#How to be a leader on Substack?

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

The Substack Eminence Book

An Original Book For Ultra-Advanced Writers Who Want to Scale with Clarity, Authority, and Integrity. Written by Dr Mehmet Yildiz, a Community Builder and Substack Bestseller The Substack Eminence Book Is Coming in August 2025 Dear Freelance Writers, Startup Founders, and Journalists, For those who don’t know me, I am the author of the best-selling book, Substack Mastery and Advanced Substack…

[wilwheaton]

Democrats can’t just stand idly by ... several frustrated progressive activists and movement leaders told me. They should be communicating to voters that Trump “is shutting down the government, and stripping it for parts to sell to billionaires,” April Glick Pulito, a progressive communications strategist, said. But Democrats aren’t getting it across, a reality that is disheartening, she told me, but also symbolic. “It’s part of why we fuckin’ lost,” she said. “It’s why people stayed home.” She and others I spoke with are demanding that Democrats be louder and more forceful—using resolutions and press conferences, sure, but also creative social-media campaigns and stunts for the cameras. “Speak like normal people, on platforms that normal people access,” Watts said. “I am not reading your press release. Get on every platform I’m on—talk to me on an Instagram reel, or a Substack live. Tweet things that explain what’s happening and how I can help or what you’re going to do to fix it.”

Democrats Wonder Where Their Leaders Are

[simbiotictears]

LnDs Boys if they were an Idol!boy group:

I won’t hear anyone out. I need this group to become a reality. Infold make a card of them as idols and I am yours!!

Pt2

Leader + Main Rapper: Zayne

Appears to be the most mature but isn’t. He was voted the pettiest by the members followed by Sylus and Rafayel. He was given the role of leader due to his ability to keep the fans and his members under control (minus Sylus).

Designated translator: he can speak the most languages in the group. As a result, he leads the international interviews and fan interactions.

His fans know he likes sweet things, so they often gift him sweet treats in fan meets. The staff end up confiscating most of it to stop him from eating them all and getting cavities.

His stage persona is the cold nerdy type, this is because he refuses to wear contacts, so this allows him to wear his glasses when he's not performing on stage.

He gets injured the most. Don't even try to tell me he doesn't.

In terms of his voice, he has a mellow voice. He doesn't really sing but he raps well.

When it comes to dancing, he can’t really dance, but he works hard. After the main and lead dancers, he trains the third hardest. If dance was a science, he'd have top marks. It's the moving the body part he struggles with.

He did aegyo once and it got clipped and shipped and he hasn't been able to live it down since.

He doesn’t post on social media often, but when he does, he posts book reviews (mostly nonfiction and medical books) on Substack.

His day in the life YouTube video for the group channel was him visiting Cafes and testing their sweet treats. All of those Cafes have been packed ever since he went.

He is the third most popular in the group, and his fans are the most mature and peaceful. However, they do go feral when he gets freaky for the concepts.

Main Dancer + Lead Vocalist/Rapper: Caleb

He is a jack of all trades. If he was the youngest, he’d be golden. But he’s not, so he’s just the most versatile.

He sings, he dances, he raps, he’s pretty—what can’t he do?

His rapping is far better than his singing, but his singing is nowhere near terrible. He had to work very hard on his vocals before debut, but only his bandmates know that.

He is a hit or miss with the fans, still extremely popular, but those who love him are very devout.

He’s had the second most scandals in the group, after Sylus, for fake rumours and clips taken out of context.

He’s a big nerd and is very chaotic despite his cool more chill front he shows sometimes (when he’s not in the mood). His stage persona is the popular boy next door/big brother type, and he fits the role perfectly.

He is the one to say the most random facts in the middle of a video. Definitely watches 'Cunk on Earth.' He is chronically online.

He has 'Train with me' videos which sound a little questionable due to his loud breathing.

He surprised his fans with the news of his piloting license by randomly uploading a video of him piloting a fighter jet.

He pranks Zayne often and likes to dance late at night in the studio with Xavier.

Him and Sylus have beef that no one else understands— but they do and that’s all that matters.

He has a girlfriend who he unapologetically talks about, whilst not mentioning anything at all. This has got him into a lot of trouble, but he doesn’t care. He doesn't want his fans to try and hit on him. He is a committed man. Other than that, he is very private.

Designated cook: he used to cook for the members when they all lived in the dorms together.

Visual + Sub Rapper: Sylus

Actually, the most mature. He is the oldest and hottest. People ignore the fact that he can’t sing (though he is getting better) because of how hot he is.

He usually leads when the concepts are suaver and sultrier.

I can't emphasise this enough, but he got in because he’s hot— can’t lie, that’s most of the reason he got in.

His stage persona, much like his real life personality, is the bad boy/daddy type. (I am not sorry, you know he's going to be in a suit giving it an ateez level performance)

He speaks the second most languages in the group, so he usually sits behind or at the end of the line in interviews and takes some of the stress off of Zayne. Once the interviewers know he speaks their language they do try to get him to answer a lot of questions just to hear him speak... and you know what? same.

The camera loves him.

People beg him to do aegyo and he only does it very rarely. Not even losing a bet could force him to do aegyo. It has to be if one of the boys has got his (secret) girl on the line.

Has the rich man laugh. Hear me out, he once accidentally laughed at the end of a recording session when the mic was still on, and they kept it in the track… let’s just say that track and that specific part of the track won them their first seven awards.

He has the most ravenous, horny fans. Even straight men go feral for Sylus.

He is the most likely to be put on stage shirtless or told to rip his shirt mid performance; he’s not opposed, he works hard for his abs.

His 'Day in the life' YouTube video on their group channel where he drank wine, played the organ, made steak, boxed, and watched a movie over the span of ten hours has over 109 million views.

Still, he goes live the least. Mostly because he doesn’t know how to use the live feature properly.

Naturally, he has had the most scandals in the group, not by his own fault mind you. And there have been public issues with their company's unfair distribution of his lines in most songs. (Sometimes they’re lucky if he gets four lines.)

He calls his fans “kittens” which makes all the other members hurl.

Face of The Group + Centre + Main Vocalist: Rafayel

The pretty boy of the group.

Designated Brat: he will argue with everyone about everything. He is the sassiest of the group and also the whiniest. He acts like the youngest but isn’t??

Has the voice of a literal angel and the face to match.

