nickgerard - Tumblr blog

[nickgerard]

The start-up has undertaken an extraordinary experiment in behavioral science to subtly entice an independent work force to maximize company revenue.

[nickgerard]

Women told me they had flashbacks to hideous episodes in their past after the second presidential debate on 9 October, or couldn’t sleep, or had nightmares.

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I hesitate to make the argument that Hillary's values, record, and beliefs are ethically immaterial in this election because I happen to think she has great values (if you didn't realize all politicians have a public and a private position and for good reason: hello, tiny baby who was born yesterday, you can't vote anyway so your opinion doesn't matter), an awe-inspiring record of public service (typically people don't become public defenders and go to work for the Children's Defense Fund as part of a get-rich-quick scheme), and anyone who claims she doesn't "believe in anything" simply hasn't done their homework (although I assure you she has, and the extra credit, too). Her record of accomplishments genuinely speaks for itself if you bother to listen, and in any fair or sane world that should stand on its own merits. No, she is not perfect, but I challenge you to find any politician who has made as many lives materially better as she has (really the only metric that counts, and one at which Bernie, lovable and righteous as he is, falls woefully short), all the while living under more intense and largely unearned scrutiny than I think the rest of us can even begin to imagine.

If "she's not perfect" is indeed your best argument against voting for her, I further challenge you to examine why you thought that was a reasonable litmus test in the first place. If you're really, brutally honest with yourself, I don't think you'll like what you see. Call it the soft misogyny of impossible expectations.

But on this day, mere hours away from a potential President-elect Trump, the truth is none of that matters in the slightest. I've been traveling a lot in the last few months and as you might imagine have had a lot of conversations about the election with voting age millennials. Almost to a person, those a few years older than I am had at the very least registered to vote, informed themselves about the local issues and candidates that would also be on their ballot, and found their polling place and made arrangements to get there on Election Day – or, even better, had already voted by mail. I look at my Facebook feed and see friends old and new making calls and canvassing and knocking on doors and it fills me with pride and hope for my generation.

And yet – I am continually shocked by the amount of apathy and outright disdain for civic engagement I see among people my age. Too many are rebranding their ignorance as disillusionment. You have to earn the right to be jaded. I cannot count the number of times I have heard vague, ill-formed arguments that fall apart under even the slightest bit of scrutiny about the lesser of two evils still being evil and the importance of voting your conscience. When did we decide that merely participating in the political process was tantamount to selling your soul? Better yet: who told you elections were about you?

To those people, all I can do is repeat what others have been saying and writing and shouting for months and hope the message finally sinks in: protest votes and indifference are a privilege we, collectively, cannot afford. This is real. This is happening. Take a second and try to appreciate the magnitude of this moment. You may personally be fine living in President Trump's America (although I don't think anyone really has any clue just how awful that could be, as he seems to have a virtually limitless reservoir of awful at his disposal), but there are so, so many people whose lives will be made objectively and immeasurably worse.

That's really all that matters. That's what this comes down to. If you really, truly see Hillary as the lesser of two evils, then that is all the reason you need to vote for her. This is a binary decision, because either Hillary or Trump will most certainly be the next President; wouldn't you prefer a less evil President to a more evil one?

To all my friends who have volunteered and donated and driven across the country and slept in the backs of your cars – whether for the last two days or the last two years – you inspire me. This is history in the making. Let's do our generation proud. Let's go elect the first female President of the United States.

[nickgerard]

No Getting Off the Train

Normally I try to motivate people to vote, register to vote & help others do the same based on policy. For example I wrote a piece recently explaining why I was voting for Clinton strictly because of her health care policies and who she’s said she’d nominate to the Supreme Court. That’s all more than enough for me to gallop purposefully to the ballot box and cast a vote for her. I really loathe frothy pieces that focus on a candidate’s “character” or “story” or who they remind you of from your personal life or whatever other garbage people base their bloviating think-pieces on.

But something happened yesterday that has operated on me more deeply than anything in any political campaign I’ve ever seen. It has triggered my lizard brain and I want to harm the people who’ve angered me. In a fun way!

I’m not talking about the “revelation” that Trump said he could take women and “grab ‘em by the pussy” in 2005. I’m talking about the Republicans who’d endorsed him and stood by him disavowing him on or after the day this news came to light.

That’s what it took for you to disavow him? Since I’m not a total moron, I know that what really happened is that it finally became clear to anyone who knows how elections work that Trump was definitely going to lose. This became conventional wisdom about two weeks ago. So the same drive for self-preservation that led these turd balls to endorse him in the first place has compelled them to pull the rip cord when Access Hollywood revealed their pussy tape and gave them the opportunity to pretend they care about women or something. (When they’ve endorsed a guy whose running mate is Mike Pence.) Ha ha, that is funny. Funny ha ha; like a clown. 

To them I say: fuck you. No. I am going to give money - and encourage others to give money - to the people running against you if you formally un-endorsed Trump on or after October 7, the day the tape was played for America. Nope, you are welded to Trump until the end, you spineless shit loaves. The good people of ActBlue were kind enough to put together a site where you can give money to the opponents of the senators, congressmen, governors and state legislators who’ve unendorsed Trump on or after October 7th. It doesn’t include some people I truly loathe, like Paul Ryan, but that’s because he’s stuck to his guns thus far and continues to toe the line, like a good little Republican. 

Nope, I’m talking about the real garbage, the people who want it both ways; the people who got on the train, and now want to get off. Fuck you baby, you’re on the train till it crashes into the American Electorate at full speed. Keep your eyes open and stay alert; I want you to feel it.  

God Bless America! 

Donate here

Your Friend, 

Rob

[nickgerard]

A woman making stern-looking facial movements must be angry or upset. A man who looks the same, on the other hand, is focusing on the important matters at hand.

[nickgerard]

Hillary Clinton’s candidacy has provoked a wave of misogyny—one that may roil American life for years to come.

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Recorded in Seattle and Cape Cod 8/30/16-9/4/16

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The media won’t take no for an answer.

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It is strange to hear that the speech given by the presidential candidate of the Republican Party, delivered at the Republican National Convention, was not Republican. Donald Trump was onstage in Cleveland because 14 million Republican voters had put him there. Presented with a broad field of other possible nominees—senators, governors, a business executive, two medical doctors—the Republican Party overwhelmingly chose Trump. What does that make him if not Republican... Americans have been warned that if we tolerate Trump’s crude and dangerous whites-only campaigning now, it could come back later, with a more smooth and polite candidate speaking to his base. This gets the history backward.

Tom Scocca

[nickgerard]

I voted for Bernie Sanders. But it’s enough with the purity already.

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The fuss over Hillary Clinton’s email has now proved to be one of the most overhyped news stories of this overhyped news season.

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What men got wrong about the economy.

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I found Shane Snow’s essay on prison reform — “How Soylent and Oculus Could Fix the Prison System” — through hatelinking.

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If you’re young, privileged, and interested in creating a life of meaning, of course you’d be attracted to solving problems that seem urgent and readily solvable.

[nickgerard]

When I called for my fellow progressives to welcome conservative academics on campus, readers were in agreement that I was dead wrong.