#us politics cw

[oldshrewsburyian]

This is a fascinating (to me) essay about the "No one is talking about X!!1!" refrain. Some key excerpts:

"[This rhetoric] is not so much about “the media” and its failure to cover some story that matters a great deal to the future of lawful democratic self-governance. Instead, it’s a way to fault journalism writ large for the fact that we now live in bubbles so tiny they can only deliver the same content every day." More and more, the complaint I hear is not that nobody is producing important news, but rather that the Media is failing to deliver that news directly to readers and listeners, in the manner of the mother bird with the worm in Are You My Mother? 

#current events #and the coverage thereof #us politics cw #queue

[orchidbreezefc]

one of the most exhausting aspects of the gun control conversation in the US (which is impressive) is how conservatives frame access to guns as a matter of freedom and safety and self defense. but honestly, what's worse is how liberals humor this premise.

more people need to ground this conversation in the fact that guns have exactly one (1) function.

conservatives go on about guns providing necessary safety, and the public conversation doesnt point out that their object of protection is designed for the sole purpose of hurting, killing, and destroying. it cannot be used for anything else. this 'protection' consists entirely of a way to hurt or kill someone.

when we allow this conversation to center guns as a symbol for whatever american virtues these dipshits think are at stake, we play this game on their terms, and their terms involve obscuring the actual facts. don't let them distract you. guns are not a symbol, theyre a real object, and they exist to hurt people.

when someone argues for their access to guns, never let anyone forget that materially theyre just defending their access to hurt people sticks.

#sage speaks #sage original post #bring the energy of that one zelda comic #this sword will keep me safe? #no. there is no safety to be found in a sword. it can only hurt and kill #it is a terrible burden. i hope one day you can forgive me #we're not even gonna talk about how having a gun drastically increases your likelihood of getting shot #and the likelihood of gun violence in your vicinity skyrockets if you like. put a gun there #let's talk about how guns are hurt people sticks and defending your access to them is defending your ability to hurt people more effectivel #gun control cw #guns cw #us politics cw

[marmolita]

had the wildest thought while listening to the NPR politics podcast the other day

they were talking about Nikki Haley and I was like okay, well I would never ever vote Republican but from everything I've heard, she doesn't sound that bad

and then they were like "yeah she's really a George W. Bush style Republican" and I was like holy shit

how bad have things gotten if a George W. Bush style Republican is not that bad, for fuck's sake I remember making backup plans to move to Canada when he got reelected because everything seemed so awful 😩

#lita talks about herself #us politics cw

[venndaai]

you know I don't disagree that you could argue for Biden being the least bad of the last 4 US presidents but seeing people call him a 'good' president makes me want to ask them if they are aware of the 85,000 missing migrant children

#us politics cw #and yes that's mostly the republicans' fault but there is more than enough fault to go around #i'm not going to enjoy voting for him again

[tonyglowheart]

Hey Have Y'all Fuckin Heard??

#us politics cw

[meicheesecake]

she suck my Thang nining leven style

#death cw #war cw #tragedy cw #disaster cw #terrorism cw #us politics cw

[krakenartificer]

While we're all making impassioned pleas asking USians to vote, I'd like to throw out a plea to do your research for judicial retention votes.

If you live in Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Utah, or Wyoming, then you have the ability to kick out judges who suck.

This judge decided to let a rapist go because he had "so much potential"? Kick his ass out.

That judge refused to declare a mistrial when the prosecution clearly kicked out jurors based on race? Vote 'em out.

This judge ruled there was insufficient evidence of police brutality to even hold a trial? Vote no.

So at least do a quick search for "{Judge Name} + Discrimination" or "Judge Name + Rape", and see what comes up. You may not have the ability or desire to dig through minutae of first-amendment precedent with regards to media disclosure of court records, but you sure wanna know when someone your ballot ruled that parents have no right to know that a teacher at their daycare has been convicted of child abuse.

