#white lies about america

[ausetkmt]

https://x.com/CLG98264897/status/1702084655288095220?t=Vd6t7MmenQMNF3TXdMxfEw&s=09

[alwaysbewoke]

the lies white people tell themselves to escape accountability and a real adult conversation on race, racism and history is just so sad smfh

[reasoningdaily]

Schools do a poor job of teaching about America’s legacy of white supremacy, according to a scholar who researches racial discrimination.

A Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C., in 1926

When it comes to how deeply embedded racism is in American society, blacks and whites have sharply different views.

For instance, 70 percent of whites believe that individual discrimination is a bigger problem than discrimination built into the nation’s laws and institutions. Only 48 percent of blacks believe that is true.

Many blacks and whites also fail to see eye to eye regarding the use of blackface, which dominated the news cycle during the early part of 2019 due to a series of scandals that involve the highest elected leaders in Virginia, where I teach.

The donning of blackface happens throughout the country, particularly on college campuses. Recent polls indicate that 42 percent of white American adults either think blackface is acceptable or are uncertain as to whether it is.

One of the most recent blackface scandals has involved Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, whose yearbook page from medical school features someone in blackface standing alongside another person dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe. Northam has denied being either person. The more Northam has tried to defend his past actions, the clearer it has become to me how little he appears to know about fundamental aspects of American history, such as slavery. For instance, Northam referred to Virginia’s earliest slaves as “indentured servants”. His ignorance has led to greater scrutiny of how he managed to ascend to the highest leadership position in a racially diverse state with such a profound history of racism and white supremacy.

Ignorance is Pervasive

The reality is Gov. Northam is not alone. Most Americans are largely uninformed of our nation’s history of white supremacy and racial terror.

As a scholar who researches racial discrimination, I believe much of this ignorance is due to negligence in our education system. For example, a recent study found that only 8 percent of high school seniors knew that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War. There are ample opportunities to include much more about white supremacy, racial discrimination and racial violence into school curricula. Here are three things that I believe should be incorporated into all social studies curricula today:

1. The Civil War was fought over slavery and one of its offshoots – the convict-lease system – did not end until the 1940s.

The Civil War was fought over the South’s desire to maintain the institution of slavery in order to continue to profit from it. It is not possible to separate the Confederacy from a pro-slavery agenda and curriculums across the nation must be clear about this fact.

 A Confederate treasury note from the Civil War Era shows how reliant the South’s economy was on slave labor. Photo from Scott Rothstein / www.shutterstock.com.

After the end of the Civil War, southern whites sought to keep slavery through other means. Following a brief post-Civil War period known as Reconstruction, white southerners created new laws that gave them legal authority to arrest blacks over the most minor offenses, such as not being able to prove they had a job.

While imprisoned under these laws, blacks were then leased to corporations and farms where they were forced to work without pay under extremely harsh conditions. This “convict leasing” was, as many have argued, slavery by another name and it persisted until the 1940s.

Southern jails made money leasing convicts for forced labor in the Jim Crow South. Circa 1903. Photo from Everett Historical / www.shutterstock.com.

2. The Jim Crow era was violent.

While students may be taught about segregation and laws preventing blacks from voting, they often are not taught about the extreme violence whites enacted upon blacks throughout the Jim Crow era, which took place from 1877 through the 1950s. Mob violence and lynchings were frequent occurrences – and not just in the South – throughout the Jim Crow era.

Racial terror was used as a means for whites to maintain power and prevent blacks from gaining equality. Notably, many whites – not just white supremacist groups like the Klu Klux Klan – engaged in this violence. Moreover, the torture and murder of blacks was not associated with any consequences.

During this same time, white society created negative stereotypes about blacks as a way to dehumanize blacks and justify the violence whites enacted upon them. These negative stereotypes included that blacks were ignorant, lazy, cowardly, criminal and hypersexual.

Blackface minstrelsy refers to whites darkening their skin and dressing in tattered clothing to perform the negative stereotypes as part of entertainment. This imagery and entertainment served to solidify negative stereotypes about blacks in society. Many of these negative stereotypes persist today.

3. Racial inequality was preserved through housing discrimination and segregation.

During the early 1900s, a number of policies were put into place in our country’s most important institutions to further segregate and oppress blacks. For example, in the 1930s, the federal government, banks and the real estate industry worked together to prevent blacks from becoming homeowners and to create racially segregated neighborhoods.

This process, known as redlining, served to concentrate whites in middle-class suburbs and blacks in impoverished urban centers. Racial segregation in housing has consequences for everything from education to employment. Moreover, because public school funding relies so heavily on local taxes, housing segregation affects the quality of schools students attend.

All of this means that even after the removal of discriminatory housing policies and school segregation laws in the 1950s and 1960s, the consequences of this intentional segregation in housing persist in the form of highly segregated and unequal schools. All students should learn this history to ensure that they do not wrongly conclude that current racial disparities are based on individual shortcomings – or worse, black inferiority – as opposed to systematic oppression.

Americans live in a starkly unequal society where health and economic outcomes are largely influenced by race. We cannot begin to meaningfully address this inequality as a society if we do not properly understand its origins. The white supremacists responsible for sanitizing our history lessons understood this. Their intent was clearly to keep the country ignorant of its racist past in order to stymie racial equality. To change the tide, we must incorporate a more accurate depiction of our country’s racist history in our K-12 curricula.

[lord-armitage]

that person who lied about being a human trafficking victim with HIV (hivliving) just so they could write an AU of Hamilton set during the AIDS crisis.

I really can’t believe I’ve been on this hell site for 8 years

[play-now-my-lord]

FOOD HUBRIS BY COUNTRY america: believes their shitty local burger chain is a once-in-a-lifetime culinary experience because their mayo includes onion paste canada: if your poutine tastes better than the styrofoam plate it comes on you will discover the cold rage that lies under the canadian's polite exterior united kingdom: despite thriving and unique fusion cuisines spreading from the UK to the rest of the world in recent decades, when asked to think of 'british food' the average UK citizen will start a fight over whether cold beans with a modest side of white bread is haute cuisine france: McDo Ortolan Bunting italy: extremely mad about american versions of italian food. blissfully ignorant of what happens in brazil brazil: if the scientific genius applied to making cronenbergian pizzas were applied to anything else, brazilians would all be commuting to jobs on the moon. They have pizza that can feel pain russia: obviously mayonnaise is the perfect topping for all foodstuffs, this is solved. The question is what to put on top of mayonnaise, and it might never be answered germany: less a joke than a fact: the single most produced numbered Volkswagen part is a standardized currywurst

[robertreich]

10 Worst Things About The Trump Presidency

Donald Trump left office with the lowest approval rating of any president ever. But some people now seem to be suffering from amnesia.

