#i'm more a social dem

[jaythelay]

Boy howdy with all those claims of roaming trans shooters that don't exist it sure would be baffling for us not to point out roaming white supremecists, nazis, and the fact one of them tried to shoot Dump and kill a dem's husband with a hammer that R's then mocked.

Eeeeeh nah. Let it slide. Can't have a "win", that would be barbaric! The idea of pointing out the problem has escalated is problematic and unethical! An issue that escalated entirely because of Republicans. Who claim that the Republican that shot Dump is because of Biden. Or Antifa. Or BLM.

Woe-is-me the next time they point out a minority shooter. Can't be fucked anymore. It's all theatrics to people but they pretend not to play. If all you do is wait to defend, then all you are is a pacifist. And congrats. It ain't working still.

Ya had a chance and ya'll elected not to use it. I've seen comparisons to that of a republican assassinating an ex-pres is comparable to...pointing that out? What I'm doing now is comparable to assassination to many, many, many dems and is treasony for R's.

Heartwrenching idiocy.

Ya gotta try. You can't sit on the bench when such an opportunity hits.

Culturally R's have made trans and drag queens out as violent groomers. Immigrants and mexicans as rapist gangs. They got laws to seperate children from lgbt parents. They're burning/banning books and killing libraries. Defunding schools and denying free school lunches. They've made school shooters a natural american phenomenom. They've destroyed communities and families. They raided the capitol and killed officers.

It's deplorable that ya'll ignore this one moment of cultural shift because you're scared to look immoral.

Don't be. Because you'll Never Do Anything as you've Never Done Anything but small social progress.

No matter WHAT you do morally or ethically, R's will see treason, see terrorism. There is nothing you can do to change that. They kill people based on skn color. Based on if they look trans. A fucking governor expressed joy at a non-binary CHILD being MURDERED in a school by bigots. Who did not get in trouble for it!

Make Cultural Shifts.

Don't let R's be the only ones to do it in the name of hate. This should make republicans more self-aware, more critical, more class conscious. Instead, leftists seem to be enabling and coddling them once again.

Empathy is fake for Republicans. Your Empathy, their Empathy. All of it. We have seen it time and fucking time again. How the fuck. Do you still go back to the abuser. Everytime. Do not coddle republicans, they will LARP their way out as they have thousands and thousands of times before.

HAD the roles been reversed, and it was a minority or leftist, they told everyone what would've happened. Civil War. They Would Have Killed You and Your Friends, and Any Homeowner with a rainbow flag. Mexicans. Trans looking people. Black people. Drag Queens. Gay Bars. Everyone.

And ya'll won't even verbally smack talk them. No no no, please, keep upvoting Epstein as an Angel blocking the bullet for Dump. Oh yes. Please ignore that they told you they'd kill you. Turn that other cheek tee hee!

That won't have even longer lasting fucking problems.

[hug-your-face]

Insight today while washing the lettuce and thinking of my friend who doesn't want to vote.

They are an otherwise intelligent, responsible, generous person, who appears to be socially conscious. They have worked hard and long for their position in their profession. They express concern for the planet. They get twitchy if you use too many paper towels.

But they don’t want to vote for Biden for reasons, and quote "doesn't like the whole system where the parties take turns swinging things back and forth" unquote.

I have been dumbstruck at their attitude for about two months now. I've been thrashing back and forth trying to reconcile this person I love with their attitude:

If you care abt the planet enough to conserve paper towels, don’t you care enough to stop a Repub administration from raping the land?

If you don’t like how things can swing back and forth, don't you want an administration that's going to work to shore up, rather than dismantle, more lasting democratic systems of governance?

If you understand the value of the long game, why are you only satisfied with instant results from a single election rather than viewing that election as a single move in an ongoing process?

The insight came to me as I used an extra set of paper towels to dry my lettuce:

These people are not motivated by outcomes. They are motivated by how their choices make them FEEL.

Not how the outcomes of their choices will make them feel. But how the action associated with their choices makes them feel.

In terms of outcomes for the environment, saving paper towels doesn't do shit compared to pushing for restrictions on oil companies. But using half a paper towel is an instant dopamine hit: "Ahhh, I am caring for Mother Earth. I care. I am a good person. Ahh yes that's the stuff."

This model fits for voting too. We know that The Only Votes That Count Are Those Cast. We know that Dems Go Where The Votes Are Not Where The Votes Aren't. We know that voting in every election, every time, in numbers, is a very low-effort way to contribute to moving the Overton window farther left.

But in the moment, for people who are motivated by how their action associated with their choice makes them feel... the absolute best move for their dopamine supply is to abstain: "I am NOT supporting an old fart; I am NOT supporting genocide; I am Challenging The System; I am a good person. Ahh yes, that's the stuff."

At the time, when I challenged my friend on their position, they held up their hands and said "look, I'm not saying I have any answers, I'm just saying I don’t like how the system works."

They didn't like how participating in the system made them FEEL in the moment.

For those of us who think this is madness, hey, we aren't off the hook entirely. We are basing our choices and actions off of outcomes, true. But there's probably a feeling/dopamine component in there too. "I am holding my nose and voting Blue; I am doing my part to actually affect the future even if I hate some things abt my choice; I am a good person. Ahh yes, that's the stuff."

So maybe the difference isn't in the motivation (my feelings and self-image) but in what motivates us (my action vs the outcome of my action).

I don't have an answer to the question at this time and this post is already long enough. But I'll think on it. And I invite you to do so as well:

For these people (who seem to be a sizable part of the population), how to outweigh the choice where their action preserves their self-image, doesn't cost them dopamine for having to take a "bad" action, and maybe even gives them a happy boost for "not being part of a flawed system?"

For these people, how to help them connect more to the outcome?

Off the cuff, I can't think of any means other than cognitive-behavioral therapy. :/

EDIT: Apparently there's a term for this and it's called Emotivism -- ethics isn't abt effects but abt feelings.

[anexperimentallife]

The US far right has been working on their plan since AT LEAST the 1960s, when I was a kid listening to evangelicals talking about their plan to take over the US, and eventually the world. It's called "Christian Dominionism," and it's a fascist ideology which goes hand in glove with the GOP's plans.

Although it was not expressed so much to the world at large, this plan was OPENLY and FREQUENTLY discussed in far right circles. We kids, if we asked about it, were told that it was "God's Will." Ask any exvangelical about it, and they'll confirm. (Part of why I know so much about these dangerous and deluded folks is I WAS ONE OF THEM in my youth.)

And where has that plan gotten them? Well, the GOP recently released a hundreds of pages long document filled with their intentions if they win--including a nationwide abortion ban and a repeal of anti-discrimination laws, among other things.

Trump has already signaled his intent to create a military dictatorship if elected, by repealing laws against using the military against US citizens on US soil sp he can deploy them against dissenters, etc., and if the GOP pick up a few more congressional seats, he can do it. The GOP has already pushed to repeal presidential term limits, and Trump has indicated he'd like to be president for life.

So I'm amazed at all the people who think withholding their vote and letting the GOP win is going to somehow fix things and "push the Dems left."

You wanna know how to push US politics leftward? You're not gonna like it, because it takes actual work beyond stomping your foot and pouting and performatively showing everyone how "pure" you are by refusing to vote.