#rape mention cw #rape culture cw #racism cw #systemic racism cw #activism opportunity #show the fuck up 2022 #show the fuck up 2k4ever #us politics cw

[bread-tab]

i have deleted my humorous ron desantis pudding eater rant because, in hindsight, i went a little too unhinged with it. i'm not comfortable talking that way about people, even objectively awful people. i'm trying to challenge myself to say more things that are true and beautiful. sometimes that's just... not something you can do in a shitpost.

the beloved mutual who reblogged the post can keep it. enjoy your limited-edition copy of my sleep-deprived madness.

i still think it was funny. it just wasn't kind.

(and to be clear, i don't have a pressing personal need to be kind to ron desantis. he's a powerful politician who doesn't need jack shit from me, except perhaps a friendly trans-pride-colored pie to the face. nah. i do feel a need to be kind to the general class of people who do weird things to pudding cups, and to humanity's tendency to be weird little creatures in general. and lbr, anyone trying to run a pudding-based smear campaign (pun fully intended!) probably doesn't see eye-to-eye with me on that.)

#blog housekeeping #us politics cw #food mention #pulling weeds in the soul garden #swearing cw

[optionalcausality]

Voting Matters

I live in California. Shortly after the pandemic hit, the state decided to issue Emergency Allotments for the SNAP program - food stamps.

Anyone who was eligible to SNAP would get a supplement to bring them to the maximum amount.

Anyone who was already getting the maximum amount would also get a (smaller) supplement.

That started in, like, early or mid 2020. Drafting this in late October 2022, it hasn’t changed.

For all the flak California gets, it turns out that when there’s a freaking worldwide emergency, California’s public servants think that maybe the state should. Help people? That. Let’s do that.

(Is this perhaps more noticeable because I know a fair number of people who are 60+ and on fixed incomes? Probably. I also bet your community includes some retirees, some disabled folks, some people who are just financially struggling, for whom sudden extra expenses -- like paying a friend for gas money to take them to the store, instead of taking the bus during a pandemic -- were especially hard to manage. This affects the people you know, too.)

Every time I see people talk here on Tumblr about how their disability benefits went up slightly and then their SNAP benefits got cut, I can’t help but feel a little furious at whoever the hell their elected officials are. Because their state can do better than that.

Vote. Because your states can bloody well do better than that.

#'stewardship or responsible governance or harm reduction efforts' tag #us politics cw #sometimes this is a political blog #tag for a track record of political wins and proposals #'s makes a comment or says something' tag #s documents linear time #s and the Roaring Twenties

[oldshrewsburyian]

Have you seen any of the stuff about WVU cutting their World Languages department (plus many more cuts and lay offs across many other programs)?

This just feels like the beginning of a trend across higher ed institutions in the US and it makes me worried for the future

Yes, I have. And it's not the beginning. This sort of thing has been going on. The language of "marketability" is typically used despite the fact that, even by that morally vacant standard, humanities departments typically make universities money. Universities don't pay humanities professors to keep us from leaving for lucrative industries. We don't require lab equipment. But facts, increasingly, don't matter to admin, who tend to see the liberal arts as luxuries (outside research universities and selective liberal arts colleges.)

So yes. I have seen it. It's not new. The trend of firing humanities professors and eliminating departments has been going on for well over a decade now. Depending on how you calculate it, maybe two. It is dangerous. Even unionized faculty struggle to fight it. I am confident in saying that I speak for my colleagues when I say that we know, in our bones and in our souls, that we may be the last of our kind. This is, of course, extremely bad news for the future. I keep hoping that there will be a large enough groundswell of student support (accompanied by more labor organizing) to help reverse this trend. But I am not optimistic.

#us politics cw #current events #education #spinster aunt of tumblr #asks and answers

[drustvar]

so many people who i know who would have voted for Beto are not registered but also another issue is that Texas as a state is horrifically gerrymandered especially in the north and the east the districts make 0 sense its a fucking joke

#anyway am not in the mood to hear liberals say 'well just move!' like oh how silly of me why didnt i think of that :) #also i dont want to move. this is where my family is. this is my home. I WANT it to be a good place!!! I want to make it a good place!! #gargle my balls abbott #us politics cw

[orchidbreezefc]

it's funny because my post had a very basic point. people are just determined to extrapolate things i never said and positions they think i probably have, or assume this is my one and only argument on the subject of gun control, or somehow both.

