#debunk of right-wing talking points

[contemplatingoutlander]

"Research people."

If you are doing your own "research" @dragonflydreams47, it is clearly from right-wing propaganda outlets because your assumptions are wrong.

First of all, it is Harris's mother who is Indian. NOT Harris's father. According to Time:

Harris is Black and Indian. Her father, Donald Harris, is a Black man who was born in Jamaica. Shyamala Gopalan, her mother, was born in southern India. Harris has spoken publicly for many years, including in her 2019 autobiography, about how she identifies with the heritage of both her parents. [emphasis added]

You also suggest that Harris slept her "way to the top" with a married Willie Brown. Well, according to Time, this claim "is missing some important context":

Brown was separated from his wife during the relationship, which was not a secret. Brown, 90, is a former mayor of San Francisco who was serving as speaker of the California State Assembly in the 1990s when he and Harris were in a relationship. Brown had separated from his wife in 1982. “Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago,” Brown wrote in 2020 in the "San Francisco Chronicle" under the article title, “Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?” He wrote that he supported Harris’ first race to be San Francisco district attorney—just as he has supported a long list of other California politicians, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Harris, 59, was state attorney general from 2011-2017 and served in the Senate from 2017 until 2021, when she became Vice President. She has been married to Doug Emhoff since 2014. [emphasis added]

Harris and Brown dated during 1994-1995, so Brown had been separated from his wife for 12 years when they first dated. (I don't know why they didn't divorce, but most people would have considered them basically divorced at that time.) They also dated openly. Harris certainly did not have a secret one-night stand/brief affair with Brown, as is usually implied with the concept of "sleeping to the top."

Brown did appoint Harris to two commissions (NOT simultaneously) when they were dating. But if you don't like that, you shouldn't like the fact that Trump appointed his daughter and son-in-law to high-level positions when he was president.

Regardless, Brown's influence appears to have only been during Harris's early career. Harris got her later positions all on her own, including her elected positions as California Attorney General, U.S. Senator, and U.S. Vice President.

Finally, @draonflydreams47 the above @KamolaHarris account is a (now suspended) X parody account. (Notice the "o" in "Kamola" where the second "a" should be in the correctly spelled "Kamala"--thanks for seeing this @saxlady !). The X post also had a "Parody" label at the far-right bottom of the post (circled in red, in the copy below).

So your statement "your father...", as if addressing your remark directly to Harris, indicates you didn't realize this. (I didn't realize it myself when I first commented on the post.)

However, if you are going to tell people to "research" something like Kamala Harris's history, please do your own research with credible sources. I'm sorry if I sound peevish, but I'm really tired of right-wing people telling others "to do their research" when they clearly have done very poor research themselves.

[edited]

[sleepyowlet]

breaking news everyone: no one has ever been swayed by propaganda or had their sexual awakening started by a piece of media. a very very smart tumblr user snarkily said this, so it must be true.

Breaking news everyone: butthurt nonny can't tell the difference between "sexual awakening" and "turning someone gay" and yet tries to lecture a queer woman. Astounding.

This is, indeed the crux of the problem: any kind of media, books, films, games, whatever can't cause shit.

They can only amplify what's already there!

[catherine-clover]

Anti-endos now have the plural equivalent of PragerU’s Detrans documentary

Debunking Anti(-endo's)Misinfo. AKA: How are anti-endos so bad at sources????

(The original)

Oh, well good on you for trying to cover everything! Nice of anti-endos to finally start trying to use science to prove their arguments. I'm sure these sources will totally be reliable and will prove your points beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that you won't just be falling flat on your face with every single attempt at basic reading comprehension, and end up repeatedly make a complete fool of yourself.

Let's go!

Off to a pretty strong start, acknowledging that many endogenic systems don't have DID or OSDD. Sadly, that basic fact is something that seems to escape most anti-endos. So with this in mind, I think it's safe to say the goal of this post is going to be to prove...

You can't possibly have DID without trauma.

You can't possibly have OSDD without trauma.

You can't be a system without DID/OSDD.

Let's read through and see how they'll do at proving their points by the end. I promise you, the results... won't surprise you. 😉

Well, there goes that strong start.

The source here is a Carrd and so-called "common sense."

Meanwhile, in the World Health Organization's ICD-11, alters or dissociative identities are described as "distinct personality states." In the same page, it's stated that you can have multiple "distinct personality states" without a disorder.

This is information from the World Health Organization affirming that you can be plural without a disorder. And I think that prevails over your so-called "common sense."

See also these screenshots from the plurality chapter of Transgender Mental Health, a book published by the American Psychiatric Association:

Finally, I really want to put a focus on this line of logic: "you cannot have alters without having a disorder, this is common sense as it's not normal to have alters."

Normal has multiple meanings in different contexts. The ICD-11's boundary with normality uses normal to mean "non-pathological." But this post seems to be using "normal" in the lay way to mean "common."

And that makes this particular rhetoric extremely dangerous and harmful to many communities. "If it's not common, it's a mental illness," was the basis for homosexuality and being transgender being listed as mental illnesses. "Most people don't think this way, so there's something wrong with them."

This could also easily be used to pathologize Otherkin and other alterhumans as mentally ill because it's not "normal" to identify as an animal.

The modern World Health Organization and American Psychiatric Association recognize the fact that simply thinking unusually or differently isn't an illness or disorder.

Statements like yours do not exist within a vacuum, but harken back to decades past when any non-typical thinking would have you labeled as having a disorder that needed treated.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Let's be thankful to live in a world today where our differences aren't considered disorders. And let's not resort to ideologies that threaten to return us to those days past.

Wait... who suggests this? Who are they? I think I need more info...

So... "some researchers."

Also, can we talk about how this starts off with "sometimes called multiple personality disorder." I checked to see if this was before the name changed in the ICD (which I believe was 2015) and it doesn't seem to be! Oldest archive I can find is 2020!

Rethink.org is a charity.

These are not peer-reviewed papers.

The page references "some researchers" without names or sources.

I have no idea who authored this or if they're qualified at all in this field.

This is a terrible source. A web page by an anonymous author citing other unnamed authors with no reason to think anyone who wrote this had any idea what they were talking about!

This says DID is caused by many things, and lists trauma as only one that's included. This doesn't back up the idea DID/OSDD can only be caused by trauma, and suggests the opposite.

Oh, and "it's also known as split personality disorder." 😔

Go home WebMD.

Usually associated with doesn't mean it's a requirement, and in fact implies that it isn't always.

"Is associated with." "Can be a response to trauma."