Let me jog your memory. Here are 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency — in no particular order.

#1. Trump fueled division and sparked a record uptick in hate crimes.

#2. Murder went way up under Trump. He presided over the largest ever single-year increase in homicides in 2020. A number of factors might have contributed to that, but a big one is…

#3. Gun sales broke records under Trump, who has bragged about how he “did nothing” to restrict guns as president in spite of…

#4. Under Trump, America suffered more than 1,700 mass shootings.

#5. Trump said there were "very fine people" among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.

I’m halfway to ten. If you think I’m missing something big, leave it in the comments.

#6. Trump allied himself with the Proud Boys, a violent hate group who helped orchestrate the Jan 6 Capitol attack.

#7. Trump’s not wrong when he says…

TRUMP: I got rid of Roe v. Wade.

It is entirely because of Trump’s judicial appointments that 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age now lives in states with abortion bans.

#8. One of Trump’s Supreme Court justices was Brett Kavanaugh, a man accused of sexual assault by multiple women.

#9. Trump’s White House interfered in the FBI’s investigation of Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assaults.

And now: #10. Trump has been convicted of committing 34 felonies while in office. The criminally false business filings he got convicted for in New York? All of them were committed while he was president.

I’m sorry, did I say the 10 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency? I meant 15.

#11. Trump’s failed pandemic response is estimated to have led to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. By the time Trump left office, roughly 3,000 Americans were dying of covid every day. That’s a 9/11-scale mass casualty event every single day. How did Trump screw up so badly?

#12. Trump’s White House discarded the pandemic response playbook that had been assembled by the Obama administration.

#13. Trump disbanded the National Security Council’s pandemic response team.

#14. Trump repeatedly lied about the danger of covid, saying it was no worse than the flu or that it would go away on its own.

But behind closed doors, Trump admitted he knew covid was deadly.

#15. Trump promoted fake covid cures like hydroxychloroquine and even injecting people with disinfectants.

After Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks, poison control centers received a spike in emergency calls.

That’s fifteen things. Should I keep going? Ok, I’ll keep going. The 20 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.

#16. Trump presided over a net loss of 2.9 million American jobs — the worst recorded jobs numbers of any U.S. president in history.

#17. Trump profited off the presidency, making an estimated $160 million from foreign countries while he was president.

#18. Trump also billed the Secret Service over $1 million for the privilege of staying at his golf clubs and other properties while they protected him. That’s your money!

#19. Trump caused the longest government shutdown in U.S. history when he didn’t get funding for his border wall, which he said Mexico was going to pay for.  

#20. Under Trump, the national debt increased by about 40% — more than in any other four-year presidential term — largely because of his tax cuts for the rich and big corporations.

You didn’t really think I was stopping at 20, did you? We’re going to 25 —

#21. Trump separated more than 5,000 children from their parents at the border, with no plan to ever reunite them, putting babies in cages.

#22. The Muslim Ban. Yes, Trump really did try to ban Muslims from entering the country.

#23. Trump sparked international outrage by moving the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem while closing the U.S. mission to Palestine.

#24. Trump tasked his son-in-law Jared Kushner with drafting a potential Middle East “peace plan” with zero Palestinian input.

#25. And finally, Trump recognized Israel’s occupation of the Goh-lahn Heights, which is considered illegal under international law.

So there you have it, folks: The 25 Worst — Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Did I mention the impeachments? We’ve got to do the impeachments. Let’s go to 30.

#26. Trump broke the law by trying to withhold nearly $400 million of U.S. aid for Ukraine in an effort to extort a personal political favor from Ukraine’s Pres. Zelensky. Trump wanted Zelensky to interfere in the 2020 election by announcing an investigation into the Bidens. Delaying this aid to Ukraine weakened Ukraine and strengthened Russia.

#27. Trump personally attacked and ruined the careers of everyone who stood in the way of his illegal Ukraine scheme, including Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.

#28. To cover up the scheme, Trump ordered the White House and State Department to defy congressional subpoenas.

#29. For these reasons, on December 18, 2019, Trump became the third U.S. president to be impeached. He was charged with Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress.

#30. Even while he was being investigated for trying to get Ukraine to interfere in the U.S. election, Trump publicly called for China to interfere in the election.

So those are the 30 Worst Things —

I’ll go to 35.

#31. Long before Election Day, Trump started making false claims that the election would be rigged.

#32. After losing, Trump falsely claimed the election was stolen, even though his own inner circle, including his campaign manager, White House lawyers, and his own Justice Department and attorney general told him it was not.

#33. Trump kept telling his Big Lie even after more than 60 legal challenges to the election were struck down in court, many by Trump-appointed judges.

#34. Trump ordered the Department of Justice to falsely claim that the election “was corrupt.”

#35. Trump and his allies used threats to pressure state leaders in Arizona and Georgia to falsify the election results.

We may go to 40.

#36. When none of the previous schemes worked, Trump and his allies produced fake electoral votes cast by fake electors in multiple swing states. His former White House chief of staff and Rudy Giuliani are among the many members of his inner circle who have been criminally indicted for this scheme.

#37. Trump tried to bully Vice President Pence into obstructing the certification of the election.

#38. Trump invited a mob to the Capitol on Jan 6 with his “be there, will be wild” tweet.

#39. Sworn testimony alleges that when Trump was warned that members of the crowd were carrying deadly weapons, he ordered security metal detectors to be taken down.

#40. Knowing the crowd had deadly weapons, he ordered them to go to the Capitol and…

TRUMP: …fight like hell.

#41 — Yes, yes, I know, bear with me.

Trump betrayed his oath to defend the nation by doing nothing to stop the Jan 6 violence. Instead, according to witness testimony, he sat and watched TV for hours.

#42. On January 13, 2021, Trump became the only president ever to be impeached twice. This time he was charged with incitement of insurrection. It was a bipartisan vote.

#43. The majority of senators — 57 out of 100 — voted to convict Trump, including 7 Republican senators.

So that’s the two impeachments and the Big Lie, but wait, we haven’t dealt with Russia, right? So we’re going to 50.

#44. In a likely obstruction of justice, Trump pressured then FBI Director James Comey to stop the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn. This was documented in the Mueller report.

