#we posted that trump was on this path. and we pointed it out and we told y'all that this would happen.

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

I didn't want to update this post, but I'm doing it anyway, and it's long. Be glad I'm putting a "Keep Reading".

The point of this post isn't that your local fascist can be anyone. The point of this post is that y'all can't recognize dangerously bigoted rhetoric for love or money. The point is that the people who have been raised to know when things are getting dangerous have been sounding the alarm bells for... I don't even know how long. I heard the first alarms in 2018 with Marjorie Taylor Greene's antisemitic dogwhistle-filled Facebook post about space lasers causing wildfires, and people have only gotten more vocal about what they've been seeing since then. We have been getting very loud, and a lotta y'all haven't been listening or have been falling headfirst into the rhetoric yourselves - your bigotry isn't righteous just because you believe in universal healthcare or whatever.

You can read all you want about Hitler's rise to power, or Mussolini, or any other of the I-don't-even-know-how-many authoritarian regimes, but that doesn't do jack shit unless you understand the rhetoric and when it goes from off color remarks to blaming a country's problems on groups of people. Bigotry is baked into the fucking foundations, and a lotta y'all know it but can't recognize it.

The point isn't that the sweet old lady who runs the community center can also be a rabid bigot and still be a bastion of goodness in the community, it's that some of us have been taught that it doesn't matter what that sweet old lady does once she mentions offhandedly how she wishes conversion therapy wasn't so looked down on anymore, or how the Jews have all the money, or how killing disabled people isn't a bad thing because they don't contribute to society. But no one listens when we point out that, with those beliefs unmasked even once, her being in charge of the community center is dangerous. Does that make sense? It doesn't matter who's saying what or whether you agree with them on other things or how nice they are if they say something like that and you know what they mean.

And a lot of us have been saying just that. Yet, now that the worst is happening, all the people who wanted to write us off are posting their revelations as if all of us thought Nazis and other rabid bigots were a mythical big-bad instead of the people who murdered our families and would gladly shoot us dead right along with them.

“I never understood how the Nazis rose to power until this year-“ don’t say that like we’re all in that position. Some of us have always known how it happened because we never had the luxury to not understand

[netscapenavigator-official]

Listen. I hope I’m wrong. I hope in 1-3 days you all can point at this post and be like “look at this idiot for being paranoid.” I do. But I feel like the writing’s on the wall. There are no paths forward without Pennsylvania, and that gap is too large.

I hope the non-voters are happy. Legitimately. I hope the Green Party is happy. For real. I hope this outcome brings them the joy they hoped it would. I hope they don’t come to regret the next 2-4 years. I hope they’re at peace.

I hope Europe isn’t forced to change their stance on Ukraine like many Prime Ministers have warned they would. I hope there are Palestinians left in Gaza to liberate after Trump “finishes the job” and gets his real estate property. I hope the number of queer folk killed, whether individually or systematically, in the coming years is minimal. I hope the number of women killed by inaccessibility to medical care is minimal. I hope the number of disabled people who face financial hard times is minimal. I hope we genuinely can cruise through these next 4 years. I hope I’m still around to try and fix this in 2-4 years.

I hope the message the non-voters and Green Party sent is actually received. I hope they didn’t send the message to Democrats that conservatism is the way to win and what we should be embracing.

I hope that nothing in Project 2025 is completed. I hope we win at least one branch to throw a stick in the gears of fascism. I hope Trump bombs his second term so poorly that 2026 wipes the GOP out of the House and Senate.

I hope there’s still a global superpower to fix in 4 years. I hope that the corruption we’ve allowed to thrive tonight doesn’t infect our neighbors across the Atlantic like they fear it will.

I still hope for a better future. But I don’t believe that future is going to happen this time. I’m going to try to go to bed.

[ddaz3d-and-cc0nfused]

Hi!! I have a one shot request (I hope I’m in the right place lmao)

What about a autistic (fem)reader who is super smart and seems to notice things about the case that the others haven’t and every time she tries to state her thoughts a rude sherif cuts her off/infantilising her and Emily defends her

Honestly my brain stopped at the thought of Emily, I need more of her 😔🫶

-anon ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

fem plus size autistic!reader, wc: 517.

a/n: i have had this finished but sitting in my drafts because i was too lazy to post it, but here it is! i hope that i was able to capture what you were looking for right! :] this can either be read as platonic or romantic!

cw! asshole elders :/

You have been spoken over and shut down for the past hour, twenty minutes, and thirty seconds. 

You hated being silenced, but one thing that trumps that was being infantilized. You worked hard to get where you were now, and you hated being treated like a child just because your way of thinking was different from your peers. 

You have saved thousands of people and you’ll be damned if you continue to be treated like this.

“If you look closely, you can see that the area that these women were killed in must hold some kind of sentimental meaning to our unsub.” You grab the black marker and go to draw the inevitable triangle on the printed out map before you’re stopped by the sheriff.

 “Hold it now, sweetheart. Don’t just go markin’ up stuff.”

“I beg your pardon?” You ask with furrowed eyebrows.

“I’m sure the area these women were killed in was just pure coincidence, so we don’t wanna risk coloring in the paper just ‘cause you think you know somethin’.” He spoke as if he knew more than you did like he was the one with the degree, his tone absolutely rolling in condescension. 

“I’m sorry but –” You try to say but the old fart cuts you off. “I’m sure you are –”

“Excuse me, sheriff, but I’m afraid Special Agent _______ made a great point.” Emily was quick to come to your aide, emphasizing the words ‘Special Agent’ just to reinforce her point.

You could see it in her narrowed eyes, and everyone else’s really, that she was about done with the Sheriff’s embarrassingly large ego. You send her an appreciative – albeit shy – smile, and she gets up, her eyes trained on the map as well. 

“She’s right, because if you look here,” She points to the first crime scene and motions for you to draw a mark. “And here,” Her finger trails down to the second location and you follow close behind. “And here.” Her path finally ends, and so does your black ink. 

There it was, just like you had first thought, a perfect triangle connecting them all.

“The most important thing should be right –” You finish her words and color in a big circle in the middle. “Here.” Emily sends you a proud look and it threatens to weaken your knees.

“I mean… I suppose that makes sense.” The man grumbled before leaving with his tail between his legs. 

“Thank you.” You say quietly. The conversation was meant to be kept between the two of you. Of course you loved and trusted everyone on your team, but Emily was your comfort person, and she made time to understand you.

“No problem,” She responds back. “Everyone was done with his shit anyway.”

“Still, thank you.” You pressed the conversation, because you don’t really think she realized the gravity of the situation, of your appreciation. 

For most of your life you had never been given a voice, and having someone stick up for you and even paving the way for you to make your point known was something that no gratitude could give.

[labelleizzy]

Update from Democracy Action Network:

Despite his dreams, Trump is not a King. Marisa Kabas may have again broken the news. The Washington Post writes: "The White House budget office on Wednesday rescinded an order freezing federal grants, according to a copy of a new memo obtained by The Washington Post, after the administration’s move to halt spending earlier this week provoked a backlash."

