#the republicans are really just showing who they are and radicalizing more and more people

[booasaur]

April 6, 2023 - Representative Justin Pearson speaking before he and another Black Democrat are expelled from the Tennessee State House for joining a protest against gun violence, days after six people were killed at a Tennessee school

#justin pearson #tennessee #us politics #gun control #he was so good #so was jones #the republicans are really just showing who they are and radicalizing more and more people #especially the youth #and helping propel charismatic effective orators like these two to the national stage #where they'll reach even more people #just sucks that literally part of this inspiration is a consequence of the massive racism they face

[pinkandpurple360]

hiii! can someone explain to me where the “striker is a conservative” fanon came from???? in harvest moon be literally flirts with blitz???? he isnt sexist, he admires millie’s strength??? hes a dick to moxxie yeah but i dont think thats evidence of being homophobic??? and his disgust with fizz flirting with him reads to me more as just being taken off guard????

i just think its so bizarre how the fandom has somehow universally decided the radical revolutionary character is a republican because *checks notes* he is southern and traditionally masculine. like yes theres a point that could be argued that he doesnt really care about class liberation as much as himself being in power, and id love if the show actually delved into the complexities of that but they dont. he literally doesnt do anything worse than blitzo other than be mean to sad boi stolas. no idea how this makes him a republican

There is no imp discrimination or exploitation going on, the monarchy is superior and benevolent to all races, anyone who says otherwise is the real bigot —- no but why is this show always implying that the monarchy are good people but lower caste arent and that bdsm between castes is how they’ll fix the racism

I joke but like. The dark themes and tough questions are being deserted one by one in favour of I guess, safe shipping fodder, so silly accusations like that are the quickest way to do it.

#helluva boss critical

[mariacallous]

People are really exposing just how much they don't actually mean it when they say they want to make the tough choices.

The choice between Biden and Trump is not a great one, but we live in a convoluted mess of a system that will only get worse under the latter's megalomania and evil. The former is guilty of his own atrocities as much as any other president, but at least HE isn't the one who will actively turn America into his own personal dictatorship in order to escape the consequences of his own actions, for the sake of soothing his narcissistic humiliation, while most likely doing far worse things than Biden could ever do because now he has no reason and no legal checks to hold back his worst urges.

If they think the Israel/Palestine situation is bad now, Trump and the Republicans would gladly make things worse 1000x over because they're monsters and idiots of the highest degree who would provoke everyone else for the sake of their fragile egos.

And yet people are showing how much they value the appearance of tough choices over actual tough choices. Abandoning your duty just because it's highly uncomfortable and there are no good choices isn't revolution. It's pure cowardice and fixation on their own self-image.

I hate cultural Christianity, because it's increasingly obvious how much it's the root of so much of this BS. People desperate to cling to any fraction of their identity that allows them the illusion of moral purity and absolution from the consequences of their own choices that they'll willingly discard any genuine moral convictions and principles for appearances' sake.

I don’t know if some of them or many of them think this will make the revolution come sooner or whatever, but what I do know is that it would create a whole lot more suffering and oppression and death, and I have very little faith in any of these so-called radicals and revolutionaries following through on their ever-so-passionate and extreme words.

[dolphin1812]

They’re here at last!!!

I love all of Les Amis, but their introductory paragraphs have also been pretty thoroughly analyzed - @everyonewasabird and @fremedon have pretty comprehensive posts on them from previous Brickclubs. Rather than go through them individually, then, I’ll try to point out some general trends that would be relevant to Marius (given that we meet them as soon as he’s kicked out of his house, we can assume there’s a connection):

The first major issue is the legacy of the French Revolution (1789) and the Terror (1793). All of the characters we meet here (with the exception of Grantaire) are attached to the legacy of the former, but they’re divided over the latter. Enjolras, for instance, is compared to Saint-Just – a more radical figure from that time period – and with his “warlike nature” and link to the “revolutionary apocalypse,” he’s definitely more in the tradition of ‘93 than ‘89, even if he’s attached to both. Combeferre, on the other hand, fears that kind of violence, only finding it acceptable if the only alternative is for things to stay the same. Like Marius’ newfound Bonapartism, all of their ideas come out of the clash and evolution of thought after the Revolution and the French Empire under Napoleon, placing each Ami in a similar position to him as they work out their ideas. All of them, though, came to a different conclusion than Marius, prioritizing the Republic over the Empire. At the same time, they’re all distinct from each other, too, revealing the diversity in French republican thought. With his limited exposure to political ideas outside of royalism (and now, idolization of Napoleon), the myriad veins of republicanism that the Amis offer broaden up the political sphere of the novel significantly.

On top of that, they’re a group; they can learn from each other in a way that Marius hasn’t had a chance to. Even Grantaire, who claims to not believe in anything, has friends, and while he distances himself from specific ideologies, his jokes illustrate that he’s familiar with them (for example: “He sneered at all devotion in all parties, the father as well as the brother, Robespierre junior as well as Loizerolles”). Marius doesn’t have friends or people to really work through ideas with. Oddly enough, the most similar structure to this that we’ve seen so far is the royalist salon. The key difference (aside from the obvious) is the chance to learn from different perspectives, whether that’s based on variations in republicanism, in priorities (conflict vs education, the local vs the international), or both. They’re not even all defined by their politics. Courfeyrac (who easily has the most insulting character introduction in the book) is defined by his character and personality first, with his political ideas mainly being a given from his participation in this group. These variations in emphasis, then, not only show us the diversity of their views, but the varying intensities with which they hold them (as in, you could talk to Courfeyrac about something that isn’t political, but you couldn’t do that with Enjolras) and how they’re kept together in spite of their disagreements (a common goal – a Republic – and many fun and socially savvy members). All of these factors serve to give a sense of liveliness as well, contrasting sharply with the “phantoms” of the royalist salon.

