#and the GOP shit themselves

[8241991]

really grinds my ass that the SCOTUS decision for my state’s electoral maps is being halted/slowed down again and that a federal ruling allowed for the current gerrymandered maps to stay in place until SCOTUS reaches a decision

#this is purposeful lol #not like it’d flip the state blue entirely #but this is all because one democrat won a house seat in a historically red district in 2018 #and the GOP shit themselves #yeah when you disenfranchise an entire voting bloc for years they tend to not like you

[poorlittleyaoyao]

A thing about trying to plot out QS canon-divergence fixit where the marriage is averted is that the obvious solution to “she was already pregnant before they knew the truth” is, well, end the pregnancy. The wider world doesn’t seem to know that she’d conceived prior to marriage, so can’t be more than a month or so along as of the wedding for it to be plausible. People have been inducing abortion in dire circumstances despite physical risk and moral stigma throughout history. QS has magic at her disposal and the means to remove herself from society unnoticed during the recovery period, and even if it’s taboo, is it more taboo than incest?

#tfw when the text’s misogyny results in everyone operating on post-Roe Texas logic #*post-Dobbs rather #like come on JGY grew up in a brothel he would know how shit gets done #I can only see him not suggesting it if he’d witnessed someone dying from attempting to give themselves an abortion #and his panic brain was like ‘it would be Just Like That and she would DIE HORRIBLY so we must marry!’ #and even then it doesn’t explain why QS’s parents wouldn’t suggest it! #or (more distressingly yet still plausibly) pulling a Hoster Tully and forcing it #don’t mind me I woke up in the middle of the night and started pondering and now I’m grumpy #bc it’s like you either have to go FULL divergence where she and JGY never hook up at all #or you don’t give her the information until she’s already in the marriage and her options are much more limited #bc if she finds out at the same time JGY does possible outcomes either feel like a PSA about the importance of abortion access #or (if she marries someone else or otherwise sticks it out) GOP glurge about how keeping a pregnancy is always fine and good in the end #miscarriage cw #just in case

[caffiend-queen]

Meanwhile, on The Onion, my favorite news source...

Yeah, this site is ostensibly complete satire but I think you will agree it reports the events of the last 48 hours with lurid accuracy. Take a look.

This is the most outrageous yet most likely accurate “article...”

WASHINGTON—In a touching moment following Friday’s Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision overruling Roe v. Wade and eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas reportedly championed the better future they’d created for the next generation of rapists. “We did it, my friend—we’ve been waiting decades for this moment,” a visibly teary-eyed Kavanaugh was overheard saying to Thomas as the two congratulated each other on their work to make the world a better and safer place for perpetrators of sexual assault. “Today, we celebrate those who will come after us, who will be able to rape to their heart’s content. No one will be able to stop them. Whether it’s spousal sexual assault, statutory rape, or simply gang-raping a stranger, future generations will have the full backing of the law. Of course, we know that the rapists who come after us may not know their history, and so may not be aware of the decades we spent in the trenches fighting for their rights, but we’ll rest easy knowing we did all we could. Ultimately, what we’ve accomplished today is a crucial step toward enshrining universal rights for rapists, as well as bringing more babies into the world to be raped, but remember that our work isn’t done. I know we’ll spend the rest of our careers fighting for those who want to sexually violate other people.” At press time, Kavanaugh and Thomas were joined by a similarly ecstatic Justice Samuel Alito, who was said to have told them his only regret in the ruling was that they couldn’t do more to punish rape victims.

God bless The Onion. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t completely accurate.

#fuck the us supreme court #wait fuck five specific members of the US Supreme Court #Clarence Thomas is married to a white supremacist #Clarence Thomas is a vicious misogynist and women's rights was only the first step #god bless The Onion #SCOTUS overturns Roe v. Wade #The US Supreme Court thinks women are nothing but chattel #as a female you are shit to SCOTUS and the GOP #plan on the dismantling of Gay Rights and contraception next #these motherfuckers perjured themselves in their congressional hearings and THEY represent the highest court in the land? #give me a fucking break

[decolonize-the-left]

Project 25. The Heritage Foundation.

It's behind every single anti-lgbt law pushed the last year. They are why Roe v Wade was overturned. They are successful, well funded, and a massive threat.

What you can do is educate yourself and others about it. Get to know your enemy. Protest. Wear pride pins. Put out your flags. Show solidarity. We are ALL under attack by this white supremacist christo-fascist group.

Remember when 2020 had kpop stans organizing on twitter and gen z using tik tok to make Trump meets flop while white vets made themselves frontline walls at BLM protests that were organized to handle shit like kettling thanks to their amazing black organizers? Remember how people actually Showed up to those protests for awhile?