He didn't back down because it was a good idea. It wasn't a change of heart. It wasn't a feint. It was a genuine administrative coup that — for now — has been thwarted.

He backed down because people pushed back — getting media to do their job and alert us to an impending problem, calling Senators who (more or less) found their spines, lawyers challenging the coup, telling the story of the many who would suffer under such an order, joining last-minute DC protests…

We'd like you to pause before your inner cynic speaks up (the one that says "he'll try another version" or "look at all the other things he's destroyed and people suffering").

The point is stunningly important: Trump can lose when we fight. He is not invincible and he is not all powerful.

It doesn't mean we will win every fight. But it does mean that anyone who is telling you it's hopeless is wrong. Folks need to get this message: our feelings are valid, but any conclusion that says it's over is wrong. They, too, will get a chance to join and we hope they do.

To us, the biggest stories not being told are the many, many acts of resistance all over. We wish we had journalists covering this. For example:

Teachers rejecting ICE raids ("we jump in front of bullets for our students")

Folks rejecting President-in-action-but-not-elected Elon Musk's potentially illegally sent and possibly illegal buyout offer to 2 million government workers (comments are fire: "I'll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible, RTO be damned. Hold the Line!")

National trainings teaching people how to organize and strengthen community when workplace raids happen (we recommend these!) or Teen Vogue's story on ICE Watch Programs Can Protect Immigrants in Your Neighborhood — Here’s What to Know

Lawyers standing up for the rule of law — like 22 state attorneys general sued Trump over birthright order or ACLU suing fast-track deportation policy or Quakers suing to stop ICE out of worship services

The internet spamming the DEI snitch tipline

Greenlanders refusing to give up free healthcare and education and rejecting any US takeover or Colombian President Petro staring down Trump and winning the "dignity" of returnees he asked for (the US media let Trump claim victory — but international press report this very differently, like here or here or read Petro's full statement)

Groups like Civil Service Strong helping government workers sort through their decisions in these trying times and the many people finding their path in these times.

Yes, we know the overwhelm is still there. There's a reason. It's called Shock and Awe. The goal is chaos and constant crisis to push through radical changes. The goal is to push our cognitive limits to overload, so we get paralyzed.

One implication of this: to stay active, many of us will need to limit our attention. Doing so is not a rejection of other issues. It's that in a time of rapid chaos, none of us can do it all. Let's give ourselves that permission. And then let's extend that grace our allies — for not joining the causes most central to us or for picking a strategy that we think isn't most effectual. It's okay to pick your lane and focus on that. In fact, we need you to. (We have this video to help remind people of different paths they may take.)

An overwhelmed teacher asked us what they should be doing to help their students. After an extended conversation that included their basic rights to keep out ICE, it came down to this: "The thing they most fear is an educated population. Teach your students." Do what you do best. We knew there would be a lot of loss in this time, and there is. We'll have to keep planting seeds for a better future.

We want to thank Democracy Forward for its leading lawsuits. Again, thanks to journalists like Marisa Kabas (an independent journalist at The Handbasket) and Anand Giridharadas (who quoted us in The Ink). Please support our independent journalists who did not downplay this administrative coup and raised their voices right away. Thanks Rebecca Solnit who first pulled our attention to this.

Some things we're going to go do: Eat some ice cream, pet a cat, and tap some maple trees with our kid. And then keep fighting the best we can.

Warmly,

- Choose Democracy

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dan Pfeiffer at The Message Box:

Poring through the aftermath of a brutal defeat, Democrats are now in their worst position in at least 20 years. Republicans have the White House and the Senate and an excellent chance to capture the House. Trump is only the second Republican since 1988 to win the popular vote, and he made huge gains across the country, building a multi-racial working-class coalition.

For many of you, I imagine this is painful to read. Trust me. It is even more painful to write. Most of my career has been spent within the machinery of the Democratic Party. I worked in the White House and Senate leadership. I worked for Democratic governors and other party organizations. It pains me to see the party in this state of disfavor only eight years after Barack Obama left the White House. The coalition that Obama built has crumbled. There are millions of reasons why we are in this position — COVID, inflation, an unpopular President, several political miscalculations, and a failure to adapt to a changed media environment. Ultimately, I am less interested in how we got into this mess than in how we get out of it.

The press continues to second-guess and Monday-morning quarterback various tactical decisions of the Harris campaign. I am also not particularly interested in that debate. Two things can be true at the same time. Kamala Harris ran a great campaign in a brutal political environment under an impossible timeline, and Democrats just got their ass kicked by a failed President and convicted criminal who could have been sentenced to jail if he lost the election. Where Democrats go from here is a conversation that will be an ongoing part of this newsletter in the months to come. There is no singular or simple answer, and many strawman arguments are being offered up on Twitter and cable. The solution is more complex than being more left or centrist or less woke. I don’t have the answers. Like the rest of you, I am still processing what happened on Tuesday. As part of my personal therapy, I wanted to do a bit of brain dump on the road ahead for Democrats as we confront another four years of Trump.

1. Recognize the Scale of the Problem

On one level, Trump’s win isn’t that big. His popular vote margin will end up being lower than Hillary Clinton’s when she lost the Presidency. This was far from a landslide. It looks nothing like Reagan’s victories in 1980 and 1984 or Obama’s win in 2008. But we shouldn’t sugarcoat the size and scope of Trump’s victory. Trump improved on his 2020 performance nearly everywhere in the country and with every type of voter. There was a six-point shift to the right in the country from 2020. Trump did 10 points better in Democratic strongholds like New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. He gained ground with men, women, Latinos, Black voters, and voters under 30. If the GOP can maintain that coalition post-Trump, Democrats will have no shot at the White House or the Senate for the foreseeable future. We are in a deep hole, and because of that, it is essential that we contemplate radical solutions about how we communicate, campaign, and govern. Every option should be on the table and every prior should be questioned. Yes, it was a brutal political environment, but this failure was a long time in the making.

2. Understand Why We Keep Losing on the Economy

Post-COVID inflation is the biggest factor in this election. It’s why incumbent parties all over the world have been getting slaughtered in election after election. It’s almost impossible to win an election when, according to the exit polls, 68% of voters rate the economy negatively, 75% say inflation caused them harm, and only 24% of voters say their financial situation is better off than four years ago. But if Democrats just blame inflation for voter distrust on the economy, we will be whistling past the graveyard. Democrats have lost economically-focused voters in every election since 2012. Even in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, which saw huge Democratic gains, we lost the voters who said the economy was their top issue by an average of 36 points!

President Biden passed a bunch of very consequential and popular policies. Yet, his ratings on the economy worsened over time. While I think we should revisit our policy agenda to look for new, bolder ideas that better speak to people’s concerns, this is largely not a policy problem. It’s a brand problem. When you do a blind taste test, our policies are more popular. This is why ballot initiatives like raising the minimum wage and allowing collective bargaining often pass in very Red states where Democrats have no chance of winning elected office. On economic issues, Democrats have a cultural problem; regardless of our policies, voters in the toughest economic situations simply don’t think Democrats care about them, and they haven’t since Barack Obama left office. Republicans have done an excellent job — with some inadvertent help from Democrats — branding our party as the party of elites even though the GOP standard bearer is a wannabe billionaire who offers tax cuts to other billionaires in exchange for campaign contributions. There is little question that we would benefit from more full-throated populism.

