So... yeah. Figured I’d link these resources for whoever needs them.

Something important to keep in mind, though: Roe v Wade isn’t dead yet. The leaked memo says that the Supreme Court plans to strike it down when they issue their verdict. But it’s not set in stone yet. So go raise hell. Donate. Advocate. Make your voices heard in whatever way you can and support every last politician, local and federal, who’s gonna protect abortion rights. If there’s still a chance to change this ruling, then we need to do everything possible to make that chance a reality. Because I will be fucked if we let a stolen court put in place by genocidal fascists drag us back to the dark ages.

Swing states, listed in order of how easily Dems should give up on them?

Well of the 10 closest states from the 2020 election, I don't think we should give up on any of them. Here are the states in order from the smallest percentage margin to the largest.

Georgia (Biden by 0.2%)

Arizona (Biden by 0.3%)

Wisconsin (Biden by 0.6%)

Pennsylvania (Biden by 1.2%)

North Carolina (Trump by 1.4%)

Nevada (Biden by 2.4%)

Michigan (Biden by 2.8%)

Florida (Trump by 3.4%)

Texas (Trump by 5.6%)

Minnesota (Biden by 7.1%)

I'd say that of these, Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia are definitely trending towards Democrats although as you can tell, Georgia was way too close for comfort and Trump won North Carolina and Texas, the latter by about 600,000 votes. I'd include Arizona in this but I can't help but think that AZ's leftward shift is due to Trump, the ghost of John McCain, and the Arizona GOP being lunatics but we'll see. The thing is, the Sunbelt is shifting left because of college-educated suburbanites who, like I've said, are not reliable coalition partners because they pay for government programs without benefiting from them, and will gladly vote Republican if the GOP isn't totally insane.

The states that are moving away from Democrats are Wisconsin for sure and to a lesser degree Michigan and Pennsylvania because we're getting annihilated with white people, especially those without a college-degree, and I sincerely hope Dems do better with them this fall or we're fucked. If you remember, Obama won Iowa and Ohio twice but until Democrats fix our white voter problem, we aren't going to be competitive in those states, like I really hope Tim Ryan can pull it off but it's an uphill slog.

As for Florida, it's a crapshoot because Florida Dems are really unorganized and don't know how to get out the vote, but the reality is that FL is a true swing state in terms of demographics. The issue is, the Democrats there aren't progressives, they openly hate socialism, and also, Dems don't turn out while Republicans go to the polls, rain or shine, and vote for Marco Rubio and Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis, even while hating them. @femalegothic is more informed than me though since she's from Ron DeSantis' homeland.

So yeah. Democrats shouldn't give up on any states on this list, but every day I'm thankful that Schumer isn't in charge of the DSCC anymore because if he was, we'd be in a MUCH worse place for the midterms. But we'll see how November shakes out I guess.

Dickheads of the Month: November 2022

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of November 2022 to make sure that they are never forgotten.    

The optics of Suella Braverman arriving at a migrant centre in an army chinook helicopter was clearly planned, given her ranting about an “invasion” which definitely hasn't led to people petrol bombing migrant centres after she used that terminology - but when called out on the taxpayer forking out £50k for a photo op the best defence she could come up with was she choose an army helicopter because she wanted to get a good look at the coastline as if maps don't exist, and definitely not because she wanted the most fashy imagery to go with the fashy things which come out of her mouth

So it turns out that Gavin Williamson isn't just a snivelling little creep, but also a bullying little shit who when serving as Defence Secretary (before being sacked for leaking the minutes from a COBRA meeting to a mate at the Telegraph, yet somehow isn't in jail) once told somebody to slit their own throat and jump out the window, and on another occasion threatened to unleash his pet tarantula onto somebody.  In other words, once again Rishi Sunak has shown superb judgment in his cabinet appointments - especially when Williamson resigned, as opposed to being sacked

...only for Wes Streeting to make it impossible for Labour to make any comment about bullying after he called Jeremy Corbyn “senile” in Commons less than 24 hours after Williamson was out the door

...and then Rishi Sunak responded to reports of Dominic Raab habitually bullying Justice Department staff by doing the square root of fuck all, even after it emerged that the MoJ made sure to have a senior civil servant in the room with Raab at all times to stop him bullying his subordinates

...and then along came Lee Anderson at PMQs to whine that the Labour MPs criticising Suella Braverman was clearly them bullying her, because if anybody knows bullying it would be the Tory MP who assaulted a member of the public at the Tory conference

In which way does Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeting from the account of the current owner of Twitter that people should vote Republican in the US midterms demonstrate the sort of “impartiality” that billionaire manchild Elon Musk said that Twitter should demonstrate?

Snivelling little creep Gavin Williamson having a meltdown and threatening then-Chief Whip Wendy Morton because he couldn't get into the Queen’s funeral should have ended his aspirations of being a minister ever again - if not for the fact that Rishi Sunak decided to make him Minister Without Portfolio for reasons beyond comprehension, and once those threatening text messages came to light that meant Sunka was now having to make excuses for two people he should not have added to his cabinet in the first place

Billionaire manchild Elon Musk appears to not be taking it well that his suggestion of tiered freeze peach is getting laughed off the platform he paid $44bn for all because Hard Drive Mag dunked on him like his name was Nagasaki, tweeting one cringy meme after another about how people are big meanies to not pay $8 a month for something which they didn't have to pay for until Musk decided to monetise it - and then reduced the cost from $20 because he failed to comprehend what Stephen King’s criticism wasn’t that he didn't want to pay $20 a month for a blue tick, but he shouldn't have to

...and then very clever businessman Elon Musk had to humiliatingly roll back his mass layoffs as it dawned on him that maybe, just maybe, there was a reason why Twitter had so many people employed as moderators and factcheckers 

...and because billionaire manchild Elon Musk has the thinnest skin on record, when the inevitability of his approach to verification saw numerous Twitter users pay the $8, change their username to “Elon Musk” and tweet out some particularly harsh truths about the tax-dodging, union-avoiding, Blood Diamond-backed cretin, Musk responded by permabanning them while whining that the accounts should make it clear they were parodies...and permabanned those making it clear they were parodies

...and then billionaire manchild Elon Musk had to very quickly remove the paid verification option from Twitter after the share prices of companies including Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin nosedived as a result of creative shitposting - although it was coincidentally removed as soon as somebody creatively shitposted masquerading as Tesla, almost as if Musk wasn't that interested in other companies’ share price tumbling, but as soon as his own started to nosedive even harder he stepped right in to stop that happening

...and then billionaire manchild Elon Musk was diagnosed with a terminal case of small man syndrome as his response to a Twitter engineer replying to one of Musk’s tweets that was full of technically incoherent gibberish that demonstrated that he doesn’t even know how the platform he paid $44bn for even works by telling him how it works and how his tweet was downright incorrect - so, of course, the God King of Twitter fired the engineer via tweet.  And then several more engineers for similar reasons.  And then posted a tweet slagging off the engineers he fired for exposing his gross ignorance

...shortly before billionaire manchild Elon Musk thought it would be a brilliant idea to pitch an ultimatum to Twitter’s engineers: agree to work significantly longer hours (in no small part due to the mass layoffs) by 5pm the following day or accept three months severance.  Soon afterwards, Twitter’s HQ was shut down for the weekend, which definitely had nothing to do with the engineers shrugging their shoulders and deciding to take the severance instead of continue having to deal with the clueless billionaire’s bullshit

...and then billionaire manchild Elon Musk had a long, drawn-out meltdown on his Twitter feed because Apple was no longer advertising Twitter on the App Store while screeching about the c-o-n-spiracy of Apple’s hidden 30% tax on all app purchases which has been front and centre of the App Store’s ToS for well over a decade, all while looking uncannily like he was whipping up his followers to attack Apple’s Tim Cook while howling that Cook wasn't replying to his tweets immediately as if CEOs are supposed to be on Twitter all day - only to suddenly do a 180 and say there was never any risk of Twitter being dropped from the App Store, which is utterly unhinged behaviour

Remember the days when Tim Pool claimed they weren't a member of the alt-right, in spite regularly being seen hanging out with the alt-right?  Well he seems to have forgotten that, based on him responding to the Club Q shooting by falsely (if that even has to be explained at this point) calling the victims paedophiles who groomed kids to amplify the alt-right dogwhistling about drag shows that's been getting increasingly nastier for months

...as demonstrated by mug salesman Steven Crowder quote tweeting Pool with what looks uncannily like the fourteen words, which goes to show just how much of a dumpster fire Twitter rapidly became under its new, clueless leadership

Unifying force Keir Starmer once again demonstrated what an alternative he is to the Tories when harrumphing on Sophie Ridge that there are too many overseas workers recruited to work in the NHS, somehow forgetting that the NHS is literally supported by overseas workers due to how prohibitively expensive studying for a medical degree is and, of course, also stopping short of suggesting existing NHS staff get a pay raise

Nobody was expecting Kari Lake to take losing the Arizona gubernatorial election well considering how badly she would take non-American journalists questioning the version of reality she lives in by saying that foreigners aren't allowed to comment about American politics (which she did to both British and Australian journalists), but bloody hell we haven’t seen a meltdown like hers since...well, the end of 2020

I’m sure that it's a coincidence that the ultra-relatable Rishi Sunak happened to be selling poppies at Westminster tube station at the exact same time that a gaggle of client journalists happened to be passing through to photograph and film him doing so out of the goodness of his heart

...and then unifying force Keir Starmer was papped a day later doing the exact same thing outside St Pancras, once again by complete coincidence when press photographers were passing by with their equipment in hand, which definitely didn't look staged either

It turns out that, when Agnes Callard isn't crossing a University of Chicago picket line and justifying it with some guff about a “philosophical emergency”, she's taking to Twitter to pretend that her children are grateful to her for throwing away their Halloween candy when they go to bed, so is either cruel to her children or somebody who types out bizarre fantasies on Twitter about how she wishes she was cruel to their children 

The ultra-relatable Rishi Sunak claimed that the reason he did not wear a World AIDS Day ribbon is because he does not believe in wearing things on his lapel.  Except for when he wore a poppy on his lapel for several days the previous month.  Or at least two different badges to show solidarity with Ukraine.  Those were on his lapel and photographed many, many times

Pure bastardtrade from Mercedes-Benz when they looked at BMW locking their top speeds behind a paywall and, instead of thinking of not doing that to steal a march on their most direct competitors by not demanding their customers pay a subscription so they could floor it, but instead copied the idea wholeheartedly 

Unifying force Keir Starmer said he could not attend the first MPs surgery for his constituency due to urgent business, only for that “urgent business” to be him attending The Spectator’s annual award ceremony - where he was awarded Politician of the Year, a real good look for a Labour leader...

