#The New Republic

[ravenhairedwaywanderer]

Gonna go make me some food, pack me a vase full of happy trees, and then Ahsokatime 😂

#ahsoka tano #star wars #once a rebel always a rebel #anakin and ahsoka #grand admiral thrawn #sabine wren #ahsoka show #hera syndulla #chopper the war criminal #dave filoni #get ready to watch some wars in the stars #george lucas #the galactic empire #the new republic

[darth-memes]

#star wars #sw memes #sequel trilogy #the last jedi #luke skywalker #the new republic

[chorusan]

#rvb #agent washington #the new republic #wash rvb #the chorus trilogy #talktag #chorusan memes

[mayhaps-a-blog]

I’ve seen a few people asking why Thrawn would attack the New Republic – shouldn’t he join them and fix the system from the inside, or just go back to the Ascendancy? Why would he destabilize the galaxy further?

But if you think about it

Really, the only reason Thrawn needs is to believe that the New Republic is a threat to the galaxy. Which, well...

Thrawn joined the Empire to oppose the Grysk, because Thrawn believes in a strong military. Thrawn’s not good at politics, and deals with everything in military terms – remember the Lioaoin's economic issues? That’s why he got along with the Empire, and why he put up with all their crap. In Thrawn’s head, big military = big victory = stop bad guys = good.

Enter the New Republic.

What are they doing? Disarming. While there are still pirates, the Hutts, Imperial Remnants, and, of course, the Grysk nipping at their heels. In the midst of a tumultuous time, they are deliberately weakening their ability to meet the challenges ahead, and opening the galaxy to invasion. Says Thrawn.

It doesn’t even matter if they’re Grysk influenced or just stupid – it’s the same result. The galaxy loses. His people lose. Says Thrawn.

What do you expect him to do? Join them? Of course not – he at least knows he’s terrible at politics. And the New Republic is all politics – it would put him at a disadvantage, in a fight he cannot afford to lose. And it would open him to attacks on fronts where he has no power: trials for war crimes, possibly leading to execution – or worse. The Mind Flayer.

You think Thrawn would risk his mind?

Besides, better to ask forgiveness than permission, as they say.

And if you want something done right, do it yourself.

Conquering the New Republic would be better for everyone, Thrawn says. It would save the galaxy from annihilation, allow him to turn the resources of the Empire against evil, bring peace and order to the galaxy and beyond. He would keep all the good of the Empire, Thrawn says, while getting rid of all of the bad, Thrawn says – whatever that means to him.

For the greater good, Thrawn says.

Everything he’s done has always been for the greater good, Thrawn says.

The tragedy is that he believes it.

#as they say #the road to hell is paved with good intentions #long post #star wars #thrawn #mitth'raw'nuruodo #the new republic #just some thoughts #things bouncing around my head #as i watch the new show #and hear people talking about it #good intentions don't excuse his actions #he means well #but he's caused harm #and will cause harm #because the harm he's causing #is a lower priority for him #than his own goals #“acceptable losses” #acceptable for who? #greater good for who? #well #that's the sticky part #morally grey characters everyone #grand admiral thrawn #my thoughts #ahsoka show #star wars: rebels #grysk #chiss ascendancy

[thefugitivesaint]

While the media has been happy to parade around the notion that there's an "epidemic of shoplifting" plaguing retail stores, a premise that has been demonstrated to be factually incorrect and exaggerated, they have basically ignored widespread wage theft by those very same retail companies (take, for instance, Bob Nardelli, the former chief executive for Home Depot, screaming about "organized gangs" of shoplifters while on tv while Home Depot settles a class action lawsuit over wage theft to the tune of 72.5 million dollars and McDonalds pays out 26 million dollars for the same. These are just two notable examples, the latter from 2019.) How "crime" is framed and discussed matters for a host of reasons I'm not in the mood to expand on here at the moment but I will say that corporate theft is a topic that I rarely hear addressed in any detailed and sustained form by most media outlets. A quick addendum: back in 2018, a ruling from the Supreme Court in 'Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis', made class action lawsuits against employers harder by weakening workplace protections for employees. I'm being lazy here in my presentation so I suggest you do a more rigorous accounting of this subject on your own.

#wage theft #corporate crime #here's your brief moment of politics #the new republic

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Vivek Ramaswamy wants to end birthright citizenship—a longstanding American policy codified in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution—and take away young people’s right to vote, all in one fell swoop.

The presidential candidate made the call Thursday night on CNN, after being asked about his opponents, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump, vowing to end birthright citizenship. “For a period of time, I think it’s going to be necessary,” Ramaswamy said.

