#trump isn't normal

[traumatizedbymay2016]

The thing that really makes me upset when people try to make the "they're the same candidate" argument about Biden and Trump with respect to America's complicity in the genocide Israel is committing — putting aside literally any thought not directly tied to that exact issue — is that they're not even exactly the same on that front.

Like, I'm not going to lie to you and say that I like Biden's response here any more than you do. But one of these candidates has responded to protests with silence, and the other one thinks that your first amendment rights shouldn't apply on this issue.

Not only are there a mountain of tiebreaker issues that you could use to determine that one of these presidents is meaningfully less awful than the other, the issue where they're supposedly the same level of awful takes less than a minute's worth of googling to show that there are significant differences in the approach here that are one hundred percent worth choosing a side between.

[sherlock-is-ace]

.

[here-there-were-dragons]

my mother is absolutely convinced of some nonsense conspiracy theory that (in her words) "originally humanity lived in peaceful all-woman societies of goddess worshippers who took care of eachother and lived in harmony, while males were roving loners that had no society and never cooperated. that changed when the men banded together and overthrew the peaceful woman-dominated societies, and enslaved us all." and, according to her, this is proof that a woman-dominated world would be innately more peaceful, and that men are innately violent and evil and should be either barred from holding any legal power or leadership roles or at least should be (again in her words) "gelded like bulls" to remove their testosterone before even being considered for such a thing.

she also evidently believes that the problem with all religions today is primarily that they aren't "goddess worshippers", because she seems to think goddess religions are inherently peaceful and pure too and seems to be especially obsessed with "Isis" in particular. the very very few times she's openly considered it unambiguously bad for some population or another to have been exterminated (she's got a bad case of devil's advocating genocide brain), she's gone out of her way to make up some crap about how said people were a peaceful society of goddess-worshippers, almost always of isis. delusions of isis-worship seem to be the only thing that ever causes her to consider any arab or middle-eastern culture, society, or ethnicity to be relatively uncomplicatedly undeserving of extermination, in fact, because every fucking time she doesn't immediately start devils-advocating it and making remarks about how "the rest of the world should box them in and let them blow eachother up" it's when she's whinging on about how whatever specific micro-ethnicity she's thinking about are or were traditional persecuted isis-worshippers.

the sole major exception to her weird fixation on isis worship justifying worthiness of life is the whole israel thing going on, in which she has consistently made very obvious that literally the only reason she's against the genocide of palestine is because it gives her an excuse to even more openly hate jewish people than she already did. and honestly i'm not sure even that's true because i think she's made some offhand remarks about palestinians having probably been peaceful isis worshipers before the jews infected them with christianity or something anyway.

so for the last, however fucking long it's been i've been constantly having to listen to her go off about how this behavior is in the jew's blood or whatever and that they literally invented all genocide because somehow the concept didn't exist before them and wouldn't have ever been invented by the rest of humanity without those jewish aliens dropping it in i fucking guess apparently and she furthermore goes on about how every single genocide and mass-oppression movement in history is directly inspired by them, ESPECIALLY the nazis, and THEN i have to listen to her rant about how, basically, wwii was something they entirely brought on themselves by "dominating the economy and treating everyone not them like shit" and the nazis were just "using their own tactics back at them". and then she goes on a rant about how the people the original jews exterminated back in the day (aka the first ever genocide, which they invented, because jews invented genocide and hate according to her) in the middle east region were peaceful matriarchal isis-worshipers.

and then she starts making comments about arabs being backwards and palestinians either being mysogynist muslims that should be boxed in to blow eachother up with everyone else or secret peaceful isis worshippers corrupted by men's cruel hand, sometimes in the same sentence, entirely dependent on which group she's more in the mood to hate at the time.

it's exhausting. beyond exhausting. her sole purpose in existence seems to be to have the singularly most exhausting set of politics physically possible to fit into one person.

just, sometimes i think, if there really is anything at all to the incredibly stupid and inexplicably popular idea that anyone or anything has a Purpose tm to exist for, i feel like my mother's purpose is to be walking proof to me of a Type Of Guy That Is Real, cause i sure as fuck would have trouble inventing this mess if it wasn't standing right in front of me spewing confusingly bipartisan hate. all of her thoughts and opinions are these long winding nonsense chains that feel like if that man carrying thing sketch about the friend with confusing politics was a person. on meth.