He spends the most time with Xavier because Xavier doesn’t argue with his insane logic (the boy is exhausted, save my boy Xavier).

He pretends to hate acting cute, but he secretly loves it.

People ship him with literally everyone in the group, but mostly Xavier and Zayne. It’s the icy x sunshine dynamic.

Designated model: He has the best fashion and always dresses like he’s about to hit the runway. His airport photos are basically photo cards in and off themselves. And a few times they've ended up on the cover of high fashion magazines. He would never be caught dead in anything less than the best.

He is the laziest in terms of training, but who needs to train when they’re that beautiful? (His words, not mine.)

Zayne has to threaten him to get him to go to dance practice.

He goes live with Xavier most often.

He is the one who controls the social media pages. He loves posting the most random stuff.

His ending fairies always go viral.

One time a fan asked him to marry them when he was live and he asked how big their paycheck was.

Should have more scandals than he does, most of his drama is people arguing about his sexuality— to which he tells everyone to mind their own business.

He’s terrified of cats. The group went on a YouTube Channel where they got to play with cats as they answered questions. Rafayel hissed at any cat that came near him and hid behind Sylus.

He once did a paint with me stream and everyone was shocked at his skills and art knowledge to which he said he went to art school.

Maknae + Lead Dancer + Sub Vocalist: Xavier

The youngest of the group.

His stage persona is the shy boy/prince type. Because of this, everyone thinks that this sweet man is innocent, but he’s a freak.

Can pull off literally any concept.

Has insane dance skills. (I don't want to hear it. In a world where they are idols that man can dance.)

Him and Caleb are the most likely to be in the dance studio late at night practicing.

Because he works so hard at night and off camera, the fans think he is lazy or “always tired.” He is anemic, but his sleepiness mostly comes from his excessive training.

He has a secret dance TikTok called Lumiere; where he dances with a hood on, a face mask, and in baggy clothes. Some fans have hypothesised that him and Lumiere are the same person, but he never confirms it.

He nearly got caught once when Rafayel was live, and he walked back into their hotel room with the same hoodie on as his latest TikTok video.

He mostly enjoys releasing dance videos on their group TikTok and YouTube channel with Caleb because their styles blend well together.

When they do more lifestyle like content, he is either with Rafayel or Caleb.

He has a very soft and pretty voice, which makes most people swoon though he actually prefers rapping, but the group would have too many rappers, so he sticks to singing.

He once sat in on Caleb’s live with Sylus and Zayne and rapped a whole cypher, which shocked all the fans because he sounded so good! He’s got insane flow.

It started the #letXavierRap trend.

Has a secret partner, and his biggest scandal was a hickey that wasn’t covered up properly.

People love the princely concept on him. He lowkey hates it. He only wears it on the stage.

He grew out his hair once and everyone begged him not to cut it again (he did, it got in the way of his face when he was dancing.)

They once had a concept where they all had to act. Much to everyone’s surprise, Xavier did so well that he started to get offered acting gigs. He mostly turns them down, but once in a while his fans might spot him as the lead in a C drama or two.

He can’t cook to save his life.

He relies on Caleb and Sylus to make everything; however, he does eat pot noodles when they refuse.

He once tried to cook for the members, and they had to move dorms because the place caught fire. Of course, that was before they all moved to their own places.

[drdemonprince]

do you see this tendency of people to believe telepathy is real (re: TTT / the commenters on your substack essay) as at all connected to like, how widespread belief in astrology is, and people talking about being witches and doing magic and casting spells, and other similar very woo stuff? it seems like a lot of people are very invested in what i would see as being Fake Shit, obviously some of which is much more harmful than others, and they don’t seem to understand that this thing they expect everyone around them to also believe is true is actually like a supernatural belief or whatever that other people should not be expected to also believe in

I think the cultural and ideological pathways of some of these things can be fairly different. We should be very precise about the mechanisms through which the extreme conspiratorial ideological capture happens and how and why it does.

On the one hand, there is a clear throughline connecting a variety of types of "Conspiritualist" thinking that radicalizes people -- parents who cannot cope with their kids' Autism initially invest their hopes in special gluten-free allergen-free diets, then have Reiki performed on them, then shell out thousands of dollars for dubious untested supplements, then become antivaxxers and claim their children have telepathy and vote for Robert F Kennedy Junior. These beliefs progress in intensity and remove from reality, and they're linked usually to organizations or spiritual leaders who profit off of people and move them forward along the radicalization pipeline.

Similarly, there's a spiritualist/reactionary ideological pipeline that begins with being deeply fatphobic and obsessed about fitness and clean eating that morphs into regular enemas, eating nothing but raw meat, taking Joe Rogan supplements, eschewing all medicine, and voting for conservatives.

Those ideological pathways are quite different from the ones followed by a queer witchy type who initially got into tarot or pendulum-reading as a conscious fuck-you to the homophobic Christianity that they were raised with. I do not see the degree of radicalization happening there that you see with the right-wing conspiritualists and I think it's somewhat messy to conflate the two.

If a person gets into astrology as an queer-dating icebreaker or takes a spellcasting class at the local witchy bookstore, it progresses to, what? Buying too many decorative crystals? Maybe refusing to have a Virgo as roommate? There's biased, unscientific thinking happening here but there simply isn't a massive industry in place devoted to capturing this group, isolating them, leeching them of huge sums of money, and moving them further down an ideologically extremist pipeline.

Of course both communities share interests at times -- astrology, alternative medicine, white person pagan bullshit -- but I think we should be really precise about exactly what's going on here because it's not the case that the bulk of the damage is being done comes from people having a silly hobby or believing something untrue. (Most humans do to some extent). There is a significant difference between owning a few spiritually elevated good-luck items on the one hand, and becoming completely isolated from anyone who believes differently from yourself, eschewing all medical care and educational resources for you and your family, depending upon predatory hucksters and joining hate movements on the other.

There are spiritualist/woo woo communities that capture individuals and move them further along the pipeline of far-right radicalization but picking up a Chani Nicholas book or a steven universe tarot deck is just not gonna lead to that.

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Canadian Newspaper Globe And Mail: Conservative Leader wants harsher jail sentences for repeat offender auto thieves.

Nora Loreto, self-described Socialist: Stealing cars is a victimless crime!

Loreto: Also, most people in our jails are innocent!

