#voting matters!! climate change is real! vaccines save lives!!

[akagamiko]

Here are my political thoughts. I'm not putting it under a read more and I'm not tagging it!! I know a lot of people come here to give themselves a break from real world stuff but sometimes you gotta deal with it (like right now)

Or just scroll by/block if you want idgaf baby!!!

To those in the US: I hope you are okay, get resources for your mental health if needed. Be scared, be pissed off. Don't let anyone tell you your feelings aren't valid because anyone that is queer or disabled or a poc is in for an even bumpier ride than usual.

If you are able: I hope you are involved and engaged in your community because there is no getting progressives into the White House without getting them in at the local level first and that's where you can make the biggest changes. Volunteer with youth or a campaign you feel good about. The DSA have a lot of different chapters in different states if that's your jam.

Remember that progress takes time and does not happen overnight or even over a few years. It is slow as hell and I know that sucks, but we have to be in this for the long haul and for future generations.

The rest of the world: we fucked up for real (again). Sorry for the fallout your countries will inevitably face.

If you voted for Tr*mp: get off my blog before I shoot you with my laser eyes. I do NOT tolerate intolerance. I come from a rural community who are completely brainwashed and!! newsflash!! His 2017 legislation hurt farmers and his tariff plan on John Deere is gonna hurt you again!!!

If you don't "do" politics: well, politics is gonna do you, babydoll, so you might as well!

[tanoraqui]

VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE!

Find your polling place | Register day-of | Ready your ID | Hassle your boss for legally required time off (varies by state) | Uber and Lyft are both offering discounted rides to your polling place (and some random restaurants are offering random deals, too, I guess?)

WHY VOTE?

The Bean will be disappointed in you if you don’t

Voting for the lesser of two evils DOES reduce the amount of evil. Voting for the lesser of two evils SAVES LIVES.

^ Bernie Sanders gave a really good breakdown of this, actually.

Voting is not a choice of your personal idol, it’s a choice of who you have the best chance of persuading around to your side. It’s public transit—you don’t get exactly where you want to go, but you get close enough to walk, or at least to somewhere you can catch the next bus.

Harris has a genuinely good track record of helping the people she serves, and genuinely good goals for doing it some more as President

Trump’s most repeatedly and explicitly stated goal is to order the armed forces to persecute protestors, immigrants, journalists and his political enemies. He’s even less grounded than last time, very likely suffering dementia, and anyone from his previous administration who once restrained him even slightly is warning people that he’s a fascist who explicitly admires Hitler. Their replacements will be vaccine deniers, climate change deniers and the authors of Project 2025.

Hope alone is an act of defiance. Defiance alone is an act of hope. You WILL feel better if you vote, no matter who wins, because you’ll know you did what you could.

Also for the love of god please vote for House and Senate races, too. The Biden-Harris administration only passed the Infrastructure Reduction Act, “the single largest investment in climate and energy in American history” because they held both House and Senate AND VP Harris to break a Senate tie. Not a single Republican voted for it; all Democrats did.

And more local races, of course! They ALL have real effects!

Once you’ve voted, the Bean will be able to rest easy once more—AND so will Candi!

GO VOTE!

[six-spot]

United we stand, divided we fall…

I don’t care on which side of the political spectrum you identify. The threat to our democracy is a clear and present danger!

A 🧵 Buckle up it’s a long one.

This is not a fight about 2A, it’s not about abortion, it’s not about education, it’s not about sexual orientation, it’s not about taxes or immigration or about healthcare. This fight comes down to a religious minority, trying to push its narrow views upon our country.

The Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 threatens to dismantle nearly 250 years of progress toward equality for all. And I for one am not going to stand for it.

We must unite against the GOP with Joe Biden as the nominee. He cannot be replaced on ballots without being challenged. “Protest” voting for other parties will sign the death certificate of our nation. The same thing happened in 2016.