You have to start the same way the far right did (and again, they've been OPENLY talking about and pursuing this plan since I was a kid in the 1960s, AT LEAST)--they started by getting the most extreme right wingers they possibly could into any position they could. Positions like school board member, police chief, sherrif, city prosecuter, city council member, municipal judge, mayor, governor, hell, fucking dog catcher.

They encouraged far right extremists to become police officers and military personnel and work their way up the ranks to the point at which even the famously-racist FBI reported that major city police departments across the nation were pretty much taken over by members of white supremacist organizations.

In formerly reasonable churches, right wingers pushed for the hiring and training of more and more right wing pastors and mire right-wing theology.

More affluent right-wingers bought local papers and broadcasters, and as their political power grew, they changed laws to make it easier for a single entity to control the news--until now a mere handful of entities own nearly every major media outlet in the US.

And then they used every victory as leverage for the next one, and worked their way up. I mean, there's more, like the capitalization on economic and social anxiety and their inentional exacerbation of same so they could take advantage of it, but that's intertwined with the rest.

Essentially, they got this far because they put the work in.

If the US left is going to turn things around (and if it's not already too late), we've got to do the same, but it takes RESEARCHING and PROMOTING your local and state candidates, attending city council and school board meetings, and shit like that. It's actual fucking work to fix a country.

And then, after you've done all that--and after you've shown up to primaries to try to get any non-authoritarian leftist candidate you can nominated--then you vote for the leftest folks you're able to in the general. If there are no remotely leftist candidates, you vote for the centrist or right winger who will do the least damage.

Again, that's what the US far right has been doing for decades. Taking action. Wherever possible, taking new ground, but when they couldn't do that, ceding as little ground as possible. If they couldn't win, they made damn sure to do everything in their power to try to keep actual decent human beings from winning.

Actually doing the work doesn't have the emotional satisfaction of a grand gesture, but it definitely shows who is serious about making a difference and who would rather let everything burn than sully their imagined purity by voting for anything less than perfection.

Listen, Trump is not going to end the genocide in Gaza--in fact he increased tensions between the Israeli occupation and Palestine. And the GOP will never be persuaded. Hell, they want to let Russia take Ukraine and declare open season on asylum seekers.

The Dems suck. But the GOP is far, far worse, and will do MORE damage, and kill FAR MORE innocents. And if allowed to do so, will make it even harder to change the system than it is now. They've already PUBLICLY ADMITTED that their only chance of victory is keeping people from voting. Don't play into their hands.

Under current circumstances, you know what the Dems are going to do if Biden and a bunch of other Dems lose for not being pure enough? You think they'll be all like, "Oh, no! The left sure taught us a lesson by handing the country to the GOP! We'd better shift to the left!"

No. They're going to sip champagne in their multi-million dollar mansions and have meetings about how they need to move FURTHER RIGHT to win elections, because the left doesn't vote.

And if the US becomes a military dictatorship, most of the high ranking ones will simply take their fortunes and leave.

Yup, it'd sure teach ol' Joe a lesson to force him to spend the rest of his days sipping cocktails on the Riviera.

Look beyond the single battle and think strategically. That's how the GOP keeps gaining power. And refusing to act strategically is why the left is losing. We cannot take the hill we want right now. But if we lose the hills we've already taken, we risk losing the entire goddamn war.

So fucking vote. Work to get every leftist you can in any office you can. And if you can't do that, support the one who will do the least harm.

And if it takes voting for that shitbag Biden to keep Trump and the GOP out, hold your fucking nose and pull the goddamn lever.

[batboyblog]

Hi, idk if you're a Mdni page or not, but I'm really scared. I'm 15f, I live in a mostly red state, I've grown up here, and everyone I know is voting red. I was previously in the middle, I didn't care either way who won. I'm terrified of the election after reading about everything the Republican candidate did and plans to do. I wanna know if there's anything I could do to help prevent Trump from winning the election? I have a younger sister, and I don't want her to have to live in a country where her rights are being stripped from her. I just wanna know how to help. Thank you for reading and feel free to delete if I broke a boundary.

for the record I don't mind anyone sending me an ask, everyone is welcome to interact respectfully.

that out of the way, I remember working for Hillary in the 2016 election (by my math you would have been 7?) and our intern was your age and he was... he was everything he was so dryly sarcastic, smart, unflappable, could do anything, he kept us sane and he saved our asses with his can do (and tech skills) more times than I can count.

So to any teens out there who are not yet old enough to vote and think "oh there's nothing I can do" in 2016 we won a Senate race by 1,000 votes, which 100% was the doors we knocked and the voters we talked to out of our office, a 16 year old intern working his ass off saved Obamacare in 2017, not a word of a lie, you can make a difference as an intern or volunteer

Now, from the tone of what you're saying it sounds like your parents would into that, idk if you're parents are the kind of people who let you explore your own thing, or the kind of people who just wouldn't notice, or if they're the kind who would seriously object to you volunteering for the Democrats or progressive groups.

A lot of people assume because they live in Red States or Blue states they don't matter, but for example there are key Senate races this year in Texas, Montana, Ohio, and Florida (Red) and Maryland (Blue) Alaska is a traditionally red state but its one and only Congressperson is a Democrat who will run a very close race to get re-elected again this year. So where ever you live there is a key race, even if it's local. And lots of chances to call voters or send them postcards in swing states

Any ways everyone check out ways to Volunteer Run for Something also supports younger local candidates so if you live somewhere very red or very blue it can be helpful to find locals running for school board or city Council

now for you personally young person, and everyone else, have real and serious conversations with people in your life about this stuff, I can not TELL you how often I knock on someone's door and we talk politics and they tell me "oh well I'm a Democrat, but everyone around here is really a Republican" but like I just talked to 4 other people who were Democrats in their neighborhood, they just saw one Trump sign and gassed themselves up about it. People are often much more swingable than you think, feel everyone out, if there's an adult in your life thats convincible, work on them find out what they care about and bring them facts, be claim and reasonable and work on them. Each of us doing one on one work with people who know us is WAY! more impactful than any TV ad a campaign can buy.

finally if your parents won't let you volunteer for Dems, reach out to the League of Woman Voters, they're not partisan, so they're not Dems or Republicans, they believe in voting. When I was in High School I organized a voter registration drive in my school at lunch time, thats a great thing to do, call your county/town clerk's office and talk to your school, get a social studies teacher involved they love that shit, young people are much more likely to be Democrats so just registering them is helpful.

best of luck, in the words of Hitchhiker's Guide, Don't Panic.

[thisapplepielife]

Written for @corrodedcoffinfest.

Eddeth

Day #30 - Fame & Fortune | Word Count: 1000 | Rating: T | CW: Language | POV: Eddie | Pairing: Fake!Eddeth, Steddie | Tags: Modern AU, Stop Trying to Make Eddeth Happen, It's Not Gonna Happen, Eddie & Gareth Are Best Friends, They Are Also: Idiot², Paparazzi, Social Media, Luddite Eddie, Steve Harrington Has To Clean Up All Their Messes, But What Else Is New?

"Did you know they're shipping us?" 

"Shipping us where? I hope they poke holes first," Eddie says, looking over at Gareth as he's scrolling on his phone. Gareth isn't listening to him, doesn't even laugh, which Eddie thinks is rude. That was a great dad joke.

He's picked up dad jokes from Steve, because Steve's corny as fuck. 

"Not like that," Gareth says, "like, shipping us together. We have a name and everything."

"Speak English," Eddie demands.

"You know, like Bennifer? But we're Eddeth," Gareth says.

"Who's Bennifer?"