#45. When Comey didn’t bend to Trump’s will, Trump fired him.

#46. Trump tried to shut down the Mueller investigation by ordering White House Counsel Don McGann to fire Mueller. McGann refused because that would be criminal obstruction of justice.

#47. When news got out that Trump tried to fire Mueller, Trump repeatedly told McGann to lie — to Mueller, to press, to public — and even create a false document to conceal Trump’s attempt to fire Mueller.

#48. Trump ordered his staff not to turn over emails showing Don Jr. had set up a meeting at Trump Tower before the 2016 election with representatives of the Russian government.

#49. Trump convinced Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump’s plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and Cohen served prison time for lying to Congress.

#50. Trump was not charged for criminal obstruction of justice because it’s the Justice Department’s policy not to indict a sitting president, but more than a thousand former federal prosecutors who served under both Republicans and Democrats, signed a letter declaring there was more than enough evidence to prosecute Trump.

So those are the 50 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency. Now I could go on…

And I will! The 75 Worst Things About the Trump Presidency.

#51. Trump said he’d hire only the best people, but…

His campaign chair was convicted of multiple crimes.

So was one of his closest associates.

His deputy campaign chair pleaded guilty to crimes.

So did his personal lawyer

His National Security Adviser

The Chief Financial Officer of his business

A campaign foreign policy adviser

And one of his campaign fundraisers.

They all committed crimes, and Trump pardoned most of them.

#52. Trump said he’d drain the Washington swamp. But he appointed more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls to his administration than any administration in history

#53. Trump intervened to get his son-in-law, Jared Kushner top-secret clearance after he was denied over concerns about foreign influence.

#54. Trump hosted a Russian Foreign Minister to the Oval Office, where Trump revealed top-secret intelligence.

Oh, and Trump’s economic policies!

#55 Trump promised that the average American family would see a $4,000 pay raise because of his tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. How’d that work out? Did you get a $4,000 raise? Of course not! Nobody did!

#56. Trump vowed to protect American jobs, but offshoring increased and manufacturing fell.

#57. Trump said he would fix America’s infrastructure, but it never happened. He announced so many failed “infrastructure weeks” they became a running joke.

#58. Trump said he would be “the voice” of American workers, but he filled the National Labor Relations Board with anti-union flacks who made it harder for workers to unionize.

#59. Trump’s Labor Department made it easier for bosses to get out of paying workers overtime, which cheated 8 million workers of extra pay.

#60. Trump repeatedly suggested he might serve more than two terms in violation of the Constitution — and continues to do so.

#61. Trump called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries.

#62. Trump tried to terminate DACA, which protects immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Luckily this was struck down by the courts.

#63. Trump called climate change a “hoax.”

#64. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

#65. Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental protections.

#66. Every budget Trump proposed included cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

#67. Trump tried (and failed) to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would have resulted in 20 million Americans losing insurance. And striking down the ACA’s protections for the roughly 130 million people with pre-existing conditions could have driven up their insurance premiums or led to a loss of coverage.

#68. Trump made it easier for employers to remove birth control coverage from insurance plans.

#69. By the end of Trump’s term, the number of people lacking health insurance had risen by 3 million.

#70. Trump lied. Constantly. He made 30,573 false or misleading claims while president — an average of 21 a day, according to Washington Post fact-checkers.

#71. Trump allegedly took hundreds of classified documents on his way out of the White House, reportedly including nuclear secrets, which he then left unsecured in various parts of Mar-a-Lago, including a bathroom. He was even caught on tape showing them off to people.

#72. Trump seriously discussed the idea of nuking a hurricane.

#73. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Trump delayed $20 billion of aid and allowed Puerto Rico to be without power for 181 days.

#74. Trump suggested withholding federal aid for California wildfire recovery and said the solution was to “clean” the “floors” of the forest.

#75. Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, placing Iran on a path to developing nuclear weapons.

Honestly, there’s so much more, from exchanging “love letters” with North Korea’s brutal dictator to publicly denigrating a Gold Star military widow and making her cry, to the way he attacked journalists, to late night tweet binges.

Look, I can understand why a lot of people want to block all of this out of their memories. But we cannot afford to forget just how terrible Trump’s time in the White House was for this nation.

And we sure as hell can’t afford to put him back there.

[theartofangirling]

part 3 of the 2023 version of this post: adult books!

part 1: middle grade books | part 2: young adult books

this is a very incomplete list, as these are only books I've read and enjoyed. not all books are going to be for all readers, so I'd recommend looking up synopses and content warnings. feel free to message me with any questions about specific representation!

list of books under the cut ⬇️

yerba buena by nina lacour

if we were villains by m.l. rio

everyone in this room will someday be dead by emily r. austin

i want to be a wall by honami shirono

portrait of a thief by grace d. li

the thirty names of night by zeyn joukhadar

on earth we're briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong

love & other disasters by anita kelly

take a hint, dani brown by talia hibbert

boyfriend material by alexis hall

almost like being in love by steve kluger

the charm offensive by alison cochrun

something wild & wonderful by anita kelly

red, white & royal blue by casey mcquiston

something to talk about by meryl wilsner

honey girl by morgan rogers

one last stop by casey mcquiston

once ghosted, twice shy by alyssa cole

kiss her once for me by alison cochrun

a spindle splintered by alix e. harrow

finna by nino cipri

every heart a dooryway by seanan mcguire

the starless sea by erin morgenstern

under the whispering door by tj klune

space opera by catherynne m. valente

light from uncommon stars by ryka aoki

dead collections by isaac fellman

the city we became by n.k. jemisin

light carries on by ray nadine

an absolutely remarkable thing by hank green

feed them silence by lee mandelo

summer sons by lee mandelo

upright women wanted by sarah gailey

lavender house by lev a.c. rosen

fried green tomatoes at the whistle stop cafe by fannie flagg

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid

a master of djinn by p. djeli clark

witchmark by c.l. polk

a marvellous light by freya marske

a restless truth by freya marske

when women were dragons by kelly barnhill

plain bad heroines by emily m. danforth

a lady for a duke by alexis hall

infamous by lex croucher

passing strange by ellen klages

even though i knew the end by c.l. polk

the chosen and the beautiful by nghi vo

whiskey when we're dry by john larison

wake of vultures by lila bowen

silver in the wood by emily tesh

the once and future witches by alix e. harrow

the kingdoms by natasha pulley

a tip for the hangman by allison epstein

she who became the sun by shelley parker-chan

the song of achilles by madeline miller

spear by nicola griffith

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir

some desperate glory by emily tesh

all systems red by martha wells

a psalm for the wild built by becky chambers

the mimicking of known successes by malka older

winter's orbit by everina maxwell

fireheart tiger by aliette de bodard

empress of salt and fortune by nghi vo

legends and lattes by travis baldree

the house in the cerulean sea by tj klune

other ever afters by melanie gillman

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon

a day of fallen night by samantha shannon

a strange and stubborn endurance by foz meadows

the unbroken by c.l. clark

real queer america by samantha allen

fun home by alison bechdel

in the dream house by carmen maria machado

better living through birding by christian cooper

why fish don't exist by lulu miller

[friskyfreddie2024]

America: You Fucked Up

You could have chosen Hope. You chose Hate.