[bump-inthe-night]

Trump isn't guaranteed to win this year's presidential election because he's been shot at. In 2020, Trump supporters voted in heavy numbers, but guess what? They still lost because we outvoted them. 

Do I want to vote for Biden? No, but I will since no third-party candidate has a winning chance, and I don't want Trump to be president again. Unless y'all are gonna overthrow the American political system and government, we need to vote.

It's normal to be terrified about this presidential election, but don't allow it to stop you from voting and trying to stop that orange fucker from returning to office.

[autumnrory]

i honestly just never wanna hear from these "voting doesn't matter" and "both candidates are the same" losers ever again

[snailpass]

If you're in the US please for the love of God VOTE

[us-the-voices-and-more-voices-2]

FUCKING TRUMP GOT SHOT THE ACTUAL FUCK?????

DUDE I WAKE UP AND THE NEWS IS GOING "trump got shot in the ear today"

THE ACTUAL FUCK, THE ACTUALLLLLLL FUCKKKKKKKKKKK

this is exactly what causes the trumpets to get trump to win the election.

DON'T FORGET TO VOTE GUYSSSS

[quitedisastrous]

neopronouns are starting to look mad appealing. i get it now

[coolcoelacanth]

bruh my dad comes home drunk everyday and it makes me uncomfortable bc he acts so weird

[alex51324]

Useful article from CNN on election-night misinformation.

Key takeaway is that pretty much whatever happens, Trump will claim it's evidence that the election is being rigged against him.

Some additional things to keep in mind--particularly if you haven't been through many of these before:

The winner may or may not be projected on election night. How long it takes depends on a bunch of factors, having to do with the logistics of ballot-counting and how the statistical analysis comes along. Getting a projected winner by midnight and the count taking several days are both well within the range of normal, and neither one suggests that anything nefarious is happening.

Counting of votes always continues for several days after the election, until every vote has been counted. This happens regardless of whether or not the media have "called" a winner, or a candidate has conceded.

Media outlets project election winners based on the data that has come in and their statistical models--they do not "declare" or "decide" who won. The major outlets are very motivated to avoid an incorrect projection*, so if they make a call, it's because they're really sure they have enough information to accurately predict the outcome of the final count.

Usually, when this happens, all of the major media outlets are making the same projection around the same time--within the same hour, at least, and often in the same 10 minutes or so. If there's an outlier, there's a good chance they're either guessing or propagandizing.

Candidates do not get to call the race in their own favor. There's a decent chance Trump will try, but also it's also normal and expected for both campaigns to talk like they're expecting to win; e.g. introducing their candidate as "the next President of the United States" when appearing before supporters at events. (My guess is that if he does try, the mainstream media outlets will simply sanewash it as typical election-night bravado, which is actually fine.)

The only thing that means anything, coming from a candidate/campaign, is a concession. This will often happen after the media has called the race for the other candidate; it usually isn't a surprise. A normal campaign will often go quiet--stop sending people to talk on TV, etc.--when they're getting ready to concede. (Trump arguably** still hasn't conceded 2020, so no one is particularly expecting him to concede any time this coming week.)

It's normal for the numbers to change a lot. There are always some surprises, but there are also standard patterns: results from the southeast usually come in a clump, and put a lot of electoral votes into the Republican column, early in the night. Democrats usually pick up the west coast states, which of course are the last to close their polls and start reporting results***. For the swing states, where we'll probably see a lot of reporting on very incomplete vote totals, results will start coming in first from the rural areas, which lean red; cities take longer to count their votes--because there are more of them--and lean blue.

The more uncertainty there is about the outcome, the more you'll hear about the evolving numbers--news networks have airtime to fill, and there's only so many ways you can say, "Still too close to call." Try not to obsess over these numbers; the news networks have people specially trained to analyze this exact kind of data, and if they can't say how it's going to turn out, you're not going to know, either.

