT SHOULD I DO?

Stop giving them attention. This is one of the most BORING conspiracy theories ever created. Seriously, since 9/11, conspiracy theories have really gone downhill. They used to be about aliens and subterranean kingdoms, and now they're just attempts to misdirect pedophile hunters from the right-wing types who have covered up child abuse, and tie it to phony "think of the children" and "Satan is out to get us" religious hysteria.

With covid-19, the press is having a very slow news cycle, so they're desperately grabbing at anything that can drive search engine algorithm clicks to their sites, so they're covering Qanon because they've seen it trending. I doubt most people involved with it really believe in it, but it is so directionless that it wouldn't matter if they did. Qanon Con would descend into bloodshed fairly quickly because everyone would be angry and arguing that the tater tots are secret SRA code for cannibalising children or that it reveals that Hilary Clinton buries children beneath fields of potatoes. It's stupid, the people involved with it are stupid, and the bigger question is what they believe that led them to this:

Disenfranchisement. Having to respect the beliefs of others. Prejudice. Anger.

Well, boo-fucking-hoo. If these shitbags actually want to stop harm to children, maybe stop supporting gun rights so kids aren't being gunned down in schools, and black kids don't keep getting gunned down everywhere. Until you do that, Qanon, you're the child abusers.

[notyourmoderate]

"The will of the people has been heard" yeah, okay retard.

You’re not half a dumbfuck, are you? The post

https://notyourmoderate.tumblr.com/post/636918196568555520/nowthisnews-president-elect-joe-bidens-lead-over

where I dropped that phrase was sarcastic as fuck. Not just a little inkling of sarcasm, but big gross dripping sarcasm. I made it explicitly and plainly clear that the problem here is that Biden and his cronies are going to act as if this election was a referendum for them, as if “the will of the people” was endorsing them. And I made it explicitly and plainly clear that nobody, at all, on this side of the glass was actually super enthusiastic about Joe Biden and his crapsack policy package. The people who voted for Biden did so because they just wanted Trump out SO BAD that they would cooperate with this charade. And no other reason. All Biden proved was that people really hated Donald Chump and the Emoluments Circus, but he and the media are going to act like he’s actually super popular you guize and everyone out in America just super wants this Wall Street friendly, balance-sheets-as-policy bullshit. But you? You just skimmed that shit didn’t  you? And you saw one sentence in a paragraph. And you said “I’m gonna get in this guy’s inbox and tell him he’s a retard without reading more than that one sentence”, didn’t you? I’m not a subtle man whose meanings are easy to miss, and you managed to get it 100% wrong anyway. I’ve been called out several times before for overstating my case, getting too riled up and claiming more than I meant to. But I have never had anyone manage to fully miss the point 180 degrees. Of all the people who have ever read any of my posts, you are the very dumbest. Literally everybody else got it right but you. Man I fucking hope you don’t have a driver’s license.

[birdhaslostit]

I saw this heritage post this morning, and realized that it really genuinely bothered me in a way that I couldn’t fully describe. I don’t know why this particular post irked me so much, but it really just got on my nerves and I couldn’t verbalize why. I thought about it for a while later because it so genuinely angered me, and I needed to find out why for my own sanity. I finally figured out what bugged me so much about calling Donald Trump “Diaper Tramp” or whatever else people came up with.

Let me preface this first by saying: I cannot fucking stand Donald Trump, and I do not support anybody who does. In regards to this particular name-calling phenomenon, it has lessened slightly over the years, but to an extent, there is still a fairly large group of people who do this kind of thing. They refuse to call Donald Trump by his real name. Let me tell you why this infuriates me:

This phenomenon lessens the power of Trump’s name, which is both a good and a bad thing. Good, because the man deserves no position of power, and this gag undermines it in a way. But mostly, this is a bad thing, because it removes the associations between Trump’s name and his actions. In doing this, people are (usually unintentionally) making light of/patronizing people who have had to deal with the consequences of the heinous actions that Trump has taken to obliterate this country.