Reiterating that the first two goals here were to prove you can't have DID or OSDD without trauma. And these aren't doing that.

An association doesn't mean there's a causation, and it doesn't mean that association is there in 100% of cases.

"often develop."

Like with "usually", you wouldn't use the word often if if something always happened. The choice of wording implies you can have dissociative disorders without trauma.

Are... they messing with us right now???

I swear, you can't have a post that sets out with the goal of disproving the existence of endogenic plurality, and then use quotes that seem to consistently imply there can be other causes for DID and not pick up on that theme!

Oh, yay! We finally got a quote that's actually trying to argue the point we started with.

But, again, this runs into a similar issue to the ReThink.org one. This is a random independent organization. There is no author for this article. It hasn't undergone peer review like an academic paper would.

There is no evidence the person who wrote this article is actually educated in dissociative disorders.

And finally back to "usually."

You must be so proud...

Source Round-Up

There was a lot here, so let's just recap.

6 out of 8 of these sources only say that DID is "usually" or "often" or "can be" caused by or associated with trauma. These actually imply there are cases where it's NOT caused by trauma, going against the original goals of this post.

Finally, there were two sources, Rethink and Mind.org, which did suggest DID is just caused by trauma, full stop. But both of these are extremely questionable as sources.

Neither named their authors. There's no indication what the review process is for their websites. And "Rethink" merely said this is what "some researchers" believe.

So let's double back to those goals set at the beginning.

You can't possibly have DID without trauma: One source says this, but the reliability of that source is questionable. Another source says some researchers are saying this but doesn't name any researchers or cite those sources. Meanwhile, the other six sources imply that it IS possible for DID to exist without trauma.

You can't possibly have OSDD without trauma: Neither of the two sources that suggest DID can only be caused by trauma mention OSDD at all.

You can't be a system without DID/OSDD: None of the sources suggest you need DID/OSDD to be a system or to be plural.

So far, you've failed to prove you can't be a system without DID or OSDD. You've failed to show you can't have OSDD without trauma. And the case for DID being exclusive to trauma frankly looks weaker than before you started talking.

Incredible work so far!!!

And I mean that in the way that nothing about this is remotely credible!

Ugh. There is SO much wrong here. First, no sources for their claims about tulpamancy.

Now, tulpamancy draws its name from a Tibetan Buddhist practice called sprul pa.

This is not the same practice though. And the Tibetan Buddhist practice is NOT CALLED TULPAMANCY.

Something which should be obvious to anyone who knows even the most basic facts about language, with the -mancy suffix being derived from Latin. And tulpamancy as a practice generally isn't religious.

From Dr. Samuel Veissiere of McGill University:

The community is primarily divided between so-called psychological and metaphysical explanatory principles. In the psychological community, neuroscience (or folk neuroscience) is the explanation of choice. Tulpas are understood as mental constructs that have achieved sentience. The metaphysical explanation holds that Tulpas are agents of supernatural origins that exist outside the hosts’ minds, and who come to communicate with them. Of 118 respondents queried on the question, 76.5% identified with the psychological explanation, 8.5% with the metaphysical, and 14% with a variety of “other” explanations, such as a mixture of psychological and metaphysical.

When discussing the research into tulpamancy, we're not discussing a religious or spiritual practice that's been validated by psychologists.

We're talking about a primarily psychological practice that's been validated by psychologists.

And as for the DSM quote, it confirms that religious practices aren't a disorder. Cool. But it also implies that religious practices can result in multiple distinct personality states. Hence why they needed that criterion. It's not stated as explicitly in the DSM as in the ICD, but the implication is there, especially when taken together.

Whether you call these "alters" or not is up to you. Most endogenic systems aren't using the word "alter" to describe their headmates.

But regardless of the word, what the research is showing is that there are multiple phenomena which can result in people having multiple self-conscious agents sharing the same body.

I mean, you've still done a really bad job at showing DID and OSDD form purely from trauma, with many of your sources straight up saying the opposite.

And remember, a lot of mixed origin systems will say that their other headmates aren't caused by or related to their disorder. And there are documented cases of people with DID both having alters associated with DID, and having non-aversive entities they commune with outside of that, as Kluft references in this paper:

The woman he describes here, who experienced ceding control to another entity who talked through her, would qualify as a mixed origin system in the modern plural community.

SIX OF YOUR EIGHT SOURCES LEFT THE DOOR OPEN FOR DID TO FORM WITHOUT TRAUMA!

NONE CLAIMED OSDD COULD ONLY COME FROM TRAUMA!

NONE CLAIMED YOU NEEDED DID OR OSDD TO BE PLURAL!

Your sources are NOT claiming what you think they're claiming!!!!!!!

If this is "all the proof you need," to say endogenic systems aren't valid, it's clear you were only ever interested in confirming your worldview.

But surely you can't seriously think this will convince anyone who isn't already indoctrinated!

Not even addressing this in full. It's such a blatant strawman that it's not worth my time.

There are similarities between plurality and being LGBTQ. Especially to the many trans systems out there who are seeing anti-endos use the same rhetoric that transmeds have. Or like you did earlier, are endorsing the same types of views that led to homosexuality being pathologized until the 70s. But nobody is saying it's the exactly the same!

I'm not sure what this is specifically referring to. But it might be about the line in the differential diagnosis for DID in the PTSD section where it's stated DID may not be preceded by trauma or have co-occurring PTSD symptoms.

It does also say in another section that DID is associated with trauma, but it never actually says that's the only way to get DID.

This is a straight-up lie. Most sources used by endogenic systems are less than a decade old, with some being as recent as 2023.

Here's the breakdown of some of the dates in @guardianssystem's doc, for reference:

I mean, I feel like part of the reason nobody has been able to disprove it is because a lot of its more specific claims have been really hard to test.

But that's neither here nor there.

The bigger issue you'll run into is that the creators of the theory you're citing have stated that there may be other ways for people to be plural. Or as they phrased it, having "conscious and self-conscious dissociated parts."

The above quote is from two of the three authors of The Haunted Self, the creators of the theory of the structural dissociation.

The TOSD is made to propose a way trauma can cause dissociative disorders to develop. But it does NOT suggest you need to have dissociative disorders to be plural, and I doubt the authors appreciated their work being twisted like that

Final Grade:

F-

This started with three goals.

Let's look back at them one last time.

You can't possibly have DID without trauma.

You can't possibly have OSDD without trauma.

You can't be a system without DID/OSDD.

By the end of this, have any of these claims successfully been proven?

I don't feel they have.