A very brief history. Zoroastrianism was founded around 3500 years ago. “Zoroastrianism…held that a messiah would come at some future date…to redeem humanity in an event known as the Frashokereti which was the end of time and brought reunion with Ahura Mazda…

These concepts would influence the later religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” https://www.worldhistory.org/religion/

This monotheistic view of religion has existed for less than half of recorded history and many religions still have pluralistic beliefs. #Christianity has done nothing but oppress people since its inception. And now a very narrow interpretation of it is being weaponized against us.

It’s a disease that spread throughout the world, literally killing millions of people as missionaries spread disease from one continent to another. It didn’t matter how many indigenous people died as long as they believed and converted.

Ancient rulers seized upon the opportunity to adopt the religion and thus take power and wealth* from the people. Sound familiar? Wars have been fought for control of territory around the world.

*This was the 2nd goal of missionaries.

And now a sect of ultra-conservative Christian Nationalists threatens to end our constitutional republic in favor of an authoritarian state.

They’re trying to divide us even further so they can win. We CANNOT let that happen. Moderate, Liberal, Progressive, Libertarian, Conservative, it doesn’t matter, we will all suffer equally if Project 2025 succeeds.

They have been chipping away at certain liberties for 8 years already. It’s clear that they only have self-serving goals to make the rich richer and to oppress citizens like in other authoritarian regimes.

It is truly terrifying to see dystopian novels coming to life before my very eyes. These conservatives fear change and clearly believe that liberalism is the root of all evil.

On the contrary, education leads to enlightenment and free thought, so “liberal” thinking is really just how they demonize those who are educated and have opposing opinions or beliefs.

One example from #Project2025 is that “conservative” republicans have been trying to strip funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting since its inception. @NPR & @PBS are run by CPB.

Why? Because they educate people & allows them to adopt beliefs that oppose theirs. They lament that no republican president has been able to do it. They argue that most viewers are liberals & that not enough conservative programming is offered so it should be shut down. Boo hoo😢

How about that educated viewers use their common sense and reasoning to conclude that stories from 2000+ years ago are not fully relevant to modern society? 👩🏼‍🎓👨🏽‍🎓

Science is not theological yet conservatives want to apply theology to everything. The world isn’t flat. Evolution & Climate change are real. Vaccines save lives. The USA was NOT founded as a Christian nation. If not for free thinkers, we’d probably still be living in the Iron Age.

Most people want to be part of a group & religion is the most common way to achieve that goal. We are conditioned from birth to believe what we’re taught and not question it. This is how racism & bigotry continue to thrive along with political ideology.

Morals are morals. They aren’t inherently conservative or liberal. You are either kind to others or not; you follow the rules or don’t; you tell the truth or you’re a narcissistic pathological liar. It’s that simple. That is all that’s required to define a good person.

The notion that sexuality has anything to do with morality is utterly absurd, but this is what conservatives argue. They LIE to justify taking rights from anyone they don’t like. They fear what they don’t understand.

They oppose abortion because it’s a numbers game to them. They think more babies = more followers. Well, we’re already seeing that no abortion = higher infant mortality. So that myth is busted.

Much of the Project 2025 platform directly attacks the Biden administration and seemingly relies on data that is short-sighted at best. I’m sure many of the arguments for or against the many chapter topics are false-flags to make it look balanced.

I hope someone is trying to fact-check the book, as many of the end notes are just commentary or references to current laws. Statistics are cherry picked to support their claims.

Even my 16-year-old understands the implications should departments like education and health & human services get shut down or changed from what they currently are. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

If you made it all the way through, thanks for reading. Please share because our lives depend on it. We all need to #VoteBlue2024 to put an end to the GOP madness once and for all.

Fin.

[edivupage]

120 Debate Topics for High and Middle School Students

Are you looking for debate topics for your middle and high school students? Well, you have come to the right place. Check out our list of 120 debate topics for middle and high school students.