If it ends up being too close to call for several days, there will probably be reporting on small, county-by-county vote dumps. It's important to realize that this is all still the original count of the votes, not a recount or "finding new votes." We only hear about it when the election is so close that these relatively small numbers of ballots are likely to affect the outcome, but it happens every single election. In 2020, Trump repeatedly claimed that ongoing counts were some how irregular, and sometimes demanded that counts be stopped when the current total showed him in the lead. This is, to be clear, nuts; the full & complete count of the votes always takes more than just the one day, and it's a bedrock principle of democracy that every valid ballot is counted.

(* Back in 2000, the Bush-Gore election with the whole Florida debacle, several major news outlets did project winners too soon, and then had to walk back their projections.

This definitely contributed to the chaos that night, and may have also contributed to the widespread perception that Bush was the "real" winner and Gore was dragging the country through multiple recounts, in those first few days when the initial count of wasn't even complete in some states.

As a result, responsible media outlets are much more cautious these days about election-night projections.)

(**On January 7, 2021 he made a statement that was taken as indicating his understanding that Biden had won, or at least that he knew he wouldn't be staying in office, but he never stopped saying he won.)

(***This often looks like the Republican being miles ahead, and then suddenly California reports in and they aren't anymore. Expect Trump to pretend that this is somehow shocking, even though the last time a Republican won California was 1988.

Similarly, he will also pretend to be surprised when, for instance, Philadelphia turns in their first big batch of results, and Harris's numbers jump up.)

[kosherkept]

just thinking about how totally leftists opinions shifted from 2020 to 2023/2024 like

"a person of color being a bad person doesn't mean they deserve to face racism" >> "bad jews deserve what they get"

"black lives matter" >> "slavery is okay if the houthis do it"

"the US government is bad but people arent usually represented by their governments, most of us didnt vote for trump anyway" >> "all israelis are evil because of netanyahu's actions"

"if one nazi sits down at a table of 9 normal people, there are 10 nazis" >> *allowing swastikas and HH salutes at protests*

"silence is violence" >> "it isnt my job to talk about antisemitism"

"racial minorities shouldnt have to try to pass as white, 'white passing' privilege is complicated and should be treated as such" >> "jews are white and i wont entertain any other possibility, historical or otherwise"

"let minorities define their own bigotry" >> "jews dont know what real antisemitism is and theyre exaggerating anyway"

“immigrants should be protected and deportation is wrong” >> “israelis need to go back to where they came from”

obviously this isn't a comprehensive list & feel free to add more if you see fit but the amount of things these people did a total 180º on as soon as it was about jews is insane

[sexhaver]

a cursory glance at US history will show that the US government provably has the power to do/get away with/legally justify basically whatever it wants domestically (and acts like it has that power internationally as well), but it's "balanced" by using up some amount of public goodwill/faith in the Rule of Law and Democracy; the idea being that there is some theoretical upper limit to the amount of openly fascist and "un-democratic" actions a government can enact upon its own citizens while calling itself Democratic before people start to get pissed off enough to do something outside the normal channels (which have of course been set up to make structural change impossible). if the govt does something flagrantly illegal/unethical/underhanded to put down a person/group/idea (e.g. assassinating Fred Hampton), it means a suit behind a desk somewhere crunched the numbers and concluded that this idea/person sticking around was a greater threat to their authority than the public backlash and tarnished image (after accounting for propaganda and coverups of course).

and lately, starting with Trump, it feels like the ruling class has realized that the US public is - for lack of a better word - a bunch of doormats who will take any amount of abuse without outright revolting and tearing down the social order. that's why this killing in particular, and even more so the positive public response to it, terrifies them so much: it shows that the limit isn't just theoretical, and we are in fact approaching it, and they're slowly realizing that every tool they have to resolve this particular mess (media outlets obviously trying to generate a narrative to make Luigi seem unlikeable, blatantly planting random evidence on him to secure an initial arrest, trying to invoke terrorism charges as if that word hasn't been meaningless since it was created) just digs them even deeper into the pit of public opinion. you know, deeper than they already were when someone shot a CEO in broad daylight and people hailed him as a hero

[blueskittlesart]

All children raised religiously are being abused. They're sweet now but in thirty years see who's voting for Trump Jr or who ever the fuck.