Did you know that Lady Susan Hussey is 83?  Because a lot of people are bringing that up as if it's some kind of defence at her assuming that Ngozi Fulani must be a migrant because of her skin colour

In the latest bid of Matt Hancock to gain relevance outside of true crime podcasts, he joined the cast of I’m A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here - which immediately saw him suspended as an MP for prioritising eating kangaroo testicles over knowing where his constituency might be, apparently forgetting that Nadine Dorries had the whip suspended when she appeared on the same show a decade earlier

...and then it emerged that Matt Hancock had hired a PR firm to try and help him cheat his way to victory by encouraging TikTok users to use all five of their allotted votes to keep him in the jungle and showed them how to do it, which technically isn't a breach of the voting rules - until you look at the stats of the account gaming the system and find yourself asking why it has almost twenty times the followers of any other contestant

Balan Wonderworld is no longer the worst thing Yuji Naka has done since joining Square Enix, as Naka along with fellow executives Taisuke Sazaki and Fumiaki Suzuki were arrested after it was found that they had sneakily invested heavily in Aiming shares shortly before Square Enix announced that Aiming would be making Dragon Quest Tact, seemingly unaware that they’d get found out sooner or later

Nice job by the Qatari World Cup organisers when they decided, just two days before the tournament kicks off, that fans can't drink in the stands of the stadiums after all but they can drink in the executive boxes.  Luckily we didn't hear much kvetching from The FA about this, given their archaic rule about the lower orders not being allowed to drink in view of the pitch, a rule which doesn't apply to rugby or cricket

...and then FIFA turned around and told captains they were no longer allowed to wear OneLove armbands and would be booked if they took to the pitch wearing one, which definitely doesn't open the door to the captains for the final doing so because it's not like being booked in the final would affect them much

Once again England fans went on the charm offensive during a major tournament, be it mocking USA fans about 9/11 in the stadium for England’s match with the USA, while the fans who didn't get any further than Tenerife having a mass punch-up with Wales fans.  Charming bunch as usual...

Perhaps it would be for the best if Martin Daubney went back to school, considering he went on GB News to tell all three of their viewers that a Twitter poll proved that the public still supports Jonestown - in spite the small inconvenience of 55% of the vote on GB News’ Twitter feed being against Jonestown, which Daubney couldn’t bring himself to admit.  But he called people who disagree “Remaniacs”, so that makes it better...

There is no dick energy smaller than Nick Adams having “Alpha Male” in his Twitter username before routinely tweeting about what is and isn't “Alpha male” behaviour, which is apparently eating wings and drinking beer at Hooters. Just a thought, Nick: throw in a Brazzers subscription and you’re living the fantasy of a 14-yar old boy

It’s safe to assume that Babylon Bee really didn't like Stephen King putting Elon Musk in his place, that place being on his scrawny backside, based on their “satirical” headline about King reading an awful lot like a 13-year old ranting because somebody on an internet forum exposed them as a clueless oaf.  But remember, right wing comedy is good...

...and then Babylon Bee quote tweeted the exact same “joke” to explain the “joke”, which was just them typing out the “joke” in full a second time, because comedy is definitely repeating a joke which failed to land the first time in the hope it lands a second

As promotions go, the one by KFC where they suggested their German customers celebrate the anniversary of Kristallnacht with some cheesy chicken is one that surely won't see the light of day ever again...right?

Just as Braun Strowman had somewhat rehabilitated his image after his WWE return, he only goes and takes to Twitter to mouth off about smaller wrestlers - which promptly got him dunked on by those same smaller wrestlers both within WWE and signed to other companies, which really made it look like Strowman could not control his narrative very well...

Smooth moves by Streatham Rovers FC when they posted a tweet commemorating the 21st anniversary of 9/11.  On the 9th of November.  Yeah...

democracy was on the ballot and it won

I am a slow-boring-of-hard-boards realist about politics. I am delightedly surprised when I get what I want AT ALL. Months and months ago, I said that my number one issue in this election was the desperate need to put the brakes on democratic backsliding in the United States. I’m not sure how to process the fact that I’ve started to get what I wanted even before the transition.

There is a real path forward for democracy reform in this country. EVEN WITH an aspiring autocrat doing everything he could to rig this election, EVEN WITH a pandemic raging, EVEN WITH malicious foreign actors still trying cause problems, EVEN THOUGH we still have not restored the Voting Rights Act, EVEN WITH all the structural imbalances built into our creaky eighteenth-century constitutional system:

Voter participation went way up! People voted over the course of several weeks from the comfort of their own homes, or on weekends, or on Election Day. And because people took responsibility and spread out their votes like that, it was safer to go to polling places. That was a huge collective choice to prevent a lot of suffering and even some deaths.

A big part of why they could do that is the enormous number of citizens who rallied to work at the polls so that the retirees who usually do the job could sit this year out.

Cities and states around the country took the time they need to count carefully.

Media gatekeepers, for the most part, had the discipline and the patience to be helpful to users about what we knew and what we didn’t. If anything, they’re erring on the side of being too cautious. This is after weeks of most media gatekeepers having the discipline to debunk a disinformation campaign by Trump’s allies and Russian backers, instead of aggressively participating in it.

Social media companies took the most aggressive countermeasures yet against election misinformation.

The person who got the most votes is also the person who won the election, which is pretty cool!

That is a huge improvement from EVERY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. Just in terms of how well the election itself was administered, my only major criticism is that we still did not do something called risk-limiting audits. In the case of an election, audits are basically a carefully calibrated statistical smell test. They’re not a recount. They are a reliable and cost-effective way of figuring out if a recount or some other type of scrutiny should be done for the sake of public confidence in the results – and that makes them a cost-effective deterrence against any bad actors who are considering sabotage. Audits are important whether an election goes your way or not, just like smoke detectors are important whether your building catches fire or not.

But that absolutely should not take away from the fact that we overcame all the new problems that were introduced this year and took some big steps toward solving a lot of old ones – despite the best efforts of Trump and all his enablers. Imagine what we could do under an administration that is helping democracy revitalization instead of aggressively hindering it.

The easiest way for us to make the most comprehensive change would be to win the Senate, which would allow a Biden administration to pass a revitalized Voting Rights Act and restore legitimacy to the federal courts. If you have any time or money to spare in the next few weeks, consider sharing it with the two excellent Democratic candidates in the Georgia Senate runoffs.

We should be realistic about the situation: we’re probably not going to get to do it the easy way, at least, not until after the midterms. But we’re not going to be doing it the hard way any more. The hard way is what we’re doing now. We’re about to get a Department of Justice that opposes civil rights violations and enforces what’s left of the current Voting Rights Act. The intelligence and military cybersecurity units are going to be able to work with the administration instead of around it. And we aren’t going to have to deal with a 24/7 fusillade of lies and voter intimidation coming from the Oval Office. To spin out the “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” metaphor: we’ve been running a marathon uphill carrying forty-pound backpacks. We’ve reached the top where the path levels out, and someone just took our bags and gave us protein bars.

And while we have our protein bars, let’s look around, because the view is as clear and as beautiful as it’s going to get. Donald Trump had every intention of wrecking American democracy, and the entire Republican party had every intention of supporting his aspiring dictatorship. And, while Trump himself is and always has been a clown, the person occupying the Oval Office is the most powerful person on the planet. Actually, that’s an understatement. Since Truman gave the order to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our technology has grown stronger and our government has concentrated more and more power in the executive branch, which means that every holder of that office has arguably been the most powerful person in the history of the world. Every other holder of that office has at least wanted to think of himself as using that power for the advancement of democracy and humanity. Donald Trump affirmatively tried to use all that power to entrench himself there permanently.

We stopped him. We stopped him peacefully. We stopped him without further harming the many vulnerable people he holds hostage in a hundred different ways. We stopped him not by elevating an equal-but-opposite charismatic demagogue for a two-men-enter-one-man-leaves smackdown, but by building a vibrant, heterogenous coalition and finding competent, experienced, principled leaders who respect that coalition in all its raucous power. We stopped him, in short, by choosing to do democracy.

That feels good today and it’s enormously consequential. It is also proof of concept. It is something that can happen, because it has happened.

Something that political scientists and democracy advocates have been saying for the past few years is that Trump has been a propaganda gold mine for dictators. They use him as a cautionary tale against liberal democracy or even against hoping that things can ever get better: see, even the Americans are no better than we are! Dictators can artificially insulate themselves from accountability in the short term, which makes them ill-equipped to think about backfire. Train your people’s eyes on the aspiring American autocrat, and they can all see his humiliating fall.

To our sisters and brothers around the world, from Idlib to Hong Kong, from São Paolo to Moscow, and along every wide country road in between: this is the only true thing your oppressors have ever told you. We are no better than you are. We are no more suited for or entitled to liberation. Look what we have done. Imagine what you can do.