Loreto: As long as you use the extremely technical definition of “jail” that means “a place where people are usually held before trial and are therefore legally innocent”, which is not how it is generally used.

Loreto: I say this while ignoring how car theft means there is a victim, by definition.

Me:

Some idiot also claimed the real issue was car manufacturers making a ‘defective product’, and the “logical step” should be the government going after them for obvious collusion with insurance companies.

The intellectual titan agreed.

Even though about five seconds thought would go “wait, wouldn’t having an insecure car reduce sales? And don’t insurance companies try to avoid paying out money? And isn’t car insurance mandatory anyway?”

She has a substack post about it, and it’s, uh, special. As in Ed. (archive)

>For me, I understand a victim to be someone whose life is irrevocably impacted, negatively, by forces they cannot control.

>You’re not a victim if things can be made well through consumption.

If someone spills my drink in a bar, I'm still a victim even if they or I buy me a new drink. It doesn't un-spill the drink.

Even if I get a new car, that’s a lot of trouble to go through.

>You’re a victim if you’ve experienced something that means that you’ll never again be the person you were before.

Because no one's ever been permanently traumatized by someone using force to take their stuff. Even leaving aside the times where the thief assaulted and seriously injured the car owner.

>My immediate, half-serious reaction, that jailing people for a victimless crime is ridiculous, caught a lot of heat.

Ah, yes, the classic "I wasn't serious (except when I was)" dodge.

>Thousands of men told me how much they love their cars, how their cars hold them at night and make love to them. My emails and direct messages filled up with lots of “if you steal my car I will kill you”s and “where do you live so I can steal your cars”es. The people were mad that I could assert such a thing.

Along with the classic "let's make this a gender issue, for some reason" and "talking about the harassment so I look more like a victim while ignoring the actual criticism".

>It’s the formulation that this object is so premordial that anything that may befall a car, whether a jacking or an overpacked highway, is a personal attack on the car’s owner. It’s silly.

And naturally, a red just starts making up entirely new arguments for and assumptions about the critics from thin air instead of addressing the actual criticism.

A carjacking is a violent theft of an occupied car.

Which means the operator must a) be removed, by force and/or threat of force, or b) become a hostage of the 'jacker. Sometimes both.

It's amazing that this intellectual titan can even type while she's staring so hard at her navel. Or...another body part. From the inside.

[tomorrowusa]

Ukraine is totally correct not to fall for phony agreements with Russia. Russia has a long history of not keeping its word – maybe that's why Trump is such a Putinphile..

Russia's invasion violated at least three major international agreements.

The 1945 United Nations Charter [Article 2, Section 4].

The 1975 Helsinki Final Act [1. (a) III and 1. (a) IV] by the CSCE which in 1990 became the OSCE.

The 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Why should anybody trust Putin's Russia to observe any new agreements?

Tim Mak is a journalist working in Ukraine. He was formerly with NPR and The Daily Beast. This is from his Substack The Counteroffensive. He and two colleagues spoke with diplomat and international attorney Oleksandr Merezhko who participated in negotiations with Russia of previous ceasefires known as the Minsk agreements.

"I believed that [the agreements] could be implemented with good will... but Russia did not even try to achieve a result, they just wanted to use it for purely propagandistic military purposes to destroy Ukraine," Merezhko said. As February 2022 approached, when the full-scale invasion began, Oleksandr began to suspect that Russia was planning something more significant. After all, Moscow was increasingly spreading information online that Ukraine was violating the Minsk agreements. "Russia was looking for an excuse to abandon the ceasefire, accuse Ukraine of violating it, and then its hands would be free for full-scale aggression... We did everything to prevent Russia from having a chance to say that even if it was aggression, an attack, it was provoked by Ukraine," Merezhko said. [ ... ] The main problem is that the Russians were uninterested in a ceasefire and negotiations. They comply with rules and requirements only when it is to their advantage. "The Minsk agreements have once again confirmed that we cannot have anything to do with the Russians, because they are liars and never keep their commitments, or keep them only when it is in their interest. When [their] interest disappears, so do the obligations," Ukrainian diplomat and former foreign minister Volodymyr Ohryzko told The Counteroffensive. The main conclusion to be drawn from the Minsk agreements is that to negotiate anything with the Russians is to disrespect oneself, said Ohryzko. Therefore, the main argument in talks with Russia is strength.

Anybody who believes that Russia would observe a new agreement without Ukraine getting solid security backing from the West probably attended Trump University and bought a year's worth of Trump Vitamins.

The Russian word показуха generally means "window dressing" but can sometimes be used to describe a staged event. In that sense, that's what the Trump-Vance hissy fit in the Oval Office was.

I suspect that somebody told Trump that Ukraine got the better end of the minerals deal. The only way Trump could weasel out of it was to have a temper tantrum to keep it from being signed as scheduled.

As for Ukraine not being grateful, fact checkers pooped all over Trump's lies about that.

Fact check: 33 times Zelensky thanked Americans and US leaders

How often does Trump thank people? He probably never thanked the doctor who faked the diagnosis of a bone spur to keep him from getting drafted.

Back to 1994 for a moment. In the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons for secure borders. Now that Ukraine's territorial integrity has been violated, does that mean it's okay for them to have nukes again?

[collapsedsquid]

The deleted social media post said: “Unions gain nothing from endorsing the racist, misogynistic, and anti-trans politics of the far right, no matter how much people like Sen Hawley attempt to tether such bigotry to a cynical pro-labor message. “The message this sends to Teamsters of color, Teamster women, and LGBTQ Teamsters is that they are not welcome in the union unless they surrender their identity to a new kind of anti-woke unionism. You don’t unite a diverse working class by scoffing at its diversity.”

Going to be the annoying substacker here but I think an important point is that "labor but antiwoke that may leave you the reader out and leave the movement vulnerable to divide-and-conquer" is not really what's on offer from Trump here. What is on offer is from Trump is "Occasional empty gestures while his supreme court appointees rule unions unconstitutional."

[mariacallous]

There was a moment that struck me, and I think it would strike you too: Donald Trump openly praised Viktor Orbán, as he has done repeatedly in the past. But he said, explicitly, Orbán is a good guy because he’s a “strongman,” which is a word that he clearly takes to be a compliment, not derogatory. You’ve written about the strongman fantasy in your Substack, so I’m curious: What do you think Trump is appealing to here?

