#bear bernstein

[strange0-0storm]

Me when I doodle Yokai Watch on Magma ONG

I fuck with Bear and Eddie heavy

(Mainly Eddie hes my most fav)

Including some doodles of Keroki, Silli-Squirm ans Murini (I don't think I've posted him before)

Also- this. Plus a failed attempt at Buck

[xuzuul]

The fish stored in the fish tank are being stared at by every cat yokai in existence. they hunger

Sorry chat, they're poisonous fish not tasty fish 😔😔

They're still entertaining to watch tho... fishy swim

[oh-meow-swirls]

Yo-kai Watch 1 But I Rewrote It - Chapter 1

so as i'm sure y'all following me will know by now, i've been rewriting 1 over on ao3. for anyone interested, you can find it here.

to summarize briefly: it's a rewrite of 1 where the main difference is that it's in katie's continuity n she has her yo-kai sensing ability from nyanderful days. also jibanyan moves in with her (though that's irrelevant for now).

i decided to upload this to tumblr too, so here we are! i'm planning on making an index with all the chapters for quick access, but that's not made yet so um. sorry about that ksldfjfksldsfd- though chapter 2 can be found here. but anyways!

Chapter Summary: While catching bugs for her summer project, Katie encounters many odd occurrences... including one that would change her life forever.

Chapter 1 - An Average Day

Katie had always had an odd ability, her whole life. There were always odd, unexplainable things your average person couldn't see or hear or otherwise perceive...

But Katie could. She'd always been able to - why and how, she wasn't sure. Neither of her parents had it, nor did her grandparents from what they were aware.

It gave her a slight interest in the supernatural. Particularly in Yo-kai - mischievous spirits invisible to the naked eye. But, her bigger interest was in bugs - Springdale had lots of them, and lots of kids at her school had at least some interest in them.

Speaking of her friends, Katie was hanging out with her best friends - Nate, Eddie and Bear - at Triangle Park, a small and fittingly triangular playground many kids hung out at.

They were simply chatting about random things before Eddie said he had something to show them, digging through his bag until he pulled out a wooden box with glass on the front, with bugs pinned inside - not just common cicadas, either; there were butterflies, and even a couple of rare beetles. "Ta-da!"

"Whoa!" Katie and Nate both exclaimed.

"Did you catch those all yourself?"

"Yep! My yard attracts a ton of rare bugs," Eddie explained.

"I caught some when he got too squeamish," Bear chimed in before getting elbowed by Eddie, "hey!"

Katie and Nate both chuckled before Eddie turned to face Katie. "Hey, Katie, you're catching bugs for your summer project, right?"

"Erm... yeah," she nodded. In all honesty, Katie hadn't even started - she'd been too distracted with the books about Yo-kai she'd gotten from the school library. Her ability had gotten stronger recently - she kept seeing a small, bipedal red cat with markings walking around, who would always disappear before she could get another glance. A nekomata, it seemed to be, given the signature two flaming tails.

"I bet you haven't even started," Bear teased. 

"Yeah. Have you even taken your net out at all this summer?" Eddie chimed in, also teasing.

"Hey, you two aren't being very nice," Nate defensively butted in, "leg pulling or not, it's not very nice."

There was a pause before Eddie broke the silence. "We should all be heading back home now. Seeya guys later!"

"Bye!"

"Seeya!"

Katie waved her friends off before sighing. Eddie and Bear had been right that she hadn't started her summer project - their teasing wasn't even meant to be too cruel, they just ended up taking it too far too often. Part of her had been considering making her summer project about Yo-kai... but the teasing made her determined to finish her bug-catching!

She quickly made her way home, explaining to her mom that she was going out to catch bugs for her project - not before getting scolded for not writing in her summer diary, though. 

Once upstairs, Katie grabbed her bag and put in her bug net, a few small plastic bug containers, her diary, and a notebook. The notebook had a few doodles and notes on Yo-kai, both from her books and from her own sightings. She figured she'd bring it just in case she saw something strange.

"Alright, first stop, Triangle Park," she muttered to herself, hoisting her bag over her shoulder. She said bye to her mom before heading out to the playground.