(plus the usual ad hominem faction. i admit someone saying they feel sorry for my pet bugs because apparently thinking we should always remember that guns are tools of violence makes you unfit to care for Literal Bugs was new, i didn't expect that one)

i didn't mention any gun control measures. i didn't oppose self-defense, with guns or otherwise. i didnt discuss my beliefs. the person saying they didn't see an argument against guns in my words was correct. that's outside the scope of the post, which had exactly one purpose--sort of like guns! the post wasn't meant to address anything it didn't address.

i just said we should remember guns are tools of violence. several of my lovely respondents outright agreed, but assumed some nonexistent subtext made this an act of opposition actually.

me: i just think we should always keep sight of the fact that guns are intended for violence

gun fandom: yep we want them so we can do violence

me: cool so we're on the same page then

overall a resounding failure to refute the point. further submitted arguments will need to provide citations to the text of the points they are responding to, in order to prove they exist.

#guns cw #us politics cw #sage speaks #sage original post

[marmolita]

followup to my ranty post from a little bit back about how the people yelling about critical race theory at school board meetings are largely not actually representing how parents feel because I have data!

The Indiana Department of Education did a survey of parents and found (emphasis mine):

* The vast majority (88%) of Indiana parents are satisfied with the quality of their child’s school. Satisfaction is even higher among those whose child is enrolled in elementary school (90%) and those in rural and small-town areas throughout the state (96%). * Most parents know and approve of the subjects and topics taught at their child’s school. Only 7% of parents say they don’t approve of the subjects and topics taught to their child, and of those 7%, about two-thirds acknowledge that they do not know, or are unsure, what subjects and topics are being taught.

Only 1/3 of 7% of parents disapprove of what's being taught and actually know what's being taught, which is around 2% overall. And yet, that small percentage of people are noisy enough that the state legislature is considering all kinds of bullshit bills to restrict what teachers can teach.

Anyway, all of this to say that when you get the impression from social media of "those crazy parents in red states are all trying to make schools intolerant and racist," take a step back and actually look at what's going on. This is a problem of media coverage and political power plays, and schools are just the pawns. Parents -- both liberal and conservative -- overwhelmingly think that the subject material being taught in schools is fine as is.

What are parents actually concerned about? According to this survey, affordability of college, and safety in school are the top concerns. Only 27% of parents reported that post-high school education is affordable. 47% of lower-income parents in metropolitan areas are concerned about their children's safety at school. It's really unfortunate that what parents care about is not what's having changes pushed in the legislature.

#I'm not trying to stir up discourse I'm just tired of people categorically assuming #that all the parents in the areas where there's bullshit going on agree with the bullshit #when in fact 93% of them think it's bullshit #anyway fuck that post i saw the other day that said that all of this drama #is because parents are abusive and controlling #it's happening because fuckwads want to get elected to positions of power and we all suffer as a result #so maybe instead of going around blaming individual parents #try encouraging people to vote against these idiots #or maybe encouraging people to speak up to their representatives if they don't agree with the bullshit they're doing #anyway rant over #us politics cw

[venndaai]

sorry yall I don’t usually engage but I really have been dying to know how terfs are rationalizing all these conservative legislatures passing abortion bans and trans healthcare bans in the same breath. If our existence is an insidious patriarchal plot to conversion therapy homosexuals and enforce gender norms, why do the conservative patriarchs so very very obviously hate us

#us politics cw #transphobia cw #I know I know the answer is just going to be very depressing and stupid

[tonyglowheart]

whoever is updating the CNN live feed is a master of comedy

#us politics cw

[nephyria]

there is something that just makes sense abt not reading arguments about why I, a US trans person, should encourage other people to elect a democrat who wants to roll back title ix protections and further shove trans rights down the toilet, and just watching 10 hours of videos about different, literal, easily-preventable train wrecks instead

#Nepty talks #us politics cw #transphobia tw #like obviously we do not have a 2 party system we have a plutocracy and it’s just like #’oh boy I wonder which corporately-funded worm-riddled asshat is gonna dynamite the rotting carcass of the nation today!’ #and it’s both of them. they are fighting over the lit dynamite stick and we all gotta hope they don’t toss it to us. but they will :) #negative #meanposting