"Which version?" Gareth asks, "Nevermind. You don't care. It's the ship name for Ben and Jennifer together. Do you never read the tabloids?"

"No. And I don't like that," Eddie says.

"Well, I knew you wouldn't. But now they're thinking about us. Together. Romantically. Enough that we have a mash-up of our names together."

Eddie barks out a laugh, "Well, alright. Whatever floats their boat."

Gareth sits there quietly for a bit, then says, "Maybe we can use this. Drum up some attention for the band. Get our name out there. Be a trending hashtag."

"I don't know what that means," Eddie says. 

"I know you don't. But we could, like, get in the zeitgeist."

"I hate everything you're choosing to be right now," Eddie says.

"Eddie. This could blow us up."

"Well, sure, in that case I'll tell Steve to just step aside."

"Not for real, dummy. Just for the paparazzi. Get our names talked about more. If they see more of the band, they may like the band more."

Eddie says he'll think about it, but he has no intention of doing any of that. They are exactly the right amount of famous. He can walk down the street without being harassed, but they live comfortably. He isn't about to upset that apple cart.

But it persists. There's buzz, apparently. At least according to Gareth, anyway.

So, at the next show, Eddie hops up on the drum riser and covers Bang Dem Sticks, while flirting with Gareth. It is possible to flirt platonically, and he does it very well. 

The next day, Gareth shows him all the chatter. The tiktoks. The commentary. And, well, maybe they could use this to their advantage. Just for a minute.

So, they walk down a dozen different sidewalks, and no paparazzi cameras pop out to snap pictures. Which is normal. He isn't sure why Gareth suddenly thought they'd make TMZ. 

But Gareth persists, and they even go to the Ivy, and still nothing. 

Even LAX is a fucking bust. 

That night, Eddie crawls into bed next to Steve, and sighs.

"What's the matter with you?" Steve asks, tipping down his iPad to look at Eddie.

"Nobody will take my picture with Gareth."

Steve laughs, "What the hell are you talking about?"

So, Eddie tells him their grand plan, and Steve is laughing his fucking ass off before Eddie can even finish. 

"Eddie. You have to call the paps if you want to do a pap walk. They aren't mind-readers. They don't just show up. Do you think all those pictures of celebs you see are actually candid? They definitely aren't."

Well, Eddie never looks at pap pictures. He has no fucking clue. He likes to fly under the radar.

"Really?" Eddie eventually asks. 

"Really. Do you want me to organize a pap walk for you?" Steve asks, his eyes sparkling with mirth.

"Well. Kinda," he says, "we're Eddeth."

"I know, honey. I've seen all the videos of you flirting with him on stage."

Eddie laughs, "You know that's not real, right?"

"Uh, yeah. I'm not new here," Steve says, "I'll call it in tomorrow. You can be photographed to your heart's content."

And they are. As if it were magic, a handful of photogs are suddenly very aware of where they'll be on various outings. Eddie holds the door for Gareth. Hugs him on the street corner. They get an inordinate amount of coffees that Eddie doesn't even like.

The pictures run, and not a lot of people care, but they are being discussed in some circles. 

So, they keep doing it. Dinners and movies and trips through the airport where they're not really going anywhere. Only going through security, as if they were.

That's a brand new kind of torture. Who goes through TSA when they don't actually have to? 

More coffee. Coffee, coffee, coffee. Eddie's never bought this many drinks in his life. 

And then the bottom falls out. 

Someone makes a video that goes extremely viral, explaining everyone in their Corroded Coffin circle. 

Including Steve. 

In fact, it's almost mourning the breakup of them. Steddie. They're Steddie, apparently, and now the fans, the real fans, those that actually have followed them, are upset. Pointing fingers, assigning blame. Some to Eddie, some to Gareth.

Fuck.

"Uh, we've got a problem," Eddie tells Steve, and Steve just shakes his head, already aware of the situation.

"Do we have to do a pap walk now?" Eddie asks, worrying his hands together. 

He never did anything romantic with Gareth. It can all be explained away, swept under the rug. 

He thinks.

He hopes.

"I really don't want to," Steve says, and that's that. They won't.

Now, Eddie's either a cheater in the eyes of their actual fans, or they think Steve's gone. 

Instead, Gareth does a couple pap walks with his girlfriend, and she's branded a beard, immediately. They really fucked this up, big time. 

"We'll go to dinner. The four of us," Steve says, "I'll call it in."

And Eddie kisses his cheek, over and over.

Just to be safe, Steve has their publicist send TMZ a copy of their marriage certificate, and some boilerplate that Eddie and Gareth are just best friends, and always have been.

As they settle into the booth at the restaurant, pictures still being taken, Steve asks, "Are we done trying to be tabloid fodder? Have we learned our lesson?"

"Yes, Steve," Eddie and Gareth both say in unison.

If you want to write your own, or see more entries for this challenge, pop on over to @corrodedcoffinfest and follow along with the fun! 🦇

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

So I am a bit ashamed given modern day politics to admit that I'm left leaning at all. Even if I'm a just Left of Center Libertarian.

But the reason why is because of the fact that a huge swath of the left has an issue when it comes to words. Specifically changing the meaning of words until they mean next to nothing at all.

What do I mean by this? Well let's consider, what words have been made to mean nothing by the left:

Gender

Sex

Abortion

Genocide

Nazi

Man

Woman

Child

Family

Capitalism

Communism

Socialism

Fascism

Racism

Sexism

Etc

The list goes on and on and on.

Nazi more or less now means, "I don't like you and you don't agree with me thus forth I will bestow this label on you so as to smear you publicly"

Gender used to mean sex and now it both does and does not mean sex and even is now used to mean "Identity" with that was never what it meant.

Genocide is SUPPOSED to mean the intentional removal of a group of people through killing them or breeding them out by sterilization or intentional delusion of their bloodline. (Example of this is the raping of Uyghur Muslim women by Han chinese men and the sterilization of the Uyghur Muslim men by chemical castration or actual castration). Now it just means, "People dying in war is genocide. People not being allowed to chemically castrate themselves is genocide. People being allowed to eat meat is genocide". IE: It means nothing at all.

And then there's my favorite phrase from the left.

"This is a threat to our Democracy" which actually translates to: This is a threat to the power of Democrats therefore we need to smear and slander anyone pushing whatever is being pushed currently. And we will use weasel words normies use in order to scare them away from whatever this thing being pushed is".

First and foremost, we DO NOT live in a Democracy. We live in a Constitutional Republic. Secondly, when people want power as BADLY as Dems and will lie, cheat, steal, and smear to get there, you should be concerned. I mean for god sake, people consider a very TINY riot at the capital with 99.99% of people unarmed completely, while we also know feds were in the crowd, an "Insurrection"; But then will not consider fire bombing the security office outside the White House, the pushing down of the WH fence, and the burning of a historical church across the street, and the injuring and killing of several Guards and Police the same thing.

So basically, it's a "If we are in power, everything we do, no matter what it is, is fine and reasonable. If you are in power anything we do to try to remove you from power is fine and reasonable.", situation.

That's why I don't like most of the left. Because they think they are gods. Their "Moral" is correct even when it never stops changing. Look at their defense of slavery in the middle east all because, "Those poor oppressed Arabs". I'm sorry but what?! SO slavery is FINE so long as it's non white doing it? That's what I'm hearing right? And sadly a lot of the time it's "YES! That is what you are hearing". If time has taught me anything it's that most of the left is a brainwashed, uneducated cult. They believe EVERYTHING outside of their cult views as evil and thus forth need to lie about it to make everyone else NOT involved or not informed also have the same resentment towards the people they hate.