General Debate Topics 

Should we ban homework: does homework promote learning?

How essential is a college education?

Banning mobile devices (cell phones, smartphones) at schools: yes or no?

Is it appropriate to allow students to create their own curricula?

Is abortion murder?

Are violent video games appropriate entertainment for teenagers?

Does social media contribute to teenage suicide?

Does modern social media make people less socially active?

How should modern society respond to teenage pregnancies?

Is higher education a necessary prerequisite for an individual’s financial success in the future?

Topics Related to Education

Are private schools better than public schools?

Should education be privatized entirely?

Are student loans exploitative?

Does the traditional classroom address contemporary society’s needs?

Is allowing teachers to carry guns on campuses a good idea?

Does the contemporary grading system work?

Should college education be compulsory?

Is it appropriate to teach religion in schools?

Is homeschooling better than a public or private school education?

Is it fair to require that all students learn at least one foreign language?

Social Debate Topics

Does the contemporary policing of marginalized communities in the United States contribute to the criminalization of youth?

Should the death penalty be abolished in the United States?

Is it ethical to have an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy?

Does peer pressure absolve deliquent teens from cupabilty?

Will electronic databases fully substitute brick and mortar libraries?

Is cloning ethically acceptable?

Is the legalization of marijuana a food idea?

Should euthanasia be legalized?

Is there any reason to raise minimum wages?

Drug addicts: Do they need help or punishment?

Is nationalism beneficial or dangerous in the context of globalization?

Environmental Issues

Is climate change already irreversible?

Banning plastic bags and packaging: yes or no?

Are genetically modified foods a viable solution?

Banning zoos: yes or no?

How does tourism affect the environment?

Should there be more national parks in the United States?

Is banning fracking a good idea?

All people should become vegetarian.

What is organic farming’s role in agriculture’s future?

Are live animal exports ethically acceptable?

Political Debate Topics

Political campaigns should not be allowed to accept money from.

Democracy is the best form of government.

Is it appropriate for governments to limit their citizens’ freedom of speech?

Are taxes that increase at accelerating rates fair?

Limiting terms for U.S. senators and representatives brings more harm than good.

Former offenders should preserve their voting rights.

Modern patterns of incarceration that affect minorities more than whites contribute to racial inequality in the US.

Is it necessary for a political leader to be active on social media?

Is the US Constitution a living document?

Should the Supreme Court judges be appointed for predetermined fixed periods?

Debate Topics Related to Parenting

Should children use smartphones without parental supervision?

Teenage girls having access to birth control without parental supervision: yes or no?

Should parents decide which career their children will pursue?

Parents always treat their children fairly: yes or no?

Is it ethically permissible for parents to  pick the genders of their future children?

Gay couples are adopting children: pros and cons.

Should parents control their children’s activities on social media?

Is parental supervision the same as parental control?

Teenage children and completely autonomous decision-making: should parents allow this?

Is parental support essential for the future success of children?

Technology Topics

Will technology make people smarter?

Is artificial intelligence dangerous?

Will robots increase people’s quality of life?

How do technological advances influence us?

Will humans colonize another planet soon?

Can all cars become electric?

Does technology intensify human communication?

Recent developments in technology transform people’s interests: yes or no?

Can people save nature using technology (or destroy it)?

Do laws effectively keep up with changes in technology?

Healthcare Topics

Justifying the legalization of recreational marijuana: yes or no?

Is mandatory vaccination constitutional?

Alternative medicine and its impact on the future of healthcare.

Does technology promote our health?

Modern healthcare and antibiotics.

Is drug legalization a good idea?

Does globalization promote universal healthcare?

Should healthcare services for all citizens be fully funded by the government?

Should the government be allowed to force parents to take their sick children to the hospital?

Can competition improve the quality of healthcare services?

Debate Topics Related to Leisure

Is a summer vacation better than a winter vacation?