Les Amis aren’t very diverse class-wise, but they’re still better than the salon. Bahorel and Feuilly, at least, aren’t bourgeois or aristocrats.

Feuilly also brings us to the international level, far beyond Marius’ early attempts at imagining himself as part of a country. Focusing on the partition of Poland in particular, Feuilly advocates for national self-determination in all lands under imperial rule. The idea that a people should govern themselves was key to republican thought more broadly in that time (nationalism really took shape in the 18th-19th centuries), but to Feuilly, this isn’t just an issue of nationalism, but of tyranny:

“There has not been a despot, nor a traitor for nearly a century back, who has not signed, approved, counter-signed, and copied, ne variatur, the partition of Poland.”

The word “despot” ties this back to France in a way, with his rejection of despotism as it affects Poland possibly implying a similar anger at the same phenomenon in France. The Bourbons at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 were, after all, the same Bourbons who ruled during the Restoration. A quick note on Lesgle: I didn’t get the joke around “Bossuet” the first time I read this book. Then, I had to take a class on the French monarchy, and I was assigned a text by Bossuet of Meaux, court preacher to Louis XIV and fierce proponent of absolutism. His name seemed familiar, but it took me a while to think to check Les Mis? And now I think calling Lesgle Bossuet because he’s Lesgle (like l’aigle=eagle) of Meaux is one of the funniest jokes in this book.

#Les mis letters #lm 3.4.1 #les amis de l'abc #enjolras #combeferre #courfeyrac #feuilly #grantaire #Bahorel #Lesgle #bossuet #this ended up being much less organized than I’d hoped #But that’s OK because they’re here and now we can all talk about them!!

[queeranarchism]

really as time goes on and I see stuff just happening how it is I continuously care less and less about being a “palatable” queer person to people. I just really can’t care. I am the one to know my gender and sexuality and if it confuses cishet people then good. people act like as we get older we “conform” more, but I just feel the opposite. I see transphobic and queerphobic legislation being pushed and I don’t see what point there is to try to act “respectable” or “acceptable” and clear cut to people. And we really should never feel like we had to.

I just am putting this ask out here on this blog since it just feels appropriate and want to hear if anyone is feeling similar thoughts and everything. I have been for a while, but it’s been on my mind a lot more now. and this is a blog about anarchism and being queer after all

Oh yeah, 100% agree.

A book I wish more people had read is The Gentrification of the Mind by Sarah Schulman, which (amongst other things) describes how during the height of AIDS deaths, when more of the more revolutionary voices in the queer community were dying, the media started appointing their own palatable Gay Spokespersons, who had no standing in the queer community and hadn't done the work of the struggle, but who were elevated to positions of visibility because the media really wanted a Gay Republican and a Gay Moderate and was prepared to create them if it couldn’t find them. And over time those became faces that showed up on the cover of magazines that were once been started by the radicals, until many wrongly believed that these were in fact our community leaders.

She then quotes Donald Suggs who said “The drag queens who started Stonewall are no better off today, but they made the world safe for gay Republicans. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but the people who make change are not the people who benefit from it”

I think that process is ongoing.

[tomorrowusa]

The weakest Speaker of the US House of Representatives since the Great Depression has become the ex-Speaker.

The unfitness to govern by the Republican Party was once again on full display as millions of viewers saw the inept Kevin McCarthy get the boot.

The House GOP is being compared to a failed state, and it didn't just start to get that way under Kevin McCarthy.

The House GOP Is a Failed State

For nine months, McCarthy had the title and the gavel and a Capitol suite with a nice view. But he never really held the office of speaker in anything like the historic meaning of that job. He never inspired fear. He sought favor from GOP colleagues — 210 of whom actually stayed with him until the end — but he had scant influence to bestow favors in return. He wasn’t associated with any particular governing idea. At the start, his speakership was effectively an optical illusion. At the end, it was an exercise in self-abasement. The main consolation is that he has plenty of company. For a quarter-century, every Republican to ascend to the speakership has descended from it with his standing diminished. It’s a line that travels from Newt Gingrich to Dennis Hastert to John Boehner to Paul Ryan to McCarthy. A lot about the times in general, and the GOP in particular, has changed in the decades since Gingrich and his self-proclaimed “revolutionaries” roared into power in the 1994 elections. He was shooed from the speakership four years later by GOP colleagues who had grown tired of his rap and mounting evidence that voters felt the same way. But a pattern was set that has endured long past Gingrich.

While Trump worship is ultimately at the center of the current fiasco, the GOP dysfunction pre-dates his 2015 escalator ride.