And it was the last straw when I saw post after post after post of leftists excusing rape. And then people like Hasan Piker calling Kids, "Colonizers" while in the breath before talking about violent removal of people is fine if they are colonizers.

No leftists. You need to understand something very clearly. The "Right" you view as so bad and evil are consistent in most of their morals. But you view everything in bad faith. Thus can't see past your own bias long enough to realize the actual evil ones are you.

And understand. I'm not calling EVERYONE on the left evil. But if you worship the left, you probably are evil. Even if you believe you are doing "The right thing" that doesn't mean you are. And it's about time you realized that.

[qqueenofhades]

It's definitely a refusal to engage with or truly understand politics. I'm 24, I was in middle school during Obama's second term and 17 in 2016, and I feel like a lot of my peers just continue to be appalled at how bad things have gotten with the Republicans and why Democrats can't do anything to stop it. What's missing from their understanding is how long it took for the Republicans to get here. It didn't start in 2016. They worked for decades to do all the nightmarish shit they're doing now, and Democrats just haven't been able to do the same (because people refuse to vote consistently and give them the power to do those things). I feel like that's where the "both sides are the same" bullshit comes from - the idea that if the Dems wanted to stop the GOP, they would. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of how anything works, and often relies on downplaying how bad the Republicans actually are in order to support their 'Dems are just as bad' stance.

Things did get catastrophically worse when Trump was elected, and he broke things way more than they ever had been, but he doesn't exist in a vacuum and it took the Republicans a lot of fucking work for him to do what he did. The only way the Dems can counteract that is by having a party of people willing to put in a similar level of work, and that requires understanding our structures and how things work (executive orders are only temporary fixes and actual legislation takes time, compromise, and work), and a lot of these people just aren't willing to do it.

The thing is, yes, I absolutely do get the feeling that everything is terrible and we are doomed. I went through it when GWB was re-elected in 2004 and then again in 2008, worrying about whether Obama would get elected and end that particular run of Republican-induced misery (when John McCain looks like a fucking saint compared to the GOP candidates we are being offered now), and obviously plumbed the depths of despair in 2016 with Trump. But I don't remember ever thinking that I should just give up trying, stop voting, or any of that, and I don't think it was because I was some kind of special person who was just so tenacious. I obviously have not been a teenager in the present era and yes, that means I have different views on things from the next generation, but also: this has always happened. Moments of total political despair and feeling that everything is fucked are also not a new thing. We are going through it with Trumpism, the previous generation went through it with Reagan/Thatcher, the previous previous generation went through it with Nixon/Vietnam, the previous etc generation went through it with the Cold War, the previous etc. etc. generation went through it with World War II -- and so forth. There has never been any one point when everything was great and there was no work left to be done, because, y'know. That is not how either history or human nature works.

Hence, that is why I'm trying to figure out what in the fuck is going on right now, and whether it's just social media that have made things so bad (entirely possible). Critical thinking is a shambles, yes, but that's not necessarily something young people have chosen for themselves. The current world is a late-stage capitalist dystopia run by four or five trillionaire oligarch cartels and corporations, and obviously public education, basic civic responsibility, the teaching of any "controversial" history, and everything else that might threaten that setup has been systematically and methodically dismantled, politicized, or so infiltrated with false information that it's basically useless. That in itself is not young people's fault. They have genuinely been dealt a terrible hand in many ways, and I don't blame them for being angry about it. I too am angry about it! I do question, however, when the overwhelming sentiment became "well we should just give up and let the bad guys win, either because it's too much work to change it or because that will spark the Great Revolution and that's the only way to fix things ever, and doing anything else at all in the meantime is wrong."

Once again: I do not blame young people for being angry at the shitty situation they are currently facing. I do not blame young people for being disillusioned with the system and thinking that it can't solve everything at once. But yet again: there has never been any government, country, or organization in the history of ever anything everywhere that was able to do that, and the ones that tried, or insisted that they could do it, were infamously murderous bloodbaths, because breaking society (even with all its flaws) into a thousand pieces and thinking this will make My Preferred Ideological Utopia Now Appear is probably the deadliest belief in all of time and space. The world is flawed and has been for all time because humans are flawed and probably will be for all time. Being a grownup requires coming to an understanding of that fact and seeing what you can do in spite of that. People in every era have had gaps and biases and blind spots and other things that hobbled their understanding or made their efforts for change less perfect or complete than they would have wanted in an ideal world, and they have had to move past those anyway. The current generation is no different. Not to sound like a boomer, but even despite the mess they've been faced with, they need to figure out how to engage with it anyway and not just completely absolve responsibility because they can't fix it all at once. Which I don't think most young people do! There are plenty of them who really do get it and are engaged and idealistic and working for good change, and that's great! It's just the other part that worries me, and which is not as small as we would like to think.

And yes, part of this is just flat-out bad information and the stubborn lack of any desire to change it if it conflicts with pre-existing beliefs. (This is by no means exclusive to young people of this current generation, as it's another bad habit of humanity, but yes.) In the aforementioned "you're driving young leftists away :(" ask I got yesterday, there were also plenty of dubious and just-flat-wrong claims, such as that Democrats keep moving to the right "especially economically." That is just not true. In the last four years, the Democrats have moved the most economically leftward in all of American history and have finally and flatly rejected the Great Reagonomics Myth. Just because Clinton did Reagonomics-lite in the '90s (when most of the current generation of Online Leftists weren't even born), that is thirty years ago and in wildly different circumstances. These things are not difficult to look up. Do it. Try to educate yourself, even if the system doesn't want to do it. You can't just throw up your hands and insist that nobody taught you, so how could you know??? Put that "instant access to all of human history and knowledge" to use, even just a little. It'll be good for you!

Likewise, there was also the anon's befuddling insistence that I was "patronizing" or "shaming" anyone "further left than Biden," which reflects their apparent feeling that telling people to vote for Biden is a "personal attack" on their cherished beliefs, or whatever. I'm unsure how many times we have to keep repeating that voting for a candidate does not mean you are canonizing all their beliefs exactly as your own, and that it's just one tool to do the bare minimum to not live in a fucking fascist theocratic dictatorship, but yeah. I can guarantee you that I personally am well left of Biden. I can guarantee you that most people on Tumblr voting for Biden are probably well left of him as well. That does not negate the fact that Biden is the most progressive president America has ever had, regardless of how much Online Leftists shriek otherwise. It also does not negate the fact that this is by no means true of America as a whole (witness the large faction that still thinks Biden is a godless far-left evil socialist). It does not negate the many complex historical, political, social, cultural, religious, racial, etc reasons that have collided to produce the America where this is the case. Therefore, if I do not want to live in a society ruled by Trump and his orange Nazi minions, which is the case due to how badly the last 10 years have been fucked up, I will use the tool of voting for Biden! He can be successfully pressured to create positive change in the direction that I would like! Trump cannot and will not under any circumstances, regardless of the wild fantasies that suddenly he will transform into a perfect progressive on Gaza or whatever other issue! THIS IS NOT THAT FUCKING DIFFICULT!!!!!!!

