please read this if you don’t support the fucking genocide
there are palestinian kids who should be in school, getting ready for a new semester. they should be procrastinating their homework, texting their friends. they should get to go home when they feel unsafe or upset.
instead, the school year was suspended on november 6th. over 200 schools have been bombed. more than 7,870 children have been killed. kids do not have a safe place. anywhere. their homes are being destroyed and their schools are being destroyed and the places they used to hang out at and eat at and shop at and pray at and mourn at and live at are actively being destroyed
people of palestine, of all ages, should be living their lives. they should be having normal experiences. they should be going to the movies or redecorating their rooms or celebrating birthdays or scrolling their phones for no reason. but they’re not. they’re not allowed to have the comfort of mindless human joy without constant threat and fear and bloodshed, and it is the fault of israel, the united states, and other fucked corrupt governments.
there have been close to 20,000 palestinian deaths, almost 2.2 million people displaced, and an estimated half of those people face starvation.
we need to fucking do something. the fact that the US still refuses to support a ceasefire is disgusting and evil. the claim that all anti-israeli statements are based in antisemitism is hurting both the people of palestine and jewish people worldwide.
here’s some things you can do:
-donate if you can or ask someone you know to donate
-sign a petition to demand a ceasefire
-fill out a form to email your representative. then do it again. then do it again. then do it again.
-boycott and avoid all companies on this list that you can (especially now that the holidays are rolling around: buy from independent stores, non-big name brands)
-spam text your friends and family with this post and these links
-reblog to spread awareness, interact with other posts that give instructions for direct action, follow palestinian voices
-instead of feeling guilt or denying yourself personal happiness, do all you can to make a difference. it doesn’t matter if you don’t have money to donate or if you’re a minor. you can always contact representatives or sign petitions
DO NOT LET THE GENOCIDE CONTINUE.
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Do you have any advice for dealing with election anxiety?
I think/hope so!
First, a couple caveats:
I'm from the US, so US perspective, and about US 2024 elections
I know more about politics/follow them more than like, at least 85% of US Americans? But I am not an expert.
Environment/climate news and climate hope are science-based and can be measured/predicted empirically wayyyyy more than politics can, because People
I'm not getting into the trenches around Democrats vs. the Left vs. Liberals vs. Progressives. In this post, we're all in one big venn diagram of mostly interchangeable terms
So, first off, maybe my biggest piece of advice is this: The antidote to anxiety is action.
Find something you can do to help - anything. Anxiety is like fear - it's part of your brain's alarm system. It's part of your brain's mechanism for telling you that you need to do something
So if you listen to that alarm and do something, your brain won't feel the same need to desperately escalate the alarm system
You can look up and sign up for actions, protests, petitions, letter-writing campaigns, phone banking, canvassing, and more for candidates near you at Mobilize.us (no Repubs on here I promise). They also work with Swing Left a lot - a group that helps voters look up and focus on helping the nearest race that is actually competitive (because most of them aren't!)
Again, that's Mobilize.us and Swing Left as two of the best places to find out how and where to help, and sign up to do so
Other than that, I don't have advice specifically so much as I have "some useful and more hopeful ways to think about the coming US election" and to a lesser extent democracy in general
1. The media is going to underreport how well the Left and/or Democrats are doing, basically no matter what.
So, although we can't get cocky about it, this is something absolutely worth remembering when you see just about any polling or predictions about the 2024 elections.
Here's why:
Poling is weird and often inaccurate and skews in a lot of ways and is inherently biased, and it's less accurate the further you are from an election. Also, the electoral college is a huge complication here
This skewing is built into both the interpretation of the poll and the design of the poll itself - how many people do they sample? Demographic spread? Polls try to go for "likely voters," but how well can you predict that, especially as voting rates for young people and marginalized groups are rising, often dramatically?
Right now, those biases are all skewing most to all polls and predictions to the right. Including from basically all pollsters, as well as left-wing media and news outlets.
Now, THAT'S NOT INHERENTLY A BAD THING. It's not because they don't want the Left to win. It's because in 2016, basically all mainstream media, including left-leaning media, said that there was a very low chance Trump was going to win. They said that Hillary Clinton had it in the bag. So they're all correcting for the huge inaccuracy in the 2016 (and 2020 and 2022 tbh) elections
Not only were they catastrophically and humiliatingly wrong about that, they then had to deal with the fact that that very reporting was part of why Clinton lost in 2016 - voters heard she was probably going to win, so they felt safe staying home instead of voting
And then the 2020 election polls were also super wrong, mostly in the other direction
Polling as a field is undergoing a massive shakeup around this, trying to figure out how to not fuck up that badly again, but they haven't figured it out yet, so right now they're skewing things to compensate
That's for the sake of both their own credibility and, you know, the part where just about no one in either left-wing or mainstream media or mainstream polling orgs wants Trump to win
So they're going to underreport Democratic chances on purpose to a) compensate for the bias skewing things toward Democrats in their models, and b) to make sure that they don't accidentally help Trump win again
Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x
Reasons the Republicans are in more trouble than a lot of people think
Democrats are largely closing ranks hard around Biden, because no matter what they think of Biden, they know a Repub victory would be a thousand times worse
Republicans, however, are absolutely NOT unifying around a candidate. And they're also the ones who go around saying a ton of awful and offensive and wildly untrue things about their opponents. Meaning that the Republican primary is about to get fucking messy, and probably all of their candidates will be tarred in the process
So, basically, the Republican candidates are all going to be busy smearing the fuck out of each other - while Biden mostly doesn't have to deal with that level of negative campaigning against him for months and months
As studies show, in politics, "a negative frame is much more persistent, or “stickier,” than a positive one. If you come at an issue negatively, but are later reminded of the policy's positive aspects, you will still think it's a bust."
Also, Biden is gonna get basically all presidential-race left-wing big-name donor money, while the Right will have that money split a bunch of ways and blow through it hard on infighting, creating a probable funding gap
Trump's campaign contributions are all going to pay his legal fees. Like, to the extent that last month, his main PAC had just $4 million in cash on hand - because they siphoned over $101 million to pay his legal fees (muahahaha)
Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x
Other hopeful things to consider
Yes, Trump's indictments and trials are, unfortunately, boosting his numbers among his supporters. However, that's only with the hard right wing - and you can't win a general election with just the far right. He needs to appeal to independent voters and moderate Repubs - and every indictment and trial hurts his chances with them. x, x
In 2022, literally everyone was predicting a "red tsunami." And they were wrong: it never happened. Instead, Democrats picked up a seat in the senate, lost a third or less of the seats in the House that they were expected to, and won a number of statewide races. x, x, x, x, x
DeSantis's decision to go to war with Disney stands to do him a lot of fucking hard. Disney isn't just powerful in general - it's an unbelievably powerful force and employer in DeSantis's home state of Florida. Disney has already pulled a $1 billion project from Florida due to the feud, is responsible for "half" of FL's tourism industry, and and is branding DeSantis as "anti-corporation" and "anti-business" - dangerous charges in the right wing. x, x, x, x, x, x
Abortion is an issue that gets voters to the polls. This is an issue on which politicians are wildly out of step with voters: Numbers change depending on how you break it down, but generally 60% to 70% of Americans think abortion should be legal - which is, in election terms, is a landslide. For years, that momentum has been with Republicans. Well, now it's with us, and so far pro-choice candidates and ballot propositions have done way better than expected. To quote Vox, in 2022, "abortion rights won in all six states with abortion ballot measures, including in red states like Kentucky and Montana that otherwise elected Republican lawmakers." x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x
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