The first claim is what all the sources tried to focus on. But most of the sources didn't say that and didn't support it. All but two implied that DID could possibly form other ways.

And for the others? Nothing suggests OSDD can only be caused by trauma.

And you failed to provide any sources that suggested you couldn't be plural without DID and OSDD.

You completely and utterly failed to find decent sources to back up your claims, and to make a compelling case for them, at every conceivable juncture.

If I were you, I would be embarrassed to have put out something of such poor quality.

What have we learned:

Non-disordered and endogenic plurality has been supported and validated across the psychological field, including the World Health Organization's ICD-11 and Trasngender Mental Health which has been reviewed and published by the American Psychiatric Association.

The creators of the theory of structural dissociation believe it might be possible that "self-conscious dissociative parts of the personality" might form without trauma and that this needs to be further researched.

Tulpamancy is a mostly psychological practice that has been studied and validated by psychologists.

Anti-endos are really bad at sources.

Conversely, the majority of endogenic sources are actual peer reviewed academic papers. And contrary to false claims here, many of the papers are actually very recent.

(Tagging some tags from the original post)

[mariacallous]

A Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote wild and baseless claims that Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz sexually assaulted one of his former students, according to several specialists tracking the disinformation campaign.

Experts believe that the campaign is tied to a network called Storm-1516, which has been linked to, among other things, a previous effort that falsely claimed vice president Kamala Harris perpetrated a hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011. Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West.

The propaganda unit’s work has successfully reached the highest levels of the Republican party, with vice presidential candidate JD Vance repeating at least one of their narratives. NBC reported this week that the group has pushed at least 50 false narratives in this manner since last fall, which comes amid a broader Russian government effort to disrupt next month’s election with the aim of helping former president Donald Trump return to the White House.

Numerous figures in MAGA world boosted the Tim Walz assault claims, including Jack Posobiec, the Pizzagate promoter who is now a member of Trump’s campaign team, and Candace Owens, the popular right-wing podcaster. The claims went viral on X last week, when an anonymous account called Black Insurrectionist posted screenshots of emails from a purported victim. Other X users quickly debunked the claims, citing formatting errors in the images that suggested the emails were fake, but days later another conspiracist posted a video on X claiming he had spoken to one of Walz's supposed victims on the phone—without providing any proof. The video racked up millions of hits.

Then, on Wednesday, a video claiming to show a former student of Walz describing abuse by the former football coach spread widely on X. According to a WIRED analysis using several deepfake detector tools, the video was created using AI. The video, shared by a prominent anonymous QAnon-promoting account, garnered over 4.3 million views before it was deleted.

The campaign to attack Walz predates the video; it traces back to John Dougan, a former Florida cop who now lives in Moscow and runs a network of pro-Kremlin websites. Dougan appeared on Zak Paine’s QAnon show RedPill78 on October 5 with an anonymous man named “Rick,” who said he was a foreign exchange student at Mankato West High School in 2004 when Walz was a teacher there. “Rick” then claimed Walz assaulted him. Dougan did not respond to a request for comment.

The claims, however, didn’t go viral until last week and the release of the deepfake video.

Darren Linvill, codirector at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, tells WIRED that he immediately recognized this tactic as part of Russia’s well-established disinformation playbook.

“There is little doubt this is Storm-1516,” says Linvill, whose team uncovered the network last fall.

Linvill says the account that first shared the AI-altered video bears all the hallmarks of previous Storm-1516 campaigns. “It is standard for them to create an X or YouTube account for initial placement of stories,” says Linvill.

The campaign orchestrated by Storm-1516 often begins with the posting of a fake story and video from a whistleblower or citizen journalist, the US mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe outlined in July. Disinformation is “amplified by other seemingly unaffiliated online networks,” the US mission stated. The claims then take on a life of their own, shared and reposted by unwitting social media users who likely have no idea of where the videos originated.

The fake stories can also be picked up by other media outlets that cover viral social media stories. In the case of the Walz claims, they ended up on MSN, a news aggregation site owned by Microsoft.

In the past, Storm-1516 has relied on a network of fake news websites run by Dougan to push its narratives. On Saturday, a story that referenced the RedPill78 interview, the Black Insurrectionist posts, and the deepfake video was published on over 100 of Dougan’s websites simultaneously.

This was first discovered by Alex Liberty, a researcher who tracks the activity of Russia’s propaganda networks and who agrees with Linvill’s assertion that the deepfake video bears all the hallmarks of a Storm-1516 campaign.

“We believe that it might be a coordinated campaign in [an] attempt to bring numerous false accusations of the same nature against Tim Walz through different channels and in different formats in order to bring an image of legitimacy to the narrative,” Liberty tells WIRED.

McKenzie Sadeghi, the AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, agrees.

“The false narrative appears to be part of a wider campaign pushed by pro-Kremlin media and QAnon influencers ahead of the November 5, 2024, US elections aimed at portraying Walz, whose political appeal is as an everyman schoolteacher and coach, as a pedophile who had inappropriate relationships with minors,” Sadeghi wrote in an analysis of the deepfake video.

From the very beginning, the allegations against Walz were easily debunked. In his interview on the RedPill78 QAnon show, Dougan’s source claimed he was in the US thanks to the State Department–funded Future Leaders Exchange program, which allows students from countries formerly under the control of the Soviet Union the chance to study in the US for a year.

However, a spokesperson for the US State Department, told NewsGuard that it has no record of any Future Leaders Exchange student from Kazakhstan in Mankato area schools from 2000 through 2020. Mankato Area Public Schools communications director Mel Helling told NewsGuard the allegations were “outlandish.”

The baseless claims were shared by some far-right accounts in the days after the episode was published, but they didn’t really take hold until a week later, when the X account known as Black Insurrectionist posted a clip from Dougan’s RedPill78 episode. The clip was viewed over 800,000 times.

Google search trends data shows a huge spike in people searching for “Tim Walz pedophile” and “Tim Walz abuse” on October 13, the day the Black Insurrectionist account began posting their claims.

The Black Insurrectionist account is anonymous and launched a year ago; its followers include Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump adviser Roger Stone. The account’s bio reads: “I am MAGA.” It rose to prominence weeks before the Walz post, when it claimed to have been in contact with a whistleblower at ABC who said Harris had been provided with the questions ahead of her September debate with former president Donald Trump. Those claims were widely debunked by multiple major fact-checking and media organizations.

Last week, the Black Insurrectionist account shared screenshots of email correspondence the account had with an alleged victim on X. Almost immediately, the evidence was questioned when X users spotted a text cursor in one of the screenshots, suggesting that Black Insurrectionist was editing the document. Others pointed out that the date and time format shown in some of the screenshots was inconsistent with how they are displayed on real emails.