Now, let me be clear, if you’ve done this in the past, I do not have any hate against you. You likely meant no harm and were just playing along with the game. Totally understandable. I’m pretty sure I did it too a while back, during the start of his presidency. But long-term, this “joke” can become a serious issue. I don’t think people truly realize how bad of a thing it is to remove Trump’s name from what he has done.

He is a liar, a bigot, a sexist, a racist, an idiot, a rapist... the list goes on and on. Would you want someone who had done something to you associated with these things to be known by some cutesy nickname? No. You would want everyone to know their name and exactly what they’d done to you, so they could be penalized. That’s why this irks me so much. America wants people to know who did this to us. Nobody will take Trump’s crimes against this country seriously, neither in the present nor the future, if you call Trump some stupid nickname like “cheeto man.”

Do you want your kids and grandkids to make light of the shit that you had to go through during Trump’s presidency, all because you didn’t take it seriously while it happened? I don’t think so. His actions are atrocious, and you wouldn’t want them to joke about it because it’s not appropriate to joke about. The US has been divided to a level that no one could have ever predicted. Thousands of people are dying every day due to a pandemic that easily could have been stopped in its tracks, had our leader taken it even a little bit seriously when it first arrived on our shores. Policemen who are supposed to protect us are murdering people on the streets simply due to their skin color. And that doesn’t even include the fact that the system as a whole is already corrupt and rigged against said people. I could go on and on.

Who do you want held accountable for their crimes? Who do you want all of this madness to be blamed on at the end of the day? The US as a whole, including people who had nothing to do with it and/or actively fought against it, or the man who directly fueled the flames? When you call Trump some silly little nickname, you’re diverting the blame from the man whose fault it is onto innocent citizens. I didn’t have anything to do with this shit. I never voted for Trump. I’ve done my part to work against his insane agenda. I’ve done all I can possibly feasibly do, believe me. Don’t lump me in with Trump’s problems. Blame it on the person whose fault it is.

When we are taught in history class about Nazis and World War II, we don’t give Hitler funny nicknames like “Mr. mustache man” in history classes. We call him by his name. We want to know what was done, and exactly who did it. The same should go for Donald J Trump.

Likewise, instead of sitting behind a keyboard and coming up with names to call Donald Trump, you could be using that time to make valuable contributions, like actually taking a stand against him instead of sitting behind a keyboard and whining about it. That time has passed, the time for action is now. The nation is quickly descending into fascism, the signs are all here. White supremacists are primed and ready to fill the streets regardless of whether Trump wins or loses. Don’t just sit there complaining behind the safety of your screen. FUCKING DO SOMETHING. You don’t have to actually go out on the streets, and I suggest you don’t right now, unless you want to get jumped or caught up in a riot. But do SOMETHING besides sitting there complaining on social media.

And that is why I am against calling Trump stupid nicknames. The American people want Trump to be held accountable for his actions. We want his name to be associated in society with the awful deeds he has done. Regardless of whether or not Donald Trump is reelected this year, and I hope to god he isn’t, we want to make sure that in the annals of history, Donald Trump is known as the man who threw America under the bus. Not “orange man,” not “Diaper McTinyHands,” not “Mr. comb-over,” but Donald J Trump. Don’t patronize Americans by calling him these names. We are the ones who have to deal with the mess he leaves wherever he goes. We are the ones most directly affected by him.

Call a spade a spade. Call him Donald J Trump. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, so make sure Trump’s legacy is known as what it deserves to be– a cautionary tale for future generations, and a textbook example of what not to do with a country.

Please, for the love of god, if you haven’t already voted, vote on November 3. Help stop this madness.

Stay indoors if you are in an area where you suspect there might be riots/protests that could put you in danger. If you plan on counter-protesting, please take safety precautions. Above all, hope for the best, but expect the worst, because it’s the best one can do at a time like this.