3. Close the Communications Chasm

Democrats are losing the information war. Trump and the Republicans are relentlessly communicating their narrative to a wide swath of the electorate, while Democrats are mostly still playing by an old set of rules. The Right is dominating the information space. In the battleground states where Democrats could spend more than a billion dollars communicating to voters on TV and digital platforms, Trump gained three points over his 2020 performance. In the rest of the country, which saw no paid Democratic messaging, Trump gained six points. This means that Democrats got absolutely battered in earned and social media. An average American who just turned on their TV or unlocked their phone or tablet was getting much more pro-Trump and anti-Democratic messaging. This situation is not unique to the Harris campaign. It’s been a problem for Democrats for more than a decade. Democrats cannot reach the wide swath of voters who don’t actively consume political news. According to polling from Data for Progress, here’s the statistics showing how people voted based on the amount they paid attention to political news:

a great deal: Harris +8

a lot: Harris +5

a moderate amount: Trump +1

a little: Trump +8 -

none at all: Trump +15

If you read the New York Times or watch CNN, Democrats know how to reach you. The problem is that we already have those voters. It's very clear that most of Democratic communications is a circular conversation with the people who already agree with us on everything. The rest of the electorate can’t hear us. They are getting no countervailing information to counter the Right Wing caricature of Democrats. Because of Fox News and other Right Wing outlets, Republicans have long had an asymmetric media advantage. However, in recent years, Right Wing messaging has come to dominate non-political online spaces centered on topics like comedy, gaming, gambling, and wellness.

Most Democrats continued running the same communications playbook for the entire Trump era despite massive changes in the media ecosystem. We haven’t incubated our progressive political media enough nor have we been willing to go into the non-political spaces where the most critical segment of voters are getting their info.

Dan Pfeiffer has yet another home run column on how the Democrats can roar back from their shock 2024 losses.

[thebreakfastgenie]

It’s dangerous because you should be voting for people who have polices that you like. Under Biden this country has gone to shit. Kamala was in charge of the boarder and it was horrendously run. She is an ag who locked up the most black people for minor offenses in ca history. you supported blm now you’re gonna vote for someone that locked up a ton of them for minor offenses. she’s not good at her job and if she wasn’t a democrat black women id guarantee you would not vote for her you’d trash her. Look up who you vote for on neutral websites before casting your vote. And most don’t like that they bypassed a primary and the rich and powerful got to hand pick your candidate for you. So much for defending democracy am I right?

I’m not happy about bypassing a primary either, but what’s done is done. There is no path forward now that gives the primary voters a say. I voted for Kamala Harris for Vice-President in 2020. I voted for President Biden in the 2024 primary and he endorsed Vice-President Harris. Democratic voters are rallying behind her by choice because we don’t want to waste time fighting each other or open ourselves up to Republican attack. We want to beat Trump. You're underestimating how callously partisan I am this year. I want to beat Trump. Everything else comes after.

But let's talk about you. This message isn't just badly type, it seems reads like a response to a post, but none of my popular political posts are that post. I haven't really talked about Kamala Harris being a Black woman, because although it is significant because the base of the Democratic Party is Black women they've already begun incredible organizing for Harris, the most relevant point to me and the point I have chosen to focus on is that Harris is the candidate endorsed by the president, with access to the president's campaign funds, and has quickly secured united support, averting chaos. I was against Biden leaving the reason because I was terrified of chaos. I do support BLM and I'm sure I reblogged posts about it at the peak of that movement's mainstream attention, but most of the content on my blog is not BLM posts. A lot of my posts about racism and antiracism take a more academic stance. This ask feels like a copypasta, something you just sent to any Democrats you saw supporting VP Harris. I wonder why you'd want to undermine support for VP Harris. Could it be that chaos I'm so afraid of? Could it be because you want Trump to win? I mean, you didn't say anything about Trump in this ask. Not even a cursory "of course Trump is bad but." You do go in on "defending democracy," which is a big priority for a lot of Democratic voters. It's almost like you're trying to dissuade people who care about that from supporting/voting for VP Harris. I wonder why?

But this is what really sticks out to me:

Look up who you vote for on neutral websites before you cast your vote.

"Neutral websites?" What exactly are these neutral websites, pray tell? You certainly didn't provide any examples. There's just something about this phrasing that's incredibly strange. This is not, in my experience, the way leftists with left criticisms of Democratic candidates approach this issue.

All this is giving me the gut feeling that this anon is a troll designed to suppress support for VP Harris and the Democratic Party. Maybe a human troll, maybe a bot, but the goal is the same. If I get more asks like this I might just delete them so as not to platform them, but I wanted to post this one so everyone could see what I'm talking about.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

de Adder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 8, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 09, 2024

Social media has been flooded today with stories of Trump voters who are shocked to learn that tariffs will raise consumer prices as reporters are covering that information. Daniel Laguna of LevelUp warned that Trump’s proposed 60% tariff on Chinese imports could raise the costs of gaming consoles by 40%, so that a PS5 Pro gaming system would cost up to $1,000. One of the old justifications for tariffs was that they would bring factories home, but when the $3 billion shoe company Steve Madden announced yesterday it would reduce its imports from China by half to avoid Trump-promised tariffs, it said it will shift production not to the U.S., but to Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Brazil. 

There are also stories that voters who chose Trump to lower household expenses are unhappy to discover that their undocumented relatives are in danger of deportation. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked Indiana Republican senator-elect Jim Banks if undocumented immigrants who had been here for a long time and integrated into the community would be deported, Banks answered that deportation should include “every illegal in this country that we can find.” Yesterday a Trump-appointed federal judge struck down a policy established by the Biden administration that was designed to create an easier path to citizenship for about half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s advisors told Jim VandeHei and MIke Allen of Axios that Trump wasted valuable time at the beginning of his first term and that they will not make that mistake again. They plan to hit the ground running with tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, deregulation, and increased gas and oil production. Trump is looking to fill the top ranks of the government with “billionaires, former CEOs, tech leaders and loyalists.” 

After the election, the wealth of Trump-backer Elon Musk jumped about $13 billion, making him worth $300 billion. Musk, who has been in frequent contact with Russian president Vladimir Putin, joined a phone call today between President-elect Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky. 

In Salon today, Amanda Marcotte noted that in states all across the country where voters backed Trump, they also voted for abortion rights, higher minimum wage, paid sick and family leave, and even to ban employers from forcing their employees to sit through right-wing or anti-union meetings. She points out that 12% of voters in Missouri voted both for abortion rights and for Trump.