Black Insurrectionist initially defended itself before going silent. The account was deleted on Thursday.

The two dozen posts from Black Insurrectionist laying out their alleged evidence have been viewed over 33 million times, according to X’s own metrics, and have been shared on numerous other platforms, including Truth Social, Instagram, Telegram, and TikTok.

Among those sharing Black Insurrectiont’s claims was Paine, who hosted Dougan on his QAnon show. “I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this story,” Paine wrote on X.

The posts have also caught the attention of the wider MAGA universe in a way that Dougan’s initial claims didn’t. Prominent right-wing figures like Owens and Posobiec both flagged the “allegations” as something worth looking into.

Owens discussed the conspiracy on her top-rated podcast, with the episode racking up over 630,000 views on YouTube since it was posted on Wednesday.

Posobiec wrote on X that there were “lots of allegations going around regarding Tim Walz sexually abusing young student(s).” While he added that he didn’t “know about any of the recent allegations being made,” he did share a link to Dougan’s claims from earlier in the month.

When Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president in July, Russian-aligned propaganda networks struggled to mount effective disinformation campaigns targeting the vice president and her team.

But as Microsoft reported in the summer, those campaigns have started to find their footing. "The shift to focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign reflects a strategic move by Russian actors aimed at exploiting any perceived vulnerabilities in the new candidates," Clint Watts, head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, wrote in August.

[justinssportscorner]

Parker Molloy at The Present Age:

This weekend, John Oliver did something surprisingly rare in mainstream media: he dedicated 42 minutes to a thoughtful, well-researched segment on transgender athletes in sports that cut through the hysteria and political opportunism dominating this conversation. What makes Oliver's segment so effective is how thoroughly he dismantles the often-cited "evidence" used to justify banning trans athletes. For instance, that talking point about trans athletes winning "900 medals" that gets repeated endlessly on Fox News? Turns out it comes from an unverified website where anyone could submit entries, including poker tournaments and disc golf competitions. And that famous fifth-place swimming trophy that Riley Gaines has built an entire career around? She tied with Lia Thomas for fifth place. That's it. That's the entire controversy. Perhaps the most revealing part of Oliver's segment is when he connects these sports bans to the larger political strategy at play. As the president of the American Principles Project openly admitted, conservatives "pivoted to the sports issue" after losing on same-sex marriage and bathroom bills because it got people "comfortable with talking about transgender issues." It was never actually about protecting women's sports - it was about finding a more socially acceptable way to attack trans people's existence. Meanwhile, the same lawmakers who claim to care so deeply about women's athletic opportunities are remarkably silent about the actual issues plaguing women's sports: inadequate facilities, sexual harassment, unequal funding, and lack of media coverage. Kentucky legislators, for instance, rushed to override a veto to ban a single 12-year-old trans athlete from competing but couldn't be bothered to pass a bill protecting young athletes from sexual abuse because... they had dinner reservations. If you know someone who has sincere questions or concerns about this issue, I strongly recommend sharing this segment with them. It's one of the most comprehensive and accessible breakdowns I've seen that doesn't fall into fearmongering or oversimplification. Oliver manages to acknowledge the genuine complexities at elite levels of sport while highlighting the cruelty of blanket bans that primarily harm children who just want to play with their friends. It's the perfect resource for anyone who wants to understand what's actually happening beyond the inflammatory headlines.

On his HBO show Last Week Tonight Sunday night, John Oliver gave a strong fact-based segment on reality of trans women in women’s sports, debunking the horseshit lies and tropes used by anti-trans folks to justify bans.

To the Gavin Newsoms and Tom Suozzis of the world who think it’s okay to bargain away trans athletes, this Oliver segment will rethink that notion.

See Also:

GLAAD: John Oliver Calls Out the Right Wing’s “Absolute Fixation” with Trans Athletes on “Last Week Tonight”

From the 04.06.2025 edition of HBO's Last Week Tonight:

[donjuaninhell]

Whenever I see some lib/leftie YouTuber known for their rationalism or debunking abilities start talking about how the JFK assassination wasn't a conspiracy at all and the CIA wasn't involved and Oswald acted alone (both Contrapoints and Rebecca Watson/Skepchick have gone off on this point recently) I honestly can't help but feel like they really haven't looked at things all too closely. Everything about Oswald screams intelligence asset. Okay so a guy in the army with top secret clearance working as a radio operator on the U2 project is just allowed to loudly proclaim himself a Marxist during the McCarthy era '50s without disciplinary action, defects to the USSR, decides he wants to come back to the U.S. and then receives a new passport and is granted a return visa when he requests one, is never debriefed on his return and immediately falls in with the white Russian emigre community and becomes fast friends with former OSS operative and right wing oilman George de Mohrenschildt who had close ties with the U.S. State Department and CIA, and in fact when he met Oswald immediately checked in with CIA man J. Walton Moore whether it was fine to help him (and we know that because of the House Select Committee on Assassinations). It's called building a cover. Of course you're never going to get solid, incontrovertible proof, that's not how intelligence works. You absolute fucking rubes.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine at Erin In The Morning:

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into California’s Department of Education over Assembly Bill 1955, a law passed last year that limits the forced outing of transgender students to their parents. The bill, already the subject of multiple legal challenges, has become a lightning rod for anti-trans activists who claim it infringes on parental rights. The Department now echoes that line, suggesting the law may violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)—a familiar argument among right-wing opponents of student privacy protections. What they leave out: a judge has already ruled that parents still retain access to educational records, including those that reflect pronoun or name changes. “There is no forced secrecy in this case; parents are still free to have conversations with their child about gender identity; and parents have the right to observe a classroom, talk to a teacher, and review educational records,” San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Michael Sachs wrote in a ruling on an earlier challenge to the law. This dynamic is not unique to California—schools across the country continue to allow parents access to their child’s school records. In a similar case in New Jersey, courts found that gender presentation changes don't automatically trigger changes to a student’s official records and emphasized that the laws simply protect a student’s right to disclose their identity on their own terms. In both cases, courts reviewed FERPA-based arguments and found the legal footing of anti-trans challengers to be unpersuasive. Up to 40% of homeless youth in the United States identify as LGBTQ+, and 28% of LGBTQ+ youth report experiencing homelessness at some point in their lives—most often after being kicked out by unsupportive family members. Outed youth also face a heightened risk of being subjected to conversion therapy, a discredited and harmful practice still legal in several states. AB 1955 allows students to use names, pronouns, and gender presentation that reflect their identity at school without the fear that educators will preemptively out them to their families. “The agency launched today’s investigation to vigorously protect parents’ rights and ensure that students do not fall victim to a radical transgender ideology that often leads to family alienation and irreversible medical interventions,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a statement. On Friday, McMahon sent a letter to education officials nationwide reaffirming the Department of Education Student Privacy Policy Office’s (SPPO) opposition to legislation like AB 1955, doubling down on the administration’s broader resistance to transgender rights. The letter reiterates claims from the department’s original announcement of its investigation—echoing the repeatedly debunked narrative advanced by the Trump administration that schools are encouraging vulnerable youth to transition without consent. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also weighed in, issuing a separate letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who signed AB 1955 into law, signaling its support for the investigation.