We need that cross-generational Fuck The System energy again. Not just for a summer this time. This needs to go passed the election.

They're playing a long game and so do we.

Get inspired.

Their goals include saving the children and traditional family, and "to lay the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right."

This translates to destroying the EPA, disability rights, and criminalizing being LGBT. Also to overthrow the US government, as stated in their manifesto.

They want to replace our democracy with a theocracy. No Republican in office was elected without their approval.

They're the kind of right that makes being LGBT punishable by death. That makes it a crime just to exist where others can see you. They want librarians who work in libraries that make LGBT books accessible to be registered sex offenders. They want you prosecuted and even specify that no mercy should be shown to people the "left" likes (ex: immigrants, black people, etc)

That's the extreme right who's been manipulating our laws.

And they plan to make things a lot worse within the first 180 days a Republican is elected president.

Source

If you don't have plans coming up.... Start organizing them. We will be okay if we work together.

We will be okay if we work together.

If we have each other, we'll be okay. We have to rely on each other. You have to be reliable. You, person reading this, have to show up. That's how this works.

I have your back if you have mine. Do not leave me to the wolves and I won't leave you.

#current events #tumblr #news #important #supernatural

[qqueenofhades]

It's definitely a refusal to engage with or truly understand politics. I'm 24, I was in middle school during Obama's second term and 17 in 2016, and I feel like a lot of my peers just continue to be appalled at how bad things have gotten with the Republicans and why Democrats can't do anything to stop it. What's missing from their understanding is how long it took for the Republicans to get here. It didn't start in 2016. They worked for decades to do all the nightmarish shit they're doing now, and Democrats just haven't been able to do the same (because people refuse to vote consistently and give them the power to do those things). I feel like that's where the "both sides are the same" bullshit comes from - the idea that if the Dems wanted to stop the GOP, they would. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how anything works, and often relies on downplaying how bad the Republicans actually are in order to support their 'Dems are just as bad' stance.

Things did get catastrophically worse when Trump was elected, and he broke things way more than they ever had been, but he doesn't exist in a vacuum and it took the Republicans a lot of fucking work for him to do what he did. The only way the Dems can counteract that is by having a party of people willing to put in a similar level of work, and that requires understanding our structures and how things work (executive orders are only temporary fixes and actual legislation takes time, compromise, and work), and a lot of these people just aren't willing to do it.

The thing is, yes, I absolutely do get the feeling that everything is terrible and we are doomed. I went through it when GWB was re-elected in 2004 and then again in 2008, worrying about whether Obama would get elected and end that particular run of Republican-induced misery (when John McCain looks like a fucking saint compared to the GOP candidates we are being offered now), and obviously plumbed the depths of despair in 2016 with Trump. But I don't remember ever thinking that I should just give up trying, stop voting, or any of that, and I don't think it was because I was some kind of special person who was just so tenacious. I obviously have not been a teenager in the present era and yes, that means I have different views on things from the next generation, but also: this has always happened. Moments of total political despair and feeling that everything is fucked are also not a new thing. We are going through it with Trumpism, the previous generation went through it with Reagan/Thatcher, the previous previous generation went through it with Nixon/Vietnam, the previous etc generation went through it with the Cold War, the previous etc. etc. generation went through it with World War II -- and so forth. There has never been any one point when everything was great and there was no work left to be done, because, y'know. That is not how either history or human nature works.

Hence, that is why I'm trying to figure out what in the fuck is going on right now, and whether it's just social media that have made things so bad (entirely possible). Critical thinking is a shambles, yes, but that's not necessarily something young people have chosen for themselves. The current world is a late-stage capitalist dystopia run by four or five trillionaire oligarch cartels and corporations, and obviously public education, basic civic responsibility, the teaching of any "controversial" history, and everything else that might threaten that setup has been systematically and methodically dismantled, politicized, or so infiltrated with false information that it's basically useless. That in itself is not young people's fault. They have genuinely been dealt a terrible hand in many ways, and I don't blame them for being angry about it. I too am angry about it! I do question, however, when the overwhelming sentiment became "well we should just give up and let the bad guys win, either because it's too much work to change it or because that will spark the Great Revolution and that's the only way to fix things ever, and doing anything else at all in the meantime is wrong."

