#who can't vote cause I'm not a citizen

[queeraliensposts]

I am 100% serious when I say that if I get through the 2024 election without being admitted into a mental hospital, it'll be a fucking miracle

[musical-chick-13]

This is the only thing I'm going to say about the election until it's over:

Anyone who did not vote for Harris or who attempted to dissuade people from voting for Harris, you are indirectly responsible for whatever shit Donald Trump does if he gets elected. That blood is primarily on his hands, yes. But it is also on yours. I hope you can live with that because I sure as hell wouldn't be able to.

[qqueenofhades]

The thing that confuses me about the "don't vote" left (not the "I don't want to vote", I'm talking explicitly the "don't vote" left. I don't agree with the "I don't want to vote" left either but I can understand their logic) is they lose me at the final step of the logic. I've tried to connect the logic here, even if I don't agree with a political position I do try to understand where people are coming from (empathy for someones situation is not the same as cosigning it), but I just can't connect the dots here in a way that isn't deeply cruel. Does United States politics prioritize the lives of those in the US (and often white) over those in the Global South? Yes, it's a fucking atrocity. We should continue to make noise about it, cus Biden has used less drones and that shows progress, even if it's not enough. The part where I lose the plot is where the conclusion to this injustice is to let even more people die? Cus that's kinda how I see the idea of not voting: I can pick between shit and more shit, and at the end of the day, I'm picking whoever allows the most people to make it to the next day. Given Trumps stance on everything but specifically climate change, I feel like Biden is pretty significant harm reduction.

I don't think both things can't be true: that every life lost is a travesty we should not forget AND the more people we can save is worth fighting for.

The thing is, I have seen nothing among the "don't vote" far left (and I am talking here specifically about the people who both loudly announce their intention not to vote and try to convince others to do the same) to convince me that they actually care about harm reduction or stopping genocide. They only care about what makes them look the most Correct and/or superior to the Democrats. They yelled bloody murder about Obama using drones, they went dead quiet about Trump using them even more (even when he nearly started WWIII by assassinating the Iranian general Soleimani with one), and then said nothing at all when Biden reduced the drone program to almost nothing and withdrew the US from a failed war in Afghanistan it had long ago lost. Now they will yell all day about Israel/Hamas (something that Biden did not start and has had no direct military role in responding to) but they don't care about Russian genocide of Ukraine and Syria, Chinese threats to invade Taiwan, etc, because those governments are "anti-western/anti-American" and therefore should be defended. Their opposition to human suffering is extremely conditional and rests on whether they can look good out of it, and they never interrogate the hypocrisies of their own ideology.

Likewise: every country in the world prizes its own citizens above those of other countries. It's just a basic fact. Yes, the US has a grim history of intervening in other countries and causing untold civilian damage (especially during the Cold War and then in post-9/11 War on Terrorism). Yes, that legacy is complex and needs to be acknowledged. But literally none of that will be fixed, not to mention all the vulnerable people in America itself who will be punished, by Trump getting into power again. Biden is not just a grudging "lesser evil," but has done a lot of truly good and helpful things, regardless of the Online Leftists' constant lies, misinformation, and misrepresentation. If you spend all your time announcing what a champion you are for non-American marginalised people and/or those undergoing terrible suffering, and then deliberately and knowingly adhere to a course of action that will increase that suffering tenfold not only for those people but your own neighbors, friends, and family, then no, I don't believe you are a brave champion of social justice. You just want to know what categories of people you can gleefully and righteously punish and make to suffer for not believing the same things as you, that makes you just as dangerous as the right-wing fascists, and I can and will call out your ass accordingly.

[k3n-dyll]

I know I said I'd be inactive but I gotta rant like I'm at a point of pure rage and I'm not all the way sober rn. As a black woman? I feel betrayed. Like I have no clue why, but for some reason I had faith in y'all to come through and recognize that while Kamala isn't perfect by any means that a Trump presidency would likely mean wraps for all of us, but no. Every. Single. Group managed to fuck up aside from black men and women in this election.

What happens when the internet becomes so overruled with censorship that we can no longer share information about the causes we care about? The police are already over militarized and the oompa loompa that's been put up in office is fully ready to grant them immunity, meaning they would essentially be able to do whatever the fuck they want to us without consequence.

I mean let's be fucking real that immunity is going to affect my community at a disproportionate rate just in case you guys already forgot what those pigs like to do to us. And my community is also that main group of people that is out on the street riding for everybody when there's an issue so what's gonna happen now? Hm?

Black women have been saying for a good while that we should vote for the candidate who will let us keep doing the work we're trying to do. The one that we would be safe protesting and organizing under so that we can make change both in and outside of our community, for example, actually putting third-party candidates in STATE GOVERNMENTS so that when actual viable third parties run, they'll have some chance in the presidential election. Y'know because the Electoral votes and support from state governments are really what matters.

And I say ACTUAL viable third-party candidates because, let's be real once again, half the people who voted for Jill Stein didn't do research on her like they should have. That white lady has been a grifter this isn't news.

It's like...watching people just cling to the idea that some big revolution is going to start within the next year because of this is exhausting, especially when the vast majority of American citizens had not a fucking clue about Palestine, Sudan, or Congo until 2023. Unfortunately for us, this shit takes time and actual irl community building. These election results have only made what would have been difficult nearly impossible because people either want to stand on some moral high ground or for 'tax cuts' that they aren't eligible for because half of you bitches are poor just like the rest of us.

I'm fucking exhausted. My ancestors survived slavery, Jim Crow, red lining - we're still surviving and fighting for justice for victims of police brutality and I am so. Fucking. Tired of surviving shit because y'all can't think critically for two fucking seconds. It's like doing a group project but everyone else has a few pebbles in their skulls knocking around in there instead of brains.