Encouraging teenagers to read books: are the outcomes encouraging?

Has technology changed the way young people spend their leisure time?

Has social media taken over our leisure time?

Can daily leisure time be a substitute for a yearly vacation?

Is leisure time essential for workplace effectiveness?

Playing video games during leisure time: pros and cons.

Has work-life balance changed with the advent of technology?

Has globalization and our increased mobility changed the way we view vacations?

Women spend their leisure time differently than men.

Debating Financial and Policy Matters

Can the U.S. government ensure the country’s financial stability?

How secure is mobile banking?

Does the credit industry promote or hinder economic development?

Is there any economic justification for wars?

Should wealthy people pay higher taxes than the poor?

How would lowering the voting age impact America’s future?

Mass incarceration and its impact on U.S. politics.

Mandatory financial education: pros and cons.

Should online financial advice be available for every citizen?

Can high profitability alone justify environmentally hazardous practices?

Debating Historical Matters

History is an important subject that all students should learn: yes or no?.

Is King Arthur a real historical figure or myth?

Knowledge of history enriches one’s worldview: yes or no?

What role did Britain play during the First World War?

How have different historians interpreted World War Two?

Was there any justification for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US?

How shoudl we interpret the Revolutionary War?

Ancient Roman culture versus contemporary culture.

History & its impact on the future.

Modern interracial conflicts evaluated from a historical perspective.

Topics for Fun Filled Debates

Are men stronger than women?

Daydreaming versus dreaming at night: which is better?

Communication between the sexes: do men and women have different approaches?

Choosing the best pizza topping: healthy versus tasty.

Do fairy tales affect children’s perception of reality?

Is living together before marriage appropriate nowadays?

Should teenagers get after-school jobs?

Gender and life expectancy: what factors explain life expectancy gaps?

From a historical perspective, are women smarter than men?

The post 120 Debate Topics for High and Middle School Students appeared first on The Edvocate.

120 Debate Topics for High and Middle School Students published first on https://sapsnkra.tumblr.com

[biofunmy]

Is Marianne Williamson a Fringe Candidate? Or a Likely One?

Marianne Williamson is a major-minor candidate for president, or a minor-major candidate for president. She believes that America is suffering from a spiritual and moral rot. She believes that the rot can only be healed if an empathetic and loving leader, equally versed in American history and culture, takes the helm.

“A person who has no conscience, a person who has no remorse, is a sociopath. And an economic system that displays no conscience and no remorse, for whom making your own short-term profit, a justifiable bottom line, no matter who or what gets hurt, is a sociopathic economic system,” Ms. Williamson said earlier this year on the campaign trail, in a meeting with Iowa Safe Schools, a nonprofit that focuses on L.G.B.T.Q. student issues. “You don’t just need someone to go to Washington who understands how the mechanics of Washington works. You need someone to go to Washington who understands how the mind of a sociopath works.”

When she arrived at the debates this week, appearing onstage with nine other candidates, including Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, she aroused a strong and emotional response, provoking some combination of ire, confusion, admiration and hilarity.

She was on the one hand the candidate who campaigns strongly on reparations for African-Americans; she also told America she was going to “harness love.” She was compared to Kate Bush and Stevie Nicks; jokes on Twitter about shawls and the astral plane and witchcraft proliferated, where her own Twitter history was harvested.

It’s a variation of the same message Ms. Williamson has been delivering since the late 1980s, but Thursday night it landed before a new audience less likely to be aware of her self-help book series, the latest of which, “A Politics of Love,” was released just a few months into her campaign — endeavors, she says, that are not so related.

“If I was just out to sell books and do better in my career commercially, I would never have mentioned politics,” Ms. Williamson said, while campaigning in Iowa. “I saw somebody on Twitter say, ‘This is a cash grab. She’s going to raise money. And then she’s going to take all the campaign contributions. And then she’s going to quit.’ And I thought, ‘No, that’s how you go to prison.’ A much better idea is just writing another book.”