ok let's talk about it. for context i've been working with children aged 2-6 in both school and home settings for almost 10 years and have met kids raised in basically every major religion in the world. I was personally raised completely agnostic.

religion is not inherently abuse. religion is a moral framework. All religions have the potential to become high-control groups or perpetuate abuse, and certain religions are more prone to those issues than others. that does not mean that teaching your child about the god you believe in is abusive. the abuse comes when your religion perpetuates a lack of choice, which, as I have already explained, most of the religious children i have worked with are not experiencing. Religion at such a young age is often primarily about stories, which preschool aged children LOVE. The bible functions similarly to, say, a my little pony episode to these children, in the sense that it's a fun story they get to experience which teaches them an age-appropriate moral lesson at the end. (and by and large, these kids are only getting the age-appropriate stories and lessons. I do not know any evangelical children who are being taught about the rapture and i don't condone that kind of fear tactic, but again, that's not what's being discussed here. we're talking about RELIGION, not high-control groups that happen to use god as a mechanism to perpetuate their abuse.)

in that same vein, religion in preschool aged children largely functions as a moral framework, which, in certain situations, can genuinely be very helpful. the christian and muslim children I have worked with especially are very often the ones that are the best at resolving conflict. they understand the concept of "treat others the way you want to be treated" and they're able to articulate it to their peers at an age where their morality is still developing and children often think in very black and white, self-centered ways. With rituals like prayer, church, etc, at such a young age they tend to consider them bonding activities. they have friends at their church or temple. their entire family prays together in the same way an agnostic family may enjoy a family dinner. again, I'm not denying that these rituals have the potential to be used to control or abuse, but they are not INHERENTLY abusive. they're normal. religion is a normal part of life for a VERY large percent of the population. telling your two year old about heaven isn't inherently going to strike the fear of god into their heart. more likely it's going to make them tell their babysitter, very earnestly, that when they go to heaven they're going to bring their legos so that we can all play legos together in heaven.

it is very likely that you, personally, have people in your life who are privately religious and you never even knew, because religion is not inherently a public statement of identity nor is it necessarily conducive to fringe or radical beliefs. it is a part of the human experience. you need to learn to be normal about religion.

[littlematchagirlll]

one of my friends (also a leftist) said that because we live in utah, it doesn't matter who he votes for, and there's no way he will vote for a "fucking cop who was complicit in genocide."

he is telling his friends in utah that they have zero say in who is president, so they shouldn't vote for harris.

and, i love him, but i think that line of thinking is really damaging.

if the stakes were lower for this election, then sure! i'm all in favor of third parties, and i do think that should be more normalized. it would be great to get to a point where we have more viable options than just democrats and republicans.

but this election is against trump. if trump wins, we get project 2025.

this isn't your father's republican party that just wanted to lower taxes and have more free trade. we are looking at rights being taken away for several marginalized communities. major changes that will set us back decades. there is too much on the line, and harris needs every single vote she can get.

saying you won't vote for harris because you live in a red state and don't think your vote will count... like a vote for a third party will??

you're really just saying that you don't mind trump winning, or if you do, you aren't willing to actually do what it takes to stop it.

as for being complicit with the genocide, aren't we all? our tax money is going to the genocide. we are complicit, whether we like it or not.

and harris has openly advocated for a ceasefire! also, do you think trump won't be complicit in the genocide? do you not think he would actively support israel? i'd rather have a president that calls for a ceasefire than one who doesn't. i'd rather have a president who is willing to push back on israel than one who be pushed around by israel.

there's more hope for a ceasefire with harris than there is with trump, and that's worth something.

my friend said "when people look back at your history, don't let them see your name next to a war criminal's."

honestly? in this election, i would rather have my name seen next to harris because that shows i understood that the future of our country and the safety of its citizens was more important than my personal moral superiority.

i don't just vote to make a fucking point. i vote because it impacts people's lives.

it seriously feels like some people are okay with watching the country burn, as long as they feel morally superior.