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

And so as not to derail that previous post further, I'm taking my rant to this new post, but shit like that makes me so angry for so many reasons:

It's a hate crime against Jews, many of whom are totally uninvolved in the current situation

Let's say that hypothetically that this organization and every single one of its members was publicly advocating for the destruction of Gaza** or something: vandalizing a synagogue is still a hate crime, because you're not just targeting that community by spewing antisemitism, you are targeting all Jews. Every Jew. Every Jewish institution. Because the thing is that there is never an excuse for antisemitism. If you say that there is, what you're saying is that antisemitism IS okay as long as it's directed at Bad Jews or Jews you don't like. I can't stand Caitlin Jenner, but I'm not gonna call her out of her name or misgender her. Kanye is a walking dumpster fire of a human, but that doesn't mean I get to say racist stuff about him. And yeah - even Jews with the worst, ugliest opinions do not legitimize antisemitism. Come on guys, this is Social Justice 101.

And another thing: Let's assume again the worst about this group - they still don't have any power to actually change or stop what's happening in Israel. They are diaspora Jews who, unless they are randomly dual citizens, cannot vote and do not live there. Even if this antisemitic hate crime somehow inspired a deep reflection about who and how they are as Jews (massively unlikely for reasons that should be obvious), them taking up the torch of anti-Zionism does not have any legal significance. This act, in addition to being a hate crime, is one that is not even strategic in helping to shut down bad actors with actual power, nor is it at all calculated to build community bridges.

In fact, it is almost guaranteed to have the opposite effect: these vandals have not only made enemies of this community, but alienated any other potential Jewish allies.

But even if we set that aside, assuming that they don't care, it's massively counterproductive in that it will likely inspire more diaspora Jews to feel unsafe in that location and consider aliyah as an answer. If anything, these kinds of acts of blind hatred only reinforce the legitimate fear behind much of Zionism. You people just can't help proving again and again that Jews are physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially unsafe in the diaspora and need somewhere that is guaranteed to take us in when the next Kristallnacht happens.

It's also counterproductive, even if you actually just want Jews to die and don't care where we go; you actively want the destruction of Israel and all of the Jewish people because you're an antisemitic jackass you think it's somehow deserved: Normal people actually don't want that, and so if you're trying to attract other goyim who are decent people to your cause, associating pro-Palestinian activism with hate crimes is one of the worst things you can do in terms of PR and moral high ground.

Using Palestinian lives, deaths, and suffering as a bludgeon ignores them as real people and dehumanizes them and their struggle in the process. Anyone engaging in or excusing this kind of behavior is misusing their cry for justice as a get-out-of-antisemitism-free card, dehumanizing them by turning them into a weapon, and diverting much-needed energy away from things that actually help to doing PR cleanup and having to publicly distance themselves from these disgusting acts.

(**Please note that I am not saying these people were; in fact, I have yet to see a not-reactionary right-wing fringe Jewish group calling for anything but a return of the hostages and praying for peace in the region)

[jewreallythinkthat]

I shouted at the radio yesterday because BBC Radio 4 had an interview with a guy protesting outside the DNC who said not only is what's happening in Gaza the worst famine ever seen (which is fucking insane and completely delusional) but also that maybe if the Democrats lose, it will send them a message to think about Palestine next time when they choose their next candidate.

Like... First of all, Palestine is the other side of the world and the job of the US government is to protect it's citizens (which it doesn't do super well but still). If they mean the us should centre Palestine or people in the US will die, that's sounding like a threat of terrorism.

But what really got me is the idea that the response to the Dems losing is just 'they should learn and be more Palestine focused in four years' as if trump hasn't literally said THIS WILL BE THE LAST ELECTION IF HE WINS. Like, if the democrats lose, they won't have to field a candidate ever again cause trump has said openly that he's gonna just destroy the democratic system.

The situation in Palestine is small compared to other tragedies happening in the world. I'm not trying to downplay it, I'm really not, but if you are obsessed with numbers, then you can't get upset when the numbers undermine your arguments but you don't see people threatening not to vote because the political parties aren't centering Sudan, Rwanda, the DRC etc. in their policies.

[short-wooloo]

I've been seeing a lot of "Biden should abandon Israel entirely, if he doesn't he's going to lose/im not voting for him unless he does" posts/reblogs and I'm so sick of them

1. You pricks weren't going to get off your lazy asses and vote anyways, you don't give a damn, this is just a pathetic excuse

2. There are a number of reasons why Biden can't and shouldn't do that, like the fact that you don't just abandon longtime allies (trump did that with the Kurds), the fact that the US is not the only country who supports Israel, the fact that Israel has its own arms industry to support its needs (that is not to say Israel is completely self reliant, just that it is not wholly dependent on the US, shocking I know, turns out Israel is an independent country and not the 51st state), the fact that netanyahu would most assuredly seek out new patrons-probaby russia and china, the fact that pulling all support also removes any leverage or influence the US has over Israel

But they pale in comparison to one fact:

Abandoning Israel would absolutely be a losing move for Biden

See despite what the far lefties think, support for Israel is in fact the majority view of American citizens and politicians, it's one of the few things both sides can agree on, the difference is in how, and ending that support would invite a MASSIVE backlash, especially in an election year

It would splinter the Democrats, like I said, they do generally support Israel, but their support-unlike the republicans-has conditions and limits, they expect Israel to have restraint in its operations, casualties to be minimized, aid to go to civilians, and plans to be made for a free independent Palestine

And wouldn't you know it, that's what Biden's trying to do

So what do you think would happen if Biden were to abandon the position that the majority of his supporters/ party wants hmmmm?