Well, I’m going to answer it in a slightly different way, and then I’ll go back to the way you mean it. I think he’s tapping into one of his own inner fantasies. I think he looks around the world and he sees that there’s a person like Orbán, who’s taken a constitutional system and climbed out of it and has managed to go from being a normal prime minister to essentially being an extraconstitutional figure. And I think that’s what Trump wants for himself. And then, of course, the next step is a Putin-type figure, where he’s now an unquestioned dictator.

For the rest of us, I think he’s tapping—in a minor key—into inexperience, and that was my strongman piece that you kindly mentioned. Americans don’t really think through what it would mean to have a government without the rule of law and the possibility of throwing the bums out. I think we just haven’t thought that through in all of its banality: the neighbors denouncing you, your kids not having social mobility because you maybe did something wrong, having to be afraid all the damn time. African Americans and some immigrants have a sense of this, but in general, Americans don’t get that. They don’t get what that would be like.

So that’s a minor key. The major key, though, is the 20% or so of Americans who really, I think, authentically do want an authoritarian regime, because they would prefer to identify personally with a leader figure and feel good about it rather than enjoy freedom.

You mentioned the word banality, which makes me think of Hannah Arendt’s theory of the “banality of evil.” What would the banality of authoritarianism look like in America?

So let me first talk about the nonbanality of evil, because our version of evil is something like, and I don’t want to be too mean, but it’s something like this: A giant monster rises out of the ocean and then we get it with our F-16s or F-35s or whatever. That’s our version of evil. It’s corporeal, it’s obviously bad, and it can be defeated by dramatic acts of violence.

And we apply that to figures like Hitler or Stalin, and we think, Okay, what happened with Hitler was that he was suddenly defeated by a war. Of course he was defeated by a war, but he did some dramatic and violent things to come to power, but his coming to power also involved a million banalities. It involved a million assimilations, a million changes of what we think of as normal. And it’s our ability to make things normal and abnormal which is so terrifying. It’s like an animal instinct on our part: We can tell what the power wants us to do, and if we don’t think about it, we then do it. In authoritarian conditions, this means that we realize, Oh, the law doesn’t really apply anymore. That means my neighbor could have denounced me for anything, and so I better denounce my neighbor first. And before you know it, you’re in a completely different society, and the banality here is that instead of just walking down the street thinking about your own stuff, you’re thinking, Wait a minute, which of my neighbors is going to denounce me?

Americans think all the time about getting their kids into the right school. What happens in an authoritarian country is that all of that access to social mobility becomes determined by obedience. And as a parent, suddenly you realize you have to be publicly loyal all the time, because one little black mark against you ruins your child’s future. And that’s the banality right there. In Russia, everybody lives like that, because any little thing you do wrong, and your kid has no chance. They get thrown out of school; they can’t go to university.

We don’t imagine how a regime change is going to be at the dinner table. The regime change is going to be on the sidewalk. It’s going to be in your whole life. It’s not going to be some external thing. It’s not like this strongman is just going to be some bad person in the White House, and then eventually the good guys will come and knock him out. When the regime changes, you change and you adapt, and you look around as everyone else is adapting and you realize, Well, everyone else adapting is a new reality for me, and I’m probably going to have to adapt too. Trump wants to be a strongman. He’s already tried a ​​ coup d’état. He makes it clear that he wants to be a different regime. And so if you vote him in, you’re basically saying, “Okay, strongman, tell me how to adapt.”

Yeah, we could talk about Project 2025 all day. This new effort to bureaucratize tyranny—which was not in place in 2020—could really make the banal aspect a reality because it’s enforced by the administrative state, which is going to be felt by Americans at a quotidian level.

I agree with what you say. If I were in business, I would be terrified of Project 2025 because what it’s going to lead to is favoritism. You’re never going to get approvals for your stuff unless you’re politically close to administration. It’s going to push us toward a more Hungary-like situation, where the president’s pals’ or Jared Kushner’s pals’ companies are going to do fine. But everybody else is going to have to pay bribes. Everyone else is going to have to make friends.

It’s anticompetitive.

Yeah, it’s going to generate a very, very uneven playing field where certain people are going to be favored and become oligarchs. And most of the rest of us are going to have a hard time. Also, the 40,000 [loyalists Trump wants to replace the administrative state with] are going to be completely incompetent. When people stop getting their Social Security checks, they’re going to realize that the federal government—which they’ve been told is so dysfunctional—actually did do some things. It’s going to be chaos. The only way to get anything done is to have a phone number where you can call somebody at someplace in the government and say, “Make my thing a priority.” The chaos of the administration state feeds into the strongman thing. And since that’s true, the strongman view starts to become natural for you because it’s the only way to get anything done.

Timothy Snyder Explains How Americans Might Adapt to Fascism Under Trump

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Steven Beschloss at America, America:

I love my country. I believe in democracy and treasure fundamental values such as justice, equality, diversity, decency and truth. That’s why—as Trump and his fascist regime aggressively pursue the dismantling of American institutions and the destruction of traditional alliances to align with dictators and other authoritarians—I cheer for his opponents. These assaults have caused me to reflect on the meaning of patriotism. I fully realized my emotional and intellectual shift when I heard Canadian hockey fans boo last week during the singing of our national anthem in Montreal. Rather than laugh it off or feel aggrieved, I understood how upset many Canadians are about Trump threatening to turn their country into the 51st American state. Honestly, I was uplifted by the booing because it told me that there are plenty of people there who refuse to humor Trump and his imperial ambitions. I was already aware of the role that our democratic allies can play in pushing back against the hostile interventions of this Trump regime. That was on full display during the Munich Security Conference when Vice President and Trump henchman JD Vance hypocritically attacked Germans for their lack of free speech and democratic commitments by refusing to embrace their far-right, neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany party.