Once again: I do not blame young people for being angry at the shitty situation they are currently facing. I do not blame young people for being disillusioned with the system and thinking that it can't solve everything at once. But yet again: there has never been any government, country, or organization in the history of ever anything everywhere that was able to do that, and the ones that tried, or insisted that they could do it, were infamously murderous bloodbaths, because breaking society (even with all its flaws) into a thousand pieces and thinking this will make My Preferred Ideological Utopia Now Appear is probably the deadliest belief in all of time and space. The world is flawed and has been for all time because humans are flawed and probably will be for all time. Being a grownup requires coming to an understanding of that fact and seeing what you can do in spite of that. People in every era have had gaps and biases and blind spots and other things that hobbled their understanding or made their efforts for change less perfect or complete than they would have wanted in an ideal world, and they have had to move past those anyway. The current generation is no different. Not to sound like a boomer, but even despite the mess they've been faced with, they need to figure out how to engage with it anyway and not just completely absolve responsibility because they can't fix it all at once. Which I don't think most young people do! There are plenty of them who really do get it and are engaged and idealistic and working for good change, and that's great! It's just the other part that worries me, and which is not as small as we would like to think.

And yes, part of this is just flat-out bad information and the stubborn lack of any desire to change it if it conflicts with pre-existing beliefs. (This is by no means exclusive to young people of this current generation, as it's another bad habit of humanity, but yes.) In the aforementioned "you're driving young leftists away :(" ask I got yesterday, there were also plenty of dubious and just-flat-wrong claims, such as that Democrats keep moving to the right "especially economically." That is just not true. In the last four years, the Democrats have moved the most economically leftward in all of American history and have finally and flatly rejected the Great Reagonomics Myth. Just because Clinton did Reagonomics-lite in the '90s (when most of the current generation of Online Leftists weren't even born), that is thirty years ago and in wildly different circumstances. These things are not difficult to look up. Do it. Try to educate yourself, even if the system doesn't want to do it. You can't just throw up your hands and insist that nobody taught you, so how could you know??? Put that "instant access to all of human history and knowledge" to use, even just a little. It'll be good for you!

Likewise, there was also the anon's befuddling insistence that I was "patronizing" or "shaming" anyone "further left than Biden," which reflects their apparent feeling that telling people to vote for Biden is a "personal attack" on their cherished beliefs, or whatever. I'm unsure how many times we have to keep repeating that voting for a candidate does not mean you are canonizing all their beliefs exactly as your own, and that it's just one tool to do the bare minimum to not live in a fucking fascist theocratic dictatorship, but yeah. I can guarantee you that I personally am well left of Biden. I can guarantee you that most people on Tumblr voting for Biden are probably well left of him as well. That does not negate the fact that Biden is the most progressive president America has ever had, regardless of how much Online Leftists shriek otherwise. It also does not negate the fact that this is by no means true of America as a whole (witness the large faction that still thinks Biden is a godless far-left evil socialist). It does not negate the many complex historical, political, social, cultural, religious, racial, etc reasons that have collided to produce the America where this is the case. Therefore, if I do not want to live in a society ruled by Trump and his orange Nazi minions, which is the case due to how badly the last 10 years have been fucked up, I will use the tool of voting for Biden! He can be successfully pressured to create positive change in the direction that I would like! Trump cannot and will not under any circumstances, regardless of the wild fantasies that suddenly he will transform into a perfect progressive on Gaza or whatever other issue! THIS IS NOT THAT FUCKING DIFFICULT!!!!!!!

Anyway. All of this is obviously complicated. Obviously things are bad and frightening and we want a solution that fixes all of it at once, instead of slowly, badly, and piecemeal. But as I said: that has never, not once, been the case in all of history, and we know what happens when people and/or governments with delusions of psychopathic grandeur try to do it. We do not want the "Final Solution" (which is infamous as what Hitler literally called the Holocaust). We do, in fact, want the careful step by step, we want things to get better and not just explode in a mountain of nihilistic doom, and that does take work, from everyone. So unfortunately, there is no real choice except to do it.

#anonymous #ask #history #politics for ts

[theculturedmarxist]

I like how libs, mostly white cishets, talk about how trump is worse than Biden while using every minority under the sun as their scapegoat victim. "oh but gay people will suffer worse under trump" "oh but minorities will suffer worse under trump" "oh but disabled people will will suffer worse under trump" instead of asking the people they seem to be "fighting" for what they think. And the smugness too thinking they figured it out and how they are the main smart person that has figured it out and everyone around them is stupid. I honestly do hope trump wins and is as horrible as they say he will be they really deserve it. Oh and this coming from someone who is gay, a minority, and disabled, Biden has materially been worse than trump has been. If the vote blue maga people want to do something useful they should kill themselves

I like how libs, mostly white cishets

I think the problem is less their physical identity and more that they're comfortable petite bourgeois/Professional-Managerial Class types. For them, Trump is worse than Biden. While the PMC isn't exclusive to the Democratic Party, that's where you'll find that they predominate. They're the same people that are saying "what do you expect me to do, NOT work at Raytheon?"

