#do nothing democrats

[qqueenofhades]

Normally, this whole "the entire Republican Party from Trump on down is now a willing Russian asset/actively working to regurgitate Russian disinformation to hurt Biden" thing would be a huge scandal. However, because we live in the worst timeline, I expect it will get 3-4 days of coverage max, the media will largely shrug and give the GOP a pass, and go back to writing 248402935 concern-trolling pieces about Biden's age.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

[adxmanial]

Ok I get that you hate voting and fine fair. But would you stand by and do nothing in the trolley problem? How would that help anything. I just see you attach this element of approval to the act of voting, that just... isn't really there.

I'm not voting for someone supporting genocide hope that helps

[sickvictorianangel]

Biden rejected the ceasefire again. According to him “it will not bring peace”.

Now I want the democrats to continue to barf the same words again, on how Biden is the only solution 🤦🏼‍♀️

Source: CNN

Please! I urge all US citizens to research before you vote on the first old men, because your favorite celebrities (who are also problematic) said they are the only solution.

Little editing because I forgot to attach the image 🤦🏼‍♀️

[thatweirdnoise]

I know the elections are just for entertainment and nothing is fr, but i see people on twitter (not surprising) and here having awful takes about the brazilian because they take them as too aggressive, rude or overall just too emotional during the debates. And it's giving me the ick

It's a very strong stereotype that latinos are seen as scandalous and rowdy by gringos, and while I don't feel that was the intention, that's exactly how some people here are viewing Cellbit and Forever's on this :')

it's normal for people to talk over each other in debates, and every time Cellbit and Forever realized they were doing this to Baghs, they gave her space to speak.

some of you are acting as if they believe they own the truth and keep their ears shut to anything Baghs and BBH say, but this is not the case. the real problem here is that bad and baghs don't trust insaneduo enough to talk about their plans (valid tbh, Forever will tell anything to Cellbo. And they don't trust Cellbit so...), and this makes cellbo and 4ever see them like they don't have anything concrete planned.

this lack of information makes it seem like they are ignoring bbh and Baghs words, but that's literally just it, lack of information and poor communication between candidates

People acting like the two are difficult to cooperate with, saying they don't listen to anyone and judging them for talking loud or being excited during a minecraft debate, just shows how limited your views on brazilians are

[thundergrace]

Imagine how many lives could be saved if the president actually took action to ban ALL assault weapons and modifiers and confiscated them. AND if he prohibited the manufacturing of them in the states... instead of using the *potential* of such actions for votes.

[crypticarchivist]

To anyone who follows me and is thinking of not voting in protest of the genocide in Gaza.

I understand. I do. It’s fucking monstrous. But as fucked up as it is to say it, all those problems you were hearing about before Gaza are still around.

The anti-trans legislation, the book banning, the attacks on abortion rights and other forms of uterine healthcare, the repeated attacks on democracy, the orange guy with a slavishly loyal christo-fascist voter base who literally keeps saying he’s going to turn dictator *day one* and lock up his political opponents and lgbtq+ people in camps if he ever gets re-elected. The same orange guy who has tried to overthrow legal elections in the past. The same orange guy who is absolutely going to turn the genocide from bad to worse and has explicitly said he will.

All that shit.

Still exists.

The far right didn’t take a vacation or time out while people were justifiably worried about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. They’re not taking a time out while people are *still* justifiably worried about Gaza.

You can *still* worry about the people of Gaza. You don’t need my permission but I’m still saying you can just to clarify that I’m not telling you to ignore the deaths.

But please. PLEASE.

Do not get tunnel vision.

Not voting. Does not. Hurt Joe Biden.

Not voting. Does not. Help Palestine.

Not voting. Is exactly. What the leader of Israel, Trump, and literally every fascist in this country wants leftists doing.

Some people will need to ask themselves if maintaining a personal sense of moral purity is more important than preventing the country with the biggest military budget on the planet from making a full backslide into theocratic fascism.

[mariacallous]

NY AG Letitia James filed a lawsuit to create a buffer zone of 30 feet around any facility in NYS offering reproductive health care to prevent anti-abortion activists from Red Rose Rescue having access to those facilities after they’ve repeatedly harassed patients and staff at various reproductive health facilities since 2017, with numerous patients missing appointments for things like abortions obviously but also for cancer screenings and STI testing.

“In New York we will not be bullied by any right-wing zealots. Everyone has the right to access the care they need without fear and intimidation.” - NY AG Letitia James

[missbaphomet]

Replies won't let me type the full response so here

@thefalse first of all, there's more to meat/dairy consumption than "it tastes good". There are health issues that necessitate eating meat and animal products, and they provide vital vitamins, minerals, and proteins. Your body will specifically even give you cravings for food high in these nutrients when you're in need. Secondly humans are omnivores, our healthiest diets consist of meat AND plant. Livestock also consumes a huge percentage of food waste that humans, including vegans, can't or won't eat. This can be "ugly" food, food too close to expiration, food you can't keep overnight like baked goods. 30% of the diet of that pork chop that I had last Tuesday was food people threw away. Only 36% of food (by calorie) grown globally is eaten by livestock, 55% makes it onto the plate of a human. 9% goes to biofuels.