But in spite of Vance’s arrogance—his remarks came just nine days before Germany’s election—I was buoyed by the pushback of Germany’s president Olaf Schulz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. Schulz posted on X to “emphatically reject” Vance’s remarks, underlining his nation’s dark history and lessons learned. “We reject any idea working together with the extreme right and it’s not on others to give us advices to do so,” he firmly retorted. And, “Out of the experiences of Nazism, the democratic parties in Germany have a joint consensus—that is the firewall against extreme right-wing parties.” Added Pistorius: “Democracy must be able to defend itself against the extremists who want to destroy it.” Yes, yes and yes again. We are clearly going to experience more support for human values from Germany’s top leadership than from America’s current leaders who could not care less that their country has long served as a global beacon of democracy. [...] Of course, there are plenty of committed opponents here. On Wednesday, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker gave his State of the State address, in which he provided a powerful voice of opposition. “There are people—some in my own Party—who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm.” The governor then described an instance during the pandemic when he “swallowed his pride” and tried to work with Trump to get his state the equipment it needed. “We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators,” Pritzker recounted. “Going along to get along does not work. Just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.” Pritzker talked about the time back in 1978 when Nazis planned to march through Skokie, Illinois. Permit me to share his reflection on that threat in a town that had “one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world.” 

Steven Beschloss wrote in his America, America Substack column that rooting against the dark and twisted vision of Trump’s America is inspiring.

[the-most-humble-blog]

🚫“Why AOC Will Never Be President (And Why Your Aunt’s Pantsuit Is Losing You Swing States)”💼

(Also known as: Why Democracy Has a Restraining Order Against Feminist Branding)

⚠️Screenshot and REBLOG before they slap me wrist for talking out of turn.

👩🏽‍🦰💼 Picture it.

Fourth of July, 2028. Gas is $9.34 a gallon. Rent eats 61% of your paycheck. There’s a new “emergency equity initiative” to rename public bathrooms “feeling spaces.” And your party’s candidate? An MSNBC-branded soy smoothie in a H&M power blazer who calls backyard grills “carbon crimes.”

This is how you lose a nation.

⚠️ WARNING: Middle America Doesn’t Want a Manager. They Want a Fighter.

America is not The Wing. America is not an HR diversity training. America is not a Brooklyn rooftop brunch where every man is a “toxic archetype” until he cries on command.

America is a battlefield of the soul, held together by people who bleed for the weekend, fix their own brakes, and haven’t cried since their uncle’s funeral.

You don’t win that vote with:

TED Talk therapy voice

Eyebrow-pierced campaign interns

Instagram feminism

Quotes from Audre Lorde between bank-sponsored protest chants

You win it by commanding respect.

By being someone they’d follow into a burning building, not someone who’d cancel them for how they described the fire.

🤢 Feminist Cosplay Isn’t Leadership

Kamala tried to giggle her way into nuclear deterrence. Hillary brought a PowerPoint to a culture war. AOC talks like the boss’s daughter who gives you a write-up for microaggressions while sending your job to India.

Here’s the blunt truth:

The average American male, regardless of race, class, or coast — would rather get shot by a Russian than scolded by a feminist.

It’s not misogyny.

It’s survival instinct.

They want to serve under someone who would bleed for them, not someone who would lecture them mid-tour about their internalized masculinity.

You can’t out-charm tanks. You can’t equity seminar your way through inflation. And you sure as hell can’t ban barbecues and expect to win Michigan.

👨‍🔧 Who Would Win?

A male Democrat with:

🔧 The bluntness of a mechanic

🪖 The discipline of a war vet

🔥 The swagger of a dad who fixes shit himself

🚫 Zero tolerance for HR-speak, committee-think, or brunch-branding

Not another Twitter-thread theorist. Not another sob story about wage gaps between social media managers. Not another decolonized cookout moment.

Someone who calls gas prices what they are: robbery. Someone who says men need jobs, not gender workshops. Someone who knows a border when he sees one — and doesn’t need an 8-part podcast series to define it.

Masculine. Grounded. Loyal. Brutal when needed. That guy? He wins 42 states. Even with MSNBC screaming.

🧠 Men Don’t Vote for “Representation” — They Vote for Blood

Dems don’t lose because they’re “too woke.” They lose because nobody wants to die for a brand deck.

There’s a silent contract in every voter’s brain:

“Would I go to war for this person?”

If the answer is no, your “representation” doesn’t matter.

You can be:

Nonbinary

Bi-ethnic

Trans-disabled

A sex-positive vegan ceramicist

But if you don’t command loyalty like a warlord, you’re just another manager pretending to be a prophet.

👩🏽‍🦱 AOC Will Never Be President

Not because she’s a woman.

But because she embodies the exact archetype that men instinctively resist as leaders.

She’s brilliant, yes.

Charismatic, yes.

But she speaks like someone whose dad was a guidance counselor and whose weapon of choice is a Substack.

She’s condescension in cat-eye eyeliner. The kind of energy that makes even progressive men go:

“Nah, I’ll sit this one out.”

Men don’t want to be parented by their leader.

They want to die fighting for them.

AOC gives the vibe that she’d call your battle strategy “problematic.”

🏳️‍🌈 The Feminist Candidate Doesn’t Even Unite Women

Suburban moms? Don’t relate. Black women? Not inspired. Working-class women? Feel patronized. Conservative women? Mobilized against her.

The academic feminist doesn’t unite women — she splinters them. Her followers? An urban Tumblr priesthood. Her enemies? Literally everyone else.

You want unity?

Try someone who’s touched a power tool, paid rent late, or held a dying friend — not someone whose most traumatic moment was getting ratio’d on Twitter.

📉 HR-Speak Is Not a Political Platform

Try this experiment.

Play a 60-second clip of AOC, Kamala, or a TikTok-adjacent Dem candidate.

Then play a 60-second clip of a Marine talking about losing his squad.

Now ask a group of swing-state men:

“Which one feels like a leader?”

It’s not even close.

We don’t want:

“We believe in inclusive, intersectional, climate-conscious futures—”

We want:

“Here’s what’s broken. Here’s how we fix it. And here’s what I’d sacrifice to get it done.”

That wins elections.

Not hashtags. Not panels. Not awards from NGOs who’ve never changed a tire.

🚫 Stop Trying to Win Voters Who Don't Exist

There is no army of undecided voters whose main concern is inclusive menstruation language.

But there are millions of Black, Latino, and working-class men who want:

Respect

Work

Freedom

Pride

Give them a leader who speaks like them.

Not down to them.

Give them someone who says:

“Yeah, I know what it’s like to grind. I’ll fight like hell for you.”

And then actually means it.

🧠 TL;DR

AOC will never be president because she reads like a diversity committee cosplayer, not a leader of men.

Kamala is a marketing campaign with no soul.

The feminist candidate alienates more than she unites.

No one wants to die for someone who’d cancel them for saying “manhole.”