Anyway. All of this is obviously complicated. Obviously things are bad and frightening and we want a solution that fixes all of it at once, instead of slowly, badly, and piecemeal. But as I said: that has never, not once, been the case in all of history, and we know what happens when people and/or governments with delusions of psychopathic grandeur try to do it. We do not want the "Final Solution" (which is infamous as what Hitler literally called the Holocaust). We do, in fact, want the careful step by step, we want things to get better and not just explode in a mountain of nihilistic doom, and that does take work, from everyone. So unfortunately, there is no real choice except to do it.

[decolonize-the-everything]

Is anyone else just completely disillusioned? Done?

I could not think any less of people still talking about celebrities or how their biggest issues are not having a Starbucks cup that's $50

Like why are we as a collective letting people like that run the lives of everyone on the planet? A planet rife with unnecessary conflict and greed? People who can't be bothered to just Not go to chick-fil-a?

Why are people who clearly value profit over humanity in charge of humanity, ykwim? How the fuck did that become a majority opinion?

I drive thru my nuclear town, I go to our community events, our local small businesses, I try to support my community in ways I can everyday. But I can't help but notice that So Many of the people who do that alongside me, don't show up to protest for the rights of the people they claim to support.

Its all so incredibly shallow and one dimensional and obviously disingenuous and why the fuck are the rest of STILL begging for the ability to make changes within the framework they built?

Why are we still making educational posts for them and trying to make them understand when the first thing we are taught about reaching understand is that you must first be willing to listen and they refuse.

The ruling classes never listened. Never, ever have they granted anyone any oppressed group rights that they asked for without the group needing to fight for it. And it's always after generations of oppression.

I'm fucking tired of being nice and pretending the laws they made up matter and like their socially constructed bureaucracy is the only way to make change to be quite fucking honest.

They're LUCKY we use it EVER and now they don't even fucking listen to our voicemails?

The only things stopping me from taking what's mine are disabilities and I'm Dying to know what everyone else's excuses are.

Or is that?

Are we all physically too incapable? Is every single able bodied person actually a liberal fascist?

Asking for the disabled Turtle Mountain Ojibwe person typing this who's life literally depends on y'all caring enough about other people to make life anything but a list of systematic circumstances I'll suffer from until I eventually die early of an illness I can't afford medical aids for and which are not provided for me either.

And if you're able bodied and you feel the same... Start working outside that framework and stop asking so nicely. Stop giving a shit if you don't have the support of the oppressors and their liberal foot soldiers.

Stop worrying about what CNN is gonna say about you because I promise that the people who matter and Understand you will be inspired to follow in your foot steps and supportive.

Get active in your co-ops, mutual aid groups, and consider training like you're black bloc.

Learn what direct action is and how to do it and start doing it. Just reading theory era is over.

More of this

less whatever the level of cognitive dissonance this is

Imagine saying 'i voted so I did everything I could' like the suffragettes didn't have an arson and bombing campaign because the people who Could vote were people benefitted from their systemic silence and thus did almost Nothing to help them get voting rights and they Refused to let oppressor laziness be their obstacle.

Yeah, they don't teach you that in Voting Matters School the suffragettes were bombing the UK just a year or two before they got their rights do they?

The only language oppressors will listen to is their own.

And I'm Tired of pretending otherwise because that delusion is what makes the privileged feel like they don't have to do anything but vote and makes them feel they're justified to criticize those of us that fight back through other avenues.

And maybe if we had politicians that gave a shit about any of us then those votes and movements and public sentiment would have a bigger sway in government, but they don't.

They don't fucking care.

Why are we still giving them power over any of us and letting them tell us what to do and demonize us when they use that power allowed to kill us and bury us in unmarked graves in some field in Mississippi? And make everything so expensive that the richest citizens on earth struggle to pay their bills?

Why can a government only "condemn" a state agent's right to shoot an unarmed protester 57 times, but they can bypass Congress to send Israel billions upon billions worth of weapons?

I'm tired of pretending this country is anything but a front for White Supremacists when every liberal I see is trying to gaslight everyone into thinking genocide is acceptable.

Shut the fuck up and get out of my equality tags, fascist.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

When parties fail, movements step up

This Saturday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

Does anyone like the American two party system? The parties are opaque, private organizations, weak institutions that are prone to capture and corruption, and gerrymandering's "safe seats" means that the real election often takes place in the party's smoke-filled rooms, when a sure-thing candidate is selected:

https://doctorow.medium.com/weak-institutions-a26a20927b27

But there doesn't seem to be any way to fix it. For one thing, the two parties are in charge of any reform, and they're in no hurry to put themselves out of business. It's effectively impossible for a third party to gain any serious power in the USA, and that's by design. After the leftist Populists party came within a spitting distance of power in the 1890s, the Dems and Repubs got together and cooked the system, banning fusion voting and erecting other structural barriers.

The Nader and Perot campaigns were doomed from the outset, in other words. Either candidate could have been far more popular than the D and R on the ballot, and they still would have lost. It's how the deck is stacked, and to unstack it, reformers would need to take charge of at least one – and probably both – of the parties.

But that's not cause for surrender – it's a call to action. In an interview with Seymour Hersh, Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal) sets out another locus of power, one with the potential to deliver control over the party to its base: social movements:

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/ordinary-people-by-the-millions

It's been done before. The parties are routinely transformed by power-shifts within their internal coalitions: since 1970, corporate Dems have consistently pushed the party to the right, making it the power of white-collar professionals and relying on working people showing up and marking their ballots with a D because they have "nowhere else to go."

Bill Clinton was the most successful of these corporate raiders, delivering the parts of the Reagan Revolution that Reagan himself could never have managed: dismantling tariffs and bank regulations, passing the crime bill and welfare "reform." He came within a whisper of (partially) privatizing Social Security.

This set in motion the forces that made Trumpism possible: when Dems told deindustrialized workers to "learn to code" and blamed them for the destruction of their communities, it opened a space for Make America Great Again, the (empty) workerist rhetoric of the GOP. The Dems' plan of putting "really smart people" in charge and letting them run things was a (predictable) disaster. "Really smart" isn't the same as "infallible" and really smart people can be spooked or bulled into doing the wrong thing – like Obama "foaming the runways" for the banks with the houses of mortgage holders, and leaving the bankers responsible for the Great Financial Crisis unscathed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

"Really smart people" can't get us out of this mess. Instead, we need the kind of muscular political action – the "whirlwind" – that characterized FDR's New Deal: "complete reformation of the banking industry.. just about every other industry as well. Regulation. Social Security. Public works. Antitrust. Soil conservation."

FDR got there by alienating his former classmates and refusing the go-slow entreaties of his cronies. He got there because there was a mass social movement that made him do it ("I want to do it, now make me do it"):

https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/i-agree-with-you-i-want-to-do-it-now-make-me-do-it/

Every time in US history where one of the political party duopoly listened to its base, it was because of a mass social movement: the farmers' movement (1890s), labor (1930s), civil rights and antiwar (1960s). As Frank says:

Social movements succeed. They build and they change the intellectual climate and then, when the crisis comes, they make possible things like agrarian reform or the New Deal or the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s.

Today, we see the seeds of those social movements: the new union movement. Black Lives Matter. Neobrandeisians with their "hipster antitrust." These are the movements that are creating "ideas lying around": ideas that, in time of crisis, can move from the fringe to the center in an eyeblink:

https://doctorow.medium.com/ideas-lying-around-33a28901a7ae

They are setting in motion another transformation of the Democratic Party, from its top-down, "really smart people" model to a bottom-up, people-powered one, kept in check by movements, not party bosses. As Frank says, "They require the mass participation of ordinary people. Without that, I am afraid that nothing is possible."