Marcotte recalled that Catherine Rampell and Youyou Zhou of the Washington Post showed before the election that voters overwhelmingly preferred Harris’s policies to Trump’s if they didn’t know which candidate proposed them.  An Ipsos/Reuters poll from October showed that voters who were misinformed about immigration, crime, and the economy tended to vote Republican, while those who knew the facts preferred Democrats. Many Americans turn for information to social media or to friends and family who traffic in conspiracy theories. As Angelo Carusone of Media Matters put it: “We have a country that is pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.” 

In The New Republic today, Michael Tomasky reinforced that voters chose Trump in 2024 not because of the economy or inflation, or anything else, but because of how they perceived those issues—which is not the same thing. Right-wing media “fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win,” Tomasky wrote. Right-wing media has overtaken legacy media to set the country’s political agenda not only because it’s bigger, but because it speaks with one voice, “and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter.”

Tomasky noted how the work of Matthew Gertz of Media Matters shows that nearly all the crazy memes that became central campaign issues—the pet-eating story, for example, or the idea that the booming economy was terrible—came from right-wing media. In those circles, Vice President Kamala Harris was a stupid, crazed extremist who orchestrated a coup against President Joe Biden and doesn’t care about ordinary Americans, while Trump is under assault and has been for years, and he’s “doing it all for you.”

Investigative reporter Miranda Green outlined how “pink slime” newspapers, which are AI generated from right-wing sites, turned voters to Trump in key swing state counties. Republican strategist Sarah Longwell, who studies focus groups, told NPR, “When I ask voters in focus groups if they think Donald Trump is an authoritarian, the #1 response by far is, ‘What is an authoritarian?’” 

In a social media post, Marcotte wrote: “A lot of voters are profoundly ignorant. More so than in the past.” That jumped out to me because there was, indeed, an earlier period in our history when voters were “pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage.”

In the 1850s, white southern leaders made sure that voters did not have access to news that came from outside the American South, and instead steeped them in white supremacist information. They stopped the mail from carrying abolitionist pamphlets, destroyed presses of antislavery newspapers, and drove antislavery southerners out of their region.

Elite enslavers had reason to be concerned about the survival of their system of human enslavement. The land boom of the 1840s, when removal of Indigenous peoples had opened up rich new lands for settlement, had priced many white men out of the market. They had become economically unstable, roving around the country working for wages or stealing to survive. And they deeply resented the fabulously wealthy enslavers who they knew looked down on them. 

In 1857, North Carolinian Hinton Rowan Helper wrote a book attacking enslavement. No friend to his Black neighbors, Helper was a virulent white supremacist. But in The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, he used modern statistics to prove that slavery destroyed economic opportunity for white men, and assailed “the illbreeding and ruffianism of the slaveholding officials.” He noted that voters in the South who did not own slaves outnumbered by far those who did. "Give us fair play, secure to us the right of discussion, the freedom of speech, and we will settle the difficulty at the ballot-box,” he wrote.

In the North the book sold like hotcakes—142,000 copies by fall 1860. But southern leaders banned the book, and burned it, too. They arrested men for selling it and accused northerners of making war on the South. Politicians, newspaper editors, and ministers reinforced white supremacy, warned that the end of slavery would mean race war, and preached that enslavement was God’s law.

When northern voters elected Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 on a platform of containing enslavement in the South, where the sapped soil would soon cut into production, southern leaders decided—usually without the input of voters—to secede from the Union. As leaders promised either that there wouldn’t be a fight, or that if a fight happened it would be quick and painless, poor southern whites rallied to the cause of creating a nation based on white supremacy, reassured by South Carolina senator James Chesnut’s vow that he would personally drink all the blood shed in any threatened civil war. 

When Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861, poor white men set out for what they had come to believe was an imperative cause to protect their families and their way of life. By 1862 their enthusiasm had waned, and leaders passed a conscription law. That law permitted wealthy men to hire a substitute and exempted one man to oversee every 20 enslaved men, providing another way for rich men to keep their sons out of danger. Soldiers complained it was a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” 

By 1865 the Civil War had killed or wounded 483,026 men out of a southern white population of about five and a half million people. U.S. armies had pushed families off their lands, and wartime inflation drove ordinary people to starvation. By 1865, wives wrote to their soldier husbands to come home or there would be no one left to come home to. 

Even those poor white men who survived the war could not rebuild into prosperity. The war took from the South its monopoly of global cotton production, locking poor southerners into profound poverty from which they would not begin to recover until the 1930s, when the New Deal began to pour federal money into the region.

Today, when I received a slew of messages gloating that Trump had won the election and that Republican voters had owned the libs, I could not help but think of that earlier era when ordinary white men sold generations of economic aspirations for white supremacy and bragging rights. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[qqueenofhades]

Maybe I'm too hopeful, but I think also the convictions narrow the path for any moderate Republicans who are left who still try to believe in what they consider to be patriotic law and order American ideals. There's suddenly a lot less for them to hide behind when they're deciding who to vote for.

Allegedly, a relatively tied race becomes a 7-point Biden lead if Trump is convicted of any felonies (which has just happened). Now: caveats that polls have been especially useless this cycle, we don't know if that represents the same group of ~20% of registered Republicans who have been voting against him in every state primary so far, if this reaches people who still primarily get their (mis)information from social media, and so on. But when Trump was already underperforming public polls by an average of 10 points or more in every primary (while Haley, despite dropping out months ago, continues to pull a solid 20%), that is meaningful.

We will have to see if any post-conviction primaries make any further dent in Trump's performance, and etc etc all the caveats about how we cannot generalize and still have to vote. But they tried everything they could to prevent this verdict because there is no group of swing voters that this really helps him with. His cultists will double down, but they were already voting for him anyway. That is a small and limited pool, and this is not going to help him expand it.

[redistrictgirl]

As of September 22nd, 2024, Kamala Harris is moderately favored (74% chance) in the race for the presidency.

Never mind, something happened.

Not in Nebraska, mind you, where it seemed Republicans would get their wish of a winner-take-all system. The effort appears to have fallen short by just one vote.

But state-level polling has reflected a post-debate bounce for Vice President Harris in a way that national polls just haven't, especially in the Rust Belt. As such, former President Trump's paths to victory seem to be getting narrower and narrower. The battlefield at large has also narrowed as about a tenth of last week's undecided voters have committed to a candidate, with states like Iowa, Florida, Virginia, and Maine showing over 19-in-20 odds for their favorite. With that said, let's go over the closest states:

Arizona (50% chance for Trump) - The Grand Canyon State is about as neck-and-neck as you'd expect from 2020, with both candidates leading polls here this week. Mr. Trump did hit 50% in an Emerson poll, which is enough to maintain an edge in that department, but the overall rating, once you factor in fundamentals, is a genuine coin flip.

North Carolina (51% chance for Trump) - Ms. Harris at this point holds a slim lead in polling in the Tar Heel State, but my model expects some reversion to the mean in a highly polarized southern state. Overall, the advantages each candidate holds here are actually opposite to Arizona, so I feel like the median outcome really is each party winning one of these coveted Sun Belt tossups.