Minorities, the disabled, etc, sure, they care about them, but only insofar as they care about themselves as a part of that group. This mindset is fixed in their heads even if only subconsciously because their own position requires exploiting all those identities as they exist in the working class. Sure, they care about the quality of life of their paraplegic employees, but they'd damn well better clock in on time.

The promise of the Democratic Party is that its members aren't supposed to be touched by the same miseries as the hoi polloi. Their credentials mark them out as a better sort of person. They're smarter, they worked harder, they earned it. They don't really have a problem with the GOP preying on people, they have a problem with the GOP preying on them. Just take this leaking dickhole as an example:

It's fine to talk shit about Biden! 😌 But you still better vote for him🤬

The problem isn't that Trump is deporting people. Biden's busy doing that very fucking thing, after all. No, the problem is that now the wrong people might be deported! This is so much worse than when regular brown illegals get imprisoned and deported en masse.

You can take the right to abortion as another example. Trump's plan is to let the states figure it out for themselves. Well, it turns out that's the Democrat plan too. The Democrats and the PMC aren't really concerned about abortion because their class position basically guarantees they'll be able to get it. They live in states where its protected, or they have the money to take care of the problem some other way if the need arises. It's an abstract problem for them. Their only real fear is if that suddenly isn't the case, that they would face the real problems of regular people. That's the terror and threat of Trump to them, not that he'll commit genocide like Biden is, but that their ass might be the one in the fire this time, which of course makes Trump "worse."

#trump #biden #liberals #professional managerial class #class war

[creature-wizard]

Man, witchtok and witchbook sure do love the narrative that Christianity stole everything from them, huh?

So I see that you asked a mutual of mine the same question, while also asking what can be done about this problem. Since said mutual suggested that you come to me for advice here, that's what I'll post.

First of all, understand that this is nothing new. this has always been a popular narrative among neopagans, because it gives people a narrative in which they can frame and talk about their grievances with society. "The Catholic Church stole Christmas" isn't factually true, but it's easier to learn and spread than advanced socioeconomics. People believing this stuff is not a personal failing. It's a consequence of systemic failure. We live in an information crisis, with conservatives effectively sabotaging education at every turn and algorithmic feeds designed to serve up whatever will get the most clicks, not what's most accurate.

The problem, therefore, must be addressed systemically. This means participating in politics, voting on whatever elections you can vote on, spreading relative political news, whatever. Do whatever you can do keep the GOP out of power or from gaining more power. Get involved in political activism circles if you aren't already.

You can also put out your own information to counter the misinformation, and boost or promote good info. Work with the limitations of social media - short, memeable content is always more likely to spread.

When you catch yourself wanting to complain about something you hate, try to find a way to transform it into praise for something you love. Like instead of complaining about people who post misinformation about the goddess Aphrodite, find some cool facts about Aphrodite to post instead.

When you're creating educational content of any kind, follow this very simple guideline: don't shit on the dinner table. That is, don't mix big ranting gripes in with content meant to educate the masses. If you got a big gripe to get out of your system, put that gripe in its own space.

When you do have to address incorrect beliefs specifically, try to avoid shaming believers, because not only does it not work, it's just unnecessary cruelty. Nobody misinforms themselves on purpose. Nobody wants to be a bad person. What we have are a lot of people suffering from systemic fuckery and just want to not feel sad, scared, and helpless, because feeling that way hurts.

(This post is an example of how I took something frustrating and put a positive spin on it. I wrote it when I was feeling pissy about the kinds of problems you mention in your message.)

Prepare to deal with the same misinformation a lot. Like not just intellectually and emotionally, but physically - create FAQs, masterposts, whatever. It can get really frustrating trying to deal with that stuff a million times, but the reality is that there are billions of people in the world and they're making new ones every day.

Keep a list of resources on hand that you can share with people you're talking to, depending on what they're searching for. The fewer steps/resources that are needed to access said resource, the better. Keep a list of podcasts, scholars with YouTube channels, blogs with good information, whatever, that you can just suggest to people looking for info.

And finally, take care of yourself. If you find yourself wanting to rip people's throats out or something, it's time to take a break and focus on yourself.

#answered #witchcraft #education #misinformation

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

You don’t need to be a political genius to know that Republicans are straight up shitting themselves right now. The Arizona Supreme Court ruling in favor of an 1864 ban was a tipping point across the country, and the GOP—in every state, at every level—knows that voters are furious.