Most of all, McCarthy showed his malleable core on the paramount question of Republican politics, or for that matter all American politics: Where do you stand on Trump? “I’ve had it with this guy,” McCarthy sputtered to colleagues after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, saying he would push Trump to resign immediately. McCarthy denied news reports that he had ever said this, until my colleagues Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin revealed in their book, This Will Not Pass, that they had the moment unambiguously on tape. No matter, McCarthy soon enough was reliably back in the Trump fold, and Trump was unreliably and indifferently in the McCarthy fold. If so, however, Trump didn’t put much passion into it. Many people believe the former president has the instincts of an authoritarian. Authoritarians, however, generally prefer order and discipline. Trump has shown no sign that he cares much about the ostentatious disorder and indiscipline of the House. Certainly he didn’t try to marshal support for the man he calls, in cuddly moods, “my Kevin.” The House GOP now resembles a failed state. The party elects leaders with no capacity to lead members who have no interest in being led. McCarthy is like one of the succession of short-lived Soviet leaders who followed the long reign of Leonid Brezhnev, before the radical disruption of Mikhail Gorbachev at the end of the Cold War.

The House GOP resembles the old Soviet Union – a lumbering failed state immobilized by ideological rigor mortis.

Carl Hulse at the New York Times doesn't think that the Republicans will change much as a result of this.

[I]n today’s Republican Party, doing the right thing is considered a transgression, not a virtue – a sign of unforgivable allegiance to the political establishment. That was the central problem for Mr. McCarthy, and for his eventual successor. House Republicans, beholden to a base that reveres former President Donald J. Trump and detests compromise, have become ungovernable. And it is doubtful that his precipitous downfall will break the fever.

The only way Republicans might change is with Trump's departure from the scene. Even then there may be divisions between self-designated Trump successors and more traditional conservatives. The prognosis is not good for the GOP.

EXTRA! A look back at the Republican House Speakers of this century. It so happens that the most successful one was also a child molester.

#kevin mccarthy #us house of representatives #speaker of the house #ouster of speaker mccarthy #118th congress #donald trump #republicans #republicans are unfit to govern #republican infighting #republicans in disarray #dennis hastert #election 2024 #carl hulse #john f. harris

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, and Tesnim Zekeria:

Last month, Bernie Moreno won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Ohio. Moreno benefited from an early endorsement from Turning Point Action, the far-right activist group founded by Charlie Kirk. On May 10, 2023, Kirk posted on X that he was "proud to support Bernie," and Moreno had Turning Point Action's "full endorsement."  In response, Moreno wrote that he was "honored to be endorsed by Charlie Kirk and Turning Point Action." Moreno said that "[f]ew have done more to fight back against the radical left than they have," and he looks "forward to working with them to defend for our America First conservative values in the US Senate." 

In 2023, Kirk repeatedly featured Moreno as a guest on his popular podcast and consistently promoted Moreno's candidacy to his 2.9 million followers on X. At the end of 2023, Kirk donated the maximum legal amount of $5,000 to Moreno's campaign through the Turning Point PAC.  At the same time, Kirk, known for his embrace of fringe views and conspiracy theories, launched a sustained attack on Martin Luther King Jr.'s life and legacy. At a December 2023 convention hosted by Turning Point USA, Kirk said that King "was awful" and "not a good person." Kirk's critique extended not just to King himself but to the civil rights movement itself. "We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s," Kirk declared, trashing the legislation that outlawed segregation in public places and many businesses. 

In his convention speech, Kirk blasted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as an effort to “re-found the county” and “get rid of the First Amendment.” He criticized courts for enforcing the law, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. "Federal courts just yield to the Civil Rights Act as if it's the actual American Constitution," Kirk complained.  A spokesperson for Turning Point USA, Andrew Kolvet, defended Kirk's attacks, saying respect for King's legacy was based on "fake history." 

Kirk announced he was "gonna tell the truth about MLK Jr" on MLK Day in January 2024. According to Kirk, a podcast episode attacking King and the civil rights movement was being put together by his producer, Blake Neff. In 2020, Neff was forced to resign from Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News after it was revealed Neff was posting racist comments online under a pseudonym. The episode, titled “The Myth of MLK,” kicks off with Vince Everett Ellison – a right-wing activist who claims that voting for a Democrat will send you to Hell. Ellison describes King as “despicable,” “immoral,” and “perverted.” Kirk repeatedly suggests that King’s legacy has harmed “Black America.” He asks Ellison if the lives of Black Americans have improved “the more that we have worshipped MLK.” Kirk also invites Ellison to talk about how “MLK's narrative and political activism led to the modern welfare state.” Ellison responds by accusing the civil rights community of keeping Black people poor, adding that the devil “rest[s] his head at the DNC” and that the DNC “use[d] MLK and all of those perverts with him.”

“I could say declaratively this guy is not worthy of a national holiday. He is not worthy of god-like status. In fact, I think it's really harmful,” Kirk says after the conversation with Ellison ends. Then Kirk, alongside Neff, spends roughly 30 minutes attempting to demonize the Civil Rights Act. According to Neff, the Civil Rights Act is “directly against this colorblind world that conservatives think MLK brought.” Kirk tells listeners that “in reality the language and the application of the Civil Rights Act…is a color preference act, not a color blindness.” Kirk adds that the Civil Rights Act “is making it harder for us to pursue Excellence as a society” because, as Neff puts it, “you have to discriminate against men, against white people.” On X, Kirk wrote that the "deification of MLK and his proto-DEI ideology marks the exact moment that the progress of black America goes sideways." Kirk suggested that MLK was responsible for the "disintegration" of "their cities," the "collapse" of "their families." Because of MLK, Kirk claims, "they" are "enormously dependent on government support." 