Georgia (70% chance for Trump) - The narrowing window for upsets really puts an exclamation mark on this state, where the former president gets his first 50% and consistently leads in the polls. There's still a meaningful window for the Vice President - the southern trend of reversion to the mean actually helps her somewhat here.

Nevada (75% chance for Harris) - Now, we move onto vulnerable states for Democrats, though we remain in the Sun Belt. Ms. Harris hit 51% in a Morning Consult poll this week - genuinely impressive! - but my model isn't convinced that she's truly consolidated majority support here.

Wisconsin (79% chance for Harris) - The polls say that Mr. Trump is down by two points and that only about 3.5 percent of voters remain undecided for a head-to-head. Remember that not all undecideds will commit to a candidate (historically this number is about two-thirds), so... yes, he's in deep trouble here, though it's not insurmountable, especially if the polls actually miss. As always, the fundamentals point towards a substantially closer race.

Now, let's go over the elephants in the room... or perhaps the donkeys?

Pennsylvania (80% chance for Harris) - The Keystone State rocketed towards Democrats this week on the heels of an extremely robust polling sample. Only one out of ten polls showed Ms. Harris under 49% of the vote here or gave the Republican a lead. That's a very brutal combination. The polling still isn't as commanding for Democrats as it is in Wisconsin, but the fundamentals are a lot rosier for them.

Michigan (90% chance for Harris) - Good lord. If you're wondering why this number is so high, look at this week's polling. 52% for Harris, 52% for Harris, 50%, 51%. It seems clear at this point that she has the support of a majority of voters in the state.

Overall, this race has very much begun slipping away from the former President. At this point, he needs at least one genuine upset in the Blue Wall while holding onto two coin flips in the Sun Belt. That math is tricky, and unless the Vice President's numbers start coming back down to earth or a genuine polling error happens, it will be an incredibly difficult tightrope to walk. And things could still change - he still has one-in-four odds, after all - but all the pressure is clearly on him.

[aotopmha]

Dawntrail final zone spoilers!

(General thematic thoughts, actual side character post planned at some point.)

I think one of the takes that has stood out among the many I've seen about Dawntrail is someone saying "just because you emotionally resonate with something doesn't mean it is good".

And this is antithetical to everything I believe about stories.

The entire point of a story is to invoke feelings within you.

A story is bad if it doesn't invoke feelings within you in a way that you feel is satisfying.

Does it make you happy, sad, angry the right way; in a way that resonates with you?

This is why "good storytelling" is such a subjective topic to me, it depends so much on your own experiences.

I've been seeing dismissiveness with equal amounts of love for what I view to be the strongest thematic thread of the story: loss and saying farewell.

It's very much leaning on Shadowbringers' and Endwalker's theming; grief is but a facet of loss and saying farewell, so it is not "new", in fact a little bit of a retread, yet still incredibly effective to me.

It is essentially further exploring the ideas of burying any negative feelings instead of processing them properly, as with Hermes and the Niburuns.

You can remove the memories, but the feelings are still there, essentially repressed and unprocessed.

The final zone (and Solution 9) is tied to the principles of the Yok Huy and their value of forgetting being equal to death.

It is tied to the principles of Hanuhanu who celebrate regardless of the difficult times they go through.

And it is tied to the stubborness of the Mamook to stay stuck in their ways and never seek another solution, which prepetuates an horrible system.

Sphene is a reflection of Wuk who has not and wishes not to act according to these lessons, as the AI copy essentially following protocol she is.

Her solution for keeping the system running is taking the lives of other worlds and her solution for combatting loss is erasing it completely, which is just not how human nature works.

(Which also aligns with the path the Ascians took and Golbez, adding to some retreading; diluting your existence by consuming souls is actually even brought up as a parallel to the 13th.)

But as we go through and reintroduce the natural way of life by granting the citizens rest, some find closure through silly moments. Some find closure through an earnest, honest talk. Some find closure through fulfilling what they want the most.

And the very simple reason why it was so effective to me personally is because I have been through a very similar "loss", even if it was a very different situation.

There has been another criticism circulating that the last zone took too little time, but to me every single one of those sections was nothing but meaningful line after meaningful line that felt honest and powerful.

(To me quality always trumps quantity and I wish this principle would have been more consistent throughout the entire story.)

And to me, this is why it hit. It felt authentic to my experience of loss in terms of the feelings on display. And that is what good writing is to me.

Something that accurately reflects the human condition in my eyes. Be it villain, hero or any type of character inbetween, if I believe it, it is good.

And the more I've thought about it, the more I've reached the conclusion that's probably all there it is to all of the extensive arguing about any piece of media.

"Do, I myself, believe these feelings in this story?"

Everything else truly comes after.

Plothole X, inconsistency Y. None of it matters if the feelings are real and effective to you.

But character could've done X! Yeah, but I think what the character did makes sense.

You can even disagree with all of the technical stuff and what is an inconsistency or plothole or whether there even is one.

In light of all of this, whenever I see someone talking about an objective way of judging stories, it always comes across as insecure.

What makes this one person the arbitrer of truth above others?

Well, in my eyes, nothing, since, well, it's all feelings and the most those guidelines can do is organise them, which is also very subjective.

[rosemaries-shroom]

Rosemarie Rambles 🌱🍄 (tw political)

We've been trying to figure out what the fuck to say about what's been going on but there's never a chance to think 🙃 (which is intentional but whatever)

So here's what I want to say, in wake of all the posts talking about what to do instead! Starting with, go read them cause I'm not making anything comprehensive ^-^

Don't reinvent the wheel, you don't have to make new organizations when there are already groups in place working to fight back. Find them (when you're ready) and be prepared to commit

Get a email template/phone script in place and spend 5 minutes sending it off to your representatives once a week or so. (If I find some good ones I'll put a link)

Spell out what you want, if everyone is stating their intentions (instead of "agreeing" with someone who stated theirs), it becomes harder to ignore. You want universal Healthcare in place? Say that! You want ranked voting? Say it over and over to representatives, from the most local to the federal.

Voting still exists, a bunch of representatives go up for re-election in two years. Use this, and find people to run against the incumbent. Make it known they'll have a challenger who will work for the people of your community. Put all your support behind them and make them win.

Fuck the national shit going on for a second, remember we have local governments for a reason. They're the places that we can become potholes for this fucking clowncar running shit. They're where we can make the most change currently

The goal is to make everyone from your most local government and up as uncomfortable as possible. So uncomfortable with the idea of doing something against what is wanted and losing their job that they listen!

On that note, if they are working towards the goals you have, send your recognition of the efforts. It's human to want your efforts noticed, to have them acknowledged. Don't turn it into a whole big show, just recognize when they're doing good

Remember, this only works if everyone in your local areas works together. Unity through common goals is how we avoid losing the few protections we still have against the dumbasses in power. It means gritting our teeth and working with the people who are only now realizing they've been screwed over, too. What's done is done. Don't ever let them forget their part in allowing this to happen, not by a long shot. Don't let it be used to keep us divided either, that's only helping us lose

We're fucked, that's for sure but we haven't lost yet. Rest, recover, breathe, but for your own sake; don't give up. Don't give in to the despair. People are still fighting for our rights, fighting the unconstitutional and illegal stunts Trump is trying to pull.