Beyond that, the backlash from independents/centrists/and "moderate" republicans would be insane

See, most of those voters are people who don't like trump/the current state of the republican party, and are either going to vote for Biden/sit out of the election because they don't feel like supporting trump, but they still support Israel, so if Biden were to drop that entirely, these people would be PISSED OFF, they would swallow their misgivings and vote trump, speaking of...

If Biden announced "no more aid of any kind for Israel" today, then by this evening trump would announce that the first thing he'd do when back in office is send the most massive arms package imaginable to Israel

And he would win

Enough Democrats from Biden's base would be pissed at him and not vote, the centrists/independents/"moderate" republicans would decide aud for Israel is more important than stopping trump and vote for him, and the already fanatical republican base would really come out for trump on election day

So in addition to causing what could be the biggest landslide in modern election history and likely sending American democracy on a death spiral, Biden deciding to end all aid to Israel would end up helping netanyahu and hurting Palestine more in the long run

Yeah, so uh, Biden's not doing that

Welcome to realpolitik

[poorrichardjr]

Threats

Sometimes it can be very frustrating to live in a place so heavily populated with conservatives. Most everyone I run into plans on voting for Donald Trump because they believe he was sent by God to save them. He is what's best for our country, and it doesn't matter what he says or does, nothing is going to shift their belief in him.

I know a lot of these people have no idea what Trump really says. I know most of them have no idea what the results of his hatred for immigrants, the media, or liberals will really be. Mostly because they don't believe what he will do is really that extreme, and also because most of them really can't be bothered to actually do a bit of thought or research to understand the threat. Nope, they are die hard republicans and voting any other way is voting for the devil and the destruction of the country.

The thing is, I know a lot of these people aren't stupid. And though they say that they aren't hateful or racist people, it sure seems hard to believe them when you watch how they respond when they are told about how Trump wants to send troops into American cities on day 1 to root out every single immigrant and deport them. It's as if they can't put it together that if we suddenly remove a few million people from our economic system that we are going to have massive upheaval. No, these people aren't all collecting government checks that are so large they live better than you. These same people aren't taking your job. They are doing construction jobs, agriculture jobs, and meat packing jobs that a lot of Americans will not do. Many of them are paying taxes.

Don't get me wrong, there needs to be a better system in place to root out the criminals that sometimes slip through the cracks. There also needs to be a way for these people who are dedicating their lives to getting better and working hard to become citizens. We all know that suddenly deporting millions of people is going to adversely effect our economy. Adding in tariffs will significantly increase the costs of everyday items and cause a massive recession or depression. Tariffs have a place and a point, but Trump doesn't know what it is, and that's why he had to pay trillions of dollars to farmers and agriculture companies just to keep them afloat after he started his trade war.

But, this isn't about economics. As bad as Trump is on economic issues, you will never hear a bad word about it in the right-wing media sphere which is where the vast majority of these upper lower class yahoo's get their information from.

No, what I'm really getting to is that Trump, and by extension the Heritage Foundation, is planning to use every tool at their disposal to completely upend our society in every way imaginable. For people who seem constantly obsessed with conspiracy theories about democrats murdering newborn children, children using cat litter boxes in schools, or the government pushing vaccines on people to track their every movement, they don't want to consider the possibilities of giving a man who is deemed to be untrusty by every reasonable measure the tools to do whatever he wants.

You say you love your freedom. You say you want your guns, your free speech, your religious freedoms, and every other thing you know you are entitled to by our constitution. Yet, you can't understand that a man willing to send the police and military through the streets to root out undesirables isn't going to suddenly decide one day that even your freedoms are too much. You shouldn't have your guns because some idiots tried to assassinate me. You shouldn't have any right to protest because you don't like what I did. Maybe I will send the police and military into your town to round you up next and stick you in concentration camps.

I know you believe that will never happen. Oh, my representative wouldn't allow that. Yes they would. They are all cowards who have repeatedly bowed down to let Trump say and do whatever he wants. Are they suddenly going to grow a spine and try to say no just because your lily white ass is now on the line? Hell no, they won't because like every coward they are far more worried about their own lily white ass.

Trump and all of his enablers are a threat to the very foundation of this nation, and I am so sorry that none of you are able to see it. I still believe there are enough people of good moral judgement and conscience that Trump is going to lose this election. I can't guarantee that though. There are people in place to gum up the works and there are others who plan to not certify the vote if Trump loses. I don't expect Trump to walk away if he gets blown out, and I don't expect the right wing bubble to do anything but try and say how everything was stolen from them. They have also proven over and over that they are willing to say anything to get their way.

My faith in my fellow countrymen is waning. I want to believe you are good and honest people. I want to believe you are who you say you are. But I see your actions. I hear your words. You aren't the Christians you think you are. You aren't the good people in this story. I don't want to blame you. I know you are being lied to. I know you are struggling and doing your best just to get by most of the time. I also know that you are being poisoned and brainwashed on a daily basis when you listen to anyone talk about how awful our country is. There are problems, just like there has always been, but we are nowhere near as bad as we have been in other times.

Our whole way of life is on the line. I hate to say this because most everyone is tired of hearing how "important" this election is. But, it's true. A man who is given absolute immunity to do whatever he thinks he should for the good of the country isn't going to stop at "illegal" immigrants. Next they will come for the trans people. Then the gays. Then the "left wing media". Then anyone who doesn't support him and his every lie.

Sooner or later they will get around to you and your friends. Someone like this can't stop no matter how far they go. There will always be a new enemy. You have the chance now to stop this madness before we walk down the same road as Germany, China, Rwanda, and so many other nations. Can you, as a concerned citizen do the right thing? Will you? I guess I'll get my answer in a few weeks.