Real leadership isn’t about identity. It’s about gravity.

🧨 CALL TO ACTION (Psychological Torpedo Edition)

👉 Stop running candidates that sound like they’re about to ban fireworks.

👉 Start backing leaders who look like they’ve worked the Fourth of July shift.

👉 You want the working-class vote? Run someone who’d fight beside them, not re-educate them.

👉 Give America a real leader — not another TEDx feminist with a comms degree and a persecution complex.

Because guess what?

We’re not just sick of losing.

We’re sick of being asked to lose quietly while being told it’s “progress.”

⚖️ LEGAL DISCLAIMER — READ IT, SOB THROUGH IT, AND COPE:

This post is 100% protected by the U.S. Constitution. If you believe criticizing a female politician is inherently misogynist, please exit the simulation before the grown-ups fix it. Satire is not hate speech. Neither is accuracy. Your aunt's shoulder pads can't save you here.

🔥 Reblog if you’re done pretending aesthetic empowerment is a substitute for strategy. 💬 Comment if you’ve had enough of Twitter activism pretending to be policy. 📩 DM if you’ve ever voted with your gut, then watched your timeline call you a traitor. 🔁 Share it before someone calls this post “internalized misogyny” while wearing a corporate-sponsored uterus hat.

Cry harder. We’ll be grilling.

[wittyno]

USAID VICTORY!!!

I was going to write my own write-up about this but Jay Kuo did it so much better than I ever could. I would absolutely recommend subscribing to his substack.

I will reinforce how important this decision is for USAID and for global health. The US was until recently a leader in global health. USAID is responsible for medications and treatments for hundreds of thousands of people around the globe, including in America. Without this funding people are dying. This is hope that they will be able to fund these projects.

Before anyone comes and says, what about philanthropy. The scale at which the US government operates, both in terms of funding and logistics, can not be recreated by philanthropy.

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Introduction to New Writers Joining ILLUMINATION Pubs Today #65

Welcome pack and a quick acknowledgment of your acceptance to ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Medium with helpful links to our resources We also published this story on Medium so Medium members can read it from this link. New writer applications to Illumination are via our registration portal. Please review our checklist and the onboarding pack before submitting your stories to our…

[dhaaruni]

Mahmoud Khalil is a leader of CUAD which is an explicitly pro Hamas organization. I have linked their instagram and their substack but they have stated that their ultimate goal is the "total eradication of Western civilization through violence" and organized a day of mourning for Sinwar. That article says it is "unclear" how he has been involved with CUAD and their building takeovers, but it is on film, and he acted as their negotiator a few days ago.

Here are the links to CUAD's instagram and substack.

https://www.instagram.com/cuapartheiddivest/?hl=en

https://cuapartheiddivest.substack.com/

Here are the links to the videos of Mr. Khalil's involvement with the CUAD pro Hamas protests and building takeovers.

https://x.com/CampusJewHate/status/1898786862833041853

Here is a video of Mr. Khalil speaking at a CUAD meeting, calling the Oct 7th terror attacks "armed legitimate resistance," from exactly a week ago (March 7th.)

https://imgur.com/wzZqLuD

It is easy to act like this is just internet drama but it isn't. This organization that Mahmoud Khalil is a member and leader of has made my life personally hell for the entire year and a half it has been operating, and has made life hell for all the Jews at Columbia University and living in the surrounding area. You've been an ally to us. Please don't now jump ship because you don't like Trump or someone was rude to you online. Please don't spread articles that talk about how it is "unclear" how Mr. Khalil has been involved with CUAD, when his involvement is well documented and he was active in their building takeover and spoke at their one of their meetings about how Hamas is a resistance movement, three and two days before being arrested, respectively.

I really don't want to engage on this topic any more but I still stand by my point that regardless of what Khalil did or didn't do, deporting him without due process is unequivocally wrong. If he committed criminal acts (I'm not clicking through all those links but if anybody wants to, be my guest), charge him by all means and he should face appropriate consequences, but deporting him and shipping him off to Louisiana when his wife didn't even know where he was is wrong.

The reason I'm currently being dunked on by leftist/progressive Tumblr and being called a Brahmin is because I said that Khalil shouldn't have been deported without being charged but didn't suitably venerate him. This is the converse of that point: people still deserve rights even when they do bad things!

This was the post that set it all off I think. Someone sent me this screenshot since OP (who's Canadian) has me blocked (probably for having boring liberal politics)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Secret Service: "Use the Gate." Jimmy Carter: "Hold my Peanuts." Life is full of obstacles. Pres. Carter showed us how to jump them like a boss. RIP #JimmyCarter

* * * *

Jimmy Carter’s final gift to America.

December 29, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Dec 30, 2024

One of the most decent men ever to hold the office of President of the United States passed away in his 100th year on December 29, 2024. I am not a historian, so I will leave the assessment of his presidency and equally consequential post-presidency to others who are better equipped to make those judgments. But one does not need to be a historian or student of politics to know that President Jimmy Carter was a good man whose decency acted as a balm for a troubled nation following a time of crisis.

It impossible to reflect on Carter’s decency, humanity, and humility without experiencing a foreboding sense of dread about the lack of integrity and amorality of the incoming presidency. Many tributes make oblique references to that contrast. President and Dr. Jill Biden issued the following statement:

[T]o all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning – the good life – study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith, and humility. He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people – decent and honorable, courageous and compassionate, humble and strong.

If there is any lesson in the life and passing of President Carter, it is that we are a good people capable of electing good leaders. We should not surrender to a false sense of inevitability that lies and narcissism are permanent fixtures of the American political landscape.

Over the coming weeks, I will highlight commentary regarding President Carter that deserves the attention of readers of this newsletter, and I invite readers to use the Comment section to post links to non-paywalled articles.

As of Sunday evening, James Fallows has published a freely accessible version of an article he previously published in The Atlantic. See James Fallows, Breaking the News (Substack), Jimmy Carter: Unlucky President, Lucky Man.

Fallows’ article is a bracing reminder of how much has changed since Carter’s presidency. Fallows reminds us:

In office [Carter] also had the challenge of trying to govern a nearly ungovernable America: less than two years after its humiliating withdrawal from Saigon, in its first years of energy crisis and energy shortage, on the cusp of the “stagflation” that has made his era a symbol of economic dysfunction. It seems hard to believe now, but it’s true: The prime interest rate in 1980, the year Carter ran for reelection, exceeded 20 percent.