It's already been said, but the whole point of him flooding our feeds with these bs executive orders. It's a whole bunch of shit that, as a random citizen, you can't personally stop/slow down. So let it remind you why we're still fighting and put the energy into the places you can effect. Being a nuisance is still doing something and it's what people on this site are good at (/fondly)

Use it. There's still a future worth protecting and it's our fucking responsibility to keep that path open

[coimbrabertone]

Formula One Was Good Actually?

Yes.

I can't believe it either, but I did actually enjoy the F1 race this weekend.

Okay, so, just going to get the elephant out of the room now - the fact that Lando Norris won instead of Max Verstappen is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but it's not just because of that - and now that I've said that, I'm going to talk about why I enjoyed F1 yesterday at the 2024 Miami Grand Prix.

Full disclosure, I didn't watch the sprint and it doesn't sound like I missed much.

In the race, however, something interesting happened...Max didn't break the field right away. He pulled a bit of a gap on Leclerc, yes, but Piastri in third was quick, and he managed to overtake Leclerc for second pretty early on, even started gaining.

Once Max pit, it was Piastri in the lead by a pretty comfortable margin, then Sainz, then Norris. I tuned into the race around this point since NASCAR at Kansas - also a banger of a race, I might get into that later actually - was in a rain delay. Piastri and Sainz made their pitstops, Lando was actually going quick - IIRC he had the fastest lap at this point - but still, it looked to me like Max had a clear path to the lead for the umpteenth time.

Kevin Magnussen, attempting to overtake hometown driver Logan Sargeant, hit the Williams and sent him into the barrier gearbox first. Logan was out on the spot, Kevin continued, and the safety car came out.

Now, maybe Bernd Maylander was just used to slotting in ahead of Max Verstappen - and can you blame him after these last three years? - but the safety car picked up Max in second, while Lando was free to run to the delta. Everyone knew he was going to make a free pitstop at this point, but with the rest of the field stuck behind the safety car, the question became...is Lando going to put a hole lap on the field?

Well, fortunately or unfortunately, race control waved the field by the safety car before any shenanigans could occur, so when Lando made his stop and came out on fresh hards, he caught the safety car with the rest of the field directly behind.

This is where things got fun.

On the restart, full disclosure, I thought Lando blew it and let Max Verstappen get too close...only for the Red Bull to fail to get the pass done on the start-finish straight. Lando kept the lead...and pulled away for the rest of the race.

Meanwhile, Verstappen spent the first part of the post-SC portion of the race breaking out of Leclerc's DRS range, while behind, Piastri and Sainz where showing that DRS wasn't a free pass this time out. And that's really what I liked about this race - the fact that, lap after lap, Sainz would get DRS on Piastri and would try and pass going into turn eleven...and it wouldn't be enough.

Unfortunately, Sainz eventually just decided to barge his way through and sent Piastri into the pits for a new front wing and fresh tyres, but the idea was there. DRS was an overtaking assist, but it wasn't a free overtake - and that's how I believe it should be.

That being said, as Piastri showed once he was on fresh tyres, a faster car could get by, so he charged through the likes of Albon and Ricciardo, taking fastest lap and eventually finishing thirteenth after having come out of the pits nineteenth. Sainz would get a five second penalty post race.

We had a new winner in Lando Norris, the winner started from fifth on the grid, it was a Grand Prix in the United States at a pleasant afternoon timeslot for me, and for the first time, it felt like it lived up to the hype of Miami.

Now there was also another thing, and it's so divisive that I'm not even sure if I should talk about it in this blog, but it's that Donald Trump was in attendance. He was a guest of Muhammad Ben Sulayem and Liberty Media, they took him through the McLaren garage, he posed with Zak Brown outside the garages, and he took a photo with Ben Sulayem and Lando Norris post-race. Not only that, but David Croft, in his race winning call went "On a weekend where McLaren has welcomed an ex-President into their garage, it's Norris who trumps Verstappen!"

So...in the eyes of some people, Norris' first win is forever going to be associated with a divisive ex-President who is one: subject to various legal proceedings in a number of states, and two: is running for office yet again. I hate that for Norris.

I'm not getting into the politics, I'm not making a judgment either way, please don't use this as a place to rant about your particular political views, I'm just saying it sucks that, a day after this guy's first win, I'm still seeing people talk about a guy who was a guest in the paddock rather than the guy who actually won the race.

It must suck for your first win to be at the center of people's political and moral arguments one way or another. I wish it wasn't a topic of conversation coming out of this race.

So yeah, I got to watch an F1 race I enjoyed for the first time in awhile, I even watched some of the post-race content, and by the time that was wrapping up, it was time for NASCAR.

I really like 1.5 mile triovals and Kansas is one of the best ones. We had moments of three, four, and even five wide in that race, and at the end of it all, we got the closest winning margin in NASCAR history. 0.001 seconds for Kyle Larson in the #5 HendrickCars Chevrolet over Chris Buescher in the #17 Castrol Edge Ford Mustang. I was rooting for Buescher, I desperately wanted Ford to get their first win of the season, but seeing that, I just had to throw my hands up and say it was a good race.

So, while there wasn't any MotoGP or Indycar this weekend, F1 and NASCAR managed to give me a pretty good Sunday of racing. I'm pleasantly surprised and I'm glad I can say that.

I hope McLaren can keep the forward momentum going and actually challenge Red Bull somewhat consistently, and I hope Ford can snap their winless streak in NASCAR sometime soon.

[bright-eyed]

Whatever I'm just gonna post it. I've been reading a lot of coverage and I need to just get my thoughts out, it's not perfect and it's long and I'm just rambling but I gotta go to work and also lower my blood pressure so. Please just scroll past really fast if you don't wanna read about US politics (understandable, take care of yourself, have a great day)

So many Dems and leftists pointing fingers over the past week, when it’s obvious to me that the person at whose feet lays the primary responsibility for Trump’s resurgence is fucking Joe Biden and his establishment of stupid decrepit goons.

He refused to prosecute Trump for literally staging a coup when there was widespread, bipartisan political will for it. He put a hand-wringing Republican crank in charge of prosecution, who (probably purposefully) fumbled the bag so extraordinarily and for just long enough to let the right wing propaganda apparatus regroup and rewrite the prosecution into an example of a Democratic political hit job, a narrative many are already predisposed to believe, which reinforced the Democratic image as one of establishment corruption. Trump could be in prison right now, but instead, he's going to be president, all because Biden was a fucking coward and a goon.