If you're as worried about resource scarcity as you claim maybe start trying for renewable resources??? The problem isn't "oh wow animals are so bad for the environment", the problem is "companies and corporations are doing bad things for more money and they're only getting worse." You can stop eating milk and honey all you want, but that's not doing literally anything towards what you claim to be advocating for. We can develop new ways to farm that are sustainable and renewable but we can't unfuck the environment with a simple "just don't buy meat lol". It's infinitely more complex than that.

Did you know it's illegal to harvest seeds you got from a tomato at your local Walmart and cultivate them for yourself? That is assuming the plant hasn't been rendered sterile to enforce reliance on whatever company sells the seeds. I personally think that's a bit more fucked up than having a grilled cheese every so often.

Also no one is arguing animal abuse is good, but it's pretty common knowledge that if you abuse your livestock, it reflects negatively in the product. Put simply: animals that are abused then slaughtered for meat make shitty meat. Is there some sketchy shit happening in factory farming? Abso-fucking-lutely. Many livestock animals live on the bare minimum. I absolutely think that livestock should have good lives. Obviously not every cow and pig and chicken can be raised with the same quality of life as a champion show poodle, but they absolutely deserve a nice pasture and good scratch and a warm, comfortable shelter.

You know who provides these things? Local farmers or even just hobbyists. I have several family friends that raise chickens, and we get more eggs than we could ever hope to reasonably eat as a family of four. If you don't eat the egg, toss it back to the chicken! She will happily eat her eggs because they're nutritional and make a damn fine meal. My family also has connections to a family owned cattle farm, and we split a cow up the middle every year, and did for almost 20 years before the owner got cancer and stopped selling beef to focus on his health, and it was damn good beef too. Pigs aren't prominent in my area, but I'm sure I could find one semi-locally. My DM keeps bees and my family went from basically never using honey to buying it by the pint. I think the only thing that my family buys from the store that we couldn't get anywhere else is milk and cheese because pasteurization and cheese making is a huge expensive process that isn't really reasonable to maintain for just a small family.

Ultimately the argument of "but animal abuse" boils down to factory farming, but the solution then becomes just don't buy meat and other products from factory farms.

[oloreaa]

Election day!!

[simptasia]

the episode where sawyer has a nemesis boar was even more insane than i remember because at one point sawyer picks up an adorable baby boar and just starts shaking the shit outta it and i can’t believe kate gave sawyer even a drop of her pussy after witnessing that

[anghraine]

Some Halbrand<-->Aragorn thoughts (spoilers for S1 of ROP):

One of the reasons that I like the Halbrand approach to Sauron, even though (or in some ways because) it was predictable, is because I don't think there was that much of an attempt at a twist. I think the point was something else.

I mean, it's a twist for the characters, sure. And I don't think it was striking some super subversive blow at monarchism as such. But there does seem a basic implicit criticism or at least potential concern over certain royalist narratives embedded into the reveal.

Halbrand is a foil for Galadriel and the Noldor, yes, but he's clearly framed as a sketchy (and it turns out, very much worse than sketchy!) version of Aragorn as well. It's not subtle. The whole choice to have Sauron pass himself off as a dispossessed human king who has Seen Some Shit (but not remotely near what actual Sauron has seen and done) rather than a Vanya or whatnot is absolutely rooted in the Aragorn narrative.

Moreover, I would say it's especially rooted in the pop culture/movie Aragorn narrative that supercharges the "kingship by birthright" element of original Aragorn's arc, while simultaneously framing him as reluctant and effectively needing to rise to the occasion/mature before he's ready to take up his rightful mantle.

(Despite the movies sacrificing numerous other characters to prop up Aragorn's personal nobility, they lean hard into the idea that Aragorn is the rightful king by inheritance, where I think book Aragorn's uber-kingliness forms a contrast to the more recent heirs of Isildur and even more distant ones like Arvedui. Arvedui was a literal king, but he failed where Aragorn succeeds. And Aragorn ultimately succeeds by following the path of Arvedui's Anárioni rival Eärnil, where he has a debatable claim in terms of legal precedent, but gains popular and elite support through his actions. Anyway.)

The more uncharitable response to Halbrand as shadow-Aragorn is that it's a largely failed attempt at obfuscation. And maybe! But I think there's at least some intrinsic interest in questioning the popular Aragorn narrative given the revelation that ROP's ersatz Aragorn figure is, you know, Sauron.