Katie set her bag on the bench, pulling out her net and some of the plastic bug cages. She made her way to one of the trees, which had a few cicadas resting on the trunk; with one foul swoop, she caught a green cicada and quickly put it in the container. It didn't put up a fight at all, oddly enough, while the other cicada had flown away.

Katie managed to catch another cicada before she looked around again. "Guess that's all that's here..."

As she was putting the cages in her bag, she felt an odd aura from the green cicada who hadn't struggled, and saw it glowing. "Whoa... this must be a rare one!" Or something else...

Quickly, she made a note of it in her notebook (odd aura from glowing cicada) before placing the cage back in her bag.

"Hmm... where should I look next," Katie thought for a few seconds, "oh, the school janitor always talks about his bug collection! I should ask him."

She walked over to the schoolyard, waving to a few of her classmates before finding the janitor. "Um, Mr. Janitor? Where's the best place to find bugs."

"Hm... well, I'd say it's probably Mount Wildwood," he answered, "if you're going bug-catching, take some of these," he handed her some containers of what looked to be a black syrup of some sort, "bugs love this syrup - slather some in your net and they'll be more likely to stay caught."

"Thanks!" Katie smiled, putting the syrup containers back in her pocket. She received a "good luck!" from the janitor before heading to Mount Wildwood.

There were many steps leading up Mount Wildwood; allegedly there were ninety-five, and climbing all of them would give you a good education. It was a tiring trek, and Katie took a break between the flights of stairs until she finally reached the shrine.

Mount Wildwood was serene and calming. For the most part, it was still in its natural state - the shrine on top and the abandoned mining tunnels further up the trail were the only industrialization as far as Katie was aware.

"Alright," she muttered, holding her net tight as she went down the stairs to the right of the shrine. There were a few trees she could access - and a fence, which behind it had a giant tree. It was sacred - Katie wasn't fully sure why, but didn't question it, "guess I'll see what I can find around here!"

She slathered some syrup on her net and in the empty containers - it helped her catch more cicadas, though some of them realized what Katie was doing and managed to escape. By the end, she'd caught around five cicadas in total - three green ones and two red ones.

Speaking of green cicadas... Katie pulled out the cicada who had an odd aura. She still sensed the aura, even stronger than before now... it wasn't only from the cicada now. Katie looked around, her eyes catching on the fence that had previously been a barricade from the Sacred Tree - it glowed the same odd glow the cicada had, and had a much stronger aura... and then, it vanished, as if it had never been there in the first place!

"What the..?!"

Katie looked around, putting the cicada back in her bag. Seeing as no one was there...

"Well... guess a little look around wouldn't hurt!" Katie thought out loud, grabbing her net and again hoisting her bag over her shoulder.

She walked into the outcove with the giant tree, looking around. "Hmm... if I were a rare bug-" or a Yo-kai... "-where would I be..."

Katie's thoughts were cut off as she approached the tree - she hadn't quite realized how tall it was from behind the fence. "Whoa..."

But what caught her eye more was the base of the tree - there sat a gachapon machine, which looked very old. "What's this thing doing here-"

It had an aura.

She simply stared at it for a second. "What in the..."

Then a voice burst into song.

"Feed me, feed meeeeee..."

"What?!"

"Feed me, feed me, feed me now!"

Katie was caught off-guard and was hesitant in her next actions. I guess I should... put a coin in?

She searched through her bag for some change, finding some and approaching the gachapon machine. Quickly, Katie shoved the coin in and backed away, shielding her eyes... nothing happened yet, at least.

She cranked the dial on it a few times and a capsule popped out. It looked like it was made of rock, but did have a defined top and bottom. 

Katie screwed off the top, and was launched back by the force of... rings made of some sort of light coming out? Through the spiraling rings, Katie could make out... a silhouette?

"Why hello! I'm Whisper - I'm a Yo-kai butler, at your service. Pleased to meet you. Charmed!"

[fantasmiau]

redraw of this scene with my designs!!