[eldritch-bf]

More updates sorry I’m really fucking high:

- Harris mocked trump for getting handed millions of dollars and declaring bankruptcy 6 times

- Oh she flip flopped on fracking bc they REALLY want Pennsylvania to flip blue

- Trump calling the moderator by his first name “David!” in a whiny voice when he interrupts him is fucking hilarious

- Trump won’t answer questions about Jan 6 keeps pivoting to other shit

- Oh right at the beginning Trump said “immigrants are taking the jobs of African American and Hispanics” literally hey POC please vote for me I acknowledge your existence gimme your votes

- Trump wants the debate to end right now and send her to DC to sign a bill and close the border right now like let’s go right now

- “We need two things we need walls, borders, and good standing” sir that’s 3 things

- “We have so many facts and statistics”

- “Donald trump was fired by 81 million people and it’s clear he’s having a hard time processing that”

- Harris looking at him “world leaders are laughing at you. generals that worked with you say you’re a disgrace”

- He said the prime minister of Hungary supports him ??

- Trump “I’ll tell you a secret he [Biden] can’t stand her he hates her [Harris]”

- “If I were President it [Ukraine War and Hamas attack?] would have never happened” Iran wouldn’t have had the money to give to their proxies and Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine

- Harris said Trump exchanged “love letters” with Kim Jong-Un

- Harris punchily said “Putin will eat you for breakfast!”

- “Russia has something no one else has nuclear weapons nobody thinks about Russia having nuclear weapons you gotta remember that”

- “she’s the worst vice president in the history of the country” I don’t need to remind you all that this is an opinion half his ‘points’ are OPINIONS

- restates that he will NOT support NATO if they don’t pay

Presidential debate tonight at 8pm CST I’m gonna take an edible and watch this train wreck I hope she fucking murders him on stage

[morningsound15]

I agree with you that the whole political system in the US is rotten to its core. I don't know what it is, but it's not a democracy. And yes, Biden won't bring the structural change that's needed. However, don't you think it'll be easier to get any change at all if after the election we get a blue house, senate and president? (Not to mention the supreme court seats won't fall into Republican's hands.) I mean, at least this way there's a chance progressives can get some of their causes through.

okay, so this is like the only ask i’m going to answer about this because i do NOT want this page to turn into this, this blog is the only part of the entire internet for me that isn’t entirely devoted to politics, organizing, radical education, theory, community-building, mutual aid, agitation, etc. i do that on literally every other social media platform and i do not want to do it here. that said i will answer this ask, i guess, though not exactly in the way you asked it i’m just gonna dump my thoughts on electoralism & this election here and i apologize in advance for how long this is going to be

to your general ask: yes, some people believe that. that is a reason many people are participating in this election (i go into that further down). my objection is not to the idea of participating in this election, the idea of voting, or the idea of voting for joe biden. it’s the entire framing of the situation & it’s the complete disregard for any people who have decided not to participate in this election, or who have decided to participate in this election & not vote for joe biden (i am NOT talking about republicans or trump supporters, that is a party of fascists & white supremacists & i am NOT talking about them, i’m talking about young people and the disaffected left). i’ll explain (under the cut so it doesn’t clutter y’alls feeds & so hopefully i won’t get as much hate because if there’s one thing i know it’s that no one on the internet reads)

what i object to is the framing of joe biden as anything less than an active enemy of the left & progressives. (the left & progressives are not the same thing, but they are both to the left of the dem party so i am putting them together for the sake of this argument but progressives are not leftists, though some leftists do describe themselves as progressives & vice versa, just want to put that out there to start.)