You could have chosen Empathy. You chose Enmity.

You could have chosen a New Beginning. You chose the Nazi.

We could have finally been rid of this cancer on American democracy. He could have been banished to obscurity, remembered only as the worst president in American history, and finally held responsible for his numerous crimes.

The ignorant, racist, misogynistic, white supremacist, pathologicial liar is now going back to the White House. He is a convicted felon, an admitted sexual predator, a total fraud, and a demented old man. He belongs in prison.

What did you do?

You ignored that the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world, that inflation is at its lowest level in four years, that unemployment is at its lowest level in three years. You believed the lies about how terrible the economy is. I knew better.

You forgot about his 30,000+ lies while he was in office. I remember.

You forgot about his complete mismanagement and ignorance over COVID, resulting in the deaths of over one million Americans. I remember.

You forgot about the saber rattling over military exercises in the pacific, when Kim Jong Un threatened us with nuclear missiles, causing us to fear whether we'd see another day. I remember.

You forgot about waking up every morning dreading to hear the latest abomination he tweeted. I remember.

You forgot about "very fine people on both sides." I remember.

You forgot about "only the best people" like Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, Tom Price, Scott Pruitt, Steve Mnuchin, and many others who were given cabinet positions despite having zero qualifications for the job. I remember.

You forgot that 40 of his former cabinet members and dozens of former generals and officials refused to support him, saying he was "unfit to serve." I remember.

You forgot about January 6, "fight like hell". I remember.

You forgot that when he was told that his vice president was secured because the rioters wanted to kill him, he said, "So what?" I remember

You forgot about The Big Lie, "Release the Kraken" and 60+ failed attempts to overturn the election in the courts. I remember.

You forgot about "I just need you to find 11,780 votes." I remember.

You forgot about "They're eating the cats! They're eating the dogs!" I remember.

What now?

When a woman suffering an ectopic pregnancy dies because she doesn't have access to medical care, that's on you.

When they take away your neighbor, your co-worker, your friend, and deport them, that's on you.

When a woman is forced to suffer the agony of carrying her rapist's baby to term, that's on you.

When a transgender kid harms themselves because they can't get the medical care they need, that's on you.

When your middle-class taxes GO UP, while billionaires get even more tax breaks, that's on you.

When schoolchildren are killed by an assault rifle in a mass shooting, that's on you.

When children grow up ignorant because you banned books and dictated how history is taught, that's on you.

When Grandma can no longer afford a comfortable life because the Social Security she paid into all her working life, and provided income on which she now depends, has been cut, that's on you.

When violence against Jews, Asians, Hispanics rises again, that's on you.

When prices on the goods you buy skyrocket due to tariffs, that's on you.

When Ukraine, deprived of our support, is overrun by Russia, that's on you.

When the U.S. is the laughing stock of the world (as we were 2016-2020), that's on you.

What should you have done?

You should have exercised critical thinking skills, recognized the thousands of lies you were being told, recalled that his administration had four years to live up to his promises and failed at all of them. You should have realized that he is a profoundly stupid individual who doesn't give a shit about you or your family or anything except himself.

You had the last nine years to see that, and you still fell for his bullshit.

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

I've almost reached my breaking point with this genocide in Ukraine. I'm older than most Tumblr users, so I was being yelled at in university tutorials in the early 00s for talking about the Holodomor, and being told that "If it happened, Ukrainians deserved it for being Nazis".

I was out there in 2007 when we had the worldwide march for the Holodomor to be recognised as a genocide, only for so many countries (the USA being one of them) to tell us that they won't do it because it might upset russia.

I remember when russia invaded in 2014 and Obama said it wasn't his business, and that russia can decide what happens in Ukraine. And then he sent Ukraine fucking helmets and "hygiene kits" instead of the military aid he was supposed to.

My family in Donetsk walked out of their homes with their lives packed in plastic shopping bags nearly eleven years ago. But people prefer to believe the russian lies that Donbas wants to be part of russia.

I remember sitting at home on the 17th of July 2014, hearing about russia shooting down MH17, and feeling my blood run cold because the initial reports said the aeroplane was full of Americans. Being so sure that the USA might finally live up to the Budapest Memorandum and get involved in the war.

Of course they didn't.

And then the Malaysians went and protested at the Ukrainian embassy, as if they were to blame for being invaded by their genocidal neighbour.

I remember being at a protest at the russian embassy in Canberra just after Crimea was annexed, and the only people who turned up for us were other Ukrainians. Soon after there were massive protests for Palestine and BLM from Melbourne to Dublin and beyond. Ukrainians are too white for leftists and too foreign for right-wingers to care about.

More people dumped buckets of ice on their heads than supported us.

I spent Easter 2016 in a hotel in Ukraine. 8.5 years ago I was the only guest who wasn't a soldier on leave from the war.

Now I go on reddit and see that Americans are discussing how Ukraine "has a neo-fascist problem". Um, you guys just voted for Donald fucking Trump?

Then I see an Australian journalist say that the US election result means that America is "becoming like Eastern Europe". No. Eastern Europeans aren't Nazis. They suffered more under the Nazis than anyone.

We're always on our own. Millions upon millions of Ukrainians have been killed in the last ninety years, millions more sold into slavery in Germany (including my grandparents), hundreds of thousands sent to gulags (including the entire population of my grandmother's village), and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands dead or missing now, but we're still not seen as worthy of caring about.

I have family members whose dead bodies have been lying on battlefields for over a year. One killed in Bakhmut, a city that no longer exists. Another taken hostage from Mariupol, a city russia bombed to the ground. The mass graves there can be seen from space.