There’s kind of a false dichotomy going on where people swung from “Trump is going to successfully rig the election for himself” pessimism to “oh, Biden only ousted an incumbent by a freakishly large margin, it wasn’t an immediate electoral college landslide, why did Trump get so close.” This take has set in before deep blue California and New York have come close to completing their mail-in ballot counts, which tells you that it isn’t serious, but it’s also beside the point. Trump succeeded in making the election unfair. If he hadn’t illegitimately put a whole lot of thumbs on the scale in his favor, if we’d actually had the free and fair election we deserved, I think he probably would have lost in a landslide. We did the work and showed up in numbers that were ultimately too big to rig. That led to victory, although not a victory you can quantifiably measure against the dozen or so American elections that were more or less free and fair. That doesn’t mean the rigging didn’t happen or have any impact. It means we beat the spread. As the world’s most prominent train enthusiast once said, that is a big fucking deal.

A government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the earth. One day soon, it may even exist. That is our charge. That is our choice.

So take a moment to recharge. Enjoy the view. Breathe. We got work to do.

Attica! Attica!

This sucks but I like Attica as a neurotic republican politician. Idk how to write Leon being mute or whatever I just gave him a stutter bc...communication. Also I dearly wanted Serena to have a solid place in the cast so I was like, what the hell, she can be on Attica’s staff. Idk if she should have an important position like campaign manager or something but rn she’s just an assistant. Also since this is Attica’s POV Serena is less funny and Leon is idk more caring than he actually is bc she perceives them that way (Serena is actually funny and Leon is actually a dick)

Its funny because I’m pretty sure Attica is going to be the “good guy” on the protagonists side and help them and Milo is going to end up being a terrifying source of trouble for everyone. Also I was like ok and rolled the ethnicity dice and was like the Kings can be Chinese and the surname King was changed by their grandfather from Qing when their family really started grabbing power, and then was like ok Serena’s adopted but she’s of Iranian origin (guess that means Danny is too)

$$$$$

Attica King averaged 4 hours of sleep a night. And that was if she was lucky.

Looking at twitter was giving her heart palpitations, but what was she supposed to do, 5 weeks before the Midterm elections? Her numbers guy said that her district would re-elect her by a large margin-- it was red. It had always been red. It wasn’t like that hippie freak who was running against her had a chance in hell. People in Indiana loved her. People in DC though, where she spent considerably more of her time, hated her guts. The vitriol and fake news that journalists were spewing about her online proved that much.

“I’m gonna kill somebody,” Attica said. It was 7 am. She had already been to the gym, showered, sensibly done her hair and make-up, and put on the kind of suit that said ‘listen to me you dummy’. She brandished her phone at her Chief of Staff. “Do you see what they’re saying about me, Leon? They act like I’m some kind of younger, smarter, Chinese female version of Stalin all because they can’t bully me into voting for their stupid gun regulations. People are out there blowing each other up with their minds! What the fuck am I supposed to do, help get rid of guns and leave every sucker who can’t do magic defenseless?”

Leonard, Attica’s Chief of Staff and younger brother, shrugged helplessly. She liked to think of him as the RFK to her JFK. Without the whole getting shot in the head thing. “G-get off twitter,” he said. He was not partaking in the breakfast that Attica’s assistant picked up for the team. Something about the breakfast pastries and espresso made him bitch about how unhealthy it all was. Leon opted to bring a protein shake instead, which worked out for him. At 6 feet tall and weighing over 200 pounds of muscle, he was often mistaken for her bodyguard if he wasn’t dressed up. He kept his black hair shorn close to his head, which didn’t help either. It made him look like he was the type to rip people apart with his bare hands. “You’re obsessing.”

“Where the fuck is Myers?” she asked. “He’s my communications director. Shouldn’t he be out here, I don’t know, directing? Putting an end to all this fake bullshit.” Attica looked at her phone again, pulling up a particularly offensive tweet. “‘ King is unhinged and desperate, putting the needs of lobbyists in front of the needs of her constituents.’--and this is posted with that terrible picture of me, that unflattering close-up where I had pollen in my eyes so they looked red.” She was gripping her phone so tightly that her knuckles went white. “Now whose fault was that? I didn’t have my eye-drops.”

The only other staff member present, Attica’s personal assistant of 3 years, went bug eyed. This was magnified by her thick lensed glasses. She put up her hands defensively and almost dropped the armful of manila folders she was holding. “That’s not my fault, that picture was from when I took some personal time off.”

“That was when you were vacationing in the mental hospital again and I had to rely on a temp for two weeks and was completely up shit creek without you, Serena, so yes it was completely your fault.”

Serena was in her mid 20’s and pretty in a frazzled, underfed, nerdy way. She had only been hired because she was Iranian or something and Attica had been afraid she looked racist after making some allegedly offensive comments while supporting the President’s drone strikes in the Middle East. As it turned out, Serena was brilliant and had graduated from Notre Dame with a degree in Political Science, an inexplicable Chemistry minor, and a desire to work on the Hill. The only reason Attica hadn’t appointed her to a more important position at this point was due to her unfortunate tendency to eat handfuls of pills whenever life got too stressful.

Attica quickly cycled back to the matter at hand. She poured some coffee, which she knew would only make her keep vibrating. It was her 3rd cup of the day. She felt like a hummingbird. “What am I going to do about these people degrading me online?”

From where he sat on the couch, Leon leaned over to out his face in his hands. Dramatic bitch. “For the last time, remember the first amendment.”

“R-r-remember the f-f-first amendment,” Attica repeated in a high pitched child’s voice, mocking him. She chugged the rest of her coffee and caught Serena staring at her like she had lost her mind. At this rate she was going to going to have a heart attack before she turned 40. “Grandfather would have sent someone after those motherfuckers with a crowbar.”

“G-Grandfather was a monster.”

He was right. But being monstrous was just more effective. Who was that old dead guy who said it was better to be feared than loved? Napoleon?

Attica kept looking at her phone. Too bad people didn’t seem to fear her yet. She could feel the blood pounding in her face. When she was angry, her skin turned very red, blotchy and unattractive. It couldn’t be helped. And what she was reading made her angry. Half of what she was mentioned in was negative. And half of those were violent, threats against her. “Here,” she said, landing on an egregious one. “‘King’s giant tits once again distracting everyone from her cloven hooves lol’. I want this person dragged into the street and shot.”

“Jesus C-Christ, c-c-calm down.” The muscles in Leon’s face tightened. He was gritting his teeth.

“Ma’am, maybe you should put your phone away,” said Serena.

Attica kept reading. “‘The NRA owns King but how would she like it if she got used as target practice’. ‘If I saw (pretend this is an at sign)AtticaKingIN in real life I would punch that bitch in the face.’” She began to breathe faster. Were these people from Indiana? Would they vote? Did they actually hate her? Who were these people? “‘King is part of the GOP gestapo’. ‘(at)AtticaKingIN doesn’t care about gun violence in her own state, vote her out!’ ‘I hate that dumb cunt (at)AtticaKingIN she needs to shut her mouth or suck my dick’. ‘I--”

Leon stood up, snatched Attica’s phone out of her hands, then held it above her head where she couldn’t reach it. Attica punched him in the chest but her brother was a wall of muscle and didn’t seem to feel it.

“Seriously, A, you need to c-calm down,” he told her. Attica punched him again. “I don’t want to know about the threats anyone’s making towards you, it’s upsetting. At 9, that lobbyist who works for Madeline C-Caligaris--”

“Do you want some xanax?” Serena interrupted.

Attica spun around to glare at her. She was aware of how flushed she must look. It was just...she cared so much about what people thought about her. “No,” she said coldly, but breathing heavily. She brushed a strand of hair away from her face. Imagine if Grandfather could see her now. After all, he had wanted Leon to head the family business. Hell, before he died, the old man had even expressed regret for treating their youngest..brother, Milo, like a stray dog. But never her. And Attica had tried so hard for all those years and slaved away just to get his validation… “Do you need a xanax, Serena?”

“I do now,” muttered Serena.

Attica tried to grab her phone one more time, then gave up and sat down.

It wasn’t even 7:15.

She took a deep breath to clear her head. “Ok. Tell me about this lobbyist. Calligaris-- that’s the Proverge exec, right?”

Leon nodded curtly. He put his sister’s phone in his breast pocket and sat down next to her. With a sudden rush of urgency, Attica realized that all he had wanted to do was protect her. How had their roles switched like that? When they were little she constantly made herself torment the kids who picked on him for the way he talked. After 30 years he barely even stuttered anymore. “C-can I get those files from Foster v Proverge, please?” Serena leafed through her armful of papers and presented him with the relevant ones. “Thanks. You read this, A?”

“Let’s work under the assumption that I didn’t.” She had been too busy talking to her numbers guy about the polls the previous night to actually look into anything that would affect her policies.

“Proverge wants to build a factory in your district. Magic distillation for use in their products. 200 new jobs. They c-can’t get approval in Indiana anymore-- they c-can’t get approval from most places these days because of all the lawsuits. People protest.”

Attica rolled her eyes. Liberals. “What lawsuits?”

“From the early 2000’s. Proverge distillation factories in Georgia, Tennessee, and Michigan all attempted to c-cover up widespread negative variant medical symptoms that affected workers who were exposed to thauma-slurry being distilled unsafely.” Leon flipped a few pages of the file. “Mostly c-cosmetic. But there were c-claims that the exposure to the slurry also lead to violent psychological problems and some c-clearly unsafe environmental effects.”

People were so whiny. Attica shrugged. “200 new jobs is more important than a couple honest mistakes the company made. I want to make this happen-- an announcement about job creation could really push my numbers in the polls. If protests become a problem, I’ll just send in the cops to clean them up.” She paused. “Or, I’ll send in Milo.”

Leon looked at her like he was trying to peerinto her soul or something. His broad, honest face was genuinely concerned. What did he see in her face? Did he see the will to do whatever she had to? “He’s g-g-getting worse. You c-can’t keep doing that.”