[devileaterjaek]

Fatal Fury Special on Sega CD

[lunala8368]

Yo-Kai Watch Incorrect Quotes Part 4

Bear: Everyone thinks I'm this soft cute person but I'm not! Katie: Bear, you cried for an hour after stepping on a bug yesterday. Bear: It had feelings! It was probably going home to dinner and I killed it! Nate: ...It was a bug. Bear: It was a BEETLE, and its wife is definitely worried sick, wondering where it is, and I really don't get why you all think I'm so sentimental because I'm not! Katie: ... Nate: ... Bear: Stop looking at me like that!

*Katie is in the kitchen and she hears a crash from the living room* Katie, running into the living room: WHAT ON EARTH HAPPENED HERE?!?! Jibanyan, looking at the broken TV screen and the remote on the floor: I was trying to throw the remote onto the TV stand! Katie: And Nate didn’t stop you?! Jibanyan, pointing at a sleeping Nate: He's been asleep for the past three hours. Whisper, floating in, oblivious to the situation: Hey guys- Whisper, realizing: Wait, is the TV broken? Why?! Katie, pointing at Jibanyan: He threw the remote onto the TV stand. Whisper: Come on! That’s the 5th time this week and it’s 2 in the morning on a Tuesday! Nate, waking up to see the situation: *yawns* How long was I out? Nate, seeing the broken TV: OH GOSH NOT AGAIN! JIBANYAN, I TOLD YOU NOT TO! Jibanyan: You were asleep! And I always take a window of opportunity when I see it! Katie and Whisper, in unison: But you broke the- Jibanyan: My work here is done. If anyone asks, I was never. *dashes out of the living room*

*The gang when they drop food on the floor* Katie: Aw man. *Throws it away* Whisper: Five second rule! Jibanyan: Foolish germs, thinking they can stop me!? *Eats it off the floor* Nate: *Sobs on the floor*

Katie: Why are you smiling? Whisper: What? I can’t just be happy? Nate: Jibanyan tripped and fell in the parking lot.

Nate: I have a question. Katie: Shoot. Nate: Is the S or C in scent silent? Whisper: F*** you, I’m going to be thinking about this all day. Katie: Okay well, cent is pronounced the same way as scent so I’m gonna say the S is silent. Nate: Okay, but sent is also spelled the same way. Whisper: Google says that the C was added in the late seventeenth century, so I guess the S is silent. Jibanyan: Plot twist, both the S and the C are silent and the E actually makes the sss sound. Whisper: Jibanyan is not allowed to talk anymore.

Nate: Wait a minute, how did this happen? We're smarter than this! Whisper: Apparently, we're not.

Nate: You know, people treat me like a god. Whisper: How? Nate: They ignore my existence unless they need something.

Whisper: I honestly feel like some of our conversations here are almost word-for-word accurate to the generator. Jibanyan: Yup. Nate: Maybe the generator is watching us. Whisper: Wouldn't that imply this conversation will be added? Whisper: ... Whisper: Wait—

Part 1/2/3

[echo-stimmingrose]

I had to look up these books to prove to myself that they do in fact exist and I'm not making up memories of them from my childhood.

[childr3ns-book-bracket]

Round 1 Poll 12

The Bernstein Bears(The Bernstein Bears) VS Little Critter(Little Critter)

Reminder to be nice, this is all in good fun. Anyone who bullies me or others will be blocked immediately.

Also, this is a tournament about Tumbler's favorite, not who would win in a fight. So, choose your favorite character!

[lexkent]

there's a talkville poll out you should all take since we have the superior Smallville opinions here

[neverfibnatefancam]

waka waka 🤙

[actual-corpse]

The Mandela effect is fake.

The whole thing was made up by the government in order to cover up government cover-ups.

**This post was made under the influence....

But do not confuse that confession..

I HATE the Mandela effect and I wish people would shut the fuck up about it.

Like... I'm sorry you can't admit that your memory is absolute shit and so you just agree with the people around you to avoid conflict.