[queersatanic]

Ok, regarding voting/not voting in the US presidential election because neither candidate is a good option: What other choice is there?

I want to understand because I've seen so many people say that voting for the lesser of two evils is pointless and that I must not actually care about marginalized/oppressed people if I choose to do so, but voting in the presidential election is one of the vanishingly few scraps of influence I feel we have in this country.

Does it amount to much? No. Am I happy about it? No. Are we actually living in a democracy? Not even a little bit. Am I under the impression that Kamala Harris would solve every problem ever had around the world? No, absolutely not. The way I see it, voting for Kamala definitely isn't solving problems. It's just preventing Trump from arriving on the scene to create more problems for us because the last thing any of us need on top of the colossal shit-storm we're all currently dealing with is more bullshit, and of the two viable options that we've been given, Kamala is the one that would give us less of that type of bullshit. Again, I'm not happy about it. I'm fully aware that this is a band-aid solution at best, but this is the most influential thing I can do as a US citizen. There is nothing else I could possibly do as a single individual to meaningfully sway who's in power here.

I'm lucky enough to live in a state that allows us to mail our ballots. Voting only takes me like, five minutes, and it seems worth doing if it prevents us from having Trump back in office, even if Kamala is only better by a miniscule fraction of an amount.

So, if voting is truly pointless, if there's truly zero difference between Kamala and Trump, what should we do instead? I really can't imagine an alternative that would result in swift, positive changes for anyone. (Again, not that voting would create swift, positive change either, but it at least seems like it would give us a better chance at positive change eventually.) Anarchy and protesting and raging against the machine are all well and good, but those are also things that will endanger and cause the deaths of vulnerable people, just as much as voting. Not that they aren't also worth doing, because they are, but it seems like it would be just as lengthy of a process and as impactful as it would be to vote in the election. And it's entirely possible to do those things on top of voting in an election. So I want to know what it is that I should be doing instead. Please help me understand. This is a genuine question, I'm not looking to argue, I want to know what other avenues there are and what I'm not seeing about the situation.

So, here is the simplest way to understand this: replace everything you are saying and thinking about "voting" with "signing a petition". It only takes a few minutes, it amounts to more than nothing, etc., etc.

Do you think that signing a petition — any petition — deserves to be given so much money, attention, conversation, and so on that it forms the boundary of political imagination and is used as a synecdoche for political action?

Sign a petition or don't; vote or don't vote. But it's not the most important thing you do, it shouldn't be the thing you devote hardly any of your life to, and it should not be how you neatly reduce other people around you.

This includes voting third party for president.

This includes writing in "Free Palestine" on your ballot.

This includes not voting at all.

The anarchist critique of electoralism is usually not even that you shouldn't do it but to recognize it for what it is: a mostly meaningless gesture over who you want to run the orphan-crushing machine. You can say that it's important to you to select someone who will read a land acknowledgment while operating the machine or that it's critical with global warming to have an orphan-crushing machine operator who will commit to installing solar panels by 2035 or that it's a moral imperative not to cooperate with the machine at all and express no opinion on who the operator ought to be. But none of that has anything to do with stopping the machine from crushing orphans, and the purpose of a system is what it does.

By the way, this is not new or something that privileged keyboard warriors invented in 2013. A hundred years before that, the Japanese anarchist Ōsugi Sakae wrote a short allegory called "The Chain Factory" about people wrapped in chains, making even more chains they add to it, and the only the factory boss has the key to free all of them.

The narrator wants to free himself, but he needs the help of others, and other people have different ideas about how to go about this.

There are so many who do not realize that they are bound by chains. There are many more still who, were they to realize it, would only be grateful for their chains. There are also many who, while not grateful, have resigned themselves to working industriously to forge their chains. And there are the many who, seeing the chain-making as ridiculous, frequently find openings in the watch of the guards to rest their bodies while harbouring selfish delusions in their heads and passionately spouting nonsense about actually being free and not bound by chains at all. It is more foolish than I can bear to watch. I then suddenly cast my gaze about. I found others around me that seemed to be aligned with me. They are few, and they are scattered all around. But they all desire the key to their bellies in the clutches of the master. And like me, they seem to be aware of being unable to take back their keys alone, so they whisper frequently to their neighbours to forge alliances. “They are few; we are many. They are outnumbered. If we act together, we can take back our keys in one fell swoop.” “However, since we make pronouncements about justice and peace, we must not permit violence. We must proceed through peaceful means. There is a simple way to do this.” “Once a year, we send a representative to the master to decide every aspect of our lives. All of those chaps in that meeting are representatives of the master, and if we muster up our own true representatives now, we can be the majority in the meeting, and that's how we can pass the resolutions that we want.” “All we need to do is shut up and forge the chains. Just continue to wrap the chains around ourselves. Then, when the day comes every few years that we choose our representative, we simply vote for our own representative.” Our representative will gradually loosen our chains, and will, ultimately, take back the key to our bellies from the master. We will then find ourselves in a factory under a new organization and a new system of our own ideals, with our chains in the hands of our representative.”

So, how does this relate your question of what you should be doing? Vote or don't vote in the five minutes it takes you. Find whatever slate recommendation you trust most and follow that, then turn it in or throw it away. But live your life.

Talk to your neighbors. Talk to your coworkers. Bring food to each other. Lend tools to one another. Be available to take people to the airport and pick them up from the hospital. Talk about rent. Talk about wages. Talk about working conditions. Exchange contact info so you don't have to call down the drone strike that is cops showing up in your neighborhood over people yelling. Take people into your home when you can so they can escape domestic violence. Shun rapists so they actually face consequences even if it comes at social cost you yourself. Yes, get trained on first aid and shooting, too.