He refused to make abortion and the fascistization of the Supreme Court into a mobilizing issue. There's a whole other rant in how abortion isn't necessarily a mobilizing issue, or at least how it wasn't in this election, but still, right after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, he could have marched up to the nearest podium and railed the court for the decision, laid the blame at their feet in a way that would have forced the media to name the responsible party, called out the Republican party for their corruption and machination of the Supreme Court, and committed the Dems to court reform. Instead, he made some forgettable statement about how important a woman's right to choose is or something, and then he derided leftists as crazy and out of touch with the party for their supposedly radical idea of reforming the court. Now, 10% of people believe that Biden is responsible for the overturning of abortion rights, and we have a court which has essentially become an unelected and untouchable branch of an increasingly right-wing Republican party, which rewrites and enacts law according to its political will, and which will endorse any presidential act made by Trump in the next 4+ years, no matter how unconstitutional or disastrous for the country and the world.

He refused to listened to everyday people's concerns about their economic condition and instead kept harping on about how America has the greatest economy in the world, which only reinforced the belief that many people already had that the Democrats don't represent their interests. Biden's (and then Harris's) campaign talked about how the economy is great and inflation is actually lower than in many other Western countries, which may be true in a macroeconomic sense but is not salient for the average American citizen, who is struggling to make rent and buy groceries and who makes, adjusted for inflation, as much as someone did 50 years ago. Biden not only was incapable of providing any solutions, but also just refused to listen to voters or to admit the problems were there, and in a sense I don't blame people for turning away from him because he also failed to make his economic plans salient to your average person, so everyone basically voted on vibes (which they do literally every election because most people are not actually that interested in the technicalities of politics and just want to believe that the person in charge cares about them or at least has a plan).

He refused to step down when there was still enough time. He just should have fucking stepped down in 2022. At the latest. Biden should have never tried to run again, and his decision to is what ultimately set this country on a path to Trump 2.0. Polls were showing voter had concerns about his age for years, and Biden only barely managed to win against Trump in 2020, and that was back before he had a track record of continuously fumbling the bag. He refused to step down, and robbed the Democratic party of a primary election, which would have allowed them to run not just new candidates but new messaging and strategies. This would have likely alleviated the incumbent variable which lost Harris the election (along with Dem policies being absolutely shit), and might have reinvigorated the party long enough for it to crawl through to 2028. Instead, the party is (rightly, thankfully) in its death throes, having an existential crisis about its colossal failures. I don't know if Biden truly believed he was the best choice, that he'd win, that he was entitled to a second term, or whatever, but the voters didn't agree with him. It's such a gigantic slap in the face that, on top of all the ways he failed to do most of the things that he promised, he still thought so little of us and so highly of himself to think we'd blindly follow him again, and he fucked us all in the process.

The media (right wing and establishment both) is also responsible, seeing as the entire information ecosystem through which people across the globe get their news is almost irredeemably corrupt, and in America that corruption is particularly disastrous. The establishment at large (especially Democratic) is also responsible because it refused to see the reality of what is happening politically, even to their own colleagues, and it refuses to take a stand against it. But Joe Biden exemplifies everything that's wrong with the Democratic party, and we have to rebuild this shit from the ground up. There are so many people out there who are desperate for a government that actually works, that addresses their concerns, that provides solutions and follows through, that fights for them. There are so many individual people, activists and politicians alike, who want to fight for them, but the party has been too scared to take a stand and upset their corporate donors and too ideologically incoherent to take a side anyway. We have to start talking about what we actually believe to voters and stop letting the right wing manufacture a straw man identity for us so that we never have another Biden or another failure this catastrophic. I mean, you have to believe in something! Believe in something! I'm going crazy!

[thevioletjones]

Listen, the DNC fucking nailed that convention so hard, I'm positive we're gonna win.

The party platform they laid out is immaculate. The stark contrast in messaging from that of the party of loveless, bigoted, weirdo, grifter, ghouls couldn't be more plain.

Somehow, in just 4 days, the Dems have officially become the party of family values, in addition to being the party of equality and inclusivity. It's actually surreal to those of us old enough to have slogged our way through many contentious election cycles and decades of hypocrytical myopic bullshit foisted upon us by old-fashioned post-Reagan conservatives.

The selection of Tim Walz as VP turned out to be masterful. Next to him, JD Vance looks even more pathetic and stupid than he already did. The men on the republican ticket are fundamentally incapable of acting like the informed, caring adults on the historic democratic ticket.

I'm disappointed in the youth on social media as usual. As an elder millennial progressive, I have always been further left than the tickets I've voted for and the administrations I've supported. Even my favorite politicians have done things I don't like or agree with. But that's the way it is. It's something we as voters and citizens do not have full control over and never will.

I believe in a free Palestine and I in no way condone the US involvement in supplying Israel with weapons in an unjust war. I also am not a fan of the barely disguised antisemitism that's permeating that cause, and I'm smart enough to know that the entirety of the conflict is much more complex than the last year's news cycle. You can seek out documentaries by credible news sources (like the excellent Vice News program previously aired on HBO and other cable channels) that detail bothe the history of Israel, the history of Palestinian struggles, and the history of the US relationship with Israel, and what that territory means to the different religious factions that want it for themselves (and how sects of Christianity have been indoctrinated into the cause of gaining it for themselves).

The thing is that this election isn't about that relationship or that conflict. It's not about anyone else's country. It's about ours.

I'm American, but I grew up in Venezuela. They just had a big election there that resulted in a steal from a dictator-like unpopular president. But unlike ee did with Trump the first time he lost, they can't actually get his ass out of the presidential palace. Chavez and Maduro have ruined that country with the same anti-democratic tactics that Trump would love to employ and pushed millions of citizens to emigrate from the country.

None of that is about the US either.

My point being, every country on this planet has it's own problems that for better or for worse, we have to largely leave in the hands of the citizens of those nations to resolve.

This is your opportunity to continue the slow correction of the path we've been on in America since Clinton and Obama. It's a slow march towards progress that keeps getting stymied and dragged back, then pushed a little bit forward again. These moderate liberals are the only vote we have that will ever possibly lead to a truly progressive hero and champion. You know, most likely someone in one of our generations.

Millenials and Gen Z have a lot in common, but as the older of the two, I'm telling you, only time and experience will prove to you that you can't have everything in one candidate or even an entire party, and wasting your ability to actually make a difference for noble ideals that won't make an actual difference to those lives you think you're trying to save is illogical.

Israel will not stop bombing Gaza because you sat out of a US election, or because you protested the DNC, or protest voted 3rd party.

Until the system is overhauled, there is no point in 3rd party voting. Of course we should have more than 2 options. We don't.

Anyway....... I am joyful this week.

I still can't believe Grandpa Joe actually got pushed out of the nomination. They are taking this swift shift to Kamala Harris and running Sha'Carri Richardson fast with it.

Get on board.

It's nice not to feel doomed all the time. I don't even care if it's partially an illusion. I know the alternative is a living nightmare that needs to end.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gabe Fleisher at Wake Up To Politics:

A few weeks ago, after CNN published its bombshell report about North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, I was texting with a friend. Rumors had been flying around the political world all day about what the report would bring. Now that it had arrived, my friend told me he was unimpressed; it wasn’t as earth-shattering as he’d been expecting. “One day, when your grandchildren ask you what American politics was like in 2024,” I responded, “you can tell them that we learned a gubernatorial candidate called himself a Nazi on a porn website, and your initial response was to shrug.” [...]