It’s not just the nightmare stories of raped children being denied care and women going septic that put voters over the edge, but the disdain for women that seeps out of every anti-abortion decision. At the same time Arizona Republicans are enacting a law from before women had the right to vote, anti-abortion groups and Idaho Republicans are headed to the Supreme Court to argue that states shouldn’t have to give women life-saving abortions. How much clearer can they get? All of which is to say: strategists have their work cut out for them. How can they convince voters ahead of November that the anti-abortion horror show they’ve unleashed on Americans is good, actually?

If anyone has an answer, it’s Kellyanne Conway. The Republican strategist and all-around terrible person has been doing damage control in the wake of the Arizona ruling, pushing out talking points at record speed. And the messages she’s focusing on paint a clear picture of what we can expect to see from GOP candidates—including Donald Trump—over the next few months. In a recent appearance on Fox News, for example, Conway stuck to some of her old standards—namely, attacking Democrats as the real extremists. She honed in on ballot measures, specifically, saying that abortion rights activists are trying to pass amendments that are “more permissive than pre-Dobbs.” Of course, this is demonstrably false. It’s also one of the reasons I don’t love ‘viability’ language in proposed amendments—in addition to the fact that it’s just another restriction, Republicans will claim we’re pushing for abortion ‘up until birth’ regardless.

Conway also repeated some of our favorite anti-abortion bingo words like “compassion,” and “federal minimum standard” in lieu of ‘ban’—but it was something she said about states’ rights that piqued my interest.

[“What is state’s rights? Is it when the state Supreme Court speaks? Is it through a ballot initiative? Is it through the governor and the state legislature working together? Is it through the trigger laws that have been on the books? I can argue that it’s all of the above.”]

Over the last few months—especially as pro-choice ballot measures have advanced in multiple states—I’ve noticed Republicans tinkering with the definition of states’ rights and the ‘will of the people.’ Essentially, they know that they’re passing abortion bans against voters’ wishes, so they need to make it sound as if these laws are something Americans actually want. (That’s why they say ‘consensus’ instead of ‘ban.’)

This week, for example, Fox News ran a headline about the EMTALA case headed to the Supreme Court, stating that the Biden administration is “subverting state’s rights” by requiring hospitals to give women life-saving and stabilizing abortions. John Bursch, an attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the radical legal group arguing the case, told Fox News, “It’s pushing abortion on states that don't want it.” It takes a lot of nerve to pass abortion bans no one wants, only to then accuse pro-choice politicians of disregarding voters’ wishes! But that’s the message I’m seeing come up again and again among Republican legislators, anti-abortion activists and conservative media.

Jessica Valenti’s Abortion, Every Day Substack exposes the GOP’s abortion bans are the “will of the people” charade in which they falsely suggest that the Democrats are the ones extreme on abortion.

These nimrods claim to be for “states’ rights” when it comes to abortion bans, but they would ban it nationwide in a heartbeat if given a chance to do so.

#Abortion Bans #Abortion #GOP #2024 Elections #Kellyanne Conway #Reproductive Health #Abortion Every Day #Jessica Valenti #Anti Abortion Extremism #States' Rights

[tomorrowusa]

When Republicans make accusations against Democrats, it's a given that Republicans themselves are deeply guilty of those charges.

Republicans may be terrible at governing, but they are world class when it comes to projection.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY-01) is frantically searching for nonexistent "evidence" to impeach Joe Biden while ignoring Trump businesses getting over $7 million from China, Saudi Arabia, and other countries while in office. What on earth was the Chinese government doing at a Trump property in Las Vegas?

^^^ Did the Democratic Republic of Congo spend $25,171 at the Trump International Hotel in DC so he would stop calling them a "shit-hole country"? 🇨🇩

As for GOP Rep. James Comer, he's a hypocritical multimillionaire twit who is the perfect corrupt MAGA zombie.

The Republican leading the probe of Hunter Biden has his own shell company and complicated friends

#james comer #us house of representatives #ky-01 #republicans #projection #gop hypocrisy #trump-china scandal #donald trump #china #saudi arabia #democratic republic of congo #election 2024 #john cole

[longwindedbore]

Democrats: THERE ARE TWO ELECTIONS in 2024

PRIMARIES in which you can often vote among a field of Democratic candidates for House Congressional and State Legislative contenders whose political beliefs align with your own. These races don’t require a lot of money so there are usually good new choices.

Win or lose in the Primary, in NOVEMBER the Democrats and Republicans square off for who will occupy those seats in Congress and the Legislature.

Every exiting GOP member will be replaced by a bat-shit insane MAGA theocratic lunatic candidate who has unhealed childhood trauma driving them to make life horrible for everyone so that by comparison with us they can feel better about the empty black hole inside themselves.