what i object to is the framing of joe biden as an ally. this kind of “at least he is willing to be pushed” “at least he’s already been pushed to the left by progressives” “at least he’s willing to listen & maybe with enough pressure we can get him where he needs to be!” “at least maybe a biden administration will support the policies we want them to!” because he’s not willing to learn, he’s not willing to help, he’s not willing to listen, he’s not willing to support progressive policies to tackle the healthcare/climate/war/imperialism crises or do any of that stuff. his policy goals, his entire campaign is basically to figure out what is the absolute bare MINIMUM thing he needs to do in order to say that he’s “moving the country in the right direction” so he can get elected & so he can get political cover from well-meaning but ultimately extremely sheltered dem figureheads while at the same time actively standing in the way of any real reform, progress, change, abolition, justice, etc. that’s his goal, he’s been very clear about that fact, i do not need to go into all the ways he’s already said & proved that! it’s obvious in his speeches, in the entire dnc (i watched every night of the dnc hoping for someone to lay out a good reason for me to vote for biden & i came up with 0 thanks democratic party), the people he has running his campaign, the donors he has, the lobbyists he hires to write his policy platform, the way he cozies up to billionaires, racists, segregationists, war criminals, and the way he always has in order to ‘maintain the order of politics’ & it’s gross & we don’t really need to go into it. he’s a capitalist, he’s a corporatist, he takes $$ from pharmaceutical companies and oil lobbyists and he is not a good person. BUT! many progressives know this and believe this, & still are voting for him. that is fine.

but we have to remember that joe biden is not our friend, he is not our ally, he is an enemy of the left, he is an active obstacle stopping us from achieving what we want to achieve (liberation, equality, justice, the dismantling of capitalism). so let’s not get it fucking twisted, like we need to be clear about that from the jump. we shouldn’t talk about him like he wants those things, like he’ll help us achieve those things, because he doesn’t, and he won’t, so we do not need to talk about him like he does. it is damaging to the progressive left of the democratic party to talk about biden like he’ll help us achieve any of our goals, because he won’t. we will need to fight just as hard if not HARDER under a biden administration to get the things we want, because we’ll be fighting with the people supposedly in our own party too, and they (along with the political machine they worship & kill themselves to support) are going to do everything they can to demonize and push out the young progressive diverse left, to break their spirits & destroy the political potential of the few politicians they actually do like, because that’s what they’ve always done, because the progressive left represents a threat to institutional capitalist white supremacist power. so our job would not be EASIER under a biden administration. it will just be different. we have to be very clear about that when we talk about what might happen in november.

now, that’s NOT TO SAY that there are not good reasons people have for voting for joe biden. i’m not telling people not to vote for joe biden and i am not telling people not to vote. that’s not what i’m saying. you just have to understand what this country is, what these politicians are, what they want, and what they are going to do to achieve what they want. just don’t lie about it. and only when you understand all of that can you make a truly informed decision about this upcoming election.

you can support joe biden for a lot of reasons. there are a lot of people whose politics don’t align with mine who want me to vote for joe biden, and there are people whose politics do align with mine who are making the choice to vote for joe biden. and the things that the latter group says, stuff that i find persuasive, is stuff like “joe biden is an enemy. donald trump is also an enemy. putting joe biden into office is better for the cause of liberation/leftists/revolution because he is a weaker enemy. he is a weaker opponent. we might be able to do things with him in office to help us tinker with the way our system is structured that will ultimately be for the benefit of the true left wing of this country, which will help future political actors survive in our rigged electoral system and maybe actually gain & maintain political power.” (stuff like abolishing the filibuster, getting rid of the electoral college, packing the courts, systemic changes that we need to make if we want to wrest control of this broken political system from the hands of fascists and white supremacists - many of whom sit inside the democratic party too, so let’s not get that twisted. all of these proposed changes, by the way, it’s important to note (unless i’m incorrect which i don’t think i am) joe biden doesn’t openly support or advocate for ANY of them, so let’s not get THAT twisted either.)

here’s the argument i think you’re making anon, from the mouth of comrade Angela Davis (libs love to weaponize angela davis’ words on biden without comprehending any of her politics or supporting her abolitionist policy positions, also there are other abolitionists who do not agree with davis here but i digress):

“In our electoral system as it exists, neither party represents the future that we need in this country. Both parties remain connected to corporate capitalism. But the election will not be so much about who gets to lead the country to a better future, but rather how we can support ourselves and our ability to continue to organize and place pressure on those in power. And I don’t think there’s a question about which candidate would allow that process to unfold… if we want to continue this work, we certainly need a person in office who will be more amenable to our mass pressure. And to me, that is the only thing that someone like Joe Biden represents.”

i don’t know if i fully agree with that argument per se! but i understand it, and i think it’s valid and valuable, and i understand arguments like that, and they are persuasive to me in many ways. because the republican party maintaining power is the way we slow-march into fascism, but also the democratic party getting/maintaining power is the way that we continue to slow-march to neoliberal destruction of the planet. so they’re both bad, obviously. but there are people who think (maybe they’re right! i’m swayed by this argument) that the biden administration would be easier to manipulate, easier to transform, than a trump administration.