This move is part of a broader push by the Trump administration to curtail transgender rights across multiple arenas, including bans on transgender military service, sweeping restrictions on gender-affirming care, and policies barring transgender people from public accommodations like restrooms. It reflects a coordinated effort to mainstream anti-trans positions within both Republican and even some Democratic circles—an effort that emboldens anti-trans advocates who view the current administration as a vehicle to undermine transgender rights at a foundational level.

[...] State Superintendent Tony Thurmond also outlined that the California Department of Education will remain committed to protecting this bill and transgender students. “Our students must be safe in order to learn,” he said in a statement. “I have heard from so many students and families whose safety has been impacted by forced outing policies. To our LGBTQ+ youth and families, I want to make sure that you hear us as loudly as we hear you: You are heard, you are protected, and you are loved.”

The Trump Regime is threatening federal school funding to California over its student safety-protecting bill AB1955 that prevents forced outing of trans students.

[queenrizzardnthelizardscissored]

anyone else feel like all those analysis/video essays from 2014-2020 that deal with politics in media and philosophy and political debunking (think hbomberguy, shaun, skip intro, jack saint, big joel etc) feel so. idk. depressing now?

like they all try so hard to analyze this media and these events and these political movements, and they often have like. a LOT of effort put in. graphs, elaborate data, etc, and when i watched them then, it was like an antidote to all the far right bullshit that was spewed all over the place often by ppl laughing at it. highly entertaining and funny and also interesting and informative and a gateway for you to research more and think, and a lot of them help me develop my views on like. far right looneys from "they're just assholes" to "the large ones are motivated by capital, economics, and grifting, and the lower-class ones are reeling from economic shifts and tie cultural memory with economic memory (eg. I can't buy a house now, therefore the gays are what's wrong with the world since they showed up then.)" and these videos kind of have this hopeful tinge to them. like they all end with stuff like "well, if we build communities and organize labor and talk to these people, (and produce enough content to combat the far-right stream of disinfo) then maybe, maybe we can win. it will take a massive amount of change but we can do it, on a small scale first then a larger one." and then like none of that happened.

like the antidote was made and it was wonderful and it didnt matter for anyone except those healthy anyway. n like none of it happened. there wasnt mass community organizing (i tried but like. i was one teen), the ppl who were far right didnt stop being far right, and we like. went backwards. like there was a vid about how modern family or whatev normalized gay ppl and now its like we're going back. like far right assholes are in power n culturally important, the last election had right-wing talking points as the fulcrum of every discussion and trump WON by way way more than last time and most ppl i know either shifted right or were radicalized left but hopeless abt it. u see all these vids and they're like "well, heres a way we could fix this, here's the data to back this up, etc etc etc" or "here's how this media perpetuates negative beliefs about police" or whatever and then we didnt fix it and the media didnt change or still exists. all the hope they seem to have feels so fcking hollow when we are in the future they talk about and know everything still sucks.

[riseofthecommonwoodpile]

I’m reading John Ganz’s When the Clock Broke (which is outstanding btw) and there’s a passage he has about William H Parker (the chief of the LAPD during the Watts riots, and mentor to Daryl Gates, police chief during the Rodney King riots) that i think is fascinating and illustrative of why attempts to use ~facts and logic~ against reactionaries can be so ineffective:

In Parker’s opinion, any tool to maintain control and order was justified, including racial profiling. “At the present time, race, color, and creed are useful statistical and tactical devices…If persons of Mexican, Negro, or Anglo-Saxon ancestry, for some reason, contribute heavily to other forms of crime, police deployment must take that into account. From an ethnological point-of-view, Negro, Mexican, and Anglo-Saxon are unscientific breakdowns; they are a fiction. From a police point-of-view, they are useful fictions and should be used as long as they remain useful.”

although i cannot get an exact date on that quote (Ganz cites a recent book partly about Parker as his source and I do not have access to that book currently to cite their citation), it is worthwhile to note it had to have been said in 1966 or earlier, as Parker died in 1966. that would mean it was 20-ish years before that icon of “respectable conservative” thought, National Review, would uncritically publish a book review by Joe Sobran that called scientific arguments against the reality of race ridiculous, a view echoed by William F Buckley. Parker states in the 1960’s, significantly ahead of his political allies and even many of his enemies, the (obviously correct) view that race is an ethnological fiction– a social construct, if you will– but that had zero impact on his actions. These fictions are useful in maintaining hierarchies and the status quo, and thus will remain in place for as long as they serve those purposes.

The material reality of these things is less significant than their use and the worldview underpinning them; they need these things to be true, and so they must act upon them as if they are true regardless. Reminds me a great deal of Milton Friedman’s The Methodology of Positive Economics, or much of Leo Strauss. The maintenance or (re)introduction of hierarchy to social systems requires the maintenance or (re)introduction of structuring fictions and mythologies.

I don’t point out this right wing tendency toward a sort of solipsistic idealism to say that explications of material reality are useless; rather, it should not be a surprise that the reactionary will take and leave the world as it is whenever needed in order to maintain the world as they believe it should be, and any attempt to combat them that focuses primarily on debunking is often just punching smoke.

(The right are not the only ones who do this, of course, and ideology is necessary in one way or another to interpret anything politically, but I do find this specific prioritization of myth to be far more common and explicit in reactionary political theory)

all of you know that though so there’s no real point to this post. just talking out loud about a book i’m reading i guess

[germiyahu]

Like hot take, but if Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo's parents or grandparents had immigrated to Mexico from Israel (or a Kibbutz in M.P.) the hammer and sickle twitter response to the hate campaign against her would not be supportive in the least!