If all that sounds small, you could argue that. It's certainly more personal. But it's the stuff you do every day to build relationships with another another outside of capitalism and hierarchy, or maybe it's just the cigarette burns you put into those things, hollowing them out.

You creating trust with your coworkers so that you can perform a work stoppage together on any day is much more significant that who you vote for on some day because no matter who you vote for president, they will side with "small business owners" and "main street" over your boss shorting you on your paycheck. You talking to fellow tenants about your living conditions matters much more than your vote for city council because even in the most overwhelming Democratic city, county, and state, your electeds will side with landlords over renters. When there is a hurricane or a heat wave or a pogrom, you will know each other and be there for each other.

Vote or don't vote. When you see a petition coming to put abortion rights on your state's ballot, feel free to sign it. But you'd better have other plans when the courts throw it out. You'd better have plans for when political coalitions who don't recognize you as legitimate regardless of what you and people like you do, because that antagonist coalition will ignore the courts and do what they want anyway.

Anti-electoralism is not about voting. It is about opposing the magical thinking that voting is efficacious or will save us from fascism. The special counsel Robert Muller will not save us from fascism, or the courts, or the media, or the Democrats, or the police. There is no "someone else will solve this for us" that you can rely on, so you should engage in a sort of realistic doomsday prepping that isn't just about bugging out and running off but about creating networks of mutual reliance that build up and exercise the muscles now you will need even more in the future.

[stupidlovepurplepeace]

My brother just came home and the first thing he said was "Trump won. Im so glad my rights aren't gonna be stripped away."

Like yeah your right because you're a cis straight white Christian male American born citizen, if you don't fit into that specific box though you're now at high risk of losing rights or bodily autonomy. You just complained for 4 years about a 76-80 year old man being president and then voted for a 78 year old who has said "go vote this one time and you'll never have to vote again, we'll fix it so you never have to do it again" who is a convicted felon and is only out on bail in florida right now. What do you mean why didn't I vote for him? Because I don't focus only on religion when voting??? I don't care that he says he's Christian because he doesn't act like it so it means nothing. You can't just say you're something you have to act like it. How are you Christian when you're constantly hating EVERYONE?? You're racist sexist homophobic transphobic xenophobic antisemitic what the fuck is your problem???? My biggest question is how my parents raised both of us and were so fucking different. Is it just cause I'm a girl? Or because I actually had friends growing up? Or are you just a fucking dumbass?? I don't know but you need to go back to anger management. You got out way too fucking soon.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Why Appropriating thing without researching the result is a bad idea.

So apparently US women, particularly white women (WTF) found 4B

and people are thinking, this is great. This is a story also on the difference between conclusion and result.

So the conclusion is 4B is great The end. It was all happy. The result is a whole new story.

But let's get into it. And actually think about what we could do to do this better?

'cause if you don't learn from actual history before stealing from it and not learning a thing, then you can't learn if you screwed yourself over or not.

Some history here since it's pretty clear no one bothered asking a Korean *cough* CNN.

You didn't learn from the translating fiasco to actually ask a drama translator who translates Korean dramas, or the Atlanta shootings... I hate it here.

There was a war that tore Korea apart. But usually US people end it there CONCLUSION. Koreans see it as a result, so also a beginning of many other things.

The country was destabilized because of the war, conveniently the US likes to cover this with their own wars (Say civil war), but not the results of wars outside of the US except where the US looks like a hero, if the history class gets that far, say The Marshall Plan (I'm really, really hoping that history classes haven't gone to shit this much that no one knows what it is. You should have gotten it in High School.)

Due to the US specifically destabilizing South Korea, they also suppressed unions and factory owners, installing, not one, but two dictators, a fact that people conveniently skip. This made the country markedly worse as massive student protests burst out and Korean citizens were jailed. This is in the 1970's-1980's. While the US was prospering and boasting its head off, this is what you were doing.

The country also was under the US thumb about the sex slavery camps for military use. Someone wants to mark this with a trigger warning, but sometimes I kinda feel like trigger warnings are used as a way to not face the horrors of history. And I think that the US needs to own this.

A lot of the bad discourse on women and setting back women in Korea isn't entirely from these camps, but it doesn't help either and you're sitting there high and mighty about it pisses me off. Oh, but the US is better on women's rights~~. As if the US and UK didn't put South Korea in this position in the first place with massive imperialism you don't want to own? The force prostitution pact taken from Japanese imperialism didn't lift until 2014. To me, you don't want to talk about Black Slavery, Native American genocide, but you also don't want to talk about the crap you did to all of Asia either with this and then talking about how Asian women just you know "want" it without having to talk the impacts of where that ideology came from.

This set Korea back and women had to fight their asses off from where the US left people like Eomma and my grandmothers as the US did nothing to help with the Japanese comfort women situation because it was running its own comfort women situation. OWN it. You were doing this ins 2014. If you're reading this, this is likely in your own lifetime. Did you care or did you care more about your Korean dramas and K-pop and say how dare you bring this subject up? (BTW, the contract forced prostitutes was also done to India, China and Japan, I'm working on researching other countries as well. Japan got this idea from the UK.)

From about 1990's, Women finally started to gain more rights and fought like hell to get there, large protests, got the right to divorce unilaterally, and by the time of about Kim Dae Jeong, they found allies in government and so on, but the cost of industrialization itself meant that as women gained the vote the rate of births sharply fell, and yet SK was exporting children still during this time period, mostly because of pressure from the United States. Own that one too. US UK and Europe would continue this pressure to export babies well in the 2010's, until SK was able to put some cross pressure back.

You plundered, you r*ped, but SK people refused to be razed to the ground and fought back.