(the counter-argument would maybe be that there are a lot of fucking liberals paying attention & even showing up in the streets right now because donald trump is the president, and if donald trump is no longer the president they’re gonna go home and be quiet and go back to brunch and close their eyes and plug their ears like they did with obama, just like they did during standing rock and ferguson and occupy, and be like “oh kamala harris wore CHUCKS on an AIRPLANE look at how COOL she is don’t you remember when there was a COOL war criminal in the white house?” there are people who are going to do that if biden/harris win, and that’s risky to me! like that is a risk we need to be talking about. i see that as dangerous. now, that’s not to say that’s more or less dangerous than what we currently have, it’s just a different kind of danger we need to be cognizant & wary of. and it’s people who post statuses like “fuck you all if you don’t vote for biden you privileged snowflake how dare you look at everything biden’s ever said done or promised he will do and decide that you don’t like that and you don’t want a part of it how dare you you fucking cuck you fucking idiot you support fucking fascists you fucking idiot” who make me lose my mind because like shut up! you don’t know what you’re talking about. there are people who know what they’re talking about who have decided they’re going to vote for joe biden and there’s people who know what they’re talking about who have decided they are not going to vote for joe biden, and you know what they don’t do? they don’t fucking fight each other, they don’t attack each other, they understand & support the reasons their comrades have for taking the action they are taking. and that is just what this is about. stop yelling at people that you don’t know who are making choices you don’t understand just because you don’t understand their choices.)

(this is even assuming biden will win, which is unlikely, or that trump will relinquish power, which is unlikely, or that there will be a peaceful transference of power and not a full-scale right-wing armed militia explosion of violence on american streets after november 3rd, so let’s all really be prepared for what might be coming in the next couple months!!!! all of these arguments mean next to nothing when we don’t even know what kind of violence awaits us in november)

it’s just psycho to think that joe biden is anything but an enemy. he is an enemy. and you can vote for an enemy and you can have your reasons for voting for an enemy, but don’t sell me shit and tell me it’s gourmet.

that’s mostly what i object to. the framing of this. and i’m not telling people not to vote for joe biden i’m not telling people not to vote. i think people should vote, because for those of us who are able & haven’t had that right stripped away from us or stolen from us by our own government, voting is easy, it’s literally the easiest thing that you can do because it’s also the LEAST politically effective thing that you can do. it’s like step fucking 1 because its impact is so low. that’s not a reason not to do it! that is not a reason not to do it. voting is important because any functioning society needs to have an engaged citizenry and an engaged electorate. now we don’t have that here, but you know what i’m saying. electoralism is a conditionally useful tool of enacting change and what we choose to do with that tool is an individual choice and there are people who are making different calculations than you, and they’re coming to different answers. and those people are often radicals, they’re often poor, they’re often black, or indigenous, or undocumented, or incarcerated. they’re often the most marginalized people in this society who are making these kinds of non-voting decisions, and it’s racist and misogynistic to assume that it’s all privileged white kids who are making that choice, because it isn’t, okay? it fucking isn’t.

and it’s so crazy because it’s always white cis libs who are talking about how important it is to get out and vote and to vote for people who aren’t like you and to vote for someone who isn’t you and it’s like, the black radicals i know are not voting for biden! they just aren’t. they do not see the electoral system or the fucking presidency as the thing that’s going to help & protect their communities. so instead they’re organizing on the ground, they’re distributing food & funds & housing comrades & fighting the police & helping elders shop and pick up medicine & making sure kids have internet access so they can go to school and that is what people are doing on the ground. they aren’t all up on instagram or tumblr sharing voting memes & telling people to hold their nose & “just vote for biden he’s the best choice we have” because they understand that for their communities, that’s not what liberation looks like. that’s y’all doing that goofy social media shit.