But the young gun was not satisfied just being in agreement with the leading duo in the Republican race-to-the-repressive-bottom.

“I’ll actually go one step further on this, Abby, is that I don’t think someone just because they’re born in this country, even if they’re a sixth generation American should automatically enjoy all the privileges of citizenship until they’ve actually earned it,” Ramaswamy told CNN’s Abby Phillip. “So one of the things I’ve said is that every high school student who graduates from high school should have to pass the same civics test that every immigrant has to pass in order to become a citizen of this country.”

Surveys in the past have shown that most people would likely fail a basic multiple choice citizenship test; one survey found just 36% of respondents actually passing such a test. And given Republicans’ all-out assault on public school education, it’s unclear what their plan would be to up those numbers.

After publishing, Ramaswamy senior adviser Tricia McLaughlin said the proposal refers “to civic duty voting via constitutional amendment.”

According to Ramaswamy’s website, this would mean raising the voting age to 25, while still generously “allowing all Americans to vote at age 18” only if they serve at least six months in the military or as a first responder, or pass the citizenship test.

Yet another successful pair of Republican talking points: seizing the right to vote from young people, and forcing people to join a military that has used trillions of American dollars to wreak carnage across the world, and leave its foot soldiers out to dry upon their return.

Anyhow, Ramaswamy’s brilliant proposal to seemingly strip citizenship from so many Americans came after Phillip noted that both of Ramaswamy’s parents are immigrants, and so birthright citizenship “was in play” for him when he became a citizen.

Yet, instead of making the citizenship process easier to navigate, Ramaswamy instead wants to make it harder for anyone to be a citizen. More than that, the presidential candidate’s formulation lays out tiers of citizenship—a matrix in which, until one passes this test, they would be a second-class citizen. While this country already treats scores of people—immigrants, LGBTQ people, laborers, the homeless, and young people—as such, Ramaswamy thinks that unfair treatment should be legally bound.

#us politics #news #the new republic #republicans #conservatives #2023 #2024 presidential race #2024 presidential election #2024 elections #vivek ramaswamy #right to vote #voting age #raising the voting age #Citizenship #Birthright Citizenship #civics test #Citizenship test #tiers of citizenship #second class citizens

[contemplatingoutlander]

As The New Republic reports, “Alito is complaining that people who oppose homosexuality were being unfairly branded as bigots, despite that being a dictionary definition of bigotry.” On Tuesday, agreeing the Court should not take a case, Alito wrote he is “concerned” that a lower court’s reasoning “may spread.” He notes that the lower court “reasoned that a person who still holds traditional religious views on questions of sexual morality is presumptively unfit to serve on a jury in a case involving a party who is a lesbian.” In that case, several jurors who acknowledged they held anti-LGBTQ views were released from serving on the trial. “That holding exemplifies the danger that I anticipated in 'Obergefell v. Hodges' … namely, that Americans who do not hide their adherence to traditional religious beliefs about homosexual conduct will be ‘labeled as bigots and treated as such’ by the government.'” Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern writes, “Alito suggests that a trial court violates the free exercise and equal protection clauses when it allows an attorney who represents a gay client to strike potential jurors because they express overt bigotry against gay people.” [...] Attorney Max Kennerly posits, “If we followed Alito’s reasoning that religious beliefs can never serve as a basis to strike a juror, we’d instantly run into a collision with jurors who believe, on religious grounds, the death penalty is wrong. Any guesses how Alito would rule on that? Yeah, exactly.”

Why the condemnation of homosexual behavior by some (NOT all) religious conservatives might legitimately raise questions of bigotry

It seems to me that Alito is acting as if "traditional religious views" about homosexuality are uniform.

Alito doesn't seem to acknowledge (or perhaps is not fully aware) that there are some interpretations of scripture that do not support the condemnation of homosexual behavior or even of same-sex unions. In fact there are some mainstream Christian denominations that allow for blessings of same-sex couples (including recently the very "traditional" Roman Catholic Church). Furthermore, Reconstructionist, Reform and Conservative Jewish sects also allow the blessing of same-sex unions.

Given all of the above, one might reasonably wonder why some (not all) conservative Christians or Jews seem to prefer to accept anti-LGBTQ+ translations/ interpretations of scripture, when other translations/ interpretations that are more sympathetic to homosexual behavior are available.

Of course the primary group of religious people in the U.S. that condemns homosexual behavior consists of some (not all) right-wing "Christians" from various denominations. But one also might wonder why these same right-wing "Christians" DON'T seem to want to pass laws banning divorce, adultery, usury, lying, etc., but they DO want to pass anti-LGBTQ+ legislation? After all, behaviors like divorce, adultery, usury, and lying are clearly condemned in various parts of the Bible.