[...]

Moreno suggested white people should get reparations

Moreno himself has also had controversies involving racial issues. When he launched his campaign for Senate, Moreno floated the idea of reparations for white descendants of Union soldiers that were killed during the Civil War. “They talk about reparations. Where are the reparations for the people, for the North, who died to save the lives of Black people?” Moreno said. “I know it’s not politically correct to say that, but you know what, we’ve got to stop being politically correct.” 

GOP #OHSen nominee Bernie Moreno’s campaign is being bankrolled in part by White Nationalist-friendly organization Turning Point USA’s political advocacy arm Turning Point Action led by Charlie Kirk.

#Turning Point USA #TPUSA #White Nationalism #Charlie Kirk #Bernie Moreno #2024 US Senate Elections #2024 Elections #2024 Ohio Elections #Blake Neff #Civil Rights Act of 1964 #Civil Rights Act #Martin Luther King Jr. #Reparations #Turning Point Action

[charl3ss]

Hey! To be clear, I also think not voting is stupid as fuck, but I also follow someone who advocates for and is actively converting people to this mindset. (also, feel free not to answer, I'm only messaging to give more info so you can have better arguments prepared if you encounter this directly)

Their logic isn't (always) that Trump is better but that not voting will send a message to the dems to start putting more radical candidates on the ballot and that people won't just settle for any candidate who isn't Trump. It exposes a huge flaw with the two-party system, but ultimately imo that sort of criticism belongs in primaries while we live in the real world and should be manifesting itself in bigger pushes for ranked voting and turnout in local elections where support for other parties is more actionable, rather than on a national scale where the only thing it does is leave vulnerable populations out to dry. Purity politics have no place in the real world.

So first off, I want to say thank you for coming to share your opinion, even if it’s not one that I necessarily agree with, because it’s always good to be exposed to other view points and to be able to have civil conversations about them.

That said, I disagree that not voting will “show” the democrats anything. I agree that the two party system is stupid, EXTREMELY flawed, and should be done away with, but I don’t think not voting is the way to fix it. All that does is elect Republicans candidates and put them office—in a position of power—because republican voters are far more fanatical than Democratic ones. (Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line, etc). I think electing republicans in office is a pretty poor way to “show” the democrats, since it’s really just screwing over the American people and not the politicians. I just don’t see it as productive. It’s doing the Republicans’ job for them. As you said, purity politics have no place in the real world.

(Also, let’s not beat around the bush: the Democratic Party members (and the Republicans too, for that matter) are pretty damn old, and I doubt they’re going to change their ways anytime soon. I agree the two party system needs to be done away with, but that requires more than just not voting. That requires real systemic change, and considering 99% of the Democratic Party is—if you get down to it—center left at best, I sincerely doubt not voting is going to make them suddenly start putting radicals on the ballot.)

#answered asks

[femmesandhoney]

your grandfather reporting news in the navy is a lot different to a woman who is a radfem choosing to cheat with a married military man and then marry him herself. the military is how her family still receives money. there is nothing less radfem than the military. might as well let men identify as women at this point. radical feminism isn't a popularity contest where you defend a women you've built a parasocial connection with because of her follower count on tumblr. it means something. women are allowed to call out contradictions.

anon have you considered youre just a dumbass hypocritical little shit? you state like a million lies about her as if there's truth to em just because you want to hate on her, including you saying her family leeches off the military. kelly is literally a nurse you fucking asshole, she supports her own family.

and my anecdote about my grandfather isn't really different at all. my cousin also was in the military, even went as far as to go for ranger training. he's literally a republican. he now is in his mid 20s in "retirement" and lives off government checks. i haven't sworn off speaking to him, i don't revolt at the dinner table when i see him and start fights. he's just my cousin, i act friendly towards him when i see him. i love my grandfather, i'm very friendly with him. most people in the military aren't combat soldiers shooting people. literally many women have male and female family and friends who happen to be in the military/have been in the military. it's very unlikely all of them are gonna swear them off and think their personal relationships to someone in the military will reflect on them, because it doesn't lmao? it's called living in reality and being realistic, many people know and are friendly or date or marry people who have been in the military. it's a very big institution that feeds on the poor or those who feel they have no other options in life because the US makes people think it's either college or military at 18 years old. so yeah, a lot of people get sucked in. the institution is shit, war sucks, violence sucks. harping on her husband's past is just weirdo behavior and again lying about her shows more parasocial behavior than any of us.

anyways since you wanna be an asshole and act like you're some high roller with a mighty sword calling out "contradictions", get your ass back on the ground and remember every woman is human and none of us are ever gonna be a "perfect" feminist in practice. it's very odd to repeatedly comment on her family and spread lies about it that shit is so old be normal about other women anon seriously. if you weren't on anon and sharing your opinions and shit on tumblr too, i'm sure others could find contradictions in your own praxis again just be normal dude.

#also not her follower count on tumblr lmao anon are you a reddit user or something none of us know each others follower count #you cannot follow someone based on 'wow they're such a big user' literally its just vibes and guesses and personality that create a blog #spreading lies to justify your weird hate towards her is pathetic btw #just say that you think straight women cannot be feminists apparently since that's really what you're trying to achieve

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Nick Anderson

* * * *

DeSantis drops out of GOP primary campaign.