[spacelazarwolf]

in honor of that anon who said jews have done nothing for the world, here’s a non exhaustive list of things we’ve done for the world:

arts, fashion, and lifestyle:

jeans - levi strauss

modern bras - ida rosenthal

sewing machines - isaac merritt singer

modern film industry - carl laemmle (universal pictures), adolph zukor (paramount pictures), william fox (fox film forporation), louis b. mayer (mgm - metro-goldwyn-mayer), harry, sam, albert, and jack warners (warner bros.), steven spielberg, mel brooks, marx brothers

operetta - jacques offenbach

comic books - stan lee

graphic novels - will eisner

teddy bears - morris and rose michtom

influential musicians - irving berlin, stephen sondheim, benny goodman, george gershwin, paul simon, itzhak perlman, leonard bernstein, bob dylan, leonard cohen

artists - mark rothko

actors - elizabeth taylor, jerry lewis, barbara streisand

comedians - lenny bruce, joan rivers, jerry seinfeld

authors - judy blume, tony kushner, allen ginsberg, walter mosley

culture:

esperanto - ludwik lazar zamenhof

feminism - betty friedan, gloria steinem, ruth bader ginsberg

queer and trans rights - larry kramer, harvey milk, leslie feinberg, abby stein, kate bornstein, frank kameny, judith butler

international women's day - clara zetkin

principles of journalizm, statue of liberty, and pulitzer prize - joseph pulitzer

"the new colossus" - emma lazarus

universal declaration of human rights - rene samuel cassin

holocaust remembrance and human rights activism - elie wiesel

workers rights - louis brandeis, rose schneiderman

public health care, women's rights, and children's rights - lillian wald

racial equity - rabbi abraham joshua heschel, julius rosenwald, andrew goodman, michael schwerner

political theory - hannah arendt

disability rights - judith heumann

black lives matter slogan and movement - alicia garza

#metoo movement - jodi kantor

institute of sexology - magnus hirschfeld

technology:

word processing computers - evelyn berezin

facebook - mark zuckerberg

console video game system - ralph henry baer

cell phones - amos edward joel jr., martin cooper

3d - leonard lipton

telephone - philipp reis

fax machines - arthur korn

microphone - emile berliner

gramophone - emile berliner

television - boris rosing

barcodes - norman joseph woodland and bernard silver

secret communication system, which is the foundation of the technology used for wifi - hedy lamarr

three laws of robotics - isaac asimov

cybernetics - norbert wiener

helicopters - emile berliner

BASIC (programming language) - john george kemeny

google - sergey mikhaylovich brin and larry page

VCR - jerome lemelson

fax machine - jerome lemelson

telegraph - samuel finley breese morse

morse code - samuel finley breese morse

bulletproof glass - edouard benedictus

electric motor and electroplating - boris semyonovich jacobi

nuclear powered submarine - hyman george rickover

the internet - paul baran

icq instant messenger - arik vardi, yair goldfinger,, sefi vigiser, amnon amir

color photography - leopold godowsky and leopold mannes

world's first computer - herman goldstine

modern computer architecture - john von neumann

bittorrent - bram cohen

voip internet telephony - alon cohen

data archiving - phil katz, eugene roshal, abraham lempel, jacob ziv

nemeth code - abraham nemeth

holography - dennis gabor

laser - theodor maiman

instant photo sharing online - philippe kahn

first automobile - siegfried samuel marcus

electrical maglev road - boris petrovich weinberg

drip irrigation - simcha blass

ballpoint pen and automatic gearbox - laszlo biro

photo booth - anatol marco josepho

medicine:

pacemakers and defibrillators - louise robinovitch

defibrillators - bernard lown

anti-plague and anti-cholera vaccines - vladimir aronovich khavkin

polio vaccine - jonas salk

test for diagnosis of syphilis - august paul von wasserman

test for typhoid fever - ferdinand widal

penicillin - ernst boris chain

pregnancy test - barnhard zondek

antiretroviral drug to treat aids and fight rejection in organ transplants - gertrude elion