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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/2023/08/17/popular-front-of-judea/#speaking-frankly

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

03/12/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; More BTS/Photos; Samba Schutte Cameo; Taika; Fan Spotlight; London Billboards/Trucks; Uproar; LubeAsACrew; Watch Party Reminders; Continued Efforts; Trends; Love Notes; DailyDarby/Tonight's Taika

Hey all! Thank you so much for your feedback on the recaps! Right now I'm planning on sticking too them, but may cut them down depending on the day. Right now we seem to be pretty solid on daily news so I'll keep them the way they are for now. I appreciate you all sharing your thoughts with me <3

== Cast & Crew Sightings ==

== More BTS / Photos ==

Well as many of you know, the things that broke the internet were the latest photos that were found by @jodegg on LK Creatives Website

Nicola Dove also put up some more photos recently! Thank you to @kiwistede for putting them all in one place in this post.

= Samba Schutte =

Thank you so much to @gheyandwoke on Twitter for getting a cameo from Samba! It's absolutely beautiful and totally worth a listen.

== Taika Waititi ==

Taika's out here advertising for hot tubs, and seems to be enjoying himself with Rita! Src: Taika's Instagram

== Fan Spotlight ==

== Cast Cards ==

Tonight's cast card is Rachel House! Absolutely love Rachel in so many of her roles! Thank you @melvisik for highlighting her works!

== Ari Azure's Act of Grace ==

Our lovely crew-mate @ariazureyt wrote a song about OFMD being cancelled, and commissioned @enabuns to draw, and @ferventrabbit on vocals! The full song will be released on their youtube this Friday! To follow along for updates, visit their Link.tree

== London Billboard ==

A few more photos from the SaveOFMDCrew meetup at the London Billboard in Leicaster Square! Wanna see them all? Visit the @saveofmdcrewmates website!

Our crew-mate @heather.in.wonderland on Instagram brought Little Ed with her to visit the billboard!

== Trucks Ads Outside Amazon! ==

== Save OFMD Meet Up In London Video! ==

See the whole post on tumblr!

Website: https://www.help.saveofmd.com/ Petition: change.org/p/save-our-flag-means-death Socials: linktr.ee/saveofmdcrew

Vocals: twitter.com/ferventrabbit

Video: twitter.com/kristybean18

Lyrics: Set your eyes upon the screen A wondrous sight to see This is "La Vue en rose" Londoners from far and near Will likely shed a tear To see "La Vue en rose" The petition climbs so high No streamer can deny The power of our show We’ll spread the word about our pirates dear Until the fandom at last perseveres Look upon the lovely sight To keep our hope alight "La Vue en rose"

== Uproar Coming To America! ==

Get your tickets at fandango!

== Watch Party Reminders! ==

== Lube As A Crew ==

Our dear friends over at @astroglideofficial are hosting one last Lube As A Crew, with all of Season 2 in one go! Starts Friday March 15th 12 pm Noon PST ( 4pm EST, 8 pm GMT)

== Wrecked ==

There are sources being passed around. If access is an issue, DM @iamadequate1 on Twitter or Tumblr

Season 2 watch from March 11th to March 15th. 

Season 3 watch from March 18th to March 22nd. 

Times will be 10pm GMT / 5pm EST / 4pm CST / 2pm PST. Watch two episodes per day. Episodes are 21-22 minutes each. Use the following Saturday for the tags/watch if interested but not able to make this time.

Hashtags: 

#WreckedPirates

#SaveOFMD

#RhysDarbyFaction

== OurFlagRTL ==

Twitter-Watch-Along von Our Flag Means Death:

Streamt Staffel 2 ab dem 15. März.

Samstag, 9.3. 17:00 Folgen 1 bis 3, 

Dienstag, 12.3. 20:00 Folgen 4 & 5, 

Mittwoch, 13.3. 20:00 Folgen 6 & 7, 

Donnerstag 14.3. 20:00 Folgen 8 & 9, 

Freitag, 15.3. 17:30 Folge 10

Und anschließend bingen wir zusammen Staffel 2! 

Schaut und tweetet mit! 

Hashtag:

 OurFlagRTL

== Continued Efforts ==

So even though Chaos Dad, David Jenkins told us there was no more home, several people are still out there fighting the good fight. There's been a few different routes being taken.

1. Sell The Show, Let Us Go

Our crew-mate @patchworkpiratebear has been putting out lots of awesome media regarding this, and several people on twitter have been using #SellTheShowLetUsGo

2. There's been continued and more targeted Polite Menacing against Max, WB, and David Zaslav.

Lots of folks have been either responding to Max's Twitter / IG Post, and others have been focusing specifically on Zaslav.

Specific hashtags being used were #FireDavidZaslav and #DontStreamOnMax Thank you to @iamadequate1 for capturing all these great trends and metrics:

== Articles ==

https://www.themarysue.com/our-flag-means-death-fans-put-up-billboard-in-londons-leicester-square/

SchadenFreude Articles

https://awardsradar.com/2024/03/11/you-had-one-job-david/

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/23/warner-bros-discovery-hypes-free-cash-flow-investors-dont-buy-it.html

== Love Notes ==

Hey lovelies. I know that the new photos were both a welcome gift and also a heavy reminder of where OFMD is and what we've lost. For some it's helping them rally, and for others it's really pulling them down deeper into the gravy basket.

Wherever you are, just know it's gonna be okay. Whether we get an s3 or not, and if we do 10 years from now or next week, it's going to be alright. As so many others have said, including our lovely Con O'Neill, they can't take what we have away from us.

I continue to hear from the cast & crew in all their posts that we are some of the much amazing, kind, and engaging folks they've ever met, and you really should be proud of yourself for that. Our cast & crew are wonderful, but the fans are too.

On a slight side note, please if you can, check on your crew-mates today. The initial shock is starting to fade, but a lot of folks are still struggling, or coming back to struggling after a period of being okay. We're all riding the waves right now lovelies, and it'll take some work but we'll get through the storm, but it'll be easier together.

Our friend @thelatestkate has another lovely note for us.. and I second it. We are all weathering the storm right now, but you belong here, and we love that you're here with us, through tears or laughter, or unhinged fun. Be kind to yourselves lovelies, we are small but we are many, and we all care about you, I wish Sweet Dreams / Happy Days for you <3 Love you Crew.

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

I've run out of images allowed on one post so we're just gonna do a combo one tonight, and since this scene is the theme of the day, we'll go with the goofiest one of all. Gif courtesy of @stedesbonnets / @edsrosetattoo (The gifs are being weird AF tonight, its showing one name but apparently it's not right? Apologies if I'm not crediting the right folks!)

[linddzz]

(with every disclaimer that Harris/Walz is far from perfect and while I feel better voting for this ticket than Biden, there's still more I want to see from them on several things but especially Gaza)

One thing that I keep feeling but am like....scared??? to say out loud after 2016 (and how close 2020 was lbr) is that there aren't just the happier vibes of a Dem ticket finally learning how to go on the offense, it almost feels like a total flip of where it's been since hell...2014???

The "you're being a fuckin gross weirdo" has been picking up in leftist spaces for a bit (I want to make a tally of how many commentators have joked that they should get royalties for saying it before Walz) but I never would have expected it to reach mainstream Dem messaging and for that to explosively flip the culture war vibes (so far. Man does it say a lot that I keep feeling the need to add caution into everything lmaooooo).