“If anything is ego destroying, it’s running for political office,” she said. “The current phrase is ‘brand protection.’ This is the last thing you want to do if you want to protect your brand.”

Her Brand Is Love

In many ways, Ms. Williamson is a strange sort of photonegative, a parallel yet opposite image of President Trump, who became a boldface name around the same time, and whose vision of America is tethered to economics in the 1980s — the exact time Ms. Williamson has pinpointed as the decline of great America.

While he was enacting a great branding upon the real estate of the world, she was on a path to help people harness their energies, to seal themselves in bubbles of light and love. Central to her worldview is the power of thought — that intentions create events, or cause illness, and that people choose between fear and love constantly.

She has said that stress is “the No. 1 root of all illness” and preached that “the AIDS virus is not more powerful than God.” These ideas about “toxicity” and the power of thought — philosophical, rather than actually science-backed theories — have since been introduced to the worldview of nearly everyone who has attended a gym yoga class.

But she does not see this as a metaphor. For her, this is fact.

She has also not exactly been clear on vaccines, even when trying to clarify her position on them. “I understand that many vaccines are important and save lives,” she tweeted in June, slightly walking back a speech she made attacking “mandatory” vaccinations. (Vaccines save hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States alone.)

Ms. Williamson was among the chief early purveyors of many ideas that no longer seem as fringe as they once did, and she helped open the way to the current vogue for astrology, yoga and witchcraft, whether as metaphor or as ritual.

As a theater major at Pomona College, Ms. Williamson says she would read Ram Dass and Alan Watts in the morning and attend antiwar protests in the afternoon. She struggled to find a place for herself in America as an adult.

After dropping out of college in her junior year she drifted across the American Southwest, through the waning psychedelic drug culture of the late 1970s, working as a cabaret singer, waitress and temp before ultimately finding herself in the pages of Helen Schucman’s 1976 self-help book called “A Course in Miracles.”

As she began lecturing weekly on her interpretation of the meaning of life, her message clicked with acolytes across the country — Cher, Rosanna Arquette and Raquel Welch reportedly among them. By 1991, she was among the nation’s premier metaphysicists, and an officiant at Elizabeth Taylor’s eighth and final wedding.

Ms. Williamson became truly famous in 1992 with the publication of “A Return to Love,” her nonsecular interpretation of “A Course in Miracles,” in which she posited that the gloom emanating from the ’80s could be cured by the practice of self-love and kindness to others. Oprah Winfrey invited Ms. Williamson on TV, telling her audience, “I have never been as moved by a book as I have by Marianne Williamson’s book.”

It was the first of 13 books Ms. Williamson has published so far, a catalog that also includes “The Law of Divine Compensation,” for professionals; “A Course in Weight Loss,” for dieters; and “A Woman’s Worth,” for women.

Ms. Williamson says she briefed Ms. Winfrey on her plan to run for president, but declined to reveal Ms. Winfrey’s response. “I’ve had a personal conversation with Oprah and I wouldn’t share, I never have. And I never will share the nature of my personal conversations with her,” Ms. Williamson said. “But I have mentioned that I’m running.” (Ms. Winfrey, who hosted an interview in February with the candidate Beto O’Rourke, did not respond to a request for comment.)

The 2020 election isn’t the first time Ms. Williamson’s theories on life have brought her in conversation with international leaders — dead or alive. On one 1994 trip to Camp David, Ms. Williamson reportedly communed with the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt at the invitation of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Ms. Williamson said that her conversations as a spiritual counselor are confidential. She also considers some details about herself to be confidential; she has never publicly disclosed, for example, the father of her 29-year-old daughter, India Williamson, who has worked on her mother’s campaign. (She does occasionally disclose her daughter’s medical information, however, calling on followers to send prayers, reiki and healing energy when India contracted tonsillitis in 2011.)