After Kim Dae Jeong, and the final gain in women's rights, it looked like maybe some of the more conservative government would give in, but also women protested like hell because in Korean history Korean women were always the organizers and the biggest movements of resistance in Korean history have been Korean women—BTW, US white women go to relax, but Koreans fight for every last right tirelessly because literally look at the oppression wrought by the US.

Every time the government does something terrible, Koreans go to protest it, shut down news stations, the whole of TV, etc and workplaces often have to shut down due to the protests. Does the US do this? Nope. Apathy every single last time. "Oh we can't do anything, we can't rock the boat too much."

Black men like to say if you want something done, you go to a Black woman. Priests like to say if you want anything done, ask a nun. For Korea, it's always been the women. And not quietly.

So after the Me Too movement, unlike the US the discourse on that did not die in Korea and there were massive protests for YEARS to fight for more rights. One of them was 4B.

Repercussions

But men got frustrated at the 4B movement which also managed to get onto the lawbooks if a woman is drunk, then that's not consent.

Win, conclusion, we can go home. Wrong. This is why I hate the conclusion mindset sometimes.

As a result of this and rising women's rights, men, particularly during covid, pushed back on 4B and worked together by large degree and elected an incel supporting, crush blame-it-on-the drug users president, who BTW, had a grandmother who got frustrated with him. And so she threw flowers at him and cursed because Itaewon broke her heart that much especially after the boat disaster. He was callous and cruel.

So now the divide between men and women is greater so there is a lot of SA and SV as men feel much more emboldened and guess what this president also borrowed Trump's rhetoric to use for his own gain. Now there is a ruling on the books in SK, that in order for SV to "count" it must be violent. Wait, but she's sleeping, she's drunk? She's a child. Welcome to hell. Thanks Trump for being an Asshole. And thanks the US for your ignorance and complacency.

But sure, let's ignore systemic violence brought on by the US.

Result

This is the problem that PoCs often complain about white activism. They ignore their hand in it, but then see a pretty shiny thing on the hill and then use it without thinking about the causes and impacts and then slink off into the night once they get what they want, unwilling to organize ever again and then get all shocked when the rights backslide, because of united laziness. From watching protests, this is more of a UK/US thing. You aren't willing to protest to maintain and reinforce rights.

I told you, this is why cultural appropriation is bad. You're not willing to learn from history.

So how do you win this thing? Theoretically you have to find ways to make masculinity and manhood itself and win that discourse away from this bogus Alpha male thing. (I know, your poor omega verse, but why can't you let the whole alpha thing go romance writers, selling it to men in fiction? Can you have doms without having to tie it to this false notion of freaking wolves and selling it as sexy and powerful, etc?)

How do you make it seem like being able to choose and get rid of some of the basis of the whole ideology about men v. women, etc is powerful and better than this alpha ideology? How do you work with men to win that discourse?

Some ideas have been floated such as sacred masculinity, and secure masculinity, but how do you make those seem more powerful and more like ownership of identity than the Alpha male ideologies?

Once you win that discourse, you have to fight like hell to reinforce it and protest for it, and show and not shame men why this ideology is better while also fighting for other gender's rights alongside you.

Because I see you white women. You're saying it wasn't me. It wasn't me that skipped voting for president and now what. It wasn't me that thought that the case of the dog in the park valued a dog's life over a man's life and word. It wasn't me, that consumed Korean dramas with no interest in Korean history and what my country was doing to Korean women and stayed silent when someone spoke about the violence of the US and instead told them to shut up, it's only a TV show, it wasn't me who subscribes to Twitter with a blue check which donated to the republican party because followers is clearly much more important than defeating fascism while you mock and cry about how people voted on economics. Nope. It was you. You became complacent. You wanted to feel superior. It was all you.

You only care when your rights about to be taken, but don't show up for anyone else? This is why Black women are sick and tired of this. They showed up for Hilary Clinton and you didn't show up. Black women showed up for Harris, and *checks notes* even less of you showed up. Show up and examine your own group and press them harder as white women. You have an issue you need to address because there's more dissenters within your group. Ask for accountability and have those long chats using toxic white women's language for good. How do you tackle poverty and lack of education about economics? Press your own group to do better.

Self examine this shit and stop taking movements you won't bother researching the result of and actually show up. Stop engagement baiting and trying to get your follower count up and do shit that actually looks like outreach.

[one-little-goat]

Where do we go from here?

The election results are pretty much a sure thing at this point, and things are looking bleak, to put it mildly. If all goes as predicted, Donald Trump and the Republican party will control all 3 branches of the federal government. Once their term begins, they will immediately begin to enact policies to unravel American democracy as we know it and move the United States backwards. So what can we as the American public do to minimize the harm they cause? It may seem like there is nothing that we can do, but that's not the case. Here are a few things that we as ordinary citizens can, and I would say even must, do in the coming years:

1) Make sure that you and everyone you know votes in the midterm elections. Even if the races are stacked against us, we should still do everything possible to ensure that Republican unilateral control is as brief as possible. We need to take back the Senate and House as soon as the opportunity arises, and also take on positions in state and local government in order to enact protective legislation where we can.

2) Protest. Make your voice heard wherever you can. Even if elected officials don't change their policy positions based on your protest, we have the power to make it harder for them to act as if their actions are the will of the people. Make it clear to them and to outside observers that this is not what the United States stands for.

3) Contact policymakers and legislators. Whether federal, state, or local, ask the people who are in power now what they plan to do in the next few months to impede the incoming administration's ability to act with impunity? What safeguards do they plan to enact in law to preserve democracy as it comes under threat? Once the new administration starts, contact them again to see what their strategies are. Even in Republican controlled areas, make it clear that you as their constituent oppose regressive policy and that you will not tolerate them aligning themselves with those who seek to enact such policy.