We can't get the bodies back because russia has colonised the area. I have a relative who was moved on from fighting in Vovchansk because there was no point fighting for another city that no longer exists. My relative who was taken hostage in Mariupol was starved and tortured for 2.5 years.

And then last week our city's magazine had a three-page interview with the russian ambassador, explaining why his country "has" to commit genocide in Ukraine. The editor laughed at my aunt when she phoned to register a complaint.

But teenaged tankies on sites like this will mock Ukrainians' deaths, stick a fucking hammer and sickle in their profile, and lecture people like me about things they know nothing about.

The world needs to end its ridiculous love affair with the russian federation.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

Reasons why we know there's something wrong with Grandpa:

• believes immigrants are eating their neighbors pets because he heard someone say it on TV (without any evidence) • thinks injecting disinfectant into our veins might be a good idea. (It's definitely not, don't try it.) • claims America's F35 fighter jet is completely invisible, even if you're right next to it (like Wonder Woman's plane)

• praises white supremacists and KKK members who were chanting antisemitic hate speech, calling them "very fine people" • focuses on imaginary issues like preventing children from changing gender while at school, but ignores real problems like school shootings • thought it was a good idea to give away our desperately needed Covid test machines to our adversary ("Grandpa, what have you done?" — he can't be left alone for a minute) • decided to believe Putin's lies, but dismiss findings from America's intelligence agencies • claims America had airplanes during the Revolutionary War

• believes in the Nazi ideology that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country," and says some migrants are actually subhuman "animals" • insisted that the U.S. would have fewer coronavirus cases if it conducted less testing (yes, a U.S. president in charge of controlling the crisis, actually said something this inept, repeatedly) • due to his incompetence and lies during the Covid crisis, the U.S. had one of the highest rates of Covid deaths in the world • thinks windmills cause cancer and kill whales • speaks endlessly about his concerns re: dying by electrocution from a boat battery or being eaten by a shark

• thinks he's above the law and, as president, should be able to commit as many crimes as he wants • is a billionaire who whines about how badly he's been treated, then he's chauffeured to his private jet • likes to discuss Arnold Palmer's penis • after NINE years of repeatedly promising to unveil his Healthcare Plan "very soon," he admits he still has no real plan —only "concepts of a plan" • has a bizarre attraction to the fictional cannibal and serial killer, Hannibal Lector (why? no one knows —and everyone's afraid to ask)

• advocates dangerous plots, like using the military against Americans who disagree with him, or using the DOJ to arrest them, or just telling people to "beat the crap out of them" and he'll pay their legal fees • thinks having a national day of violence is a good idea (we should never have let Grandpa watch "The Purge") • wants to be the "law and order president," yet this 34 time convicted felon incites people to riot and to commit criminal acts of violence • unable to take the loss of an election like a man, he had a temper tantrum like a toddler, that culminated in a treasonous insurrection

⠀This guy is so delusional, he claims he's a genius because he often speaks incoherently in something he calls "the Weave." Here are two examples: • "How disgusted were all when we see all of us are when we see three days ago when we viewed their parade." Asheboro, NC, 8/21/24 • When asked, "What specific legislation will you commit to, to make child care affordable?" He responded, “Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, you know; I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka, who was so impactful on that issue. ...But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that because the childcare is childcare, couldn’t, you know, there’s something you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.” New York, NY, 9/5/24 ⠀If this was anybody else's Grandpa, the family would be having discussions about who's going to go with Grandpa to the doctor to find out what's wrong with him, and who's going to be in charge of finding him a nice convalescent home to live in. ⠀My suggestion is that it might be a good idea to elect a president who has no cognitive impairment and can tell the difference between reality and delusions. Personally, I think that's a rather important quality in a president.

[ausetkmt]

(NEW YORK)— PEN America responded today to the removal of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ acclaimed memoir Between the World and Me from an advanced placement course in South Carolina, calling it “an outrageous act of government censorship.”

As reported, earlier this spring students in the Chapin High School classroom reported a teacher for including Coates’ memoir and two related short videos in her argument essay unit. The unit, designed in preparation for the AP Language test, which is accepted for credit by many colleges, included questions such as: “Do you think racism is a pervasive problem in America? Why or why not?”

Several students wrote to the school board about the class, saying it made them feel “ashamed to be Caucasian” and “in shock that she would do something illegal like that…I am pretty sure a teacher talking about systemic racism is illegal in South Carolina.” South Carolina passed an educational gag order last year that banned “divisive concepts” related to race and sex.

In response, Jeremy C. Young, freedom to learn program director, released the following statement:

“This is an outrageous act of government censorship and a textbook example of how educational gag orders corrupt free inquiry in the classroom. In a course designed to be taught at the college level, students complained that a teacher assigning a National Book Award-winning volume about race was “illegal in South Carolina.” Instead of defending the teacher’s right to teach this material, the school board sided with the students and censored the curriculum.

As with the AP African American Studies course in Florida – which also involved the politically-motivated removal of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ writings – government attempts to limit discourse and expression in high school classrooms have spilled over into early college programs. Educational gag orders in South Carolina and elsewhere are doing exactly what they are designed to do: censor teachers who dare to discuss race and gender in class. Anyone who believes these laws are harmless, or are designed to prevent indoctrination, should look no further than the Lexington-Richland School District to realize what these laws truly are: a license to silence students’ education.”

PEN America has been at the forefront of documenting and defending against the unprecedented rise of school book bans nationwide as well as the spread of educational censorship legislation to nearly half of all states. Collectively, these bills attempt to put certain ideas and concepts out of bounds in K-12 classrooms, and even in college classrooms. Texas, Florida, and Missouri lead with the most books banned. Depriving students of literary works flies in the face of basic constitutional freedoms, and PEN America is suing Escambia County, Florida, over its book bans.

Black and LGBTQ+ authors and books about race, racism, and LGBTQ identities have been disproportionately affected in the book bans documented by PEN America in the last year and a half. The wave of book banning is worse than anything seen in decades, with PEN America counting more than 4,000 book bans since the fall of 2021.

About PEN America

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. To learn more visit PEN.org

Contact: Suzanne Trimel, STrimel@PEN.org, 201-247-5057

[wilwheaton]

shitler's iowa "win" in context

56K Christofascist losers (out of 752K voters, 115K of whom actually went to the caucuses) picked their own fascist loser to be the loser in November.