Ron DeSantis nearly destroyed Florida in his attempt to prove that he is meaner and more extreme than Trump without the craziness of Trump. It didn’t work, as an editorial in the Miami Herald noted on Sunday evening: DeSantis was supposed to save the GOP from Trump, not endorse him

Per the Herald,

It’s not just that he was steamrolled by Donald Trump. DeSantis never appeared to want to save the GOP. He was more interested in making it a more ravenous, angrier and intolerant party. That worked for Trump, but didn’t work for the governor with all the charisma of burned toast. So now DeSantis’ presidential campaign has ended. But the damage of the laws he has pushed through in Florida, as he landed more appearances on Fox News, will live on. Without his political ambitions, there likely wouldn’t be “Don’t say gay,” woke wars and the waste of state resources to fight meaningless battles against drag queen bars.

DeSantis has fallen in line behind other Republicans to “kiss the ring” of Trump—even though DeSantis railed against Trump sycophants only a week ago. DeSantis said,

You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring he'll say your wonderful.

Six days later, DeSantis “kissed Trump's ring” by endorsing Trump in the same announcement in which DeSantis suspended his campaign. And, on cue, Trump responded by saying “Ron” (rather than “DeSanctimonious”) was a “gracious” candidate who ran a good campaign.

There will undoubtedly be a lot of good analyses about the reasons for Ron DeSantis’s failure, and I look forward to sharing them with you. Tonight, I want to add what I see as a glimmer of hope in DeSantis’s political demise.

To begin, DeSantis was a miserable candidate because people understood he was disingenuous, cruel, and angry. Let’s agree on that fact and move on.

DeSantis fashioned himself as “Trump but competent.” Accepting that premise, the rejection of DeSantis shows that the support for Trump isn’t really about his policies (or his competency). It is about personal support for Trump. That’s good! Why? It suggests that if we can get past the latest (and last) effort by Trump to take the presidency, running on his policies is not enough to garner more than a few thousand votes in Iowa. (No disrespect to Iowa.)

This theory is discussed by Zack Beauchamp in Vox, Ron DeSantis got the Republican Party wrong. Beauchamp writes,

DeSantis was betting that Trumpism could be separated from Trump: that enough of the GOP’s radical factions wanted the right-wing populism without the chaos of the man who brought it to dominance in the party.

When Trump is finally gone, we will see a raft of Trump wannabes in the style of Ron DeSantis come to the fore—Don Jr., Mike Flynn, Matt Gaetz, etc. They will run on Trump's policies, but that won’t be enough. They are not Trump.

All of this suggests that there may be the remnant of a political movement that can rise from the ashes of the GOP to form a different, new party that sheds itself of MAGA extremism as it leaves Trump in the rear-view mirror.

The above is a bit fuzzy and inchoate, but the failure of DeSantis should be reassuring. If DeSantis gained traction and appeared as a serious contender for election in 2024, we could have been looking at another eight years of MAGA extremism in the presidency.

If we beat Trump in 2024—and we can—the Trump wannabes don’t appear to have the toxic brew that runs through Trump's veins. This is why we should do everything possible to defeat Trump at the ballot box in 2024. Doing so may foreclose the last chance for a MAGA extremist to gain the presidency.

To be sure, MAGA extremism will endure in the states and in Congress, but we will have avoided the threat to democracy of Trump (or an imitator) as president. That matters a lot.

Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter

#Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #Robert b. Hubbell #Nick Anderson #Florida #woke #MAGA exteremism #DeSantis #chaos

[your-krazy-uncle-bob]

To Know Who Democrats Are, Look At What They Accuse Republicans Of Being

In an interview with MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart for the racist Joy Reid show (I’d make an analogy about a Republican president sitting down with a racist Fox host, but there isn’t anything close to an equivalent) the so-called journalist asked the following question, “A far –right conservative person said earlier this month about the Senate race in Georgia, and I quote ‘I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles, I want control of the Senate.’ You were in the Senate a long time, 1973 to 2008, you know that institution inside and out, better than anybody probably has ever served in it. In that time, you served with many Republicans, super-conservative Republicans. My question is to you, though, Mr. President, is can our democracy survive when the Republican Party is…it only cares about power?”

Honestly, Joe Biden can skip his next colonoscopy, Capehart was just up there, kissing everything, and saw nothing. Our idiot President, after the tongue bath from a “serious journalist,” answered a question with implicit “Democrats don’t care about power” undertones (something laughable on its face as they still order anyone they can to get a “vaccine” shot that doesn’t work simply because they can’t let go of the power to do so), replied, “I think that if we allow the Republican party to continue to metastasize into a minority of what the party as a whole is…I look, I think one of the reasons there’s not more mainstream conservative Republicans running out there is because they are so concerned about not only their physical well-being, but also notion that how can they win when a minority of Republicans are showing up to vote and they’re really hard edged?”

What planet is he from? Putting aside the absurdity that potential Republican candidates were concerned for their safety from anything other than the Brownshirt BLM/ANTIFA progressive mob committing political violence for years on behalf of, and with the blessing of, Biden’s party, let’s just take a second and look at what the two parties have become over the last few years on just a couple of issues. Abortion: There was once Republicans on both sides of the issue, just as there once were pro-life Democrats.