And I know I'm biased, as a diehard fan of the Stewards who has reservations about both the book and movie restoration-of-the-monarchy narratives. People sometimes point out that the Stewards are also functionally hereditary monarchs, and that's true, and the emphasis on ancestry being important even if it doesn't automatically confer political power is very much a thing with the Stewards, too.

But for me, it's not that I can't buy into X Dynasty is Special for Reasons in the context of a fantasy story. But it feels like it requires a much higher level of royalist buy-in to think that the normative practice of a state should be changed after nearly 1000 years of stable, non-expansionist rule by one(1) dynasty, and the governing head of state replaced by some other guy who doesn't even live there. This should happen because Other Guy Who Doesn't Live There is a) a popular war hero and b) descended in a senior male line from the founder of the multi-millennia-old state (whom the current leader is also a descendant of, incidentally, but not via patrilineal primogeniture, so it doesn't count).

The story is structured so that the rule of the Stewards—which, again, was extremely competent for 969 years—falls apart for reasons only distantly connected with Aragorn when Denethor snaps in the last few days of the war. So, while I think Tolkien is actually pretty sympathetic to Denethor as an individual while being clear about his flaws—structurally, Denethor has to be taken out of the narrative for Aragorn's arc to resolve (since Denethor wouldn't give way to him voluntarily). And it has to happen in such a way that Faramir, earlier established as doubtful about Aragorn, will surrender the rule of Gondor and leave the home city he loves and nearly died to defend without us feeling bad about it.

And you can see why Tolkien (and even more Jackson) wouldn't want us to reach the resolution of Aragorn's long arc/rise and be thinking "huh, so are there Stewardist holdouts who are displeased about this or...?" But while the story is structured to essentially de-legitimize the Stewards' rule at the (veryyyy) end and railroad the last of the house into being happy about it, it's hard to think of a reason why people as capable as Denethor or Faramir should be replaced by Aragorn, except if you buy into the glamour of royalty more than concrete personal qualities.

Yes, Aragorn is a cool, talented guy who was instrumental in a military triumph that will mean Gondorian survival and prosperity, and who has worked steadily for that end for a long time, and I do respect that and his abilities. But Théoden and Éomer were also instrumental and nobody thinks Éomer should be king of Gondor now, you know?

(And Théoden had as much Númenórean ancestry as King Eldacar did! Eldacar was clearly framed as the legitimate ruler vs his pureblooded rivals. Also, Théoden has that ancestry through a very powerful Gondorian house with kinship to Elendil, so it's not just a matter of having a set amount of Númenórean/Elendil's blood or whatever, which would be gross enough but unsurprising. Instead, it's because of patrilineality and primogeniture and such rationales that are frankly not very mystical when you think about them.)

So. It's hard to get away from the nostalgic royalist narrative with Aragorn, however much I do find him compelling and even frequently likable, and even though I think the book's royalist arc is far more complex and nuanced than in the movies and in fandom takes on it.

Consequently, ROP turning that on its head with Halbrand and having it go DISASTROUSLY AWRY is on a personal, subjective level really satisfying. So I'm okay with it for multiple reasons, but a big one is lizard brain vindication.

[pumpkinsouppe]

Only in Austin will you see fucking cops on bikes and cops on horses Jesus fucking Christ I hate this state

[veikkoalen]

watching essays about american society from the failing state is derealizing experience. oh my heart goes so hard for the poor white rich kids, they suffer so much from having a full family, ability to travel across the whole country and bunk beds

[im-a-goat-in-disguise]

i think the most annoying thing to me is everybody using this topic to bash on about how "Labour is literally the tory party now". And subsequently claiming their policies perfectly overlap and they disagree on nothing. because if you looked at parliament any time in the past forever you might notice that's not the case. if you want a very very simple example you can just look at the Rwanda policy the tories are trying to push through. Is labour going to have that policy? Would they sustain it? Absolutely not and you know it but people will just breeze over any disagreements like that and go "Oh well they're BASICALLY the same party! Voting is pointless!"

even if you absolutely were dead-on convinced that there were zero parties worth your vote at all, not voting is still not what you should do. In the UK you can spoil your ballot which still gets counted and reported on election night. Politicians still try to vy for these spoilt ballots so you can actually influence their policies by voting for None Of Em, but still going to vote.

Not voting completely removes your voice from democracy and does nothing to help anybody. Not voting is worse than useless because a non-voter can be assumed to be a happy voter, one who likes what is happening.

Voter apathy to this scale, to the point of "I'd rather not vote at all than choose a party!" is IDENTICAL to voter hapathy. it's identical there's no difference. you can complain online all you like but that's naught compared to a vote.

[dykemom]

holy shit. there is no WAY I just saw a 'vote blue no matter who' post on my dash. you want me to actively vote for genocide??????? jesus christ