“The fuck I can.”

“He’s not listening to me anymore.” Leon’s face twisted up. Out of the whole family, he was the only one who treated Milo as more than he was. He allowed their deviant half brother to terrorize everyone as he pleased, just because he felt sorry for the bastard. “He’s go-g-going to screw up.”

The thing about Milo, was that someone had to be holding his leash.

“He’s fine,” Attica said with finality. “Maybe if he fucks up bad enough, he’ll actually learn his lesson.”

Leon stood up, handed her phone back, and walked out of the room without saying another word.

“Are you talking about your creepy little brother again?” asked Serena. She was scurrying around, straightening up the breakfast pastries and exuding her nervous energy. “He makes me uncomfortable.”

Attica massaged her forehead. “Me too,” she said. “Can you get in touch with the Proverge people and make sure they’re on their way?”

“On it.”

She could feel a headache coming on. But getting the credit for creating 200 new jobs... it was worth it. It was even worth dealing with Milo. It was worth it. She could be proud of herself. It was worth it. It would all be worth it.

Wouldn’t it?

Hemlock

I neither spell-checked nor edited this.  Apologies. It’s hard for me to even re-read this, and I wrote it.

One of the lessons of William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is that Hitler couldn’t have happened anywhere or any time else.  He was a unique plague that destroyed one particular culture by exploiting all of the weaknesses it had swept under the rug while otherwise feeling it was the most educated, most enlightened democracy possible. The people with some power over their lives felt too comfortable to confront the problems that were already obvious. Hitler in a way was a karmic answer to hubris. I’m not sure Shirer says this directly (it’s been 30 years since I’ve read the book) but every era gets the villain it deserves. 

This is what currently scares me about Trump. It is almost diabolical, almost Shakespearean how perfectly he has slipped through every alleged check and balance. He is the product of every problem America has pretended doesn’t exist – dynastic wealth, the mafia, corruption, sexism,  unchecked capitalism, etc – and he has consolidated power by exploiting racism, hostility, fear, income inequality and holes in the system that turned out to rely on office holders having a conscience.

In 1933, shortly after Hitler took power – six weeks, in fact – my grandfather wrote a prescient account of what that monster would do next. It was accurate, if not bold enough in its predictions (but how could he, an 18 year old, predict the holocaust?). I have always wondered what I would do in his position, if I would notice what he had noticed, and the answer is no, I have tried to hold onto optimism when that is now clearly no longer useful.

When I was in high school, I was taught in Ancient History that the fall of Athens as a seat of democracy was symbolized by the moment Socrates was forced to drink hemlock. Socrates was executed for the time of inculcating youth with dangerous ideas, but also the death was symbolic, one that should have been avoided, would have been in another time and place.  I’m not sure that’s a popular idea now, and even my teacher said it was a problematic moment to choose. Instead, it was a moment among many other moments where someone outside of the system could point to it and say that a functioning agora would not have allowed it to happen. 

This, unfortunately, resonates with me now. The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court might just have been our hemlock moment. It’s hard to tell for sure (it was hard for Athens to tell, too) but the fact is, a legislative body in charge of making laws has just thrown all evidence to the wind – evidence not just of sexual assault but of serious financial crimes -- in the excitement of causing the ascendency of a terrible man.

I don’t think there’s a single reason this happened and that too frightens me, because it’s overdetermined. The senate decided that they only needed to give brief intellectual cover for their reasons to embrace him, and their base agreed: make him a judge for life. What he serves as an avatar of is so many things: misogyny, angering the left, bringing on the Apocalypse (more about this later), ignoring the will of the majority of people, but mostly this: he is a promise that if you are on the side of Republicans, they will never hold you accountable.  That is powerful magic for people who feel like victims.  That is powerful magic for people who like the idea of being washed clean of their sins without having to do any work for it.

So now Trump controls the entire government, and that has happened with blinding speed.  There is a mid term election coming.  I am going to do everything in my power to make my vote count.  I’m going to encourage everyone to vote, as I believe that a majority of people in America believe in the American ideal rather than the fascism that we’re descending into.  There is a strong possibility, given the polls, that we will take back the House, which is something, and we might make the Senate difficult for them, too.  This will ease things, a little, while we protest and protest and stay alert until 2020, when we can throw the rest of the criminals out. 

But. 

I have a small glimmer, a nugget of worry that started when the truth about Kavanaugh came out, and he was confirmed anyway.  The way I put it then was that we are living through one of those times so well described in McCay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a 19th century treatise on times in human history where huge crowds of people have seemingly gone insane. He cites the now-familiar Tulipmania, as well as other financial manias, witch hunts, that kind of thing. I was feeling that the Republican party had locked arms and were launching their own political Jonestown, guaranteeing a kind of suicide when Democrats started filling the offices. 

I’m no longer so sure. One of the other things that fueled Trump’s rise, beyond all the specific American institutions that failed us, is that he knows how to channel the masses’ anger in a way that I have no experience with and no empathy for.  It’s working for them. It’s exciting to the politicians, too.  I see Trump is doing it again now, calling the left criminals who can’t be governed. He says the left is looking for violence.  The left knows this is ridiculous. Democrats are wishy-washy, the party that steps out of the shower to pee. To paraphrase Ted Mooney, The right wants to win –we want to be loved. 

But there is an old, familiar trick that’s political in nature – accuse the other side of what you’re doing. And right now we are at a place where one of three things is going on. First, and most optimistic, is that the leaders have overplayed their hands. They literally have no idea how angry and how determined women and minorities and those of us who happen to like progressive values are. When they say, as Mitch McConnell did of the sexual assault victims who protested, “I want to thank these clowns for all the help they provided,” he means it. He’s in his own bubble.  Republicans have never seen an angry liberal who knows how to fight back politically.   So maybe it’s that, and maybe when there’s a blue wave, they’re going to be genuinely shocked.  After all, Romney believed Fox News about Obama in the face of facts, and he got his ass handed to him in the election.   

The next possibility is that even they don’t know what’s going to happen next.  They got lucky and they’ll feel emboldened, and they’re just going to go one evil step at a time.  So far everything has worked for them, but there’s no real plan, just the erotic pleasure of power. 

Possibility number three is much worse.  Something we have told ourselves – I have told myself – is that the Republicans are just too arrogant to actually be efficient in making fascism work.  I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been wrong about that. 

The voting experience has already been rigged in ways we know about – gerrymandering, throwing possible Democrats off the voter rolls, killing access to the polls, the lack of paper ballots that may or may not mean there’s computer hacking that changes vote totals.  (And I have to say that final thing might be paranoia, that people know it CAN be done but no one seems to be saying it HAS been done.  Still, the lack of controls over it isn’t just maddening, puzzling or worrying – they only reason to have an open door like that is to invite a malevolent force.)  We know we have to struggle against that.  We know that even with all that stuff in place, there are so many of us that we should win.

But I worry that they’re so confident because they do have a plan.  I have a worry that there’s something the new Supreme Court can do between now and Election Day that fucks us.  Specifically I worry that there’s something Trump does that fucks us and it’s illegal and that the Supreme Court, in an emergency session, upholds it.  Maybe that’s wrong. Maybe that’s just out of the realm of possibility.  Maybe we’ll get to vote. 

What if voting doesn’t work? What if, the day after the election, it’s fishy? Or more than that – obviously it’s been rigged?  The Democrats lose and there are red flags everywhere? Or, what if the Republicans don’t accept the results? Does refusing to validate the election sound beyond possibility? 

Ask Roy Moore if he’s conceded yet. 

You say: if that happens, we’ll take to the streets.  True. I too will take to the streets. What will that do?  We occupy, say, the Senate offices, and then…oh, we’ve seen this already, just a week ago, with Kavanaugh.  The Senate now knows it can ignore angry constituents and seemingly get away with it.  It doesn’t have to actually respect facts or reports or decency or shame or even accept that the other side has any legitimacy. They no longer listen to us.

Let’s say that the rigged results just go forward.  There’s no way that everyone is going to believe they’re rigged.  There will be counterprotests.  There will be media coverage about how it’s just so gosh darned uncertain, and both sides will be shown on the news to show how fair they are.

But let’s agree about this: if the midterms don’t produce a Blue Wave, and if that’s because the results were fishy, we will have marches like you’ve never seen.  There will be the largest force in American history taking to the streets to protest.  We will not be polite. 

That’s as far as any of us have taken it, I think.  Because we think that the people, united, will never be defeated. It sounds right. But this is where it gets bad for me, because I very much suspect that people on the other side have taken it a little further than that.

How would we organize? On our phones?  On Facebook?  On twitter? You’ve got to be kidding.  Our phones are what surveil us. 

You know how the Nazis knew where the Jews were when they came to a new town?  IBM punch cards.  IBM took Nazi money because it was money and they thought that since they also did good for the war effort, it balanced out.  Do you believe that the current barons of tech are more altruistic or moral or ethical than IBM was?  But still that’s not a perfect comparison – what IBM did was actually rather small. Each punchcard had something like 8 pieces of information on it.  You know how much more information your phone and facebook and twitter has about you? 

Your phone isn’t going to work.  Not for you, at least.  For them, yes. 

Further, if protests get real, the reaction isn’t going to be the current leaders throwing up their hands and saying “Y’know what, you have a point” and then doing the right thing. They’ll fucking fight back, and fight dirty.  Your local police who, no matter what that locale is, have a problem with white supremac and, are fully militarized now.  This isn’t going to be like the 1960s.  It’s going to be much worse.  And the military has been rehearsing for suppressing rebellions.  Just ask Flint.  Just ask St Lous.

But, you say, there would have to be due process to –

Really?  Take a moment.  Think about that.

But the horrific possibility of camps to –

Right.  Camps.  Take another moment. 

We don’t advocate violence here in the left.  And let’s be honest – by “left” I mean about 70% of the country.  But we also haven’t gamed out what happens when we’re up against people who aim to win at all costs.  I’m still not doing it. My brain can’t take it further than that.