Harris/Walz seem to have managed the thing Democrats have struggled with since even the Obama years: messaging. And it's wild??? They figured out how to smack down culture war shit without ignoring it and without validating it with a full argument. You're being weird. Mind your own damn business.

And with that, now the wider social framing feels like the social progressives from the center to the left are on the offense. Now it's THEM who have internet brain rot weirdo vibes. Now the reactionaries are crying and being sensitive and throwing tantrums. They were before! But it feels like it's finally not being taken seriously. Now the center to left is making memes launching their ticket based on Vibes! Do you know how wild it is for the meme-vibes ticket to not be the other guy???

The backlash to the backlash feels like it's starting and I'm under no illusions that "oh sweet we won lmao we are so back" but man it feels nice to be on the side pointing and going "y'all are being fuckin weirdos."

(Knowing how to deflate a bully is definitely something Walz picked up from being a coach and teacher, but the "you're weird" and "mind your own business" are so word-for-word from how I've seen trans rights activists starting to hit back that I do wonder if he's gotten tips from his GenZ kids. He has said before that his stances on gun control changed bc his daughter talked to him and he's mentioned before that he listens to his kids a lot. So....I do wonder.)

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Who r u voting for?

I've been pretty consistent in saying it doesn't matter who anyone votes for as an individual, the ballot box is not a place of revolutionary activity and we should focus our efforts elsewhere. That said, my state does mail-in ballots, so I still fill them out and send them in since it doesn't take much time or effort for me.

There will likely be four left-wing candidates on the ballot in my state: Jill Stein with the Greens, Cornel West as an independent, Claudia de la Cruz for the PSL, and Rachele Fruit for the SWP.

The SWP are Zionist Trotskyists, so I won't give them the time of day.

I voted PSL in 2016, but since then there's been a lot of shit going on with them and despite the fact that there's a lot of good people working with them and a lot of good local branches, I can't support them on a national level until they get their shit together. Their treatment of women, transgender people, and people of color needs to improve. There was a great article written in 2021 by a Maoist group on the issues within the PSL that I'll link here, and while I don't agree with their conclusion that the PSL is "fundamentally reactionary" and that collaboration with PSL groups is useless, their criticisms are still worth reading.

I voted for Howie Hawkins in 2020, but I've never been a fan of Jill Stein due to her pandering to anti-vaxxers and alt-med types. She's a doctor, she should know better. She's helped push a lot of anti-science misinformation on the left, and while her platform is far better than any of those from the Dems or Republicans, I still can't forgive that. Science-based medicine is one of my sticking points.

So that leaves Cornel West. He's not a communist, and I'm not a fan of his religiosity, but his platform is still solid and I like him the best out of these four candidates. Again, I'm not doing this because I think he can win. The only way he could possibly win is if Harris, Trump, RFK Jr., Jill Stein, and whoever the Libertarian guy is this year all die a week before the election, and even then, it'd probably be a toss-up between him and de la Cruz. My vote for West is purely to signify "hey, there's people here who want what Cornel West is offering". In that sense, I'm treating the presidential election more as an opinion poll than anything else.

[mariacallous]

Gold Star Ratfucker Democratic Representative Jared Golden said not only does he want Biden to drop out, but he said, "Trump is going to win, and I'm okay with that."

Y'all know what to do:

(202) 225-6306 (DC office)

(207) 241-6767 (Lewiston office)

(207) 249-7400 (Bangor office)

(207) 492-6009 (Caribou office)

Moderate House Dem: ‘Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that’

Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), a moderate Democrat, published an op-ed Tuesday arguing former President Trump is going to win the election and he’s “OK with that.”

Golden, who has held his seat in the House since 2019, wrote a piece published in the Bangor Daily News, headlined, “Donald Trump is going to win the election and democracy will be just fine,” in response to the outcry of concern from his party following President Biden’s lackluster debate performance.

The Maine congressman argued that Biden’s on-stage presence didn’t rattle him like it did others because the outcome of the 2024 presidential election has been clear to him for months.

“While I don’t plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that,” Golden wrote.

The House Democrat argued that others in his party are concerned that if Trump wins the election this fall, it will be a threat to democracy. The proclamations from Golden’s party were only exacerbated after the Supreme Court on Monday granted broad immunity to Trump in his Jan. 6 case.

Golden said he rejects the idea that Trump will overturn American democracy. He said sounding the alarm about a Trump victory ignores the strength of a nearly 250-year-old nation.

“Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system,” he said.

Golden, who served combat tours as a Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan, noted that Jan. 6, 2021, was a “dark day.” Still, he said, police officers, judges, state election officials, members of Congress joined to defend democracy like members of the U.S. military.

“This election is about the economy, not democracy. And when it comes to our economy, our Congress matters far more than who occupies the White House,” Golden wrote.

By January, Golden believes Trump will once again occupy the White House and Maine’s lawmakers must be willing to not only hold him accountable, but to work with him.

“I urge everyone — voters, elected officials, the media, and all citizens — to ignore the chattering class’s scare tactics and political pipedreams,” Golden wrote. “We don’t need party insiders in smoke-filled back rooms to save us. We can defend our democracy without them.”

Golden, like all other House lawmakers, is up for reelection this year. He will take on Maine state Rep. Austin Theriault, a Republican, in the general election this fall.

Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan index, ranks Golden’s district as a toss-up. Trump carried the district by 6 points in 2020.

His op-ed is a stark contrast to comments from Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who on Tuesday became the first House Democrat to publicly call on Biden to remove himself from the race.

In a post on social media platform X, Theriault said Golden’s piece was “a very phony attempt to avoid accountability.” He asked Golden if he supports Biden or not and whether he believes the president is mentally competent.

“He won’t say, because he puts politics ahead of Mainers,” Theriault said.

[pixeljade]

I also want folks to know that i come from a consistently blue state, california. Out here in a former-swing-state-turned-red-state, i think a lot of people see democrats as useless, because the ones they get are 1) milder than the consistent blue state dems and 2) usually spending their tenure doing damage control instead of progressing things. Same thing happens at the federal level constantly.

But lemme tell ya, in California? I'm trans and my boobs are 100% taxpayer-funded. You heard that right, they have basically-socialized-medicine in the form of Medi-Cal (free healthcare for qualifying poor folks) and it fucks, and theyre planning on making it more officially socialized! They are also a sanctuary state for abortions, for immigrants, etc. Its far from perfect, people have definitely seen me complain about it here, but when the democrats have complete control consistently for years, and they no longer have to deal with Republican asshats throwing a molotov into the social structure every four to eight years, Democrats DO actually get shit done! And you might think "okay but did everyone get super inactive and satiated with such nice laws, and forget to tear down capitalism?" Nah, there's still a hefty leftist movement out there with some great folks! They just get to do it with better healthcare, better pay, a lot more general support than out here. So yeah. It DOES make a difference, and it DOES lead into the grand scheme of destroying capitalism

[thevioletjones]

Listen, the DNC fucking nailed that convention so hard, I'm positive we're gonna win.

The party platform they laid out is immaculate. The stark contrast in messaging from that of the party of loveless, bigoted, weirdo, grifter, ghouls couldn't be more plain.

Somehow, in just 4 days, the Dems have officially become the party of family values, in addition to being the party of equality and inclusivity. It's actually surreal to those of us old enough to have slogged our way through many contentious election cycles and decades of hypocrytical myopic bullshit foisted upon us by old-fashioned post-Reagan conservatives.