The narrative they are trying SO HARD to push on us is bullshit. This isn't some kind of landslide victory over a tough field. He *barely* topped 51% against the most pathetic field of weak candidates who fell all over themselves to not criticize him or even tell the truth about him. And look at the roughly 700K voters who stayed home or picked someone else. That's a big part of this story I am not seeing.

America hates this guy and everything he stands for. Yeah, there's a lot of white supremacy in the Republican party, and they have exerted minority rule for a long, long time. They have a loud and angry base, and an entire propaganda network dedicated to pushing their lies. AND STILL they and their policies aren't popular. Their leader is indicted on 91 felony counts, will almost certainly go to prison, and is so feeble he can't risk facing anyone but his most sycophantic (ever dwindling) audiences, lest he shit himself and forget who he's running against.

He's dangerous as fuck, but he's a massive loser and we can beat him again, just like we did in 2020 and 2022 when his hand-picked lunatics were defeated all over the place.

Do not get discouraged and think that this means America has suddenly forgotten about all of his violence, chaos, cruelty, corruption, and crimes.

Remain vigilant, check your registration, confirm your registration, and make sure you and everyone you know turn out to protect America and the world from this piece of shit.

[reasoningdaily]

The portraits of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass hang on the walls of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture on September 24, 2016, in Washington, DC

In August 1619, the first ship with “20 and odd” enslaved Africans arrived on the shores of Virginia. Four hundred years later, we look back at this moment as the start of an enduring relationship between the founding of the United States and the unconscionable exploitation of the enslaved.

In a sweeping project published by the New York Times Magazine in August 2019 exploring the legacy of slavery, Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote, “[The enslaved] and their descendants transformed the lands to which they’d been brought into some of the most successful colonies in the British Empire. ... But it would be historically inaccurate to reduce the contributions of black people to the vast material wealth created by our bondage. Black Americans have also been, and continue to be, foundational to the idea of American freedom.”

Yet centuries later, the lasting impact of slavery continues to be minimized and myths continue to flourish. For instance, there’s the erasure of the many slave revolts and rebellions that happened throughout the nation, perpetuating the lie that the enslaved were docile or satisfied with their conditions. There’s also the persistent idea that black labor exploitation is over, when mass incarceration still keeps millions of black Americans behind bars and often working for “wages” that amount to less than $1 an hour. Then there’s the idea that our understanding of slavery is accurate based on what we learned in history textbooks, when in reality, misinformation continues to be taught in our public schools about slavery’s legacy.

To unpack what often gets mistold or misunderstood, we asked five historians to debunk the biggest myths about slavery. Here’s what they said, in their own words.

1) The myth that slaves never rebelled

Miseducation surrounding slavery in the US has led to an elaborate mythology of half truths and missing information. One key piece of missing history concerns slave revolts: Few history books or popular media portrayals of the trans-Atlantic slave trade discuss the many slave rebellions that occurred throughout America’s early history.

C.L.R. James’s A History of Pan African Revolt describes many small rebellions such as the Stono Plantation insurgence of September 1739 in the South Carolina colony, where a small group of enslaved Africans first killed two guards. Others joined them as they moved to nearby plantations, setting them afire and killing about two dozen enslavers, especially violent overseers. Nat Turner’s August 1831 uprising in Southampton, Virginia, where some 55 to 65 enslavers were killed and their plantations burned, serves as another example.

 A country road follows the trail of Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion in rural southeastern Virginia, June 5, 2010. On either side, farms were burned and slavers murdered as Nat Turner and his followers marched toward the town of Jerusalem, now renamed Courtland. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images 

Enslaved Africans resisted and rebelled against individual slave holders and the system of slavery as a whole. Some slipped away secretly to learn to read. Many simply escaped. Others joined the abolitionist movements, wrote books, and gave lectures to the public about their experiences in captivity. And others led or participated in open combat against their captors.

Omitting or minimizing these stories of rebellion helps hide the violent and traumatic experiences enslaved Africans endured at the hands of enslavers, which prompted such revolts. If we are unaware of resistance, it is easier for us to believe the enslaved were happy, docile, or that their conditions were not inhumane. It then becomes easier to dismiss economic and epigenetic legacies of the transatlantic slave system.

Dale Allender is an associate professor at California State University, Sacramento.

2) The myth that house slaves had it better than field slaves

While physical labor in the fields was excruciating for the enslaved — clearing land, planting, and harvesting that often destroyed their bodies — that didn’t negate the physical and emotional violence enslaved women, and sometimes men and children, suffered at the hands of enslavers in their homes.

In fact, rape of black women by white enslavers was so prevalent that a 2016 study revealed 16.7 percent of African Americans’ ancestors can be traced back to Europe. One of the study’s authors concludes that the first African Americans to leave the South were those genetically related to the men who raped their mothers, grandmothers, and/or great-grandmothers. These were the enslaved African Americans within the closest proximity to and who spent the longest durations with white men: the ones who toiled in the houses of slave owners.

 An unidentified woman poses with a book in her hands, circa 1850. The original caption identifies her only as a “freed slave.” Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images 

A 2015 study determined that 50 percent of rape survivors develop PTSD. It is hard to imagine that enslaved and freedom-seeking African American survivors of rape — female, male, old, young, no matter their physical or mental abilities — did not experience further anxiety, fear, and shame associated with a condition they could not control in a situation out of control. Those African Americans with the most European ancestry, those tormented mentally, physically, emotionally, and genetically in the house, knew they had to get out. In fact, they fled the farthest — Southern whites are more closely related to blacks now living in the North than the South.

Jason Allen is a public historian and dialogue facilitator working at nonprofits, hospitals, and businesses in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia.

3) The myth that abolition was the end of racism

A common myth about American slavery is that when it ended, white supremacy or racism in America also ended.

Recently, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a familiar variant of this myth when he said he opposed reparations “for something that happened 150 years ago.” To the Kentucky Republican, a descendant of enslavers, slavery simply was, and then it just wasn’t, as though the battlefield had leveled the playing field when it came to race.

But the truth is that long after the Civil War, white Americans continue to carry the same set of white supremacist beliefs that governed their thoughts and actions during slavery and into the post-emancipation era.

In the South, especially, whites retained an enslaver’s mentality. They embraced sharecropping and convict leasing to control black labor in late 19th century, enacted Jim Crow laws to regulate black behavior in the early 20th century, and use racial terror to police the color line to this day.