Imagine running for re-election when 20% interest rates put home ownership out of reach for all but the wealthiest Americans.

And the political landscape in 1980 is unrecognizable today:

The South was then the Democrats’ base, and the West Coast was hostile territory. Jimmy Carter swept all states of the old Confederacy except Virginia, and lost every state west of the Rockies except Hawaii. In Electoral College calculations, the GOP started by counting on California.

The Democrats held enormous majorities in both the Senate and the House. Carter griped about dealing with Congress, as all presidents do. But under Majority Leader Robert Byrd, the Democrats held 61 seats in the Senate through Carter’s time. In the House, under Speaker Tip O’Neill, they had a margin of nearly 150 seats (not a typo). The serious legislative dealmaking was among the Democrats.

Writer and journalist Steven Beschloss published a tribute to Jimmy Carter in America, America (Substack), Jimmy Carter's Enduring Humanity. Beschloss writes:

At a time when too much of our political sphere is poisoned by cruelty and hate and malignant narcissism—and where too many self-described Christians appear driven by grievance and self-righteous aggression—the good works of Jimmy Carter offer a refreshing antidote and a necessary reminder of the power of humanity.

Beschloss quotes Jimmy Carter on the role of immigrants in America’s tradition of service to others. Carter said,

America is the most diverse or heterogeneous nation, comprised primarily by immigrants who were not afraid of an unpredictable future in a strange land. Almost all of them had great need when they arrived here and were then inspired to be of help to others. This concept of service to others is still a crucial element in the American character and has always prevailed in overcoming challenges and correcting societal mistakes.

“Service to others” as a defining trait of an immigrant nation. The difference between Carter's and Trump's views regarding immigration could not be more stark.

There is much more to be said, but I would like to end on a personal recollection of the unfairness of media coverage of Carter’s presidency. I was in law school as Carter’s presidency sputtered and groaned under the weight of serial international crises: the oil crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis, and international recession.

Carter worked tirelessly to navigate crises that were beyond the control of any global leader. The media—recently emboldened and vindicated by reporting on the Watergate scandal—was merciless. For understandable reasons, the media no longer trusted American presidents. Journalists were keenly aware that the road to Pulitzers and lasting fame ran through aggressive reporting on the president.

Even when Carter did everything right, he could do nothing right—at least according to the media. When the media learned that Carter shooed away a swamp rabbit from his boat while fishing in a Georgia pond, the story became front-page news on the Washington Post, New York Times, and all three broadcast news networks—at a time when Carter was successfully negotiating the SALT treaty limiting the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The “killer rabbit” story dominated major media outlet coverage for a week—often with the self-serving angle, “President Carter can’t shake bad press over the killer rabbit story.” Carter couldn’t shake bad press over the rabbit story because the media had settled on a negative narrative about Carter—and they wouldn’t let it go.

[Sigh. Even today, on the day of his passing, the NYTimes has an above-the-fold story, “That Time President Carter Was Menaced by a ‘Killer Rabbit’ - The New York Times.”]

Watergate broke journalism—and the profession has never recovered. As will become plain in the coming weeks, the re-assessment of Carter’s presidency will show that he was a strong president who accomplished great things. For example, the Camp David Accords created a framework for peace between Israel and Egypt that remains in place today.1

At the time, a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt seemed impossible. Carter achieved the impossible because sworn enemies put their trust in Jimmy Carter. Few presidents can claim an achievement solidly built on their universally recognized reputation for integrity.

President Jimmy Carter was a good and decent man whose presence elevated the office of the presidency.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[nateconnolly]

Hozier Reading List of Free Texts You Can Finish in Less Than A Week

Another Hozier reading list is floating around the Internet, and it’s very thorough. Huge respect to @notmysophie for putting that together, they put in a lot of effort and research and it really shows. This is an alternative reading list for people who are too busy or tired to read all the entries on a complete list of Hozier’s literary influences. This list is incomplete—even after finishing it, there will be some very prominent literary references in Hozier’s music that might go over your head. But this will definitely help you appreciate the depth of thought in his songs, and if you read just five pages a night, you’ll be able to finish this reading list in less than one week. 

ONE: ICARUS

Hozier puts the myth of Icarus to song in I, Carrion. You could very easily argue that Sunlight is also a response to Icarus. Many classical writers have told or mentioned his story, but I’ll let my own personal tastes shape this list, and recommend Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He tells the story of Icarus in Chapter 8 Lines 183–235. If you can afford it, I love the Charles Martin translation. You could consult the free Brookes More translation, or the one by A. S. Kline. Remember, you don't have to read the whole chapter--just find the part named "Daedalus and Icarus"

TWO: DOOMSDAY CLOCK

The title track Wasteland, Baby! is such a gentle love ballad, I almost have trouble remembering it’s about the apocalypse. Wasteland, Baby! finds hope and love in the face of annihilation. Hozier wrote this song as a direct response to the Doomsday Clock moving two minutes in 2018, one year before the album was released. 

THREE: GENESIS 1-3

I also recommend reading Genesis Chapters 1-3. You’re probably familiar with the plot, but I think From Eden is such an ingenious twist on the familiar story that you’ll appreciate it even more after consulting the original. Hozier takes the symbols of Genesis 1-3 and uses them to make his own radically different point. The stories of Eden also come up in Be. 

My favorite translation is by Robert Alter, but it’s currently not free online, so you might want to check out the Sefaria translation or the New King James Version (NKJV), both of which manage to capture the beauty of Genesis without becoming difficult for the average English reader. The King James Version (KJV) is also roughly the same level of difficulty as a Shakespeare play. I definitely think the KJV is beautiful, but at the end of a long hard day, you might be better off with the Sefaria, the NKJV, the NIV, or the NRSV. You can Google “Genesis 1” followed by any of those names/abbreviations, and you’ll find it right away. 

FOUR: A MODEST PROPOSAL

Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, written in 1729, might be the most gutting satire in history. UCLA students put together a very thorough explanation of the economic suffering and the proposed “solutions” that inspired Swift. References to A Modest Proposal form the skeleton of Hozier’s Eat Your Young. 

FIVE: SEAMUS HEANEY

Before learning about Seamus Heaney, you’ll need some background information on the Troubles. I recommend this National Geographic article. I also recommend looking through these Chris Steele Perkins photographs of life during the Troubles.