I hope I’m wrong about all this.  I hope that we aren’t going that far.  But, to return to Shirer, it would make some sense if it does, as the problems with the police and the military and privacy and tech have all been apparent for some time and we’ve done nothing about them because we – meaning the people who have some power over our lives -- felt comfortable.  There’s this kind of karmic justice in that a society that doesn’t deal with its shit gets destroyed by its shit.

On that note, I have been curious for a while about how it is that anyone who has a conscience supports Trump.  To give him any legitimacy means sacrificing your own morals and ethics.  He’s amazingly precise in how he causes every individual in his sway to abandon his or her own positive qualities. I’ve joked that everyone in his circle looks like a Dick Tracy villain, but maybe that’s not an accident. Maybe there’s something that curdles your soul by standing so close to his evil.  (Benjamin Wittes, a writer I like but find problematic, was once friends with Kavanaugh – and defended him at first, until his performance on the Senate floor.  He says that this person isn’t the man he knew.  So say many other legal scholars who once knew him.  Something has changed in him.  It’s weird.)

I was trying to qualify how Trump’s worldview is attractive, and it occurred to me that every word out of Trump’s mouth, every deed, is exactly the opposite of Jesus’s. It’s uncanny. If only there were a word for someone who was the antithesis of Christ. 

Hmm. I guess there is a word. 

I don’t believe he’s the anti-Christ. He’s not that important. But he’s AN anti-Christ.  As a secular Jew I’ve read the Book of Revelation as a metaphor, a warning for how, eventually, someone motivated enough can make you abandon your values unless you’re self-aware enough.  We have long made the mistake of believing the anti-Christ would be slick and undeniable and crafty, but only recently have I realized that no, of course he wouldn’t be.  The truly evil thing about the anti-Christ wouldn’t be that he tricked you.  It would be that he let you be your true self, and your true self was awful.  He only gave you permission to behave as you really wanted to, and that is how you fell. 

There is not much that give me hope here.  Not anything, in fact.  I’m not drinking these days, which could be a mistake.  For a while I was drinking two or three glasses of wine a night and my physician said ‘well, that’s a reasonable response.’  Instead, I’m paying a lot of attention and it’s the anti-Christ thing that has me most on alert.  This is where the essay gets depressing (no, really, sorry about that – the part above is just a warm up).  

The Constitution, like the Bible, tried to anticipate many possible futures, and tried to provide a framework for how to deal with them.  I strongly believe that most of us have moral backbones and many of us wish our neighbors well. But why isn’t this happening now?  We turn to strongmen in times of famine rather than plenty, and ironically we are living in a world of plenty.  It’s being hoarded by the rich, of course, but the resources are there to make most people’s lives decent.  We tend to share in times of prosperity but that’s not happening now.

I have said this in prior essays, but it’s pretty much got to be the endpoint of any essay someone writes now that speculates about the future.  I believe that we as a species recognize, in a way that is baked into our genetic code as mammals, that the future is no longer a renewable resource. I think that climate change is so obvious now and happening so fast, with so little possibility of relief, that we know the jig is up.  We have ruined the weather.

But I can’t even process what that means. There is no way, genuinely, for the human mind to hold onto the probability that in our lifetimes, not that far way, we will have made the surface of the earth unable to support life.  It’s happening so fast.  Beyond all the dramatic stuff – the hurricanes, the floods, the droughts, the fires – I have been traveling around the country this summer and everywhere I see that the sky is wrong.  There’s something off about the clouds, the circulation of air.  People comment on it.  Something is shutting down. Something is making us all uneasy.  You see it.

There are two ways to deal with this fear.  One is to deal with it directly.  Make plans, confront how awful it is, see what’s possible, admit to our coming losses. Treat the future the way we did the development of penicillin or the A-Bomb.  I was just thinking this: the crazy thing is that the only way to combat the fall that’s coming is to be the best possible version of yourself you can be. That doesn’t mean the nicest.  It means being as powerful as you can.  Which is terrifying and difficult and a little amorphous. It’s not about being loved, but about finding your moral core and sticking to it.

We heard just today that we have the scientific knowhow and the ability to start remediating the destruction that’s on its way.  What they say is we lack “the political will” to do it.  What that means is that instead of dealing with it directly, we are trading on fear.   Fear is right now bigger than love.  Fear is motivating voters because it’s a good thing to sell on the marketplace.  Deny what’s happening, pretend it isn’t, sell fear instead.  Clamp down. The world wants a bad daddy, and here is a whole bunch of them to choose.

That’s what we’re doing. The second choice.  Denying that we had problems, kicking the can down the road, is how we ended up here. If we do it again now we will be destroyed. That’s not a hope or a fear – it’s just the way it’s going to work. I wish I had better news, but I don’t.

I keep saying this thing to myself that I don’t entirely understand. It’s that fighting begins with the right to see what’s actually before your very eyes.

The only thing I can say is that despair is not an option, but a luxury, and you can’t afford it now. Go and fight. They’re going to.  

Impeachment Eve

TUE DEC 17, 2019

Yesterday’s entry was entitled, “Distant Thunder,” to describe how people seemed to be waking up to the true gravity of this impeachment... feeling it’s historic weight as one might feel the rumble of an approaching storm, and begin to worry that it might be a bit more serious than the idea of a storm seemed to be, when the skies were still mild and blue.

I’ve touched on this theme several times now, in recent entries... that it’s easy for the public, the media, and especially the GOP, to be very flippant about the impeachment, when it’s far away... but that the closer we get to that final vote, the more sober we will all become.

Yesterday, it was a little tick in the polls, showing a solid 50% in favor of both impeachment and removal, with another 10% favoring impeachment as a kind of censure to shame Trump, but feeling that removal is not called for.

So... what might cause that 10% to lean more in favor of removal?  Anything?

Well, today, on Impeachment Eve, Trump sent Speaker Pelosi a six page, flaming screed... available for all the public to read... described by all who’ve read it as, “unhinged,” in which he screams at her and her party, in the poorly constructed English he is famous for on Twitter, for conducting an illegal coup because they hate the Constitution, etc.

(I’d love to read a, “de-projected” version of the letter, where every, “you,” is replaced with, “I,” to reveal the full confession...)

 But at any rate, in the letter, he holds himself blameless and innocent of all charges.

So, it’s not only a ridiculous tantrum... made all the more cringe worthy because it was written on official White House stationary... but also a blatant declaration that, if acquitted by the Senate, he will proudly continue on with all the same illegal bullshit as before, and probably worse.

So, I have to believe that this will push some, if not most, of that 10% of the public who’ve been feeling like impeachment without removal would be enough to set Trump straight... into the removal camp.

It’s not gonna push anybody into the no-impeachment camp, because remember... Trump only loses followers.  He never gains them.  That’s been true since he took office in 2017.

But the frothing rage of hysterics that is today’s letter from our President to our Speaker, is also part of this weeks trend for those in the junta to make nakedly plain their scorn for the rule of law... not on some esoteric plane, but as it is spelled out in the original draft of the Constitution.

These Oaths in here?  Fuck them.  Separation of powers?  Well, fuck that! Checks and balances?  Fuck that too!  

Fuck the truth.  Fuck pretending to care.  Fuck all of it... we are going for broke as out-of-the-closet authoritarians.  We make the rules now.  Try and stop us!

(It’s worth a mention here that all of this is happening thanks to the midterm elections, which exist as a voter check on the general elections, and in which we gave the House back to the Democrats... with a mandate to impeach... that they still resisted doing for some twenty months.  So any argument that this is an illegal coup to undo 2016 is delusional bullshit.)

And I do see this as another iteration of the truth virus, touched on in earlier entries... McConnell baldly admits he’s working with Trump on the trial, and means to acquit him.  Graham openly brags that he will not be an impartial juror.

And today... Trump basically screamed that he is above the law and can do no wrong... stopping just short of threats.  Closest he came to a veiled threat was to tell Pelosi she will have to live with this decision to impeach him, but he will not.

Well... how will he not, unless he rewrites the history books, while she’s rotting in Guantanamo with the rest of her deposed House members?

I’ll admit that’s a stretch... with just the material in today’s letter to go by.  But let’s not forget he threatened to put Hillary Clinton in jail while he was still just a candidate for President... and that this whole impeachment is based on his intention to gin up criminal charges against Joe Biden and son.

But not to fear, because these displays of bravado, by McConnell, Graham, and now Trump, this week, are all very obvious signals of fear and, in Trump’s case, a severe panic attack.

Some say this is not the behavior of the innocent, and while that it surely true, it’s more relevant right now to note that this is not the behavior of those secure in their power.

If Trump’s acquittal in the Senate were really the foregone conclusion that even the liberal media has been granting as a given... McConnell and Graham would not need to be bragging about their bias, and flipping the bird to their juror oaths in order to impress voters on the extremist fringes of the party.

They only do this because they already know such fringe extremists are their only real hope of holding on to anything in 2020.  Please, please come back out of the woodwork for us!  We need you!  Haven’t we done everything you wanted us to do?

But the only voters who came out of the woodwork today, were pro-impeachment, pro-removal people holding simultaneous rallies across the country, from Times Square, to Chicago, Detroit, Austin, Las Vegas, Portland and Los Angeles, and many small towns in between.

The few counter-protesters on site at a few of these rallies... all displayed the ensigns of white supremacy.  

Not the best optics to show that 10% who already support impeachment, but figure maybe removal is too much.  

All that McConnell, Graham, and Trump with his six page, “defense,” can mobilize is a fractional smattering of racist and nazi scum, and that’s not a great look.

Early today, before most of this hit the news, McConnell did respond to Chuck Shumer’s demand to hear from witnesses with a flat out refusal, arguing, with extreme irony, that impartial jurors should not be calling for witnesses or some bullshit like that.