Otherwise known as “Owning the Libs”.

This is is a once on a Lifetime, 1932 FDR NEW DEAL golden opportunity to flip those seats Democratic in the House and State Legislatures.

If you have the time the Democratic Party in your neighborhood could always use help in canvassing Democratic voters to encourage them to show up to vote.

MAGA has lost every off-off year election since the overturn of RvW. The old RHINO GOP NEVER lost an off-off year election.

Better days are possible.

[stupid-sloot-headcanons]

Me watching my home state's representatives threaten to fuck over my fellow Texas by seceding for the millionth time and simultaneously feeling everything at once

I hate Greg Abbott and the reason he and all shit representatives in TX are so hard to vote out is because of the historical gerrymandering and suppression of voters

I hate the fostered culture of cutting off your nose to spite the federal government's face. I hate the federal government and its overreach as much as anyone else, but seceding is only going to transfer federal power from one group of selfish idiots (US federal government) to another group (Greg Abbott and the current TX reps)

I hate non-Texans who always laugh at us when something bad happens as if the people suffering are the same people that are causing that suffering. When a natural disaster hits, it's not the "evil GOP conservatives" or whatever stereotype you have in your head that suffers: it's poor people that comprise a large portion of the state, it's families, it's the minorities that so many non-Texans like to pretend don't exist here at best and at worst use those minorities as political tokens. I've heard shit from my northern family members about how racist and bigoted Texans are while they use every slur in Italian AND English for black people, gay people, and women who disagree with them. When you laugh at the terrible things that happen here, you're laughing at the suffering of people who have a stunning lack of political power despite everything we're doing to fight for it.

When we were freezing to death, our Senator was secretly trying to get his family to Cancun. When our elementary schools were being shot up, our police force was so cowardly that they refused to enter and physically removed parents trying to save their children when nobody else was. Houston and Dallas both have some of the biggest LGBT populations in the country.

The stereotypes of all Texans as bigoted white rednecks who are uneducated and lazy is counterintuitive at ALL levels. It absolves actual bigoted Texans of their accountability because "that's just how Texans are" despite so many of us who fight for change and who are dedicated to social justice. It shifts blame from our corrupt political system and the people keeping themselves in power to the people who fight for change despite the restrictions on their political power. It erases the gigantic level of diversity within the state and makes our default depiction of a Texan a white hetero redneck male despite our demographics being incredibly diverse, more so than a fair amount of northern states might I add.

#its at a point where i stop being polite with ppl who joke about texas like that #ive outright told someone who thought the freeze and hurricanes were (as a joke) karma for the states politics #and i had just come back from a feminist rally in dallas. so i was so sick of it that i just told him online to self delete #sloot bitches about things

[thatstormygeek]

It's great that Dems picked up the seat in New York.

It's not great that the apparent lesson learned from this is to be more like Republicans on the border.

Remember the 90s when the Dems decided to be more like Republicans on the economy? And how wonderfully that worked out for the country?

So cool. Cool cool cool cool cool.

We can talk about our belief in a strong border and strong legal immigration, contrasted with Republicans’ view of the border as a simple political tool to help spread hateful, xenophobic messages about immigrants.

Oh, sure. That would be great. If that were going to happen.

“When President Biden worked with Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to deliver the toughest, fairest border security legislation in decades, Speaker Johnson killed it — choosing politics, Donald Trump and fentanyl traffickers over the Border Patrol Union and America’s national security,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement first provided to NBC News.

Source

It may have been the "fairest" legislation in decades, but that's because of the shit way we handle immigration, not because the bill was good.

Bates noted that Biden has vowed to spread the same message, and said New York voters "proved him right" with the election result. “Tom Suozzi put support for the bipartisan border legislation — and congressional Republicans’ killing of it for politics — at the forefront of his case,” Bates said. “The results are unmistakable.”

This "fairest" bill would have given $8 billion in emergency funding to ICE (on top of their regular $9 billion/year), make asylum much more difficult to obtain, continue building Trump's wall, hand $23 million off to the DEA to "solve" a problem they largely created, not provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, and give an additional $7 billion in emergency funding to Customs and Border Protection, 1/10 of which is to hire more border cops.

There was definitely good stuff in the bill, but watching the Dems once again fall all over themselves to abandon their supposed principles in order to give the GOP what it says it wants is never pleasant. Seeing them do it when the clear example of the ACA is right fucking there and then going all shocked pikachu when the Repubs pull the same shit is just gross.