One might also ask, why do some of these same right-wing "Christians" who think it is okay to condemn the LGBTQ+ community, not also condemn a prominent politician like Trump, who has been divorced multiple times, committed adultery multiple times, and who lies almost every time he opens his mouth?

It is the picking and choosing of what to condemn, and the hyperfocus on using the law to allow those with certain "religious views" to deny the rights of the LGBTQ+ community (while not choosing to deny the rights of other kinds of so-called "sinners"--NOT that I support that either) that suggests it might be legitimate to question whether some on the religious right use religion as an excuse to hold bigoted beliefs about and/or to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community.

[edited]

#samuel alito #right-wing religious views #right-wing christians #anti-lgbtq+ religious beliefs #bigotry #lgbtq+ rights #the new civil rights movement #the new republic

[ceteradesunt]

Shattered Glass (2003) dir. Billy Ray

#shattered glass #billy ray #hayden christensen #peter sarsgaard #chloë sevigny #hank azaria #00s movies #2000s movies #the new republic #stephen glass #chuck lane #caps #my caps #screencaps #shattered glass 2003

[movietimegirl]

The MVP that is holding it all together. A true Reble. 🧡

#the mandalorian #the book of boba fett #Ahsoka #carson teva #star wars #the real mvp #the new republic #disney plus #disney+ #paul sun-hyung lee

[thatqueercookie]

People getting their panties in a bunch about the practices of the new republic in the most recent episode of The Mandalorian. I'm sorry, did you thing the republic was pure clean goodness? It may not be totalitarian but it's still GOVERNMENT. Show me the happiest, most functional country in the world and I'll show you the dirty seedy underside of how they keep it working

I don't endorse it but it's not SHOCKING

#star wars #the mandalorian #new republic #the new republic #dr pershing #doctor pershing #elia kane

[darth-memes]

#star wars #sw memes #the new republic #leia organa #princess leia #general organa #mon mothma #chancellor mon mothma

[chorusan]

i wanna witness the utter renaissance that must've happened after the war ended on chorus. i wanna know what everyone did now that they had the chance to, what music and literature people wrote and what art people made and who went back to school for what and what pop culture developed and what kind of cultural marvels came out of this rinky-dink little planet on the edge of nowhere that almost didn't make it. i wanna see these people thrive after such a long time of just surviving, they have so much potential and i want to see the people of chorus flourish (not even to mention the kind of pop culture frankenstein that must've been created even just after the two armies unified, that clash must've really been something!)

#addendum: flourishing in ways that aren't being cops and having private healthcare like in rvb15 T-T HDHFGDGDG LMAO #maybe rvb19 will expand upon it #i have tons of headcanons but they're only headcanons (and alter canon memories HDGDGFJB) #rvb #the chorus trilogy #chorusan etc #the united army of chorus #the new republic #the federal army of chorus #talktag

[selovant]

#zabrak #swtor #star wars #the new republic

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

President Biden’s brain trust appears confident that he will ultimately prevail over Donald Trump due to the threat Trump poses to our constitutional system. By November, the election’s “focus will become overwhelmingly on democracy,” one top Biden adviser told The New Yorker, adding that “the biggest images in people’s minds are going to be of January 6th.”

If so, the Biden campaign had better get cracking.

Some new polling from a top Democratic pollster finds mixed news for Team Biden on this front: Large swaths of voters appear to have little awareness of some of Trump’s clearest statements of hostility to democracy and intent to impose authoritarian rule in a second term, from his vow to be “dictator for one day” to his vague threat to enact “termination” of provisions in the Constitution.

That’s maddening for obvious reasons. But it also presents the Biden campaign with an opportunity. If voters are unaware of all these statements, there’s plenty of time to make voters aware of them—and the polling also finds that these statements, when aired to respondents, shift them against Trump.

The survey—which was conducted by veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin for the group Save My Country and shared with The New Republic—did something novel. It polled 400 voters in each of three swing states—Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—and weighted them in proportion with each state’s Electoral College votes. It omitted respondents who voted for Trump in 2020 and also said Biden didn’t legitimately win.

In short, the poll was designed to survey voters who are genuinely gettable for Biden. The poll asked them about 10 of Trump’s most authoritarian statements, including: the two mentioned above, Trump’s claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” his vow to pardon rioters who attacked the Capitol, his promise to prosecute the Biden family without cause, his threat to inflict mass persecution on the “vermin” opposition, and a few more.