discovery of hepatitis c virus - harvey alter

chemotherapy - paul ehrlich

discovery of prions - stanley prusiner

psychoanalysis - sigmund freud

rubber condoms - julius fromm

birth control pill - gregory goodwin pincus

asorbic acid (vitamin c) - tadeusz reichstein

blood groups and rh blood factor - karl landsteiner

acyclovir (treatment for infections caused by herpes virus) - gertrude elion

vitamins - caismir funk

technique for measuring blood insulin levils - rosalyn sussman yalow

antigen for hepatitus - baruch samuel blumberg

a bone fusion technique - gavriil abramovich ilizarov

homeopathy - christian friedrich samuel hahnemann

aspirin - arthur ernst eichengrun

science:

theory of relativity - albert einstein

theory of the electromagnetic field - james maxwell

quantum mechanics - max born, gustav ludwig hertz

quantum theory of gravity - matvei bronstein

microbiology - ferdinand julius cohn

neuropsychology - alexander romanovich luria

counters for x-rays and gamma rays - robert hofstadter

genetic engineering - paul berg

discovery of the antiproton - emilio gino segre

discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation - arno allan penzias

discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe - adam riess and saul merlmutter

discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity - roger penrose

discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of the milky way - andrea ghez

modern cosmology and the big bang theory - alexander alexandrovich friedmann

stainless steel - hans goldschmidt

gas powered vehicles

interferometer - albert abraham michelson

discovery of the source of energy production in stars - hans albrecht bethe

proved poincare conjecture - grigori yakovlevich perelman

biochemistry - otto fritz meyerhof

electron-positron collider - bruno touschek

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conservatives are fringe outliers - and leftists could learn from them

The Republican Party, a coalition between Big Business farmers and turkeys who’ll vote for Christmas (Red Scare obsessed cowards, apocalyptic white nationalists, religious fanatics, etc) has fallen to its bizarre, violent, noisy radical wing, who are obsessed with policies that are completely irrelevant to the majority of Americans.

As Oliver Willis writes, the views of the radical right — which are also the policies of the GOP — are wildly out of step with the US political view:

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/conservatives-arent-like-normal-americans

The press likes to frame American politics as “narrowly divided,” but the reality is that Republicans’ electoral victories are due to voter suppression and antimajoritarian institutions (the Senate and Electoral College, etc), not popularity. Democrats consistently outperform the GOP in national races. Dems won majorities in 1992/6, and beat the GOP in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. The only presidential race the GOP won on popular votes since 1988 was 2004, when GW Bush eked out a plurality (not a majority).

But, as Willis says, Dems “act like it is 1984 and that they are outliers in a nation of Reagan voters,” echoing a stilted media narrative. The GOP’s platform just isn’t popular. Take the groomer panic: 71% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. The people losing their shit about queer people are a strange, tiny minority.

Every one of the GOP’s tentpole issues is wildly unpopular: expanding access to assault rifles, banning immigration, lowering taxes on the rich, cutting social programs, forcing pregnant people to bear unwanted children, etc. This is true all the way up to the GOP’s coalescing support for Trump as their 2024 candidate. Trump has lost every popular vote he’s ever stood for, and owes his term in the Oval Office to the antimajoritarian Electoral College system, gerrymandering, and massive voter suppression.

Willis correctly points out that Dem leaders are basically “normal” center-right politicians, not radicals. And, unlike their GOP counterparts, politicians like Clinton, Obama and Biden don’t hide their disdain for the radical wing of their party. Even never-Trumper Republicans are afraid of their base. Romney declared himself “severely conservative” and McCain “put scare quotes around ‘health of the mother’ provisions for abortion rights.”

The GOP fringe imposes incredible discipline on their leaders. Take all the nonsense about “woke capitalism”: on the one hand, it’s absurd to call union-busting, tax-dodging, worker-screwing companies “woke” (even if they sell Pride flags for a couple of weeks every year).

But on the other hand? The GOP leadership have actually declared war on the biggest corporations in America, to the point that the WSJ says that “Republicans and Big Business broke up”:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-corporations-donations-pacs-9b5b202b

But America is a two-party system and there are plenty of people who’ll pull the lever for any Republican. This means that when the GOP comes under the control of its swivel-eyed loon wing, the swivel-eyed loons wield power far beyond the number of people who agree with them.