political power lies with the people always. the people collectively will prove whether or not the biden electoral strategy (of appealing to older, conservative/moderate, white voters in the midwest instead of young voters, poor voters, and voters of color all over the country, but i digress) is successful. whether or not his strategy is successful, the responsibility for the outcome of this election lies SOLELY with the biden campaign, capitalism, voter suppression, white supremacy, and our undemocratic election system — NOT the individual voters. know your enemy & know which system you need to fight. hint: it’s not apathetic or disengaged voters.

vote for whoever you want to vote for. don’t vote for trump, obviously, he’s a fascist do not vote for him. but for people who are not fascists or white supremacists, just try to understand what you’re doing and your position in the world & in this political system & act accordingly. not voting is not an excuse to do nothing; if you are choosing not to engage in electoral politics the expectation is you should be working twice as hard to make sustained impacts and improvements in your community. and if you ARE choosing to engage in electoral politics, the expectation is you should be working twice as hard to make sustained impacts and improvements in your community.

if what you think the liberation fight is is making sure you turn out at the ballot box on november 3rd, if that’s how you think you are being the most helpful, it isn’t and you’re not. you’re doing something, sure, and it’s not bad. like i did this, this was my job for a year, my job was to register voters and get young people to vote. i don’t have that job any more because i don’t believe that’s the solution. i just don’t believe it’s the solution. i don’t believe we should be talking about this upcoming election like it’s a solution, because it’s really just another problem we’re going to have to face and tackle, and we can’t talk about this election like anything is going to be solved if joe biden is president instead of trump because it’s not, and it won’t be, and these people are all our enemies, and we have to treat them like they are. that’s not to say don’t vote for them, if you understand all that & that is the decision you come to! just know what you’re voting for, and know what it means.

whatever, i’m not gonna keep going on this, rant over forever just had to spit that out somewhere and if i put that shit on my Facebook i would get unfriended by every white lib i went to high school with so fucking quick…

[omfgtrump]

Tale of Two Viruses: Part 27

  So the lines are drawn in the sand. In a battle for the ages the Republicans made it clear how they plan to reelect The Don. Let’s call it the “Great American Mind Fuck.”

I got to hand it to them. Turning over the production of the convention to the creators of the “Apprentice” was clever.

Producer: So what do you people have in mind for the show?

Campaign consultant: Well on a macro scale, we want you to create a character like you did on “The Apprentice.”

Producer: You mean turn a failed businessman, and a huckster, into the pillar of success and an American icon?

Campaign: Nailed it! So what we need,is a two pronged approach: a sort of high road, low road.

Producer: There’s a high road?

Campaign: A pretend one. Like in the Wizard of Oz – the yellow brick road juxtaposed with the witch and the flying monkeys. You in?

Producer: Am I in? This is brilliant. This will be my greatest creative endeavor yet.

Campaign: The flying monkey part will be easy, but it’s selling the president as a man for all people, a man of empathy, a benevolent protector, a father figure who will protect his American family.

Producer: Agreed. The flying monkey part I can do in my sleep. Protecting America from hoodlums and socialists; protecting white suburban women from the menace of undesirables who will destroy the sanctity of their cozy lives. Who do we have on board to spread the word?

Campaign: We’ve got those gun toting McCloskey’s from St. Louis who have become American heroes.

Producer: Great! We will script them to say:

“Democrats no longer view the government’s job as protecting honest citizens from criminals, but rather protecting criminals from honest citizens.”

“These radicals are not content with marching in the streets. They want to walk the hall of Congress, they want to take over, they want power. This is Joe Biden’s party. These are the people who will be in charge of your future and the future of your children.”

Campaign: Fabulous stuff. We also have mad-dog House member Matt Gaetz of Florida is ready to say that the democrats want to “disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home, and invite MS-13 to live next door.”

Producer: Now we’re cooking.

Campaign: Can I tell you something off the record, a little secret? The president is having his campaign people go to the demonstrations, and to use John Lewis’ words, make “good trouble.”