There are still Republicans on both sides of the issue and Republicans who are pro-life who support all manner of restrictions – from a total ban to a 15-week ban. There isn’t a single Democrat willing to say there should be any restrictions on abortion, up to the moment of birth, and until the kid goes to college if that becomes the fashion with the radical left.Capitalism: Both parties were capitalists, by and large. No Democrat pays more than lip service to the concept now.Women: Both parties used to know what one was – Bill Clinton never hooked up with a male intern and Ted Kennedy never screwed around with or killed a guy, they knew exactly what a woman was.

Now, as if someone waived a magic wand, every Democrat has forgotten what a woman is, even the women who’ve spent their political careers claiming to be champions of women.These are a few examples, but there really isn’t any issue on which the left hasn’t been completely homogenized, no one dare disagree with the fringe out of fear of their wrath. Tell me again how Republicans have radicalized?When you’re sitting next to someone in the middle of a bench then you slide down to the end, if you ignored where you were before you could make the case that the other person has moved so far to the extreme to a person ignorant of how things were. That’s what Democrats are now – a group of people lying to the base they’ve fought hard to keep ignorant.

The extent to which it works in the future is dependent upon how much it has worked so far. The results of this election will determine more than who controls the House or Senate, it will determine whether or not we start to pull up from the Democrat-imposed nosedive on everything from free speech and economics to the Alphabet Mafia and cultural rot. Don’t take the common sense of your friends, family and neighbors for granted, make sure those who have common sense actually vote. Drag them with you if that’s what it takes. The stakes have never been higher.

[thediktatortot]

So glad I found Billy tumblr, had to try and explain to a friend a few days ago about how he's a nuanced character and that we can't always depend on what the duffers say. They went on to say about how their confused about how Millenials always look for nuance while gen z see a fascist and will call them out. So I had to remind them they haven't even seen the show and only really know Billy from the teen vogue article on woobyifing villains and they went oh yeah and backed off.

That's such an odd thing for them to think too? Like, millenials do look for facists in like...almost everything? I think the main difference is that most (Most, not all obviously for anyone who might read this and try to say something stupid because I KNOW people are all different and generational stereotypes don't always fit everyone) millennials are more focused on like, real people and real instances of facism lol

I'm not a succinct person and I'll probably not be able to touch on everything I want to say but modern internet culture is heavily shaped by current trends (tiktok, twitter, netflix, etc) which is all fast consumption media and has the ability to go in one ear and out the other within a short period of time.

Focusing on things like 'calling out facists' is something we should be doing on the streets, in the news, in our law enforcement, in our healthcare, in our education system, in our actual systems.

The thing that many Gen Z don't understand is that having nuance is VERY IMPORTANT when dealing with real, flesh and blood, breathing facists. They will use dog whistles that require nuance to understand in the first place and without those skills in being able to pick up on it, you wont actually know when someone is saying something bigoted or not.

Terfs have been able to radicalize the online fandom spaces with this tactic alone, taking out nuance so people only see things at a face value of whatever their 'morals' are instead of investigating whether something is genuine or a ploy to get their loyalty or not.

Liking an abused child who happens to have been raised in a racist environment and never got a chance to actually be out from under his abusive father's thumb isn't a lack of nuance or a lack of ability to call out or see hate for what it is, it's actually seeing humanity in people's actions that brought them there in the first place.

Sometimes we have to deal with uncomfortable things and learn uncomfortable topics, or deal with uncomfortable people to actually understand the problem of the situation to fix it in the first place.

Why do so many poor southerners end up being republican? Because their are uneducated and brainwashed into seeing other poor people as the problem. But how could we fix this? By funding state schooling, making it easier for people to live off one paycheck and give people time to learn about their own world and their place in it. Obviously it's not as cut and dry as that, but that's one of the bases to start with.

Bigotry is most often ignorance to start off with, hate is most often a place of fear that is instilled within people by those who want to keep power.

None of this means you have to like the people who do these things, but having just a basic understanding of what brought people to that point can really chance how you go about fixing the problem in the first place.

Idk if any of that made sense and I'm sure I missed some larger points but yea, nuance is a good thing.

#Ask Tator #Anonymous

[aizenat]

Listening to conservative commentators “blame” the lack of a red wave this election season on things like mail in ballets and democrats being able to appeal to independent/undecided voters is wild. Tomi Lahren legit on Fox News stating, in laymen terms, that democrats won because people voted.

And they phrase it like it’s a bad thing! Oh people exercised their constitutional right to vote, something not all of us had until recently, and that’s why republicans lost. Because how dare people we don’t want voting actually vote! Like how insane do you have to be to make that your point! And to say it so blatantly. Like voter suppression is unconstitutional, but conservatives don’t care if it gets them their votes.

This line of thinking is ironically why people came out and voted democrat this year. Because the message has been that letting republicans win means the end of our democracy. The way I’ve heard that said so many times this election cycle. And then to pretty much prove that point by unironically saying “we need to get a handle on these election proceedings!”