Trumps letter drowned that out later in the day, but I did see a couple headlines on my phone to suggest that Senate GOP members did not agree with  McConnell’s stance, and were indeed interested in the possibility of hearing from new witnesses in... what, after all... is a trial... Mitch... trials do call witnesses.  That’s not abnormal.

If those headlines I gleaned have any merit, then it would seem Mitch is in for a bit of a fight with some of his own party members... who are looking to Chuck Shumer as the voice of reason in this body which must pass every little detail of the coming trial with 51 votes. 

That about sums it up for Impeachment Eve.

Yesterday, a bit of distant thunder.

Today... a hell of a lot of lightning!

I’m going to bed now.

3 Tales of Disappointment

Disappointments. (Sigh)

The Twilight Zone

The promise of a contemporary revival of the sci-fi classic The Twilight Zone was met with open embrace especially when it was announced that Jordan Peele would helm the title. Peele’s foray into filmmaking with Get Out and Us, which all but cemented him as a maestro of social horrors, made him the perfect fit for the role of this generation’s Rod Serling. On paper, the project was a match made in heaven but only time could have known the output was far from the success everyone hoped it to be.

Issues at first were deemed minor with the bulk of criticism against the first two episodes directed at its overlong running time. The original series ran for only half an hour per episode with the exception of the fourth season which clocked at one hour every episode while the ongoing revival reaches up to an hour without commercial. It doesn’t even help that earlier episodes borrowed heavily from some of the original’s plotlines such as in the case of The Comedian and Nightmare at 30,000 Feet which added a level of predictability to the viewing experience. Although some bits were tweaked to frame the storylines in a more up-to-date context, the problem lies in the fact that in the original version of the episodes, everything was founded on novelty and to repeat such novelty robs the viewer of impact and meaningful experience.

Fortunately, the revival understands that relying on the past glory days of the original is a fruitless endeavor as the audience desire for stories culled from the current political climate and cultural patterns is one it needs to capitalize on. Unfortunately, as the show rolled from one episode to the next, the more it became obvious that the problem runs deeper than running time and bad adaptation; one that has to do with lack of subtlety. The writing on the show, especially on chapters which seek to leave grand social statements, has this tendency of spoon-feeding its narrative not before sidelining the sci-fi/supernatural element as an added measure to avoid the message getting lost in the gimmick. The recently aired episode titled “Not All Men” serves as a great example to how writers of the show love to oversimplify plotlines based on nuanced topics. As if the title isn’t already obvious enough, wait till you get to the part of the episode where a character repeatedly exclaims “It’s not all men” in attempt to highlight that toxic masculinity isn’t borne out of external forces, it’s borne from within. Subtle, indeed.

Game of Thrones

A disastrous case of plot over character. For a show that has amassed intense international following and morphed into a global cultural phenomenon, you’d hope writers of the show would owe it to its audience to deliver, if not satisfying, a logical ending to almost a decade of political machinations, medieval warfare and characters we’ve grown emotionally invested in. Instead, for its last season, Game of Thrones retcons most of established character developments and rushes the plot into one chaotic, unearned endgame.

Perhaps the biggest victim of character arc assassination is Cersei Lannister. Yes, Dany’s heel turn may seem sudden but throughout the run of the series, her madness and cruelty have been hinted ever since her ascent to power, it’s only in the handling of her story arc where she gets wronged. Writers allotted little development for a smiling Dany suddenly become an unhinged warlord in a span of only 2 episodes.  For Cersei, not only is her writing poorly executed but also painfully out of character. At the end of season 6, she exercised her tactical prowess by blowing up the Sept along with most of House Tyrell and The High Sparrow thereby eradicating her immediate enemies all in one move. In the penultimate episode of the final season, she was reduced to a blubbering mess whose strategy of winning the war is basically watching everything unfold from her tower. Even her death lacks any payoff which is surprising given the track record of the show when it comes to delivering satisfying deaths of its villains.

I could have honestly forgone with the criticism of plot over character given the limited number of episodes and the fact that the season started off with two major plot arcs still yet to be resolved (Night King and Cersei) and yet even when the focus is on the plot, they still managed to fuck it up. The abrupt resolution to the Night King/White Walker arc is frustrating considering how since the very pilot episode, their threat has been emphasized and to eliminate such threat all in one battle, in one night is anti-climactic as hell. Even anywhere else you could see symptoms of bad writing from Brienne’s scorned lover b-plot to Euron’s fleet weaponry becoming a dragon killer, for the sake of advancing the plot, to utterly useless piles of wood during battle, for the sake of advancing the plot.

I could go on listing all my other grievances about the final season but something tells me with writers no longer give a fuck. Perhaps I should too.

Halalan 2019

I’d be lying if I said the current outcome of the senatorial election came as a shock to me. Although the votes are still at 96% completion as of writing, one could have seen the writing on the wall even before the start of the election if one were paying attention. It’s truly disappointing to see, if not most, all of the senatorial seats get filled with less-than-qualified administration lapdogs with zero opposition scoring a win but to say any of this is surprising is a stretch.

In the lead up to the midterm polls, collegiate mock up elections demonstrated that opposition candidates are greatly preferred by college students, mostly from prestigious universities which partly explains why liberal elites are quick to weaponized this against the working class and blame them for the outcome of the senatorial race when the ballots pointed to another reality. This line of thinking exposes a fault on the middle class specifically on how they’ve viewed the election through naïve lenses. No one could accuse candidates from opposition slate Otso Diretso of lacking noble principles but what they boasted in virtue they greatly lacked in strategy. While the opposition’s campaign did a great job of maintaining a solid core base of voters which comprised mostly of members of the middle class, they did nothing in winning over some swing voters which mainly came from the working class. Much of their campaign ads targeted the same audience and was made to arouse the same discussion on honor and values which at some point veered towards sounding holier-than-thou-ish.

From then on within the Otso Diretso supporters, it was all echo chambers; repeating the same old sentiments to the same group with the same political interest with little regards to anything else. Even when conversations were made about outside opinion, they were done to mock and in effect alienate what could have been more votes for the party. The total disconnect of the liberal elite from the realities of the majority of the people restricts them within the stubborn walls of the minority vote. The failure to recognize on the part of the opposition how extremely popular the administration is, with all its populist and strongman personality, shows how uninformed the candidates are to the desires of the public, which basically is the foundation of politics and governance. After all, before becoming a government of principle, you must first be a government of the people, no matter how dumb the people are.

So what;s this latest ImpeachTrump of the week, i heard he gave classified information to russia also two scoops of ice cream? What is going on (mainly the former)

It'sfunny you mentioned the “two scoops of ice cream” thing, becauseit's identical to the “classified info” thing - hysterical andbreathtaking lies.

It'simpossible to overstate the complete and utter totalityofthe utter fuckingbullshit atplay here. The quote-unquote “classified info” cited by the (whoelse?) WaPo's initial “story” related to ISISplans to hide explosives inside laptop computers for attackingairliners. This superclassified info wasreported by CNN on AprilFucking Fools Day - note Sean Spider giving a motherfuckingpress briefing onit in their own video. Thelede (first paragraph, and even first sentence) of a news story issupposed to cover the who, what, when, where, how and why, but thisrather crucial bit of the whatwasburied sixparagraphs deep byWaPo - gee, I wonder why.

It'salso hard to believe WaPo's ~anonymoussources~ whiningabout “compromising the source” when said source wouldn't havehad a fucking clue without them running to the media. Provide Russiawith “classified information” and they mightacton it in a way that tips off said source to their having theinformation. Run to the media shrieking and crying, and you fuckingguarantee it.Thus, these “anonymous sources” are clearly lying out of theirfucking assesaboutthis, because if they actually gave a shit about it, they wouldn'thave said shit.

Asfor anonymous sources, the WaPo attributes their information to:

*“current and former U.S. officials”* “a U.S. officialfamiliar with the matter”*”an official with knowledge ofthe exchange.”*”a former senior U.S. counterterrorismofficial who also worked closely with members of the Trump nationalsecurity team.”* “the second former official”* “aformer senior U.S. official who is close to current administrationofficials.”

That last one is my favorite -third-hand information.And not a single one ofthese “sources” is named - the WaPo expects us to just trust them- and theirmysterious “sources” -implicitly.

Byfar the most shocking revelation in the “Vault Seven” leaks washow the CIA had invested tremendous sums of money into their ownin-house ELINT/hacking/computersurveillance apparatus; their “own NSA.” The colossal wasteof taxpayer money in duplicating abilities was done solelyso the CIA wouldn't have todisclose to the NSA - or Homeland Security (and thus, the WhiteHouse) what the hell they were up to, in order to request NSA hackingassistance. This should scare the shit out of you, because the SenateIntelligence Committee found the CIAactively hid their barbaric and pointless torturing from both theJustice Department and the White House. These are the kind ofpeople the WaPo is parroting; in effect serving as their mouthpieceand enabler in their continued - and outright treasonous - betrayalof the chain of command to defend their own interests.

Whenjournalists cite anonymous sources, they're asking the readers totrust in their integrity; baking on their publication's long-standingreputation of accurate and honest reporting - as evidenced by decadesof reporting backed up byexhaustively researched, cited, and attributed facts and sources. Themedia is no longer askingtobe trusted; when challenged on their constantuseof “anonymous sources,” they now demandyou trust them and shout down anyone who dares question theirauthority as arbiters of truth, asthis CNN anchor did on live fucking television. She insists itmust betrue because allthemajor news networks are repeating the same lies - but we knowtheycollude with one another because they literally jerkeach other off on Twitter:

Iwrote about the “end-zone dances on Twitter” before, but nowthey're stroking each other off in their actualpublications beforetrading sticky high-fives on Twitter for all the world to see. Andyet, if you suggest that maybe, just maybe, we can't trust theirobjectivity when it comes to shady, mysterious government sources andthe axes they want to grind, you're shouted down on live televisionfor challenging the Divine Right of Reporters.