Producer: Brilliant strategy.

Campaign: Totally! When the president first suggested paying people to agitate and provoke violence we were like, isn’t that going too far? He just smiled and said: this is war and you ain’t seen nothing yet.  To quote him: When I get through spreading terror and fear, people will be begging me to come save them.

Producer: That’s some dark stuff.

Campaign: Usually I would say it’s just political warfare, but in the president’s case, this is the 2nd coming of the civil war.

Producer: That’s chilling, but America loves that kind of stuff. Vigilantism, maligning of the other, stoking racial animus. Makes for a good story.

Campaign: You got it. A good story. America is built on that shit, and we intend to exploit it.

Producer: Now that we have the flying monkey down, let’s talk about the golden child.

Campaign: Golden child! I just love, love, love it.

Producer: What’s with the love, love, love stuff. Can’t anybody in your camp just say that word one time?

Campaign: It’s an osmosis thing.

Producer: Right, an osmosis thing.

Campaign: So about the golden child. How do we turn the flying monkey in to a teddy bear? You know, turning the cheat, deadbeat, con artist into America’s greatest businessman?

Producer:  How do you reveal that behind the flying monkey is a teddy bear? How do you get enough black people to believe he isn’t a racist? How do you get enough white women to believe he is not a misogynist and a sexual predator? Enough Latinas to forget the fact that he put people in cages and separated children from his families? Convince people that the man has done a great job with the pandemic, despite the contrary? How to get people to not see him as a mean-spirited bully who cruelly makes fun of people?

Campaign: Yeah, how do you do that?

Producer: You pay Melania a lot of money to say:

“I urge people to come together in a civil manner, so we can work and live up to our standard American ideals. I also ask people to stop the violence and looting being done in the name of justice and never make assumptions based on the color of a person’s skin.”

“We all know Donald Trump makes no secrets about how he feels about things.’’ Total honesty is what we as citizens deserve from our president. Whether you like it or not, you always know what he’s thinking.’’ And that is because he’s an authentic person.

Campaign: Wow, you think she can do that with a straight face?

Producer: She hides her cards well. Just make her an offer she can’t refuse.

Campaign: Are you saying we should off her if she refuses?

Producer: Ha! No, no, no. This isn’t the “The Godfather,” it’s more like “Let’s Make a Deal.”

Campaign: Phew, you had me worried there. Though who knows what he would do if she defied him. So what’s next?

Producer: You get black people to extol his virtues. Anyone come to mind?.

Campaign: Yeah, Hall of Fame Dallas Cowboy’s Herschel Walker just loves the president.

Producer: Perfect. You get Herschel to say:

“It hurts my soul to hear the terrible names that people call Donald,” he said. “The worst one is ‘racist’.”

Producer: Now we need the empathy card. Who do we have on board for this?

Campaign:  Dan Scavino, his longest-serving White House aide. Ja’Ron, the most senior black official in the White House

Producer; How about Dan says:

“I wish you could be at his side with me to see his endless kindness to everyone he meets.

And Ja’Ron that’s a good catch. You get the black issue and empathy from the same person. He says:

“I just wish everyone could see the deep empathy he shows the families whose loved ones were killed due to senseless violence.”

Campaign: That’s awesome. What else you have in mind?

Producer: How about a live naturalization ceremony. Black, Latina, even a Muslim woman in a hijab, one-by-one granted citizenship. The catch is you don’t tell them they will be part of the convention, as they might not want to do that given the president’s comments about Muslims and ‘shit-hole countries’.

“What, we are at the republican convention? They never told us that! I hate Republicans!”

Campaign: Fucking genius! Last thing: How do we handle the pandemic?

Producer: You mostly ignore it and when you do mention it you talk about how it is something in the past.

Campaign: That’s a tricky one.

Producer. Agreed. But if you have the president give his acceptance speech in front with the White House as a back- drop with a thousand people all sitting close together without masks. Show America everything is back to normal.

Campaign: But people could die.