But Ms. Williamson has long been thought of as a stateswoman, in a way. One of her famous quotes from “A Return to Love” — “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure” — is so often mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela that the late South African leader’s foundation was compelled to post an online correction in 2007. (In 2018, Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, read the properly attributed selection alongside Prince Harry at a St. Luke’s Church Christmas carol concert to benefit Ugandan schoolchildren.)

Actually becoming a stateswoman has proved harder. In 2014, buoyed by $2 million in cash, a theme song written for her by Alanis Morissette and endorsements from yoga enthusiasts like Dennis Kucinich and Deepak Chopra, Ms. Williamson ran for California’s 33rd Congressional seat. She came in fourth, with about 13 percent of the vote.

Reparations, Apologies and Trump Voters

“There are many kinds of experience. Experienced politicians got us into the war in Vietnam. Experienced politicians got us into the war in Iraq,” Ms. Williamson said. “Experienced politicians have led us to the greatest wealth inequality since 1929. Experienced politicians have led us to a situation where, if we don’t act within the next 12 years, in terms of climate change, the survivability of the human race will be in question.”

A political campaign is also a chance to exhume everything a candidate has said in her career, from all the tweets to exactly what she meant 30 years ago when she called herself a “bitch for God” at a charity event.

“I think it’s fair to say I wish I had never said that. Something was going on many years ago, in a situation that had to do with some AIDS patients. I would open my course with a prayer. There was something we were doing, and somebody was saying, ‘Marianne, I don’t think we should open with a prayer.’ And I said, ‘No, I think we should open with a prayer.’ And I was getting all this resistance to opening with a prayer. And they said, ‘You’re being a real bitch about this.’ And I said, ‘If I’m a bitch, I’m a bitch for God,’” Ms. Williamson said. “I think it was something about fund-raising, and some very chic people in Manhattan who were going to be there. And I just took umbrage at the idea, whatever.”

Her call for reparations, maybe the most radical yet timely point of her policy proposals, isn’t new to her either. She has been talking about it since the publication of her mid-1990s book, “Illuminata,” and she says that without it, America’s racial and economic divide will never heal.

Ms. Williamson began leading what she describes as “public ritualistic apologies from white people to black people,” after witnessing a charismatic priest named Father DiOrio lead a room of Catholics in a round of apologies to the non-Catholics for anything they or a member of the church had ever done to hurt or offend.

“It was one of the most emotional experiences I ever had,” Ms. Williamson said. She believes the country could benefit from a national workshop.

“When it comes to race in America, I don’t believe the average American is a racist. I don’t,” Ms. Williamson said. “But I do believe the average American is woefully undereducated about the history of race in the United States, particularly since the Civil War.”

It’s a tactic she’d like to deploy internationally too.

“If I were president, the world would know that America’s greatest ally is now humanity itself. What’s happening among the Israelis and the Palestinians is that two peoples with very conflicting historical narratives are sharing the same piece of land. And something which they both know, that sometimes I feel too many Americans don’t seem to realize, neither one is leaving. There was a Palestinian peace activist nonviolent who I once heard say, when two victims were in the same room — and let’s be clear, both have been victimized — somebody, he said, is going to have to give up their victim story. As someone who has done not only individual counseling but couples counseling, for 35 years, and organizational counseling, I feel I bring a skill set to that issue beyond what anyone else will bring,” Ms. Williamson said.

When it comes to America’s own interpersonal relationships, however, Ms. Williamson would like to see the women — especially the women who support Donald Trump — see themselves as protectors against a threat.

“In every advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, a common anthropological characteristic is the fierce behavior of the adult female of the species when she senses there is a threat to her cubs; bears, tigers, lions, in the adult female hyenas, the cubs, while they’re feeding, will not let the adult males get anywhere near the food until the babies have been fed,” Ms. Williamson said. “Surely, the women of America could do better than the hyenas.”

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