There’s an important lesson there for Dems, whose establishment is volubly proud of its independence from its voters. The Biden administration is a weirdly perfect illustration of this “independence.” The Biden admin is a kind of referee, doling out policies and appointments to its competing wings, without any coherence or consistency.

That’s how you get incredible appointments like Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division and Rohit Chopra at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureat — the progressive wing of the party bargained for these key appointments and then played their cards very well, getting incredible, hard-charging, hyper-competent fighters in those roles.

Likewise, Jared Bernstein, finally confirmed as Council of Economic Advisers chair after an interminable wrangle:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-06-16-team-biden/

And Julie Su, acting labor secretary, who just delivered a six-year contract to west coast dockworkers with 8–10% raises in the first year, paid retroactively for the year they worked without a contract:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/14/statement-from-president-biden-on-labor-agreement-at-west-coast-ports/

But the Biden admin’s unwillingness to side with one wing of the party also produces catastrophic failures, like the martyrdom of Gigi Sohn, who was subjected to years of vicious personal attacks while awaiting confirmation to the FCC, undefended by the Biden admin, left to twist in the wind until she gave it up as a bad job:

https://doctorow.medium.com/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband-4ce1ffb16dc5

It’s how we get key roles filled by do-nothing seatwarmers like Pete Buttigieg, who has the same sweeping powers that Lina Khan is wielding so deftly at the FTC, but who lacks either the will or the skill to wield those same powers at the Department of Transport:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

By refusing to stand for anything except a fair division of powers among different Democratic Party blocs, the Biden admin ends up undercutting itself. Take right to repair, a centerpiece of the administration’s agenda, subject of a historic executive order and FTC regulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Right to Repair fights have been carried out at the state level for years, with the biggest victory coming in Massachusetts, where an automotive R2R ballot initiative won overwhelming support in 2020:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/13/said-no-one-ever/#r2r

But despite the massive support for automotive right to repair in the Bay State, Big Car has managed to delay the implementation of the new law for years, tying up the state in expensive, time-consuming litigation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/26/nixing-the-fix/#r2r

But eventually, even the most expensive delaying tactic fails. Car manufacturers were set to come under the state right to repair rule this month, but they got a last minute reprieve, from Biden’s own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who sent urgent letters to every major car manufacturer, telling them to ignore the Massachusetts repair law:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bbkv/biden-administration-tells-car-companies-to-ignore-right-to-repair-law-people-overwhelmingly-voted-for

The NHTSA repeats the car lobby’s own scare stories about “cybersecurity” that they blitzed to Massachusetts voters in the runup to the ballot initiative:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

The idea that cybersecurity is best maintained by letting powerful corporations gouge you on service and parts is belied by independent experts, like SecuRepairs, who do important work countering the FUD thrown off by the industry (and parroted by Biden’s NHTSA):

https://securepairs.org/

Independent security experts are clear that letting owners of high-tech devices decide who fixes them, what software they run, etc, makes us safer:

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2022/01/letter-to-the-us-senate-judiciary-committee-on-app-stores.html

But here we are: the Biden admin is sabotaging the Biden admin, because the Biden admin isn’t an administration, it’s a system for ensuring proportional representation of different parts of the Democratic Party coalition.

This isn’t just bad for policy, it’s bad politics, too. It presumes that if some Democratic voters want pizza, and others want hamburgers, that you can please everyone by serving up pizzaburgers. No one wants a pizzaburger:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/narrative-warfare/#giridharadas

The failure to deliver a coherent, muscular vision for a climate-ready, anti-Gilded Age America has left the Democrats vulnerable. Because while the radical proposals of the GOP fringe may not enjoy much support, there are large majorities of Americans who have lost faith in the status quo and are totally uninterested in the Pizzaburger Party.

Nowhere is this better explained than in Naomi Klein’s superb long-form article on RFK Jr’s presidential bid in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/14/ignoring-robert-f-kennedy-jr-not-an-option

Don’t get me wrong, RFK Jr is a Very Bad Politician, for all the reasons that Klein lays out. He’s an anti-vaxxer, a conspiracist, and his support for ending American military aggression, defending human rights, and addressing the climate emergency is laughably thin.