4) Mutual Aid. Donate your time, and if possible, your money, to organizations that seek to protect the people who are most endangered by the incoming administration. Make sure that they have the resources they need to keep people safe.

It's easy to feel like all hope is lost. I must admit, I'm feeling a bit hopeless myself. But even when there is so much happening that we cannot control, and even in the face of crisis, it is necessary to direct our energy towards what we CAN do, because even if the harm can't be prevented entirely, we can work to minimize the harm that is done.

[barryogg]

On Democracy

A recent post made me think about finally writing an effortpoast from a series that's been bouncing around my head for years.

What does it mean to Believe in Democracy? Because, uh, I don't think I do.

If I would, I think it would mean something like this: I am a citizen, and I have sort of a partial share of the country. I am able to identify my interests and causes that are important to me, and I want to redirect my share of governance towards those interests and causes. Constant direct voting is cumbersome and costly. (Is it? The Swiss manage it. We may get to it later.) So I look for reasonably like-minded people to band with in a party, and get representatives.

As in, people who represent me. As in, people who are my subjects. Who are supposed to defer to us. And if they don't represent my interests and causes I owe them jack shit.

It seems that the median person has this relation inverted almost exactly. Instead of treating politicians like they're public's servants, they treat them like celebrities! Like movie stars, Taylor Swift (I'd say "music stars" here, but she's the last remaining western one) or top sportsmen. They think that the public has an obligation to the political class, that the public owes them to vote in certain ways that'll give certain politicians more power.

Politicians who act like they're kowtowing to the public's most voiced demands are called "populists", and I'm led to believe that it's a bad thing that we're supposed to minimize.

So I don't know what is it that you people believe, but it sure doesn't look like what I would call "democracy".

Step 2: ??? Step 3: Policy!

The usual way people try to square this circle is pointing that nobody can be a completely informed voter. Economy is fractally complicated, therefore you can't intuit your economic interests! Biology if fractally complicated, therefor you can't know what's good for your health! Etc.

The thing is, how are politicians supposed to be better at that than genpop? By education, they're primarily lawyers, i.e. people who operate in the symbolic space to get what they want from a bureaucratic system, and not in any object-level knowledge domain. Map, not territory. The typical answer to that is that the domain knowledge is supposed to come from either "experts" or policy wonks.

But even if we assume: that the median voter cannot be informed about their best interest, that the experts interfacing with politicians operate not with their immediate interests in mind, but with the goal of allowing the politicians to make the best decisions (ahahaha), and that the politicians listen to the wonks and experts to the best of their ability (ohohoho).

Even if we assume all that, how are the voters (who we've established as not informed) are supposed to know which politicians to trust? At which point of the process the not-knowledge is supposed to be transmuted into knowledge and expertise?

If only the emperor knew!

But sometimes there are discrepancies large enough that they can't be explained away by parts of the public not knowing what's good for them. Things like banks not being allowed to fail in wake of a financial crisis, or Disney getting another copyright extension. In that case, it's because democracy has been corrupted, you see. It cannot be that a system may be suitable for governing 300 thousand people (Iceland, which managed to basically expel the banks after the crisis, or so I'm told) but less so for governing 300 million people. Not, the system is flawless, definitionally flawless! The flaws mean we've strayed from true democracy, towards corrupted one!

And then sometimes you get a mix of the two, when the corruption exists because some voters (who don't know what's good for them) have been deceived by the Evil party and are voting against their interests. They cannot possibly have different fundamental irreducible values which are split 40+%/40+% in the population because obviously my values are the only correct ones, and true democracy would mean tiling the country with my values.

(Dropping the snark for a moment and being explicit: if you believe something that's even passably familiar to the above paragraph, and if you want to centralize the bureaucracy e.g. by removing the US senate, you don't actually value democracy. Never have, never will, and it would do us all some good if you dropped the façade.)

...except for all the others that have been tried

Surprise! Despite all that, I'm still glad that I'm living in (some approximation of) democracy. This is an inversion from my teenage edgelord years, where I believed in the democracy but nonetheless wanted to supplant it with something more efficient. I like it now because there's a huge upside: peaceful transfer of power. But as the (social media-induced? that's the leading hypothesis, right?) gap between values widens, that center may not hold in the future.

So what do I want? These are all a bit pie-in-the-sky, but:

I want people who are softly authoritarian to be honest with themselves (obviously won't happen because they have a tremendous amount of energy invested in not thinking about themselves as authoritarians, but sill, putting this out there)

I want people to turn off fandom brain when thinking about politics. Have a healthy dose of disdain for politicians on your "team".

Decentralization! Direct representation! Switzerland has direct voting about tons of stuff, and it works! Cantons' population ranges from 1.5 million to 16 thousand, so they can vote on things that matter to them without intermediate assholes inserting themselves into the situation.

Fuck first-past-the-post! Let's do ranked voting! Down with thresholds, let's have 50 parties in each parliament! "But that would severely disrupt the process of passing new laws and regulations!" Precisely.

Sortition! Because why the hell not, the current system of career politics is an industrial-strength asshole filter, random people would genuinely improve the situation.

If I were good at writing essays, there would be a sentence here that ties everything together. But I'm not.

[tildeathiwillwrite]

Tag Game: Favorite Character Tag (Antagonist Edition)

Thanks to @somethingclevermahogony and @willtheweaver for the tags!

Rules: Make a poll of some of your characters (in this case the antagonists), provide descriptions, and have your followers vote on their favorite!

I think I'm going to do the antagonists from The Legend of Orian Goldeneye plus the ones from Trials of the Six to make for a total of five!