Butit doesn't end there - why would it? Now Republicans and Russians arebasically the same people, just four short years after ourPresidential candidate Mitt Romney wasroundly mocked by the left every time he talked about Russians asadversaries. Then Comey made “notes”about alleged conversations that “some people” at the FBI haveallegedly seen, according to otherpeople- third hand information without a single fucking source named.Andjust today, Trump's accused of getting chummy with “Russians”according to “adocument read to the New York Times by an American official.”Andafter the obligatory circle-jerking and self-congratulatorygloating over their own lies, they publish anop-ed gloating over how they sure showed Trump for daring to defytheir power. Nevermind the HarvardUniversity study proving Trump's right about the media'sill-treatment, with numbers: he deservedit.So what if over 90%of their coverage was viciously negative? Whogives a fuck about objectivityortruth? He challenged the Divine Right of Reporters, so he must becrushed.

Ipersonally know people who honestly think “media bias” claims areoverblown and that they're mostly reliable, or honest. I delayedwriting this column because I foresaw typing the following line: ifyou still believe that the media is not overwhelmingly biased againstTrump, you are a fucking idiot. Idon't feel bad about saying it, now, because to denythese facts tomy face is tantamount to insulting my intelligence. Such drasticallydivergent views of reality cannot be perceptual twists on a commontruth; ifI'm not mostly correct, then I must be entertaining mad delusions.There is no middleground on this, andwe've no more time to seek some, becauseof what the media is lying about.

Obligatorydrive-by attacks notwithstanding,the media's not using their immense power to attack Trump's polices;noton immigration, economics, or taxes. They're ignoringcampaignissues that Democrats will be running on come Congressional midtermsin 2018, in favor of a sprawling myth of Trump in particular, andRepublicans in general, being agents and allies of a hostile foreigngovernment. In short, they'renot trying to swing elections, but to ferment unrest and revolution.NewtGingrich - whom you might recognize as an experienced careerpolitician with few peers - succinctly echoed my own observationsin his op-ed yesterday:

“Weare today in a one-sided cultural civil war. The Left has picked thebattlefield and defined the terms of engagement... Those of us whotruly want to make America great again have one choice: Fight. Oursituation is similar to President Lincoln’s in 1861. He had to makethe choice between fighting until he won or giving up on the idea ofthe United States. Once again, our country is at stake.”

You'll note his choice of historical analogies, and hisclosing sentence (which I didn't read till after I'd written myultimatum paragraph above:) “There is no middle ground.”He, however, continues to speak in democratic terms; of elections andpermanent congressional minorities. But I see things different. I seea traditional news media that's suddenly and violently annihilatedthe last vestige of their fading credibility as their continuedfailure to adequately adapt to the digital age saps their baserevenue. I see fifty years of rage born of neglect, abuse andcontempt, having finally come to a head in the rust belt, goingnowhere fast; especially as the Democrat party's base platform driftsfurther and further Left - and away from the values of the old unionBoomers. I see an economy increasingly steeply divided by ruralversus urban, and a left wing more willing to retreat to elaboratefantasy worlds (as I've written about before) where everything wenttheir way sooner than face their own faults. I see the left labelinganyone who speaks against their politics as cabals of murderousNazis, even4chan. And above all I hear the statement that “antifa” wascrowing after Ann Coulter's Berkeley speech was canceled: “violenceworks.”

The fuel is set,the fire has been lit, and the media is doing their absolutedamnedest - doggedly, determinedlyand tirelessly - to fan theflames. And it's not just Trump in their sights, either - now allRepublicans are being implicated as allies of “Russians.”It's okay, even desirable, toend personal friendships with people if they voted for Trump,because he's a “blatantly (and proudly) bigoted candidate,” aswell as a racist and a “dangerous demagogue.” Inother words it's not “justpolitics” anymore; because Trump is comparable to genocide. Inshort, Trump iscategoricallyevil, andanyone who supports him are thus evilthemselves.

SinceI first issued my dire predictions of civil violence in thenot-so-distant future, I've been looking, exhaustively, for evidenceI'm wrong. But everything, everythingI look at leads me right back to the same conclusion: thisends in blood. It'sincreasingly difficult to partition off politics from my personallife; to believe that I'll be judged for my character first andpolitical affiliation second, because, again, thereis no middle ground here. IfI'm not judged a bigot and a racist, that leaves only a fool and adupe - and neither are deserving of respect. Itsas fundamental a break between people as can be made; a rift that'svery easy to widen and very, very difficult to heal again.

Theseare not happy thoughts - and all I need do to rekindle them is toturn the TV on during the damn morning news.

On “I Didn’t Leave the Democratic Party, it Left Me.”

Without fail, a few times a week I hear someone who claims to have been a Democratic voter say, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”  This is almost always said as a rationale, a justification for voting for Trump or not voting at all.   It is also almost always said by a white male.  A lot of the times, they either are or were in the manufacturing sector and/or a member of a union.  They blame the loss of jobs in their field that have either affected them and/or their family and friends on the Democratic Party.  They also blame the Party for the decline in union membership and anti-union bills passed in once proud union states like Michigan and Wisconsin.  Whenever I hear these complaints, I ask for specific examples of exactly how the Democratic Party betrayed them.  So far, I haven’t received a single specific from anyone that can’t be disproved by my eight-year-old and Google.  All I get is a reiteration that the Democratic Party left them or right-wing talking points about the Democrats being the party of “corporatists.” When I ask them to explain how Democrats are supposed to push pro-union bills when many union members themselves vote for Republicans or how they are supposed to alter the inevitable changes that arise from globalization, they hem and haw and end up not saying a damn thing.

The Democratic Party didn’t leave these folks.  These folks left the Party for a number of reasons.  One reason is because they, like most Americans, are intellectually lazy, especially when it comes to knowing and understanding how their government works.  They don’t understand or care to understand how laws are made, what can and can’t be done because of legislative rules, what can be legitimately done at any given moment in time due to the makeup of the legislative bodies involved.  This situation isn’t unique to ex-Dems, the far-left also suffers from being severely civics challenged.  They expect, demand, and want FDR-like progress without the very large progressive majorities FDR enjoyed every single term in office.  This same unrealistic demand applies on the state level, as well.  If people who claim to be progressives don’t vote for progressive majorities, then they shouldn’t bitch when things are not as progressive as they’d like.  I know this sounds simple, but it seems to completely elude a whole lot of people. When I ask these ex-Dems whether or not they voted or Democratic candidates in the 2010 and/or 2014 midterms, they almost always say, “No.”  I don’t know exactly how the Democratic Party left people who didn’t support it.  I really don’t know how allowing Republicans who are anti-union and all for shipping jobs overseas to have power is a reasonable response to wanting pro-union, less globalization.   If I’m ever able to get an answer about this, it usually ends up being something along the lines of, “to teach the Democrats a lesson.”  This is the same stupid mindset from many on the left during the 2010 midterms with regard to what they perceived were sleights with regard to health care and Wall Street reform.  How’d that “teach them a lesson” thing turn out?  As far as I can tell it led to the rise of the Tea Party, Democrats losing many states including blue states like Michigan and Wisconsin, the U.S. House of Representatives and most of the political leverage progressives had.  That wasn’t a lesson.  That was political suicide which was followed by giving Republicans control of the Senate in 2014 and the White House last November.  This is where I sarcastically slow clap and say, “Bra…..fucking….o!”  You wanted the Democratic Party to do things for you but you didn’t do anything for the Democratic Party.

Another reason these people left the Democratic Party is the same reason a lot of people left-racism/bigotry.  To many of these individuals, unions were great until minorities became members.  Public schools were terrific until their kids had to go to school with “those kids.”  Living in the city or suburb adjacent areas was fine until “those people” started moving in.  Make no mistake, White Flight isn’t something unique to conservatives.  Many so-called “progressives” bolted from their neighborhoods once it started getting ethnically diverse.  The beliefs, attitudes, mindset behind progressive White Flight are the same behind, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”  Anyone who claims differently doesn’t know a damn thing about anything, especially political history, voting patterns, sociology, psychology, belief systems….

The Democratic Party hasn’t won the majority of the white vote since 1964.  Now, why is that?  What happened in 1964 that would cause white voters to turn away from the Democratic Party?  Was it, A) the government outlawing the poll tax?  Or, B) Barry Goldwater winning the Republican presidential primary nomination?  Or, C) the last Looney Tune cartoon produced by Warner Bros.?  Or, D) the passage of the Civil Rights Act by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson?  If you say anything other than, “D” you need to be remanded to third-grade history and can’t come back to the discussion until you pass.  The underlying reason for White Flight, for School of Choice, for whites not voting for the Democratic Party is racism. Full…Fucking…Stop!  When people tell me, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me, “ what they often mean is, “An awful lot of people I don’t want in the Democratic Party are a major voting bloc in the Party.”  The same reasons behind conservative and progressive White Flight are why the Democratic Party hasn’t won the majority of the white vote since 1964.  It isn’t because the Democratic Party’s stance on economic issues.  It is because, when push comes to shove, too many white voters don’t want to minorities to have the same rights and privileges they do.

Of course, people aren’t going to come right out and say the reason they no longer support the Democratic Party is because of racial issues. Instead, they come up with nonsense claims like, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me” or “Democrats have moved too far to the left.”  This latter claim is used by the right, the media, and so-called “Democrats” who think chasing the white vote is a smart, moral strategy.  Former Democratic Senator from Virginia, Jim Webb is the most recent person making the idiotic claim that Democrats have moved too far to the left.  This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who knows  Webb’s political history. Until 2006 he was a Republican.  I wouldn’t expect anything less from someone with such a conservative background to say something different than Democrats have moved too far to the left.  This is why anyone with an ounce of sense can and should completely ignore anything Webb has to say about the Democratic Party.