 In this undated photo, two men use segregated drinking fountains in the American South. Getty Images 

In the North, whites also rejected racial equality. After emancipation, they refused to make abandoned and confiscated land available to freedmen because they believed that African Americans would not work without white supervision. And when African Americans began fleeing Dixie during the Great Migration, white Northerners instituted their own brand of Jim Crow, segregating neighborhoods and refusing to hire black workers on a nondiscriminatory basis.

Slavery’s legacy is white supremacy. The ideology, which rationalized bondage for 250 years, has justified the discriminatory treatment of African Americans for the 150 years since the war ended. The belief that black people are less than white people has made segregated schools acceptable, mass incarceration possible, and police violence permissible.

This makes the myth that slavery had no lasting impact extremely consequential — denying the persistence and existence of white supremacy obscures the root causes of the problems that continue to plague African Americans. As a result, policymakers fixate on fixing black people instead of trying to undo the discriminatory systems and structures that have resulted in separate and unequal education, voter suppression, health disparities, and a wealth gap.

Something did “happen” 150 years ago: Slavery ended. But the institution’s influence on American racism and its continued impact on African Americans is still felt today.

Hasan Kwame Jeffries is an associate professor at Ohio State University.

4) The myth that history class taught us everything we needed to know about slavery

Many of us first learned about slavery in our middle or high school history classes, but some of us learned much earlier — in elementary school, through children’s books, or even Black History Month curriculum and programs. Unfortunately, we don’t always learn the entire story.

Most of us only learned partial truths about slavery in the United States. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, many in the North and South wanted to put an end to continuing tensions. But this wasn’t done just through the Compromise of 1877, when the federal government pulled the last troops out of the South; it was also done by suppressing the rights of black Americans and elevating the so-called “Lost Cause” of the enslavers.

 The Tennessee-based group “New Confederate State of America” held a protest in support of retaining a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee located on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, September 16, 2017. Win McNamee/Getty Images 

The Lost Cause is a distorted version of Civil War history. In the decades after the war, a number of Southern historians began to write that slaveholders were noble and had the right to secede from the Union when the North wished to interfere with their way of life. Due to efforts by a group of Southern socialites known as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Lost Cause ideology influenced history textbooks as well as books for children and adults. The accomplishments of black Americans involved in the abolition movement, such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Maria W. Stewart, Henry Highland Garnet, and William Still, were downplayed. Union generals like Ulysses S. Grant were denigrated, as were anti-racist whites from John Brown to William Lloyd Garrison. Generations later, there are still many people around the country who believe the Civil War was about states’ rights and that slaves who had good masters were treated well.

Even an accurate historical curriculum emphasizes progress, triumph, and optimism for the country as a whole, without taking into account how slavery continues to affect black Americans and influence present-day domestic policy from urban planning to health care. It does not emphasize that 12 of the first 18 presidents were enslavers, that enslaved Africans from particular cultures were prized for their skills from rice cultivation to metallurgy, and that enslaved people used every tool at their disposal to resist bondage and seek freedom. From slavery to Jim Crow to civil rights to the first black president, the black American story is forced into the story of the unassailable American dream — even when the truth is more complicated.

Given what we learn about slavery, when we learn it, and how, it is clear that everyone still has much more to learn. Teaching Tolerance and Teaching for Change are two organizations that have been wrestling with how we introduce this topic to our young. And what they’re learning is that the way forward is to unlearn.

Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

5) The myth that slavery doesn’t exist today

One of the greatest myths about slavery is that it ended. In fact, it evolved into its modern form: mass incarceration.

The United States has the highest prison population in the world. More than 2.2 million Americans are incarcerated; 4.5 million are on probation or parole. African Americans make up roughly 13 percent of the general population. But black men, women, and youth have outsize representation in the criminal justice system, where they make up 34 percent of the 6.8 million people who are under its control. Their labor is used to produce goods and services for businesses that profit from prison labor.

 Prisoners at the Ferguson Unit, a large prison along the Trinity River in Texas, actively work the farm the prison runs, which includes planting and harvesting an annual cotton crop, 1997. The prison is located on a former cotton slave plantation. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images 

For those of us who study the early history of mass incarceration in America, these statistics are not surprising. From the late 1860s through the 1920s, over 90 percent of the prison and jail populations of the South were black. Thousands of incarcerated men, women, and children were hired out by the state to private factories and farms for a fee. From sunup to sundown, they worked under the watchful eye of brutal “whipping bosses” who flogged, mauled, and murdered them. They earned nothing for their toil. Today, labor exploitation, the denial of human dignity and the right to citizenship, family separation, and violent punishment define our criminal justice system in ways that mirror slavery.

Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people work. According to a 2017 report published by the Prison Policy Initiative, “the average of the minimum daily wages paid to incarcerated workers for non-industry prison jobs is now 86 cents.” Those assigned to work for state-owned businesses (correctional industries) earn between 33 cents and $1.41 per hour. In 2018, incarcerated Americans held a nationwide strike to end “prison slavery.” In a list of demands, striking individuals called for “all persons imprisoned in any place of detention under United States jurisdiction” to be “paid the prevailing wage in their state or territory for their labor.”

This is a year to remember slavery’s origins. It is also an opportunity to critique its legacies. Let’s not get so caught up in our efforts to commemorate slavery’s beginning that we fail to advocate for its end.

Talitha LeFlouria is the Lisa Smith Discovery Associate Professor at the University of Virginia.

Correction: An earlier version misstated the range of presidents who were enslavers. It was 12 of the first 18 presidents, not 12 of the first 16.

[vermiciousyidreborn]

So people keep assuring me that Palestinians are also indigenous to the southern levant and...well, I admit I'm skeptical of this. Like, I'm NOT advocating expelling them or genocide, etc. Those are all bad, just questioning the notion of indigeneity here. Mostly as a consequentialist. If Palestinians are indigenous to the Levant, that seems to imply other things. Let's think through this.

We're going to set aside the UN notion of indigenous because that's crafted to exclude Jews and often enough this is a statement by people who reject that and consider Jews to be indigenous, they're often saying both groups are. So...I guess that means something like "A group is indigenous to the region where they underwent ethnogenesis" so we'll take that as our definition of indigeneity. Jews are indigenous to the Levant, check. We're good. Arabs are indigenous to Arabia. All makes sense.

So, anyway, what's an ethnic group? From Wikipedia:

An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a people of a common language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, religion, history, or social treatment.[

Ok, so common language, culture, traditions, history, etc.