And it's not super supportive now. I don't know, but it seems that they're more interested in dunking on the Nazis then standing up for Jewish people. This woman's whole family is secular, she has not made her Jewishness a part of her public or political image (why should she have to)? This does fit a pattern where the bare minimum you have to do as a Jew to gain support is to assimilate and keep your mouth shut. If you can't denounce Israel your Jewishness better be relegated to a paragraph on Wikipedia.

Leftists love to point out kindergarten level antisemitism. They love to debunk that Nazi checklist about Jews hating Jesus while Christians and Muslims revere him. Of course they debunk it because it "won't liberate Palestine," as that's all antisemitism is, a distraction (often orchestrated by Mossad). It's easy to call out Marjorie Taylor Greene antisemitism. But we've seen how they handle any other kind. So I'm not surprised they're taking the chance to earn easy social media points here. Call out the people saying "Too many Jews are in positions of power!"

While also saying "They must have edited her nose!" like they love to draw attention to Jewish features that the Nazis surely must be talking about when they go on their antisemitic tirades.

It's cheap and it's easy, and it's a distraction from their own bullshit, and I also think they have fun doing it. They think the Nazis are funny, and it's fun to clown on them. It's all so performative. That twitter user goes on to call Israelis Nazis and denounces Bernie Sanders (who refuses to attend Netanyahu's speech but says that Israel has the right to defend itself up to a certain point).

This isn't actual allyship. Then again, I don't think they expect Jewish people or their allies to actually think that. Considering that the tone was not condemnation but "Lol Right wing antisemites are going to have a meltdown about this." I do think that Left wing antisemites relish in Right wing antisemitism. It's a joke to them. They don't care about Jewish lives or Jewish safety. They love feeling smugly superior while saying basically identical things but just about a group of Jews preselected to be unvictimizable.

Another "Twitter moment" was some right wing Trump loving doofus putting on a Magen David jacket and proclaiming he was unafraid to walk around NYC, cue that crowd making fun of "how safe he'd really be," while ignoring that Jews pointing out a tangible rise in hate crimes and hate speech and a general unwelcoming atmosphere.

Antisemitism is always "their" problem, never ours. But I've noticed that recently even if they can acknowledge the problem... it's not even a serious problem anymore. They're more likely to just laugh at the "absurdity" of it and then feel like they've demonstrated that they and their ideologies aren't filled to the brim with Judenhass.

[hexagon-club]

I’ve been thinking about your reblog where you stated that “there's something about the way gendies argue where I can't help but get the feeling that they don't even comprehend opposing views” and especially the line “they understand so little of how other people think that they don't even understand that they don't understand how others think.” 

I remember arguing with a TRA and explaining to her that I wholly supported womens (ie., females) right to be as masculine and gender-non-conforming as they wanted. Somehow we started arguing about this TIM who has a full-on beard and basically makes no effort to convey that he wishes to be perceived as a woman. I said that I wouldn’t want someone like that in women’s spaces, and the TRA I was arguing with said, “It’s funny how you talk about her beard, and then parade around like you don’t care if women are masculine.” Like, she really thought my issue was that the TIM we were arguing about was masculine, not that he was male. She couldn’t even conceptualize the idea that I did not view him as a woman. 

I think TRAs are such a unique category of people with delusional beliefs, because every other group of people with delusional beliefs at least has the language and vocabulary to articulate what they think (religious people, conspiracy theorists, etc). They can at least demonstrate a degree of reasoning behind their thoughts, no matter how flawed that reasoning may be. TRAs don’t even have that—they don’t even pretend to. It’s just circular definitions and the assertion that their internal feelings change material reality. I’m so dismayed that this ideology which is not grounded in linguistics, science, reason, material reality, or anything else has gained the popularity that it has.

I wanted to ask you what you think will become of the trans movement in the next five to ten years? Do you think we will continue to descend more and more into unreason? Do you think radfems will become more appealing in the process? I would love to know your thoughts. 

I think you're on to something. Other belief systems, even ones that are considered to be absurd by the general public, have a consistent internal vocabulary based on words that have a very clear meaning among the group members. Often they will use words in a way that is different to the way people outside the group would use them, cults love jargon after all, but they can generally communicate quite clearly with each other. If not with outsiders.

One of the many things that makes arguing with TRAs difficult is that they are not even on the same page as each other, there's the trutrans/transtrender divide, but even among the "transtrenders" which have become the mainstream of the trans movement their beliefs seem weirdly inconsistent. One of them will try to make a point, I'll debunk it, and then another will accuse me of attacking a strawman and insist that no trans person believes the thing I just debunked. They can't even clearly communicate their beliefs to each other, so they're not on the same page. But in a weird sort of way this is a strength not a weakness, because it means we're constantly trying to hit a moving target, can't really debunk an ideology if the ideology is so inconsistent no one can agree on what it even is.

On that note I just realised something, so I don't know how aware you are of this, I only learned about this after the fact, but there was something of a war on tumblr in the early 2010s between the two wings of the trans movement. The trutrans/transmedicalists represent what was essentially the mainstream of the transgender movement in the 2000s, their philosophy is essentially that being trans is something akin to a chronic illness. One that can be treated through transition, but not cured. This is in contrast to the more modern wave of TRAs who think of "gender" something more like a form of self expression. The trutrans were actually some of the earliest critics of tumblr identities and mogai stuff, because they saw that as making light of (what they believed to be) their legitimate medical disorder.

Anyway, my point is that I don't think the current mainstream of the trans community even have a word for themselves. The trutrans people call them tucutes and transtrenders. But they don't seem to have a word that refers exclusively to themselves, but not to the trutrans. That's weird, they don't even have the language to acknowledge that they are a subfaction of a larger ideology.

As to your last paragraph, I really don't know where we go from here, it's amazing that the trans movement has gotten as far as it has given how ideologically incoherent it is. But it is incredibly profitable, gender affirming care is big business, and plastic surgeons and drug companies aren't going to want to leave money on the table by letting it become less accessible. Incidentally I think this is one of the reasons why other trans identities (transrace, transage, transabled, otherkin) are never going to catch on, they are much harder to monetise, so there's no point marketing them.

The left seems to have decided this is the hill they want to die on. They seem to view gender as a sort of individual freedom. And think that people not acknowledging it is the same thing as trying to force people into rigidly defined gender roles. Like, in their minds, if they hear me say something like "non-binary is nonsense" they equate that to me saying "all women need to become stay at home housewives who wear high heels and dresses." Because they equate the word "woman" to the feminine gender role, and don't even really understand the concept of it as a purely biological classification. Even though that's what they basically all believed 15 years ago.