The U.S. is currently grappling with two major hurricanes at once — trying to prepare for one while still recovering from the damage of the other. The latter, Hurricane Helene, was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. More than 200 people have been killed, mostly in North Carolina, but also in Georgia and South Carolina as well. Entire towns in western North Carolina were leveled; some residents have now gone more than a week without running water.

The former, Hurricane Milton, is expected to make landfall in Florida tonight. Forecasters suggest that it could hit Tampa Bay, which was also impacted by the devastation of Helene but has not been in the direct path of a hurricane since 1921. The city is considered uniquely vulnerable to natural disaster; analysts are already predicting damage upwards of $50 billion. Local, state, and federal officials have been pleading with anyone in Milton’s path to evacuate immediately. “I can say this without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said on CNN earlier this week.

“Several years ago I asked [the National Hurricane Center] to show me what the worst case storm hitting Florida would look like,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) posted on X. “What they showed me back then is almost identical to the #Milton forecast now.” With both storms hitting the U.S. only weeks before a heated presidential election, it is not shocking that they has quickly been sucked into the political discourse. America has a long history of election-year disasters becoming talking points on the campaign trail, from Hurricane Andrew hurting George H.W. Bush in 1992 to Hurricane Sandy boosting Barack Obama in 2012. But the responses to Helene and Milton have been marked by something new: an unprecedented flood of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Don’t take it from me. Take it from FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who told reporters on a Tuesday conference call that the misinformation surrounding these two hurricanes has been “absolutely the worst I have ever seen.”

Many of the false claims have come directly from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has claimed that: the Biden administration is “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” (GOP governors have said otherwise); that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants” (FEMA’s congressionally-appropriated program to help local governments house migrants is completely separate from FEMA’s disaster relief funds); and that “we give foreign countries hundreds of billions of dollars and we’re handing North Carolina $750” (that is merely the amount of aid made available to hurricane victims immediately; over the long run, victims can receive up to tens of thousands of dollars in support). A slew of Trump allies, including X owner Elon Musk, have amplified several other conspiracy theories online. But the prize for Biggest Whopper goes to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who posted — on her official congressional account — this week: “Yes they can control the weather.” The supposed “they” was not immediately identified, although Greene previously suggested in 2018 that California wildfires that year were caused by space lasers linked to the Rothschilds, a prominent Jewish family that has long been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories. (Greene posted again about “lasers controlling the weather” this week.) In recent weeks, Hurricanes Helene and Milton have sparked a flurry of antisemitic attacks against Jewish officials involved in the response, including claims that they created the disasters.

In her initial post, Greene attached a video of former CIA Director John Brennan discussing geoengineering, an umbrella term for scientific research into manipulating climate systems in order to mitigate the effects of climate change. Geoengineering remains largely theoretical; it is not possible to geoengineer a hurricane, and the technology has no connection to anything that happened with either Helene or Milton. “Climate change is the new Covid,” Greene asserted in another message. “Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled. Did you ever give permission to them to do it? Are you paying for it? Of course you are.”

Other right-wing influencers advanced the argument. “The weather can and is being manipulated,” Georgia Republican Party official Kandiss Taylor posted to her nearly 60,000 X followers, adding: “[Georgia] voting has been compromised and don’t know if we will be able to get all our early voting days in. Now, a hurricane is coming straight for Florida. These two states are necessary for a Trump victory! No coincidence.” Taylor’s message has received more than 3 million views on X. The theories became popular enough in right-wing circles that Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), who represents Asheville and most of western North Carolina (the area hit hardest by Helene), issued a press release on Tuesday to reassure his constituents of the falsity of various claims. Near the top of the list? “Nobody can control the weather,” he wrote. The statement, in its entirety, is a fascinating historical document — showing the types of claims that a Republican congressman felt he needed to fact-check in 2024, partially due to misinformation spread by his own colleagues and his party’s presidential candidate.

This piece in Wake Up To Politics by Gabe Fleisher is a must-read on the misinformation/disinformation crisis regarding Hurricanes Helene and Milton, thanks to Donald Trump and MAGA-aligned figures (especially in the right-wing media apparatus).

See Also:

MMFA: On The Victory Channel's FlashPoint, pro-Trump prophets suggest Hurricanes Helene and Milton are “spiritual” and that “God did say in the prophecies that these storms would be sent to interrupt the flow of our election process”

[marta-bee]

It's so easy to criticize Donald Trump, it almost feels self-indulgent. If I wrote about every scandal or upsetting and offensive comment, I'd do nothing else all day. But the news out of Arlington crossed a line I didn't know still existed.

For non-Americans, Arlington Cemetery is a large cemetery of notable American public servants, not only military but that's what it's known for. It's one of the largest such cemeteries, certainly the most iconic, and because of that it has a certain sacred quality in the American imagination. Certainly this American's. I've had the honor to stand there, thankfully connected to someone I only knew tangentially.

It's also supposed to be non-political, which is of course where Mr. Trump enters in.

To put it in the most generous light I can manage, Trump was asked to attend a memorial by some of his supporters, for their family members who died in Afghanistan. His staff was warned not to take photos there or do anything politically motivated. This is a sacred space and a monument to national service and loss, and more to the point it's a massive grave of nearly a thousand servicemen and -women. Even if Trump was invited by some families, it's not just their space.

There was a camera. An Arlington Cemetery employee told them to stop, and his staff assaulted her. The campaign later posted video of him grinning and giving a thumbs up on their social media accounts. Said employee filed a report but opted not to press charges because she (of course it was a she). That's not even the bit that's got me most upset, though. One of the soldiers' mothers, Kelly Barnett, is asked about Trump politicizing that space. She describes her son's death as a murder by the Biden/Harris campaign. She talks about how we can't understand what it's like to be in her shoes. (Video is here, just over 2:00 in.)

There's just so much pain and anger in those words. She's turned to rage over what was done to her son rather than seeing the honor and dignity of his choice. Or perhaps in addition to? Most of my male cousins served; none died, but we had enough of other kinds of loss connected to military service, so I have a glimpse of that kind of pain. Obviously not to the extreme of having a child die, but enough. I can imagine how under different circumstances I might have gone down that dark path of blame and rage.

Which is probably why it utterly guts me to see her feel the need to defend Trump. I don't blame the media; this story is newsworthy and she chose to speak to them. But she's clearly in so much pain even now, and if she was the one to invite Trump, how truly, irredeemably wrong of him to exploit that pain to get a bit of publicity. He could have said no. Or he could have stood with them, been quietly supportive, not turned it into an ad where he had to know people like her would be left to defend him. Her words seem almost a cultish mentality, and I'm so far beyond pissed to think of him taking advantage of her pain and the place it drove her to.

What an utter fucking bastard of a man-child.

I honestly didn't know I had it in me to still be so offended by this kind of thing. But honestly, this is so far beyond the realm of "wrong." Truly.