So European American Protestants are indigenous to North America? Common history (going back to the 1600s!), identify as a group, believe they have a common culture (even if we need to break things up more finely, you can find common cultures, say, New England, or Midwest, wee American Nations), common language (English, which I will posit is part of why there's basically a moral panic about Spanish and has been almost my entire life, in much of the country). Note that an ethnicity "can include" and doesn't need ALL of these things.

So it seems pretty solid that European American Protestants are, at the least, a collection of ethnic groups unique to North America. Which means they did ethnogenesis here. Which means they're indigenous now.

So...let's be clear, to me this is a reductio ad absurdam. OF COURSE white US protestants are not indigenous to North America! But I've yet to see definitions that mark Palestinian Arabs as indigenous to the Levant without also implying that white Americans are indigenous to fucking Ohio (along with the rest of the country).

Especially when you consider that white american protestant as an identity in this sense is older than a distinct Palestinian identity. It just brings us to the eternal questions that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict brings up and that people REALLY don't want to discuss:

When, if ever, does indigeneity expire? Personally, I think it doesn't, and Jews are and will always be indigenous to the Levant, just like the Cherokee Nation is indigenous to the US Southeast, even though they've been displaced. Though I know many "Pro-Palestine" activists implicitly believe indigeneity does expire, at least for Jews, but even if I weren't Jewish, I wouldn't want that precedent set because it would fuck over EVERYONE

When does a colonizer become indigenous to the place they colonized? This is rarely discussed, but lies implicitly behind a lot of things. Again, I want to avoid setting bad precedents, but I don't see how Palestinian Arabs can have hit this threshold and white people in the US haven't, which leads me to reject the idea that colonizers can ever become indigenous, at least while holding onto the identity that did the colonization (White and Arab, respectively, hell, White Christian and Arab Muslim if we want to get more specific).

Now, I don't believe colonizers need to be killed or expelled, I'm generally against violence outside of self-defense, but I do think that the rhetoric we use matters, and I want to interrogate it.

[prozach27]

The idea that voting for Harris and Walz means you don’t care about Gaza is such an uneducated position that it can just about only be justified as a psy-op. What exactly is it that you think voting is for? If it’s to show where your idealistic morality lies - what you would really LOVE for America to look like with a president - then of course it makes sense to not want to vote someone who isn’t as critical as you’d like of the Palestinian Genocide. But that’s not the world we live in. As American citizens, we are IMMENSELY privileged, and we cannot possibly understand the horrors and tribulations Palestinians have endured over the last year. The idea that Trump and Harris are “equally bad” for Palestine is a position of immense privilege that doesn’t value Gazan lives. Trump has told Israel to finish the war. Harris is calling for a temporary ceasefire. From a purely logical perspective, one party is promoting a position that could save Palestinian lives while the other is asking for an escalation of events. If you can’t see the difference between these two positions - the real-world, life-altering difference between these two positions for people in a war-zone - then it’s time to ask yourself if you’re morally grandstanding by demanding nothing less than a complete end to the war, or if you’re more concerned in saving even one additional life.

There is no 3rd-party presidential candidate with enough name recognition to make it in this election. If you want a third party, by all means, support them after the election and help them get a foothold. That doesn’t change that they’re not a viable option for 2024. So, do you choose Trump - who wants to escalate the war - or Harris, who wants to help it calm down? These positions are fundamentally different and will lead to changes in the number of Palestinians who survive. Leaving the Palestinian genocide aside, Trump and project 2025 have made it clear how they want to limit abortion access, higher education, transgender rights, gay rights, and DEI efforts while the Harris White House wouldn’t be trying to actively dismantle these things. These are, once again, clear cut issues that will alter how many people survive under each presidency.

If your position is that “unless they give exactly what I want, they don’t deserve to be in office,” then it’s clear you’re not willing or interested in making the actually hard choices in politics and your activism is performative. You aren’t voting for who’s a good person or who you like most - you’re voting for the enemy you want in office. Do the right thing. Vote for Harris and give people a chance to save more lives.

[reading-writing-revolution]

What The Fuck is Wrong with You?

Elect Biden and shut the fuck up about his age.

Donald J Trump is arguably the most ignorant, disgusting, demented man that anyone in America can name. Why are Democrats, news pundits and internet morons continuing to talk about Biden being old?

Donald Trump tried to overthrow the government of the United States of America and lost over 60 lawsuits to that effect. He incited and supported an insurrection that saw Americans attack the Capitol and try to capture or kill American lawmakers.

Who the fuck cares if Biden is old?

Donald J Trump named three Supreme Court Justices who ended Roe v Wade and have now rendered the Separation of Powers and check and balances in the US Constitution as "null and void."

Biden is just 3 years older than Trump, and who cares?

Donald Trump goes on insane, meandering, half-baked rants at political rallies, slurring his words, unable to complete sentences, losing track of his thoughts, and calling for Americans to be hurt, have their rights taken away and worse. He treats everyone around him, including other Republicans, like trash.

But Biden is old.

Donald Trump pretended that COVID was a hoax, suggested the American people ingest bleach to fight it, and smeared the leading scientists battling COVID, which resulted in about a million deaths in the United States in a year.

But Joe Biden is pretty old.

Donald Trump was accused of rape by over 20 women, found guilty of sexual assault in 2024 and made lurid comments about his own daughter. He also cheated on all three of his wives, including his latest wife while she was pregnant. Then he tried to cover it up by paying hush money to a porn star.

Biden is an old guy.

Donald Trump banned Muslims from America, put thousands of people in cages at the border and tried to get the Ukrainian president to lie about Joe Biden.

But Joe Biden isn't a youngin anymore.

Trump said African nations were "shithole countries" and said white supremacists were "very fine people." Trump said immigrants were taking "Black jobs". He also ignored the hurricane catastrophe in Puerto Rico, which took 3000 lives.

But Biden is old.

Trump's family foundation was found to have ripped off charities, he's banned from doing business in New York, and his daughter and son-in-law received $2 billion from the Saudis at the end of his presidency. He's bankrupted or failed in every business he's ever had, from Trump Steaks to Trump Air to Trump University to all the casinos.

But hey, Biden is old.

Trump did a deal with Afghanistan to let the Taliban out of prison so they could (and did) take over the country. He's sided with Putin against NATO. He said nothing about the Saudis killing a journalist. Donald Trump eased restrictions on loan sharks, exploded the deficit and made friends with North Korea. He told over 3000 lies.

But old Joe is old.

Biden is old.

Donald Trump is easily the worst human being anyone has ever encountered, and all anyone can talk about is how old Biden is. What the fuck is wrong with you?