#us politics #this is my brain on life #representative government my ass #fire the gop #republicans are unfit for office #ostrich dems

[aficionadoenthusiast]

probably the thing I miss the most from the ancient world (greece specifically) is that people were allowed to have flaws, even, and at some times especially, the gods

look at percy jackson (the series): the main character's fatal flaws are stuff like loyalty, hubris, grudge holding, and the inability to be selfish - while holding dire potential, none of these are flaws that would ruin someone's day or make a person outright objectionable; those flaws are saved for the villains/antiheroes: excessive wrath, the need to be better than everyone (this is different than hubris - hubris is the feeling, this is more the action), the need to attain a goal at any cost

and this aligns a lot with the modern view of how people should act: we can make mistakes as long as they're hidden and they don't happen again, but really we should just avoid making mistakes and try to be a person the most people would like

but in ancient greece: the great heroes had some pretty bad fatal flaws that by modern standards would get them a lot of hate: major anger management issues, impulsiveness so bad it harmed others many times, hubris that far exceeded annabeth's (and that's another point), excessive pride (again, different from hubris, and the extent was far worse than any pjo characters), and anxiety (which is coming to be tolerated in the modern world, but back then was just a flaw for a hero)

while a lot of these are very close or even match those of the pjo characters, the ancient heroes were able to let their flaws get much farther than any pjo character. the ancient world saw character flaws as a problem, yes, but they also saw them as unavoidable and just something that needed to be controlled whereas the modern world sees character flaws as personal failures

and we do this so much with public and religious figures: the second we see something we don't like from those we already don't like, we attack, but we're so quick to defend those we do like even when their mistakes go beyond mistakes and start becoming actual problems that need to be addressed (cough gop cough) - and again, we do this with everyone: politicians, the religious people we believe in, celebrities, our friends, etc - when what we really should be doing is acknowledging that no one is perfect and perfection is an impossible, unattainable burden

and i cite the gods because the ancient greek gods messed up so damn much, and the greeks didn't deny that. that's why there were so many gods, so that the different ones could pick up slack. but now, people act like they have to hold themselves to the same standards as the monotheistic gods we have now that are often seen as perfect. (I won't get into this because it seems disrespectful to me but the main idea is that we're not gods, so even if you view your religious figures as flawless, you don't have to be)

sometimes this modern view is a good thing such as in the case of morals and ethics or when people need to be held accountable for their actions, but too often this new perspective just puts unnecessary stress on people already doing their best, and it opens up opportunities for the people who are actually problematic to makes others feel like shit, plus it pushes the idea that everyone should be the same when people use this view to push their agenda

besides, part of the point of allowing people to have fatal flaws is that they have people around them that will help them control their flaws so they don't get out of hand. we see in the case of theseus when he was with his parents or ariadne until he was with pirithous, a horrible influence, and percy and annabeth, who each remind each other when they're being too prideful or letting their loyalty get the best of them, and nico and will when will reminds nico to let bygones be bygones.

anyway all this to say, take care of yourself. you don't need to be perfect. you don't even need to always do your best, and it's ok to make mistakes. the things you see as personal flaws are what make you spicy.

*the characters for the listed fatal flaws are tagged in order if you weren't sure which person I meant

#percy jackon and the olympians #pjo #percy jackson #annabeth chase #nico di angelo #jason grace #luke castellan #octavian #ethan nakamura #heracles #theseus #otrera #perseus #greek mythology #percabeth #solangelo #anti gop #ariadne #pirithous #anxiety #self care #notes on humanity #thoughts

[gothicprep]

the gop really screwed themselves with the maga stuff. they're pretty much resigned to accepting trump's lunacy and having to placate it for the foreseeable future.

idk if i've said this here or it was offline, but the elephant in the room with desantis is that, if he gets the nomination, there's a very high chance of trump running third party, and has enough of a fanatical base to meaningfully split the vote if he did. if trump is nominated, there isn't a single person in america that's undecided about him. he's run out of doubt he can benefit from.

not to mention that this situation means candidates like haley or sununu, who imo would have a very real chance of winning in a general election are basically nonstarters in the face of this. the trend lately has been that furthest far right freaks perform well in their respective primary races, but eat shit when they go against democrats.

to be fair, we all benefit from nobody in this clown show holding high office. but imagine how much your life must suck if you're a republican strategist. biden is an unpopular candidate but you still probably won't be able to beat him in 2024, due to the hell of your own creation that you're in rn