[lizardsfromspace]

Trump threatening to buy Greenland was one of the more humiliating moments of media normalization bc it got a legion of pieces saying Maybe It Isn't Crazy After All and reminding us that Greenland Is Strategically Important and like yeah. But it's a place people live that belongs to another country that has zero interest in selling it. Leaving out the actual part people found strange. It's like writing "it would be very wise to buy the Moon". Yes it would be, but that's not a thing you can do

[fullhalalalchemist]

🚨🚨CONGRESS SECRETLY TRYING TO SNEAK IN EARN IT ACT COPYCAT INTO MUST PASS SPENDING BILL (PLEASE READ EXTREMELY IMPORTANT)

July 20, 2023 Congress is right now determining what is included in a must pass spending bill the NDAA. Often congress will sneakily add as amendments their bills that they can't pass in a normal setting.

If you remember, I made a previous post about EARN IT being reintroduced here.

The EARN IT Act and it's copycats are bipartisan bills that will greatly censor if not completely eliminate encryption and anything sexual and LGBTQ+ from the internet, globally. Anything the far-right doesn't like will be completely gone. The best way to stop them is to use https://www.badinternetbills.com/ to call your senators.

Following it's initial introduction earlier this year was massive opposition from human rights, LGBT, tech, political groups, and grassroots groups. Bc of this, the senators decided to remake the bill but give it a new name, so they can still pass Earn It without actually passing Earn It. Those bills are the Stop CSAM Act (yes really, they actually named it that), and the Cooper-Davis act.

The entire point of these bills is to mass surveil and censor everyone and I don't know why more people or senators speak out against it. There is a direct timeline from when the Attorney General Barr (under Trump) said he wanted to do this to it's initial introduction in 2019, and how the senators explicitly knew they couldn't actually say that so they lied and said it was about "stopping CSAM" or "stopping drugs" for Cooper-Davis Act.

These bills essentially do the following:

they gut encryption, the one thing actually protects you from having your data seen by anyone. Do you want republicans to know you're trans? that someone had an abortion? that they spoke out against the govt? to see your private photos you have uploaded to the cloud? to see what porn you watch? if youre a journalist, or an abuse survivor, any hacker or abuser can see your stuff and track you.

they gut parts of Section 230, the one thing that allows anyone to post online and birthed social media. Previous gutting into 230 gave us the tumblr nsfw ban and killed that site.

they create an unelected commission with some already established govt body (DOJ, FTC, etc) that will include law enforcement and people from NCOSE or other Christian conservative groups who will decide what is and isn't lawful to say. no citizen can vote who's on this commission, and the president gets to pick. it's like the supreme court, but for the internet.

lead to mass censorship and surveillance because of the above

We have until the end of the month to stop this, but this can be added literally any moment until then. It's literally code red. If this is added it goes into effect immediately. The BEST way to stop this is to drive calls and emails to the senate. https://www.badinternetbills.com/ connects you directly to your members of congress & gives you a call script.

It is ESSENTIAL to call the Senate leaders who can stop this. Here's a more precise call script you can use: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1huD5Ldd1lPTECYTEb9Gg2ZzrqW6Y9tryHT-MdjOl8kY/edit

All these people expressed concern over Earn It, so we need to press them hard to not allow it's copycats Cooper-Davis or Stop CSAM into the NDAA. This is URGENT and needs all hands on deck. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) (202) 224-6542 Maria Cantwell (D-WA) (202) 224-3441 Jon Ossof (D-GA) (202)-224-3521 Alex Padilla (D-CA) (202) 224-3553 Cory Booker (D-NJ) (202) 224-3224 Mike Lee (R-UT) (202) 224-5444

Please please please spread this message and blow up their phones.

TLDR; The Senate is trying to quietly push the Earn It Act's copycat bills into the must pass NDAA, which will lead to mass censorship and surveillance online by gutting Section 230 which is the entire reason you can even be on tumblr and why the internet exists, killing encryption which put everyone's lives in danger, and appointing far-right people to a supreme court-esque commission that the president has direct control over. They could be added in ANY DAY and we need to push hard to stop it before it gets to that point. CALL YOUR SENATORS **NOW** BY USING https://www.badinternetbills.com/ AND CALL THE SENATE LEADERSHIP AND SPREAD THE WORD!!!!