If the current trans position becomes untenable I think there will probably be a retreat to the "trutrans" identity. People like Blair White, Marcus Dibbs, and Buck Angel are hated by a lot of the mainstream trans community, but they are actually helping them out by preparing a fallback position for when mainstream society gets sick of their shit. I think people will mostly tolerate that, not that I think "trutrans" makes any more sense than the current position, but it's less evangelical and overall less annoying than what they currently preach. Also, quite frankly I think there are a lot of men (left wing and right wing) who are sick of TRA nonsense, but are also deeply antifeminist, and who will want to keep transgender ideology alive because they can use it against feminists.

I'm thinking of this meme I got from Sargon of Akkad's twitter account:

So there's a group of men who know that transgender ideology is nonsense, but still get a certain sadistic pleasure at seeing it get used against women.

I'm not really sure if things are going to get more irrational from here. Both the left and the right seem to be getting more and more unhinged, the left has chosen transgender/queer ideology as its cult of choice, whereas the right has QAnon and it's weird offshoots. It does seem like we are entering an era of unreality where people are giving up on the concept of a shared objective truth and are retreating into fantasy.

That's a depressing note to end on, sorry if I rambled a bit.

[traegorn]

i say this with as much openness as im capable of. why is everyone so eager lately to defend christianity. i dont actually need to have a history degree to be able to see that christianity is Bad For Everyone. i can see it when i look out the window. the great commission is colonialism writ large.

the GOAL of christianity is genocide, eliminating as many other religions as possible in the pursuit of mass conversion. HOW are people deciding that *this* of all religions needs some kind of "well not ALL missionary work is physical violence" hedging. what is going on. im so frustated because i have seen up close and personal the death cult that it is and to see so many people screaming "nuance!!!!" about the closest thing to a full blown Sauron Level Religion Of Evil makes me feel like im in a twilight zone episode

So I disagree with your fundamental principle that all Christians have that goal. Certainly a large potion, including the politcally powerful Evangelical movement has that approach. And I'm all for calling it out and pointing at it when it happens. And I usually have no problem with people saying "Christianity does [X-Horrible Thing]" when we're really talking about "[Major portion of the politically powerful right wing Christianity] does [X-Horrible thing]."

But here's the fucking thing - what I'm here for is being fucking accurate.

You want to talk about how awful the crusades were? Great. How missionary work is colonialism? Of course it is. But people have just made shit up, and guess what -- I'm going to fucking debunk it when I find it, and I have no patience for misinformation just because it lines up with an ideology that makes someone "comfortable."

Deal with it.

And the reason some people scream "nuance" (not all, I'm sure some are just looking for a way to excuse something) is because NUANCE IS FUCKING IMPORTANT. Black and white thinking is never helpful. Understanding that things can be both positive AND negative at the same time is important. Understanding the world is complex is important. Because guess what, some day you might find that something you find is good and has value is actually bad. But black and white thinking could prevent you from recognizing it, because you're incapable of understanding the good parts don't justify the bad parts.

Like say a missionary does tangible good in a community. They are also doing real harm there too. How do you convince someone who only sees the good that they're harming people if they're just looking at it in black and white thinking? How do you make them understand if they can't see the nuance of the situation?

Likewise, if you can't see nuance, you can't make incremental change in society. Not all changes are sweeping, and sometimes making something a little bit better is more progress than doing nothing. But black and white thinking leads folks to rejecting the ideas that could make things better right now.

Sometimes you need to build the well to keep people from dying of thirst, and evaluate where that well came from afterwards. And sometimes you need to see that what's being offered has consequences, and you might not know to say no unless you look harder.

Life is fucking complicated, and if we don't recognize that, we fuck everything up.

[thatdebaterguy]

Hey, don't bitch at me just because the current Israel is built on pillars of lies. Especially since the father of zionism, Theodr Herzl, was an ally to Proto-Nazism.

At this time of his death in 1904, Proto-Nazism didn't exist, nor did fascism, which would be introduced by Benito Mussolini in the 1920s. Nazism wouldn't come around until the 30s, which blames Jews for basically everything. Why would a Jew who supposedly blames Jews for everything in the world, create a state for the Jewish peoples. Your argument is so flawed it's unreal. And I'm not being a bitch about things, you tried justifying October 7th by saying 2 more numbers to the death count makes the entire event debunked.

I believe what you're trying to say is that Hitler also agreed that Jerusalem was the rightful place for the Jews, and the region of Palestine is where they should be, however that's purely because Hitler was a Jew hating genocidal maniac who said all Jews weren't German, shouldn't live in Germany, and should go back to their homeland, which he considered a hotbed of inferior races anyway, including Jews and Muslims. However, that's like saying since me and Osama Bin Laden both have enjoyed playing CSGO, that I'm also a big fan of 9/11. Having a single thing to agree on doesn't suddenly make Herzl a Proto-Nazi, the same way I'm not a Nazi for also agreeing that Jerusalem is the homeland of the Jews, the same way I'm not a Christian just because I agree with some of the moral values Christianity encourages. What you meant to say is, Theodor Herzl was a nationalist for the Jewish people. He was more right wing than left. But right wing doesn't automatically mean Nazi or Proto-Nazi since I'm more conservative in many aspects, which is right wing, but also have a fair amount of social libertarian policies.

Don't throw around big words to get an emotional response, like what people are doing with 'genocide' and 'fascists' and 'nazis' when as of this today none of the actions taking place in Israel fit the dictionary definition of those words. Make sure you actually know what you're talking about. If you wanna talk about 'debunked' then that's what I've just done to you, not whatever you tried to do with October 7th. Pointing out the lie of an individual doesn't explain an entire event or movement, since I've seen thousands of Palestine supporters spread misinformation but in no way do I think that suddenly makes all Palestinians guilty. Educate yourself.

[sophieinwonderland]

people are calling you racist for using tulpa terms.. i thought tulpa language was okay to use by the tibetan community??

and that anti-endos arent racist which okay maybe some of them arent but theyre still ableist right?

- a confused system

Tibetan Buddhism is generally considered an open religion, and the Dalai Lama himself has said that people of other faiths can take and use Tibetan Buddhist meditations in the past. And when I've seen the topic brought up to Tibetan Buddhists who aren't part of the system community, the majority seems fine with the use of tulpa language.

In this current conversation, it feels like a misdirect to me, and is more an ad hominen to distract from the fact that plurals are, in fact, oppressed for being plural.

I talked in a post yesterday about how beliefs can be harmful and yes, make you a bad person. As an example, I referred to how we have been arguing with right-wing racists who have been spreading the lies about immigrants eating pets, trying to correct their misinformation, and seeing them double down and go into denial mode when corrected.