[forcefemd]

a special anathema held within my heart for the people who go as far out of their way as willingly possible to interpret whatever tired, routine kink it is the vaguely e-famous trans woman of the week posted on some anonymous sideblog, or several years ago, or whatever, as evidence of them being a pedophile; always stopping abruptly short of actually saying that with whatever proprietary language they can unimaginatively scrape together : she's a groomer, a degenerate, a sex pest, she's 4channy, she's porn sick, whatever. the ease with which vulnerable transfems are swept aside is surprising only for the brazenness those who would otherwise call themselves "trans friendly" seem to revel in; "terfs dni", except for when they're disseminating falsified callouts you can mindlessly partake in spreading. tirelessly doing the work of whatever gop politician or solanas twitter wannabe it is with your "holy shit i hadn't heard of her but blocking immediately spreading awareness" responses. i don't know, it's been said a lot before and worded a lot better (read hot allostatic load, etc etc), but the length of time reconciling having been on the sharp end of an ostracization motivated callout has stolen from me, has stolen from others i know and cherish who've lived through the same is unforgivable. doesn't it make you angry, angry from the bottom of your heart, angry without comparison? it should.

#sizzling tangerine deathglitter #and to any trans girls reading this who - for whatever reason - had also found themselves sucking up to cis people as a means of getting by #there is something so much better out there. you've only got to relish in getting worse. with people who are as bad as you.

[qqueenofhades]

Speaking of Jack Smith and the indictments, follow up questions if you feel like answering! What do you think the chances of a conviction before the 2024 elections are? And (more worryingly to me), how much will convictions matter given they don't actually stop Trump from running or potentially being elected?

I've been following the investigations pretty closely, until I figured out last night that there are no laws against running for president from prison, and nothing stopping an imprisoned president from pardoning themselves. @_@ And while no one running for president from prison has ever gotten much of the vote, I have a terrible feeling that's one of those terrible firsts Orange-kun could pull off.

The thing with all this is that it is, for America, completely unprecedented political and legal territory. As such, while we can speculate and infer from what has happened thus far and what would normally be on schedule to happen next, we simply can't be sure. As I have said and as we all need to prepare ourselves for, Trump WILL be the GOP nominee at the time of the 2024 election, and if you thought he and his deranged cultists were dangerous to American democracy before, that's nothing compared to what they would be now. Which means we have the obvious task of all working as hard as we fucking can to get Joe Biden re-elected and given back full Democratic control of Congress. That is and remains Job Number One.

Next, Trump's only play is to delay, delay, delay as long as possible, in hopes of miraculously winning and canceling all the charges against himself like a proper banana-republic Autocrat-for-Life. That is obviously a terrifying idea, so see above: need to make sure it doesn't happen. The good news is that Biden beat Trump last time and if we do our part, he can do it again. Democrats are over-performing their 2020 margins by an average of 7+ points in the last 20 special or off-cycle elections, and while this isn't a sign to think we've got it in the bag and can just relax, it also means that the electoral trends are overall much better for Team Blue than they are for the Group Of Pfascists over there, especially since state-level Republican parties are basically bankrupt after throwing away so much money on pointless Big Lie challenges. Trump and his entire vindictive fascist apparatus is, again, terrifying. But it is not genuinely popular or in the actual majority, and we need to approach it like something that can and must be defeated, and not some unstoppable demonic force.

As such, we also need to recognize that even if Trump does go on trial and get convicted on any number of things before November 2024, which is still something of a long shot just because Merrick Garland dragged his feet on this for so long, he will try every bullshit delay tactic and appeal that he possibly can, in hopes of elevating it to a Trump-appointed judge and/or SCOTUS (he will try AS HARD AS POSSIBLE to get it to SCOTUS, since like every good mob boss, he thinks he owns them and they're obliged to bail him out). We don't know the timeline on that or what the effects will be, but as I noted last night, the benchmark for "progress on holding Trump accountable" constantly shifts and doesn't seem to be acknowledged, even when we are in the realm of the unprecedented for any former American president. And yet we do continue to make progress, and as I say whenever there's a development on that front, the LAST thing we should do is pre-emptively throw up our hands, despair about how it still doesn't mean anything, or just won't work. I know pessimism is easy and hopelessness feels like our default setting; the last almost-decade has kicked the absolute SHIT out of us and I won't pretend otherwise. But nonetheless, this is still happening. We just have to hang in there and do our part.

If we do that, and trust that Jack Smith and co. do theirs (as they have been doing so far), then things will probably, in fact, be okay. We cannot ever make the mistakes of 2016 again, which is why it's so maddening that a significant minority of leftist-identifying people seem determined to do exactly that, but it's certainly not as if all hope is already lost and the indictments will be a magic wand to speed Trump back to the White House (again, God forbid). We have to keep that in mind and our eyes on the goal, so yeah. We can do it and we must, and that's about all there is to it.

#anthropicmoose #ask #politics for ts #the giant orange monster