Producer: That’s the price of messaging when you are in a war. Always going to be casualties.

Campaign: That’s pretty dark.

Producer: He’s your president.

Campaign. My president? Aren’t you going to vote for him?

Producer: Are out of your mind? The man is a menace and dismantling democracy.

Campaign: So why are you doing this?

Producer: For the same reason Melania will say those words. And I think I will finally win my first Emmy.

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[you-are-all-weirdos]

What To Do When Your Leaders Are Bastards

We’ve all been there. Whether it’s a Prime Minister who can’t remember how many times he wore blackface, or one Bush or another, whether we’re thanking Obama, or still unable to believe that Donald J. Goddamn Trump is the President of the United States, we’ve all had the experience of living under a government we disagreed with. Maybe even actively despised. But strangely enough, a lot of us didn’t end up connecting that with the reality that sooner or later, any governmental tool or power enacted by people we agree with will end up in the hands of people we hate.

Let me repeat that so that I’m absolutely, positively, crystal clear. I don’t care if you’re a die-hard Republican or a born Democrat. It doesn’t matter if you’re a screaming Commie or somewhere to the right of the Kaiser. Neocon, libertarian, Green party wonk, Marijuana Party diehard, New Democrat, Labour, the fucking Rhino party, it doesn’t matter.

Governing requires you to construct certain tools. As time passes, circumstances change. No matter how well thought out your canon of laws and governmental powers might be, it can’t predict every little twist and turn that society might take. Sure, you can set out certain guidelines. Certain principles. Red lines beyond which your government should never go. Beyond which it ceases to be the government its creators envisioned.

Within those boundaries, however, a government - and a legal code - is a living, growing thing. It develops new powers and new state organs to confront new challenges. It can be tempting to offer up the most brute force solutions to whatever problems might arise. To give the government broad, sweeping powers to act in our best interests. After all, they’re here to help, right?

Thing is, as a rule, governmental power should be as narrow and as circumscribed as possible. I could - and later probably will - give you paragraph upon paragraph about my philosophical reasons for insisting on that. I won’t, though. Instead, I’ll give you a simple, pragmatic reason why you should never give any government or government agency any more power than is absolutely necessary. Not to mention why you should demand that they surrender these powers as soon as they aren’t needed. I can sum up this reason in two words.

Governments change.

Even if you can absolutely, implicitly trust the current government to act only in your best interest - and you can’t - a new government is only an election away. You could have a saint holding office right now, but after a quick vote, he’s out and replaced with the devil himself. Or, at least, someone who has a drastically different view of what constitutes right and wrong.

Or maybe just someone who’s less circumspect about hiding the fact that he doesn’t care what the masses want as long as his real constituents can get him reelected, but that’s another rant.

The fact is that if you don’t trust your government, you shouldn’t hand over new powers to them. Don’t abdicate your rights. Don’t disarm yourself. Don’t set up fences to hem in what can and can’t be said in public. Don’t do anything that lessens your ability to blunt their actions and mobilize your neighbours to remove them from power - preferably in the next election.

And even if you do trust them, you still shouldn’t let them curtail your rights any more than is absolutely necessary. Because you have no idea who’s going to get elected in four years. Or in eight. Or twelve.

This isn’t a party thing. Or a political spectrum thing. Give a government a power, and the reds will use it against the blues, the blues will use it against the reds, and everyone will gang up to use it to bludgeon the Greens and the orange and everyone else into irrelevancy so that the big boys can keep their grip on things. And, to make matters worse, even if you think you’re part of the ruling tribe, you might find one day that you’re not as blue or as red as you think you are.

It doesn’t matter what party you belong to or who you voted for, sooner or later you are going to find yourself looking down the barrel of whatever new power you stood by and let the government assign itself. And when it happens, it’s going to be the biggest bastard you can imagine who’s got their finger on the trigger.

So remember: no more power than is absolutely necessary. Power that can only be used within certain narrowly prescribed boundaries. And the moment that power is no longer necessary, scream bloody murder until your government gives that power up.

Anything else is nothing less than an invitation to tyranny.