Most people do not like trump. He lost the popular vote TWICE. Most people do not believe he lost in 2020 unfairly. Most people, especially moderates/independent voters who can go either way with their votes, do not like the culture war shit republicans keep trying to bank on. Wages are stagnant and inflation is drastically raising the cost of living. People don’t care about “big government spending” because that’s not what is making the cost of living go up (talking about Oz’s campaign in PA vs Fetterman’s free healthcare and lobbying for abortion rights which voters are going to care more about as that directly impacts them).

Republican politicians have become so out of touch, leaning into the most radical and zealous of their base instead of actually trying to relate to those moderates who want to see real change and do not like the culture war shit republicans have been running on for the last decade. Ppl are tired. They want to pay their bills, not debate who goes in what bathrooms and who should get married. The average American isn’t looking for a total upheaval of our capitalistic system, they just don’t want to be crushed by it. And at no point do you hear these republicans talking about tax breaks for the working class. They’re not talking about incentives to encourage companies to pay their workers well. They’re not talking about cracking down on predatory loans by banks or free childcare to working moms parents or safety incentives at schools to prevent mass shootings and the such.

Nope, they just want to keep running on building a costly wall that doesn’t impact the vast majority of Americans, bathroom bills when the average American not living in a metropolitan area will likely never meet a trans person, and robbing women of their right to decide not to risk their lives in childbirth. And then cry and blame trump or people ACTUALLY going out to vote on why they can’t win.

Republicans don’t stand for anything anymore. They just try to bank on “hey, at least I’m not that yuppy drinking soy lattes amirite?” But look at Fetterman! He is an Everyman! He gave speeches in jeans and a hoodie! He looks like the grumpy white men who work in my insanely white-male conservative industry and he believes in free universal healthcare! He believed in a living wage as the minimum wage! He believes in a woman’s right to choose! And you expect working class Pennsylvanians to vote for the tv fake doctor yuppy over this guy???? The guy who looks like the dude we call over to fix out dishwashers or would chat up at a car show or see down in jersey fishing for a relaxing weekend????? The guy who looks and lives just like us??????

Republicans are nuts and what they really need to get a grip on is building a case for why we would want to maintain the status quo because the longer we live in it, the less reasonable it seems.

Anyway, republicans get fucked. See you losers in 2024. ✌🏾

#I think I’m done with the election rants lol

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER  COX RICHARDSON

July 10, 2022 (Sunday)

With the recent Supreme Court decisions gutting federal enforcement of civil rights and business regulation and the public hearings of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, economic news has been pushed out of the center of public conversation. That’s a shame for two reasons.

First, Democratic president Joe Biden appears to be centering his presidency around the idea of rebuilding the middle class through government investment in ordinary Americans. This is a major shift—a sea change—from the past 40 years of Republican policy saying that the economy would prosper if only the government slashed taxes and regulation, leaving more money and power in the hands of business leaders, those “makers” who would invest in new industries and provide more jobs. Watching the effect of his policies is a window into what works and what doesn’t.

Second, the Republicans are counting on anger over inflation, shortages, and gas prices to win control over the House of Representatives and the Senate in the fall elections. It’s worth paying attention to what’s really going on with those issues, as well as to what policies the Democrats and the Republicans are putting on the table to address them. 

On the first point: Biden has focused on rebuilding the American middle class that has been so terribly hollowed out in the past 40 years. While he appears to be driven by his belief in the dignity of all Americans and their right to be able to make ends meet with a decent job, historians will tell you that in the U.S., race and gender tensions are significantly lower when income and wealth are more evenly distributed than when a few people at the top of the economic ladder control most of the nation’s capital. The rise of lynching in the U.S. in the late 1880s, just as trusts came to monopolize the economy, was not a coincidence. 

The Republican economic promise since Reagan has been that cutting regulation and taxes would create a healthy economy in which everyone who is willing to work can thrive. But political commentator Thom Hartmann marshaled the statistics in a crystal clear Twitter thread a week ago, revealing just how badly that argument has failed. 

Hartmann noted that after World War II, “the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%.” Business was growing faster than at any other previous time, and businessmen stayed out of politics. The country had great public schools, research laboratories, trade schools, airports, interstate highways, and small businesses, as well as unions that protected America’s workers.

 The election of Ronald Reagan meant radical tax cuts (from a top marginal rate of 74% in 1980 to the 27% it is today), business deregulation, and the gutting of social safety nets. Forty-two years later, Hartmann notes, more than $50 trillion has been transferred from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. In 1980, 60% of us were in the middle class; now fewer than half of us are. Republicans promised that permitting business concentration would lead to innovation and opportunity; instead, we have seen an end to competition, along with price gouging and profiteering from the giant companies that choke out small business. 

Stock buybacks were supposed to mean that senior executives would care more about the future of their companies, but instead they have become a means for them to pocket cash.

Since the beginning of his term, Biden has tried to take on the concentration of wealth and power among a few elites. Biden’s investment in the U.S. economy through the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure bill has produced significant results. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the nonfarm job numbers for June, which show that employment continues to rise. The economy added 372,000 jobs in June, mostly in “professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and health care.” We are still 524,000 jobs down from February 2020, before the pandemic. Unemployment remains at 3.6%, with about 5.9 million folks unemployed. There were some interesting trends in the data. 