The selection of Tim Walz as VP turned out to be masterful. Next to him, JD Vance looks even more pathetic and stupid than he already did. The men on the republican ticket are fundamentally incapable of acting like the informed, caring adults on the historic democratic ticket.

I'm disappointed in the youth on social media as usual. As an elder millennial progressive, I have always been further left than the tickets I've voted for and the administrations I've supported. Even my favorite politicians have done things I don't like or agree with. But that's the way it is. It's something we as voters and citizens do not have full control over and never will.

I believe in a free Palestine and I in no way condone the US involvement in supplying Israel with weapons in an unjust war. I also am not a fan of the barely disguised antisemitism that's permeating that cause, and I'm smart enough to know that the entirety of the conflict is much more complex than the last year's news cycle. You can seek out documentaries by credible news sources (like the excellent Vice News program previously aired on HBO and other cable channels) that detail bothe the history of Israel, the history of Palestinian struggles, and the history of the US relationship with Israel, and what that territory means to the different religious factions that want it for themselves (and how sects of Christianity have been indoctrinated into the cause of gaining it for themselves).

The thing is that this election isn't about that relationship or that conflict. It's not about anyone else's country. It's about ours.

I'm American, but I grew up in Venezuela. They just had a big election there that resulted in a steal from a dictator-like unpopular president. But unlike ee did with Trump the first time he lost, they can't actually get his ass out of the presidential palace. Chavez and Maduro have ruined that country with the same anti-democratic tactics that Trump would love to employ and pushed millions of citizens to emigrate from the country.

None of that is about the US either.

My point being, every country on this planet has it's own problems that for better or for worse, we have to largely leave in the hands of the citizens of those nations to resolve.

This is your opportunity to continue the slow correction of the path we've been on in America since Clinton and Obama. It's a slow march towards progress that keeps getting stymied and dragged back, then pushed a little bit forward again. These moderate liberals are the only vote we have that will ever possibly lead to a truly progressive hero and champion. You know, most likely someone in one of our generations.

Millenials and Gen Z have a lot in common, but as the older of the two, I'm telling you, only time and experience will prove to you that you can't have everything in one candidate or even an entire party, and wasting your ability to actually make a difference for noble ideals that won't make an actual difference to those lives you think you're trying to save is illogical.

Israel will not stop bombing Gaza because you sat out of a US election, or because you protested the DNC, or protest voted 3rd party.

Until the system is overhauled, there is no point in 3rd party voting. Of course we should have more than 2 options. We don't.

Anyway....... I am joyful this week.

I still can't believe Grandpa Joe actually got pushed out of the nomination. They are taking this swift shift to Kamala Harris and running Sha'Carri Richardson fast with it.

Get on board.

It's nice not to feel doomed all the time. I don't even care if it's partially an illusion. I know the alternative is a living nightmare that needs to end.

[arizonaconservativegal]

If you’re a conservative with reasonable beliefs, more power to you, that’s great, we need more people like you.

But you’re doing yourself a major disservice if you take a post about anti-social behaviors from our party and showing you don’t socialize much and just stick your head in the sand and go “nuh uh that doesn’t happen!” Just leaves that avenue open to attack from Democrats.

Both my parents are registered republicans, and my mom has had to distance herself from fellow conserative friends specifically bc of that adrenochrome stuff. (Some of the friends were Korean btw, so i don’t wanna hear racism bs) My friend who isnt a republican but whose parents are both R has her mom sick of her dad bc of this stuff. Even at my job, the guys who talk about politics are work go to the exact topics mentioned in that post you said doesn’t happen. Democrats are just gonna pull up screenshots and use that to undermine everything else youre saying and say its fake and made up too.

Project2025, which I have read, wants to abolish overtime pay unless it interferes with the Sabbath - not religious stuff in general, only the Sabbath and only if you believe in the Sabbath for real. That’s literally only christians and jews. nobody else.

I’m not saying those are your beliefs, I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen if trump is elected president. But Project2025 is a really big thing and not just bc liberals keep on pointing to it to fearmonger. abortion is one thing but how are we gonna tell people “we dont want christianity to be the main thing we just have morals” if we’ve got big think tanks going “actually we wanna test people for their religon at work” ? radical conservatism is gonna kill moderate conservatism and make people vote dem. my dad even voted for biden last election and hes been a republican since before the 90s. the weird stuff is immature but the things they’re calling weird do happen

Okay look I fully understand that no one wants to believe me here so I'm shouting into the void expecting something to happen and that's ridiculous but I'm going to do it anyway because I still have a few minutes until my conference call starts.

I've been working in Republican politics professionally for ten years. A decade. I'm not talking out of my ass when I say no one is taking Project 2025 seriously. I actually do know that directly. When the Heritage Foundation is mentioned in conversation, people roll their eyes. The thing about think tanks like that is that they don't have to deal with the reality of what they're suggesting. They essentially throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. If something does - then they'll write an actual policy prescription or draft legislation so that lawmakers have something to start working on. I know you probably don't know what the difference is (which I don't mean as a knock on you, it's just not something most people know), but Project 2025 contains none of that. Until the conversations I hear at work start to shift or I see one of those ideas become a policy treatment or draft bill, I'm not going to worry about it. From a practical standpoint, all Project 2025 is today is a Democrat fundraising point.

To your other point, there are roughly 70 million registered Republicans in this country, not counting third party members or conservative leaning independents. Some of them suck. A lot. I'm really not trying to pretend that's not the case. But to write a post claiming that all conservatives are like that is absurd and shows that you don't spend time around us. The very vast majority of conservatives are just normal human beings who go to the grocery store and work boring jobs and take the kids to little league practice and hold extremely boring opinions on politics. Just like the very vast majority of liberals. It would be equally unreasonable of me to go around telling everyone that all Democrats are the equivalent of the Bernie bro who shot up a bunch of Republican members of Congress a few years ago or that they're all the like the people who send me rape threats here or call my old campaign office to say their going to firebomb us. It would be really easy for me to believe that if all I did was spend time around other conservatives and my only interactions with the left were with their raging nutcases. But I spend time around liberals so I know they're not like that any more than we are like that jackass last night.

It is so easy these days to put yourself in a little bubble of people who think like you and only ever see the worst of the people who don't. That used to be difficult for conservatives to do because media was all very left-leaning so even if we didn't personally know a lefty, we still saw them portrayed positively on tv, whereas the left didn't see that of us. With streaming and algorithms and alternate media these days, we are heading in that direction too. Very little scares me more about the future than that.

The only way to fix that is if we all start talking to normal people on the other side the aisle again. That's all I'm trying to get people do to. You don't even have to talk to them about politics. Talk to them about baseball or something, I don't care. Just something so that when you think of the other party, you think of the human beings you know instead of some boogeyman. There are nearly 12,000 people following this blog. That guy last night wasn't one of them - why does he get to represent them? They didn't do anything wrong and they outnumber him, literally almost 12,000 to 1. The only reason anyone listened to him was that he 'confirmed' their bias and they didn't think about it any more than that. They saw one example of what they already believed and let that give them a reason to ignore the mountain of things contradicting them. So I'm pissed at that guy for that and for generally being a shithead.

But I'm still going to say it because it's still true: if you think that's how all conservatives are, you obviously don't spend a lot of time around conservatives.