But as Klein points out, RFK Jr is not peddling pizzaburgers. He is tapping into a legitimate rage:

a great many voters are hurting and rightfully angry: about powerful corporations controlling their democracy and profiting off disease and poverty. About endless wars draining national coffers and maiming their kids. About stagnating wages and soaring costs. This is the world — inflamed on every level — that the two-party duopoly has knowingly created.

RFK Jr is campaigning against “the corrupt merger between state and corporate power,” against drug monopolies setting our national health agenda, and polluters capturing environmental regulators.

As Klein says, despite RFK Jr’s willing to say the unsayable, and tap into the yearning among the majority of American voters for something different, he’s not running a campaign rooted in finally telling the American public “the truth.” Rather, “public discourse filled with unsayable and unspeakable subjects is fertile territory for all manner of hucksters positioning themselves as uniquely courageous truth tellers.”

We’ve been here before. Remember Trump campaigning against a “rigged system” and promising to “make America great again?” Remember Clinton’s rejoinder that “America was already great?” It’s hard to imagine a worse response to legitimate outrage — over corporate capture, declining wages and living conditions; and spiraling health, education and shelter costs.

Sure, it was obvious that Trump was a beneficiary of the rigged system, and that he would rig it further, but at least he admitted it was rigged, not “already great.”

The Democratic Party is not in thrall to labor unions, or racial equality activists, or people who care about gender justice or the climate emergency. Unlike the GOP, the Dem establishment has figured out how to keep a grip on power within their own party — at the expense of exercising power in America, even when they hold office.

But unlike culture war nonsense, shared prosperity, fairness, care, and sound environmental policies are very popular in America. Some people have been poisoned against politics altogether and sunk into nihilism, while others have been duped into thinking that America can’t afford to look after its people.

In this regard, winning the American electorate is a macrocosm for the way labor activists win union majorities in the workplaces they organize. In her memoir A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey describes how union organizers contend with everything that progressive politicians must overcome. A union drive takes place in the teeth of unfair laws, on a tilted playing field that allows bosses to gerrymander some workers’ votes and suppress others’ altogether. These bosses have far more resources than the workers, and they spend millions on disinformation campaigns, forcing workers to attend long propaganda sessions on pain of dismissal.

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe

But despite all this, labor organizers win union elections and strike votes, and they do so with stupendous majorities — 95% or higher. This is how the most important labor victories of our day were won: the 2019 LA teachers’ strike won everything. Not just higher wages, but consellors in schools, mandatory greenspace for every school in LA, an end to ICE shakedowns of immigrant parents at the school-gate, and immigration law help for students and their families. What’s more, the teachers used their unity, their connection to the community, and their numbers to get out the vote in the next election, winning the marginal seats that delivered 2020’s Democratic Congressional majority.

As I wrote in my review of MacAlevey’s book:

For McAlevey, saving America is just a scaled up version of the union organizer’s day-job. First, we fix the corrupt union, firing its sellout leaders and replacing them with fighters. Then, we organize supermajorities, person-to-person, in a methodical, organized fashion. Then we win votes, using those supermajorities to overpower the dirty tricks that rig the elections against us. Then we stay activated, because winning the vote is just the start of the fight.

It’s a far cry from the Democratic Party consultant’s “data-driven” microtargeting strategy based on eking out tiny, fragile majorities with Facebook ads. That’s a strategy that fails in the face of even a small and disorganized voter-suppression campaign — it it’s doomed in today’s all-out assault on fair elections.

What’s more, the consultants’ microtargeting strategy treats people as if the only thing they have to contribute is casting a ballot every couple years. A sleeping electorate will never win the fights that matter — the fight to save our planet, and to abolish billionaires.