There are 880,000 more jobs in business, computer design, administration, and research than there were in February 2020. There are 260,000 more jobs in outpatient health care now than in February 2020, but hospitals have lost 57,000 workers, and nursing and residential care have lost 379,000. Leisure and hospitality—restaurants, for example—have lost a whopping 1.3 million jobs, or 7.8% of their workers, since February 2020 (although the sector is growing again). But look at this: transportation and warehousing have grown fast, with 759,000 more jobs than in February 2020. Manufacturing is back to where it was in February 2020, suggesting that President Joe Biden’s emphasis on repairing supply chains is paying off. 

And in the past year, wages have gone up 5.1%. That, along with increased pressure for unionization, suggests workers have more power than they did before the pandemic. This data suggests that people are moving away from work in restaurants, leisure, and nursing—all professions hit terribly hard during the pandemic—and toward transportation and office work. The increase in wages reflects more bargaining power on the part of employees. All of this is hardly rocket science, I know, but it does suggest that the economy is reorganizing at least temporarily into new forms since the pandemic.

This is of interest as we try to figure out what’s going on with inflation, which is currently afflicting not just the U.S. but the rest of the world as well. That story tells us something about the success of the Republican program Hartmann identified. One of the reasons for inflation has been the concentration of corporate power since the 1980s. A June report by three economists for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston noted that “[t]he US economy is at least 50 percent more concentrated today than it was in 2005,” and that such concentration amplifies the degree to which companies pass price hikes onto consumers as businesses overcompensate for rising production costs.

  In the oil industry, the report notes, as prices have spiked, companies have posted jaw-dropping profits.The price of gasoline has been coming down from its crazy high for the past 25 days. In the past two weeks, the average price of gas has dropped 19 cents a gallon, and as the price of crude oil continues to fall, consumers can expect to see prices continue to fall as well, although they fall more slowly than they rise in a phenomenon researchers call “rocket and feathers.” That term refers to the fact that gas prices go up like a rocket along with the cost of crude oil but fall more slowly as the cost of crude oil comes down, in part because consumers are so happy to see any relief at the pump that they don’t shop around to drive prices lower.  

One of the reasons for the crazy highs is speculation by largely unregulated energy traders that creates massive volatility in prices. Lack of regulation is in the news today in another industry, too, as journalists from media organizations including the Guardian, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and the Washington Post revealed how Uber evaded regulators by using a “kill switch” that shut down regulators’ access to the files they needed to monitor the company. 

There is a coming showdown between the Democrats’ approach to the economy and the old Republican approach. Biden and the Democrats are trying to pass a $52 billion U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) that would invest in U.S. science and technology to boost American industry, support research, and fund the manufacture of semiconductor chips to free the U.S. from relying on Chinese products. But Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has vowed to kill the measure unless the Democrats back off on a budget package that would fund Medicare by placing a 3.8% tax on income “pass throughs” taken by individuals making more than $400,000 a year and would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, significantly lowering costs to consumers.   (FUCK MCCONNELL!!!!!  that man is responsible for so much misery in this country!)

[maziodynez]

idk, i always knew this but it has become really solidified in the past couple of weeks how little liberals, especially white liberals, care about other people. i'm so serious. like you sit there and claim that you care about other people, you care what happens to other people, you tout all the right slogans and claim you share all the same beliefs as radical thinkers, but the moment people tell you that voting blue does nothing and helps no one and that the democrats are just as invested in enacting oppression as republicans, you throw a tantrum.

you don't actually care about people of color, you don't care about those in the global south, you don't care about migrants, you don't care what happens to anyone other than people who might look like you and think like you because if anyone dares burst your blue bubble you scream and cry and throw up. you don't care that there's already a genocide happening at the hands of our blue president because you don't see palestinians as people. you don't see anyone who lives in the global south as people.

you would rather raise money for a slave glorifying pirate show than show support for palestinians who are getting slaughtered en masse for more than 100 days. you would rather donate to a fanfiction website than donate to those on here who risk being homeless. you would rather tell people in countries that you don't like that they should rise up against their governments but you would throw a fit if someone told you that americans need to do more than vote. you would rather pretend that you don't see biden deporting thousands and thousands of people and still keeping kids in cages because you don't care what happens to them. and for all that you guys cry about trans genocide happening if trump gets elected you don't care about trans people either, because you've likely done nothing to go against any state sanctioned violence against trans people and you sit on this website and go after trans women all day long. you cry about how you didn't know US presidents were warmongerers or bad people, meanwhile even children know that. you had the privilege to not be aware of that.

it's so hard for you, white liberal in socal, because people are telling you that voting isn't enough anymore, and you're scared because what if trump does something bad to you as if he hadn't done and enabled atrocious things against people of color for his entire tenure, as if ICE trucks weren't just picking random people off the street. it's so hard for you meanwhile palestinian children have to try and pick up the organs of the dead off the ground and lose their limbs. it's so hard for you when cubans had to make their own covid vaccines from scratch because the US sanctions and blockade on the island made it impossible for them to receive anyone else's. it's so hard for you when the people, including children, in the republic of congo die in mines and die in landslides and die trying to get the shit in your iphone. it's so hard for you when black and indigenous people in america are killed daily and weekly and the US government gleefully enables it. but it's so hard for you when someone tells you voting blue doesn't work, right?

#vero.txt #t #jesus christ you people are so fucking exhausting

[t5ltherapy]

#CivilRights #DrKing #MartinLutherKingJr #MLK