Azura Lazuli (The Legend of Orian Goldeneye)

A female dreamshaper of incredible power who seeks revenge on those who have caused her harm. She has long blonde hair, light skin and blue eyes, dressing in shades of blue with silver jewelry. She controls Iron Hollow, leaving the bureaucracy to a small terrified council as she is often away on revenge business tracking down and assassinating as she sees fit. She doesn't care who she has to torture or kill to get to her ultimate targets.

Henrik Bronze (The Legend of Orian Goldeneye)

The captain of the guard of Saint's Shoal, his primary goal is to ensure the safety of the citizens. He works with Orian Goldeneye and Diana Ozborne on occasion, despite those two being at the top of the most wanted list. Has history with Ozborne and would very much like to shut down her smuggling operation, but he can't deny her reasoning for dodging the law. Arrests Jas and Killian for being suspected dreamshapers working with Azura.

Morpheus Dreamshaper (The Legend of Orian Goldeneye)

Considered by many to be the first dreamshaper and the one tasked with ensuring the balance between dreamshapers and nondreamshapers. Shunted that task to his protegee Orian Goldeneye sometime before the novel starts and promptly vanished.

General Za'ret (Trials of the Six)

Supposedly a general from Tya overseeing the war effort in the north. In actuality a Jumper seeking to gain power and influence on Rymn and using the war as a stepping stone. Doesn't care how many lives are lost or how many people he has to torture to get what he wants. Particularly cruel in his methods for torturing mages by using their own preferred elements against them (waterboarding for water mages, branding for fire mages, etc).

Elya (Trials of the Six)

An alchemist who claims to be from Sala, she served as ship's doctor with Aquilar at the same time he was helmsman. Joined the group as their healer. Right before the story starts, she gave Hiel some 'medicine' for his wounds and left the group for her own reasons. The medicine turned out to be a sort of poison that erased Hiel's memories.

tagging @inseasofgreen @defire @melpomenelamusa @leahnardo-da-veggie @happypup-kitcat24 and open tag! :D

[hurgablurg]

it's weird looking at the content warnings for Helldivers 2 on steam and seeing the dissonance between warning players about depictions of gun violence and gore while in the same breath extolling the fun tools players get to use to "exterminate the alien forces" and "rid the galaxy of the rising alien threats".

It's extremely confused is what I'm saying.

And I can't parse whether they decided to put the gameplay blurb IN the content warning or they forgot to turn off the kayfabe for the OOC stuff.

And as a side note, I'm starting to get worried that they're just going to skip over the Starship Troopers-style parody of fascism and so-called democracy that was so crucial to the goofy tone of the first game. I'm worried they are going to try to play it straight.

The background of the first game is that Super Earth, despite calling itself a democracy, is a capitalism-enabled fascist state where a citizen's vote is decided for them by "a computer", oil is still the fuel of choice even for starships, and the so-called glorious "elite" Helldivers are the only infantry available and are laughably expendable to the point that it's almost impossible to go a single mission without accidentally dropping requisitions on your teammates, or even crushing a fellow Helldiver with your own respawn drop pod.

The lore entries are all framed as propaganda and it's explicit at the start and end of a War that Super Earth struck first in every single case and by the end of a successful campaign the casus belli is quickly swept under the rug as Super Earth has acquired whatever resource they wanted from their opponents and regained imperial dominion. Until the next War breaks out in the same exact way, with the exact same historical figures, and the exact same casualties.

(God forgive me for linking a Fandom Wiki.)

And if Super Earth is destroyed? They just designate a new Super Earth. And considering the game's lowering player count inevitably causes wars to be lost constantly, they've probably gone through hundreds of "irreplaceable homeworlds" by now.

And all that, mixed with the dissonance of the triumphant, heroic presentation of the players who being obliterated by their own autonomous autocannon because there is no Z-axis, creates a very obvious satire of militant societies. It's positively delicious.

And yet. The IGN trailer even has some generic pop-rock instead of the blaring patriotic brass of the previous game's soundtrack that reminds you it is supposed to be over the top. Like a AAA game. The Steam page is a standard feature blurb instead of a stylized despotic news reel. That has me slightly worried.

At least the announcement trailer got it right, but that was also 7 months ago. A long time in game dev and marketing terms.

[hasufin]

Honesty

I want to make an uncomfortable admission.

I didn't watch the Presidential Debate.

I haven't watched any of the press conferences, either. Or seen Biden's public appearances.

Simply put, I just don't care. There is nothing even vaguely within the realms of reality which could happen which would make me decide to not vote, or to vote for Trump.

Joe Biden could be brain-dead and I'd still vote for him.

Hell, Reagan got a second term.

And frankly, that's an important point. Because when you look at Reagan's presidency, what you see is a completely unengaged, uninvolved, and frankly unaware POTUS with a bunch of unelected people actually running the show.

And during the Reagan administration, that meant illegal weapons smuggling, drug-running to finance those illegal weapons, deliberate destruction of black communities, an intentional pandemic which destroyed a generation of LGBT people, the dismantling of workers rights, the rise of the theocrats who threaten our country now... I could go on.

And if Joe is too old and tired and isn't running the show... then apparently he's surrounded himself with basically decent people who aren't using him to destroy the country. We're still seeing an administration which is kinder, better, more aware of and concerned about citizens, than anything the republicans have offered in my entire lifetime (and that's pretty damning, considering I'm officially an Old). The worst criticism of the Biden administration is, he's not doing enough to further progressive causes - which is frequently because a lot of folks don't understand what the Executive branch can and can't do.

So, no, I really don't care if Biden is old or sleepy or whatever. I care about the results I can expect from the Biden administration compared to what we got from Trump.

To quote the Christian Bible:

"You shall know them by their fruits"