My point was that beliefs that harm marginalized people are bad. And while some may be misinformed, people who are simply misinformed will adjust their beliefs when corrected. Whereas bigots will double down because they want the lies they tell to be true. They want an excuse to hurt marginalized people.

But apparently, if while arguing with racists and correcting misinformation the racists are spreading, I happen to notice the clear parallels in how these racists and anti-endos think, drawing attention to those parallels makes me racist? Is that what they're claiming?

Anyway, sysmeds are many things, but they aren't very original. I've listened to a lot of types of bigots. And when you do that, you pick up on running themes. The fear of the "other." The invaders who are coming to take your resources and your way of life. And yeah, the clinging to lies in the face of reality.

A week ago, I even talked about parallels in the events of the "immigrants are eating pets" lie, and the lie that system hopping is a RAMCOA term. It was interesting to see how both controversies started from a social media post, with the ones who started it trying to distance themselves from the bigotry it spawned, and deleting the original post. But both narratives spiralled out from there, because even though they were debunked and retracted, the lies could be used to justify spreading hatred against marginalized people, so the bigots clung to them.

I genuinely don't know how people can listen to different groups of bigots and not see the similarities in how they speak and how they think.

And obviously, I am not saying sysmeds are exactly like racists or xenophobes. They're actually far more like transmeds and TERFs.

But the fact is that there are still some pretty clear commonalities present in the rhetoric they use.

[football-in-tuxedos]

Honestly, half the problem I run into debunking right wing pundits is that it requires me to take the most ridiculous human beings with the stupidest ideas on planet earth seriously, even for a few minutes.

"Here's Jordan Peterson, he sounds like Kermit, talks like the Riddler and writes bullshit self help books where he draws diagrams of the insane nonsense he made up in his head. Anyway now I have to debunk the single idiot point he made in this 28 minute rant where he broke down crying over some comparison to Cain and Abel he invented."

[yourreddancer]

https://meidasnews.com/news/exclusive-trump-shared-racist-flat-earth-facebook-account-with-south-african-president

Oval Office Becomes Propaganda Theater

Trump’s Oval Office stunt with a racist propaganda video isn’t just reckless; it’s a flashing neon sign of a presidency driven by ignorance, grievance, and dangerously unqualified advisors.

Michael Cohen and MeidasTouch Network

May 22

Guest article by Michael Cohen

I used to think I’d seen it all: the late-night rants, the Diet Coke-fueled tantrums, the off-the-cuff decisions that could start a war or tank a market. But nothing—and I mean nothing—quite encapsulates the deranged stupidity of President Trump’s foreign policy like what happened yesterday with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Picture this: You’re a head of state visiting the White House. You expect, at the very least, a little pageantry, a handshake, maybe a few vague pleasantries about trade or diplomacy. Instead, you’re treated to a propaganda video—not a briefing, not a fact-based presentation, but a full-blown right-wing fever dream, edited together like a low-budget horror flick, showing images of white South Africans supposedly being “slaughtered” by Black farmers in a fictitious race war.

This is what Donald Trump thinks passes for diplomacy. This is what happens when you elect a man who doesn’t read, doesn’t listen, and surrounds himself with people whose only qualifications are blind loyalty and zero experience.

Let me be blunt: the whole “white genocide in South Africa” narrative is a lie. A straight-up, dangerous, white supremacist talking point that’s been debunked by journalists, human rights organizations, and the South African government itself. But that didn’t stop Trump. Why would it? The man’s allergic to facts and has the moral compass of a broken lawn chair.

And here’s the kicker: he didn’t stumble upon this narrative by accident. No, it was spoon-fed to him by the likes of Tucker Carlson and whatever deranged Reddit thread Stephen Miller is probably lurking in. These aren’t policy experts. They’re arsonists playing with matches in a room full of gasoline. And Trump? He’s the guy who thinks the fire is a spotlight.

Instead of asking his State Department or intelligence briefers for an accurate assessment of land reform in South Africa—which, by the way, is a complex, post-apartheid issue involving centuries of dispossession and injustice—Trump decided to do what he always does: listen to the last person in the room. And if that person is a conspiracy-addled racist, well, so be it. Especially if it means denigrating South Africa, as Trump believes the entire country is nothing more than a shithole.

But let’s talk about what this really means, beyond the embarrassment, beyond the headline fodder. Because this isn’t just about one gaffe, one offensive video, one botched meeting. This is about how Trump, in his second go-around as Commander-in-Chief, continues to weaponize ignorance.

He’s not just uninformed; he’s proudly uninformed. He thinks intelligence briefings are boring, that reading is for losers, and that the State Department is part of the “deep state.” He trusts his gut over centuries of diplomatic tradition, over seasoned foreign policy experts, over literal reality. And his gut, let me tell you, is full of crap.

Now imagine what that looks like on the world stage. Imagine being a U.S. ally, wondering if your next state visit will be hijacked by a racist YouTube montage. Imagine being in the Situation Room, waiting for Trump to make a decision about North Korea, or Iran, or Ukraine—only to watch him pull out his phone and scroll through Truth Social for “intel.”

This is a man who not only doesn’t do his homework—he mocks those who do. He thinks knowledge is elitist, empathy is weakness, and that foreign policy is just a PR game he can win with enough bluster and bullshit.

And don’t get me started on the people advising him. Karoline Leavitt—his press secretary with less foreign policy experience than a barista at Starbucks. Stephen Miller—who couldn’t care less about diplomacy unless it involves deporting someone. Scott Bessent at Treasury, Linda McMahon at Education—it’s like the bad casting of a political reality show that somehow got renewed for another season.

These aren’t advisors. They’re enablers. And what they enable is the steady erosion of American credibility. Every time Trump peddles racist propaganda in a meeting with a world leader, he’s not just humiliating himself—he’s humiliating us. He’s turning the Oval Office into a far-right content farm, one propaganda clip at a time.

Let me leave you with this thought: the world is watching. They watched the first time around, and they watched in horror. Now, they’re watching again—but with the terrifying realization that this isn’t just a phase. This is what America, under Trump, has become: a country where the president learns foreign policy from fringe media and executes it with the finesse of a drunk elephant in a china shop.

And unless we wake up—unless we push back, speak out, and hold this administration accountable—we’re not just going to lose face on the global stage. We’re going to lose the very soul of American leadership.

I saw it up close. I helped build the mythology. And now I’m begging you to see the damage it continues to cause. This isn’t about party. It’s about sanity, stability, and survival. And sadly, we’re running out of time.