Result? “Only 31 % of respondents said they previously had heard a lot about these statements by Trump,” the memo accompanying the poll concluded.

The good news for Biden is that when respondents were presented with these quotes, it prompted a rise in Trump’s negatives. For instance, after hearing them, the percentage who see him as “out for revenge” jumped by five points, the percentage who see him as “dangerous” rose by nine points, and the percentage who see him as a “dictator” climbed by seven points.

“This is an opportunity to move voters and change the race,” Garin told me, noting that this shows that current public polling, which has Biden down to Trump, is “not set in concrete.”

If this Democratic polling is right, it might help explain a dynamic that has perplexed observers. The latest New York Times poll finds Biden trailing Trump by five points among registered voters even as 53% think he committed serious crimes.

Yet voters may still see Trump’s (alleged) criminality as a theoretical proposition, without connecting it to the type of unbound, lawless presidency he has told us he’d preside over—in his own words.

Indeed, the poll from Save My Country finds that after voters are presented with these statements, the percentage of those who view Trump unfavorably jumps five points, from 53% to 58%, and 69% say Trump will bring “chaos to the presidency and our country.”

In other words, when voters are presented with evidence straight from Trump’s own mouth, they see an authoritarian second term as very plausible.

In one sense, the lack of voter awareness of Trump’s “dictator” threats shows that the Biden campaign and Democrats don’t appear to have succeeded in making voters aware of the menace Trump poses. Perhaps their messaging has yet to work, or maybe the party has not seriously used the levers of power at its disposal to highlight Trump’s staggering corruption and malice.

But if this polling is right, one explanation that doesn’t seem as plausible is that voters don’t care about these matters. In fact, all this might in some ways validate one of the Biden camp’s frequent claims—that voters are so checked out that they aren’t seriously aware of the threat a second Trump term poses.

The new polling also counters a well-worn refrain from skittish, nonconfrontational Democrats. They sometimes say Trump’s negatives are so well known—or “baked in,” as campaign jargon puts it—that there’s no sense in spending much time on his authoritarian outbursts, affection for political violence, and wide array of (alleged) crimes. Yet all this may in an important sense constitute new information for untold numbers of voters.

“Trump’s negatives are not baked into the cake at all,” Garin told me. Fortunately for the Biden camp, between now and Election Day there are some eight months to fire up the campaign crucible and ensure that they do get baked in—good and hard.

#us politics #news #republicans #donald trump #conservatives #trump administration #gop #2024 #2024 elections #president joe biden #the lincoln project #the new republic #polling #authoritarianism #fascism #Geoff Garin #Save My Country #videos #YouTube #ads

[thecleverqueer]

It is more reasonable for Ezra and Hera to go up against Thrawn. Thrawn directly impacted them in a negative way. Thrawn indirectly killed Kanan, and tormented the people of Lothal (and Ryloth).

Also in fairness, it is logical to put Ahsoka on a different path to deal with a different problem all together that isn’t Thrawn. After all, they never had any direct beef that I’m aware of… and arguably, she’s probably too overpowered to take on Thrawn and make it a challenge anyway (Thrawn EU people, don’t come for me… I am just going off what I know of Filoni’s Rebel’s Thrawn).

Not that creating rivals with random villains isn’t in Ahsoka’s character (she did it with Maul too- both Thrawn and Maul are like, “Who TF is Ahsoka Tano?”), it’s just more fitting for the Ghost Crew to take him out. It raises the stakes.

Anyway…

I tend to think Hera immediately asks about Ahsoka and Sabine, and Ezra tells her that they’re still in Peridea, but there are bigger fish to fry with Thrawn back. They gather forces. The New Republic will not be helpful, so it’s going to likely fall to the pilots stationed at the Adelphi base, Boba and his rag-tag bunch from Tatooine, and the Mandalorians.

At some point, there will likely be a push to get the hyperspace coordinates from that giant hyperspace ring around the Chimera, and chaos will ensue… it’ll probably feel a lot like one of those Rebel episodes where the crew has snuck on an Imperial ship with Chopper to steal plans. Hera and Ezra will be successful in getting the coordinates, and they’ll go back to Peridea on the Ghost to rescue Sabine, Ahsoka and Huyang.

#star wars #ahsoka tano #ahsoka series #the mandoverse #grand admiral thrawn #ezra bridger #hera syndulla #the new republic #they’re about to have their hands full #ahsoka spoilers

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

"Leave a door open long enough, / a cat will enter."

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

#open polls #polls #poetry #poems #poetry polls #poets and writing #tumblr poetry #have you read this #a small-sized mystery #jane hirshfield #the new republic #cats