If only the Democratic Party was as scared of its base as the Republicans are of their own.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

[Image ID: The title page of Richard Hofstadter's 'Paranoid Style in American Politics' from the November, 1964 issue of Harper's Magazine. A John Birch Society pin reading 'This is REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY: let's keep it that way' sits atop the page, obscuring the introductory paragraph.]

[who-always-pays-their-taxes]

My favorite Jason Todd “comes back to life to the public” is just to Mandela Effect it. Bernstein Bear style. wdym Jason Todd is dead, he’s literally right there????? he IS the fruit of the loom cornucopia

[drdemonprince]

this will sound like one of those "let men be masculine" level niche internet community brained posts, but i honestly really was embarrassed of how much i like drag for a while. in the circles that i run in, liking drag too much is seen as pretty cringey and for wealthy cis gays. like everybody knows a few cool avante garde local performers that they fuck with who run queer dance parties that are inclusive and the like, but very few people that i know will just go to a drag show at an entertainment or social engagement for their own sake. it's almost seen as a tourist thing, a normie gay thing.

but its one of the few spaces where i can actually recognize a lot of feminine men and nonbinary man-thing-girly-freaks like of the particular type that i am. leather bars are so masc and buff and im often invisible. bear bars are really nice and i do feel welcome there! but people are only feminine in their mannerisms, not presentation very often. the more explicitly gender inclusive trans/queer spaces cater to more of a wlw and adjacent crowd whose relationships to masculinity and femininity are different from mine. circuit gay bars are obviously terrible.

drag is nice. there's guys with weird little haircuts and long earrings who aren't buff and are swishy and dress interestingly but are a little uncomfortable as their regular selves and have to don alternate personas in order to be outgoing. and i even like that it's okay to be bitchy and insulting sometimes in drag world, like sometimes that is just your genuine feedback on the work someone has done and it's not the end of the world. there's lot of open conflict in the drag world that actually works out pretty alright.

it's a local nightlife scene like all the rest, its got its theater kid bullshit and egos and superficiality out the ass and so many people are trying to be famous or make money, but even to this day i forget that i can just be a really weird feminine guy until i'm around some of them and watching them prance about. i worry about how i look or am being read and then even just watching a fucking drag race episode i'll see like 9 different guys who are so fucking androgynous with their weird assymetrical self cut haircuts that they pass less than i do and they're cis men. they have bodies or faces like i do. and in the local scene it's obviously even better because you're looking at real life people. maybe i should be over it by now but im not, i need to see weird little awkward feminine guys with funny outfits playing dress up and crying and fighting with one another because they never got over their last picked in gym class baggage. its meeee i relateee. i even like that its a little toxic! we've got some issues out here, let's joke with them and make a character of them instead of pretending to be nice!!

i tend to be pretty skeptical of "representation matters!" type shit but part of that is probably because i never really feel represented. i know, boo hoo, thin white man doesnt feel depicted on screen, sounds very silly. but then i see kade gottmik on drag race and i swell with emotion and suddenly feel like who i am is POSSIBLE in this world and i realize that even with all my privileges i am starved for representation and that it does benefit you to have it. theres trans guys on screen but thats not close enough to ping that ooh!!! ahh!!! i can love myself!! radar for me. it has to be a very particular kinda person. matt bernstein makes me feel similarly

[gay-mormon-wizard]

What if the Book of Mormon characters had tumblrs

👑 king-lamoni Follow

I'm so sick of getting anons telling me I shouldn't be executing my shepherds for allowing the flocks to be scattered. I have depression and this is my one coping mechanism, you're literally being ableist

20k

📚 nephi-born-of-goodly-parents Follow

the mom in Bernstein Bears is only 25??? she should be at the synagogue 😔

⛰️ lemuel-the-victim Follow

can you please shut the fuck up

30k

⚔️ ammon-the-smiter Follow

everyone wants more fucked-up romances between fucked-up characters but when it's me, a guy who chops off arms, and Lamoni, a guy who executes civilians, it's suddenly a problem 🙄

👑 king-lamoni Follow

romance ??

⚔️ ammon-the-smiter Follow

oh fuck oh no

14k

⛺ lehi-visionary-man Follow

just received another prophecy. you're all going to hell

45k