During the Troubles, Heaney wrote a series of poems about bog bodies. His poetry directly inspired the corpse imagery in Work Song, Like Real People Do, and In a Week. 

Disclaimer: I cannot read Hebrew or Latin. I am evaluating these translations solely by 1) how difficult they are to read and 2) how beautiful they sound. I cannot independently review them for accuracy. Just know that all the translations I’ve listed are widely respected among academics and/or religious leaders.

Anyways if you liked reading this go check out my Substack where I originally posted it. 

[ificouldhelpyouforget]

The ban on TikTok and what it means

Hi, hello. Idk who this will reach or if anyone will care at all, but after spending the last four or five years on TikTok, the last year being spent getting educated on politics, governments and the world, I have things to say.

The banning of TikTok is far more than losing a social media app. Frankly, I think people wouldn't be this upset if it was merely an app shutting down like Vine did. No, this is about the U.S. government banning a form of communication, free speech one might say. This ban was a rare instance where both Democrats and Republicans agreed... with no evidence that the app was a national security threat as they claimed. They banned the app on hypotheticals. Maybe our data could be taken. Maybe it could become a threat. But there was no physical evidence that TikTok was actually a threat to national security (while Meta apps are consistently hacked and we know they sell our information to the highest bidder). This should concern you because now that they've gotten away with this, what other things will they ban simply because they could be a threat? Remember this.

We also need to look at the issue of free speech. The government is very clearly trying to take that away. When Israel began its attack on Hamas, on Gaza, the news spread like wildfire... on TikTok. Watermelons began popping up on accounts and people began protesting in public spaces where free speech was claimed to be allowed. If anyone followed that, we watched those who were protesting Israel were being silenced. They were being arrested or sent away for sharing anti-Israel speech. People were exercising their right to free speech and were being forced to be silent. It wasn't the only time the voices of the people were silenced of course. But it's the biggest outrage I think the U.S. saw because news and real videos were being shared en masse on TikTok. It spread all over and it scared the oligarchs and leaders seeing how many people were banding together. But the push to ban started long before this actually.

In 2020, Donald Trump pushed for a bill to ban TikTok. You have to remember this since it appears this ban is performative and a way to make it appear as if he is "saving TikTok." He started this whole thing. He is trying to win over a demographic of young people because he knows if he keeps gaining the trust of the younger generations, when he tries to turn our government into a dictatorship, he can be re-elected. Or at the very least, he is setting the stage for future nationalist and fascists. You need to remember this. We do not praise that man for anything. He has done nothing good and has exacerbated the hate in this country. Please don't forget that he's allowed Nazis to feel safe here, which is a big no go (make Nazis afraid again).

So, what do we do then? Well, biggest thing is to limit use of Meta apps or completly get rid of them if you can. Log out and delete all Meta apps (Facebook, Instagram, What's App, Messenger, Threads) from your devices. Seek out new places like Tumblr, Bluesky (who is also working on a photo sharing app called Flash), Pixelfed, Mastodon, Substack, etc. Change is scary, I get it (neurospicy brain makes change hard), but we can't ignore that change must happen.

Start volunteering in your community. Find groups that might feel some uncertainty right now. They will need support. Let's bring love to people who are experiencing a lot of hate.

Go vote in local elections. I'm serious. At this rate, I can't guarantee women will hold their right to vote if our government keeps bending over backwards to appease the fascist getting sworn in on Monday. Minorities also. I just don't know what to expect. So for as long as we are able, vote in local elections. That's where real change can start. If you can, get involved in your local politics. We need driven and progressive thinkers to better this country.

Seek out outside news sources. I'm talking BBC or other neutral sources. We cannot trust our own media as they are falling prey to nationalism. They will only share news they are allowed to share and that is dangerous. We will soon see more and more American, government approved content across everything. That is why they found TikTok a threat. They didn't have control of it. If my hunch is right, they soon will come Monday or Tuesday.

And most importantly... we must keep fighting. We can't fall prey to forced obedience. Become ungovernable. We are entering into a time of uncertainty and harsh authority. Pattern recognizers are seeing similarities to a certain era of the 30s and 40s happening right now.

Times are scary. I feel like I've been in a constant panic attack since November. I have a lot of feelings I don't understand, but I don't like what they seem to be implying as we begin life with this new administration. I think we are going to truly see who we can and cannot trust, so we are going to have to be cautious, but we will not be controlled. We cannot let ourselves be controlled.

This ban sets a precedent for the future. We will watch many more things slip from our grasp. We will watch our places of free speech become less free (worse than we've seen over the last year or so). We are entering an extremely serious time and despite the memes we need to cope, we must be vigilant. Let's fight for each other. We can't give up. They have taken from us for so long and they will continue until we stand up. Look to the revolutions of the past. Educate yourself with books. Do not fall back into the arms of TikTok if Trump or Meta or Musk have their grubby hands on it.

We the people of the United States have a constitutional right to rid ourselves of a government that is not in the best interest of the people (not the oligarchs and CEOs) and form a new one. Our founding fathers, in their experience with tyrannical governments, thought of the future. They knew what might happen and gave us a right to change that. And I think it's about time we change it before it really is too late.

I know this is a doozy of a read, but this last year on TikTok has taught me so much and it needs to be said elsewhere. I had to speak about it. I need people to know this ban is performative. It feels icky in a way that should concern anyone in the U.S. with a brain. We are the bad place. We have been for a long time, this ban is only the beginning of potentially dark times. I can only hope things will not be as bad as they feel.

Please know that if you need a safe place, I'm here. My space is open to all people no matter your gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion, etc. But I will not be a safe space for hate, bigotry, racism, phobias of any persons, isms of the hateful kind, etc. I will always strive to be a safe place for you all. I may not have had an open mind in my past when I was under the influence of a mindset harmful to people, but I have worked tirelessly on changing myself and my thoughts over the last decade (especially in the last few years). I hope that effort allows anyone of you to feel safe on my blog. 💜

If you made it to the end, thank you for reading. I'm sorry that the times feel so wrong and gross... to make any of us feel these things need to be said, but here we are. You are loved and I wish you all safety in whatever is ahead of us.

P.S. I highly recommend not watching the inauguration on Monday. No need to give a narcissist any wanted attention. I know you might want to see what nonsense happens, but please, let's not give him the views.