The political reality is only one party has moved hard towards their extreme and that would be the Republicans.  Read Eisenhower’s 1956 platform and it sounds like it came out of the 2016 Democratic Convention.  You don’t even need to go back that far to see just how hard to the right Republicans have shifted.  Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr., even W. wouldn’t have lasted two months running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.  This shift to the right by Republicans in Congress is well researched and documented.  Since the early 70s, the majority of Democrats have pretty much stayed in the same just left of center grouping while Republicans in the Senate, but especially in the House have moved sharply to the right.  To say, “Democrats have moved too far to the left” isn’t backed up by the data.  If the gap between the majorities of the two parties was four spots on the political spectrum in the 70s and now it is ten, this doesn’t mean each has shifted three spots.  What has happened is the left has shifted one spot and the right has shifted five.  It is intellectually lazy to look at the difference between four and ten and say, “both sides have moved equally apart.”  There are no Tea Party equivalents on the left.  Jim Webb and others saying, “The Democrats have moved too far to the left,” is complete bullshit. Progressives love to point out white privilege when it applies to conservatives.  Of course, it is low hanging fruit. What many white progressives are not very good at is recognizing and admitting their own privilege and how their beliefs and actions undermine the very ideology they claim to believe in so strongly. Progressivism is about equality, justice, and fairness with no fine print, no fucking asterisks.  If you aren’t standing up and fighting for the rights of those in society who have been and are denied them to one degree or another, stop pretending you are progressive in order to make you feel good about yourself.  Don’t blame the Democratic Party for being the only one of the two major political parties that stands up for these things because you don’t have the mental or intestinal fortitude to do so yourself.  Don’t say, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me,” when what you really mean is, “I’m uncomfortable with the Democratic Party prioritizing the most vulnerable in society over my white privileged ass.”  There are actually white supremacists at the seat of power in our country right now.  So-called “progressives” who aren’t adamantly standing up and fighting for those most at risk from the quasi-fascist right may say they were Democrats, but at best they were fair weather fans who, if they were honest, would say, “I’m perfectly fine with progress as long as it is focused on my wants and needs and not on people who really need it.”  This is what it really boils down to whether progressives want to admit it or not.  If you want social/economic change, you have to vote for the party that is your best chance to get it, not the party that is completely against it.  The more you vote for and elect Democratic candidates, the more they will have power.  The more power they have, the more they can enact change.  It is See Spot Fucking Run for anyone smart enough and honest enough to see it.

1-155 ahahahah

I'm petty asf so here ya go 😂 1: Name- Bailey 2: Age- 17 (almost 18)3: Fears- lol everyone y'all 4: 3 things I love- my dog, pasta, & Morgan 5: 4 turns on- kindness, intelligence, effort, & being funny 6: 4 turns off- not able to keep an interesting convo going, no sense of humor, treat waiting staff bad, and not being good w/ kids7: My best friend- MORGANNN8: Sexual orientation- just living my life homie 9: My best first date- never had one 🙃10: How tall am I- 5'1 (I'm small)11: What do I miss- Izzy💗12: What time were I born- idk I think like 12?13: Favourite color- blue or green14: Do I have a crush- a huge one send help15: Favourite quote- "Live Life For Bella"16: Favourite place- anyplace outdoors or anyplace with coffee 17: Favourite food- ANY AND ALL PASTA 😍18: Do I use sarcasm- lolololololol all the fucking time 19: What am I listening to right now- nothing, but I have headphones in which is weird 20: First thing I notice in new person- sense of humor 21: Shoe size- 6 1/222: Eye color- blue/green23: Hair color- blonde 24: Favourite style of clothing- tshirts I guess 25: Ever done a prank call? I was in middle school once so yep 26: Meaning behind my URL- I liked the song Wake me up by Avicii when I made my blog forever ago :/27: Favourite movie- not so many but atm probably The Proposal 28: Favourite song- too many to chose from 29: Favourite band- idk don't listen to a lot of bands 30: How I feel right now- happy 😊 31: Someone I love- My dog Jake 32: My current relationship status- single 33: My relationship with my parents- I'm really close w/ both although my mom & I argue a lot (about politics and religion mostly), but my dad is my fav human to ever exist 34: Favourite holiday- probably Valentine's Day or Christmas 35: Tattoos and piercing I have- my ears are pierced 36: Tattoos and piercings I want- so many tattoos omg 37: The reason I joined Tumblr- I thought it looked cool?38: Do I and my last ex hate each other? I don't hate her bc I've let go of that negativity but she probs hates me but it's chill 39: Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts? I have recently & it makes me heart smile bud 40: Have I ever kissed the last person you texted? That'd be Morgan so YEET no 41: When did I last hold hands? When my dad was driving me to take my Midterm & I was nervous so he held my hand 42: How long does it take me to get ready in the morning? Like 20 minutes, u less I shower then like 40 minuets43: Have You shaved your legs in the past three days? Yepppp 44: Where am I right now? Laying in bed 45: If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me? Morgan probs 46: Do I like my music loud or at a reasonable level? LOUDDDD47: Do I live with my Mom and Dad? Mom48: Am I excited for anything? The future 49: Do I have someone of the opposite sex I can tell everything to? My dad 50: How often do I wear a fake smile? Anytime I'm at yee yee south Paulding high school 51: When was the last time I hugged someone? Honestly so long ago it's kinda sad52: What if the last person I kissed was kissing someone else right in front of me? They would be an invisible person bc I haven't kissed anyone 53: Is there anyone I trust even though I should not? Probably 54: What is something I disliked about today? Yes55: If I could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be? Hmmmm probs lexi or obama 56: What do I think about most? School tbh 57: What’s my strangest talent? My dedication 58: Do I have any strange phobias? I irrationally hate the dark bc I'm five 59: Do I prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it? Both idc 60: What was the last lie I told? That I wasn't mad that my dad wasn't picking me up until tomorrow 61: Do I prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online? Both is fine I prefer in person 62: Do I believe in ghosts? How about aliens? Def ghosts but idk about aliens 63: Do I believe in magic? Nah64: Do I believe in luck? Ehhhh not really 65: What’s the weather like right now? Cold as hell66: What was the last book I’ve read? Medical Law, Ethics, and Bio Ethics 67: Do I like the smell of gasoline? Kinda 68: Do I have any nicknames? Bai & Angel 69: What was the worst injury I’ve ever had? Broke my arm & my knee 70: Do I spend money or save it? Both 71: Can I touch my nose with a tounge? Nope72: Is there anything pink in 10 feet from me? My room walls 😅73: Favourite animal? My dog 74: What was I doing last night at 12 AM? Talking to lexi 75: What do I think is Satan’s last name is? Trump 76: What’s a song that always makes me happy when I hear it? Brown eyed girl 77: How can you win my heart? Make an effort to remember the little things & make me laugh....also if you're good w/ kids 😍78: What would I want to be written on my tombstone? "This bitch was lit asf"79: What is my favorite word? Content 80: My top 5 blogs on tumblr yeet too much work to do this 81: If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say? Why are we all so hateful?82: Do I have any relatives in jail? Yes83: I accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow me with the super-power of my choice! What is that power? To know everything 84: What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on? Idk depends on who's asking 85: What is my current desktop picture? Trees 86: Had sex? Nope 87: Bought condoms? Yes (as a dare)88: Gotten pregnant? Nope 89: Failed a class? Nope 90: Kissed a boy? Nope 91: Kissed a girl? Nope92: Have I ever kissed somebody in the rain? Nope 93: Had job? Yes 94: Left the house without my wallet? All the fucking time ugh95: Bullied someone on the internet? No bc I'm not an asshole 96: Had sex in public? Nah 97: Played on a sports team? Yes 98: Smoked weed? No 99: Did drugs? No 100: Smoked cigarettes? No 101: Drank alcohol? Yes 102: Am I a vegetarian/vegan? No 103: Been overweight? No 104: Been underweight? Yes 105: Been to a wedding? Yes I love them so much 😍😍106: Been on the computer for 5 hours straight? I do online college so sadly yes 107: Watched TV for 5 hours straight? Lololol I'm trash so yes 108: Been outside my home country? Yes 109: Gotten my heart broken? Many times110: Been to a professional sports game? Yes111: Broken a bone? Yes112: Cut myself? .....113: Been to prom? Yes114: Been in airplane? Yes 115: Fly by helicopter? No116: What concerts have I been to? 4 Taylor Swift, 1 Carrie Underwood, & 1 one more that I can't think of 117: Had a crush on someone of the same sex? Lololol so many times 118: Learned another language? Like 2 years of hs Spanish 119: Wore make up? I'm an ugly toe so yes 120: Lost my virginity before I was 18? Nope 121: Had oral sex? Nope 122: Dyed my hair? Yes 123: Voted in a presidential election? Nope 124: Rode in an ambulance? Nope 125: Had a surgery? Yes 126: Met someone famous? Yes 127: Stalked someone on a social network? All the fucking time 128: Peed outside? Yes 129: Been fishing? I live in Georgia so what do u think?130: Helped with charity? Yes 131: Been rejected by a crush? Lol all of them132: Broken a mirror? Sadly 133: What do I want for birthday? Money 134: How many kids do I want and what will be their names? Idk maybe 2 or 3? And I want to name them Dani, Andi, or Amelia 135: Was I named after anyone? Some bitch from my mom fav tv show 136: Do I like my handwriting? Noooo it's horrid 137: What was my favourite toy as a child? A Mickey Mouse teddy bear 138: Favourite Tv Show? Soooo many but atm scandal 139: Where do I want to live when older? Idk just not in Georgia 140: Play any musical instrument? The recorder that I learned in 4th grade 141: One of my scars, how did I get it? I have one on my knee from falling off of my bike & breaking my knee cap 142: Favourite pizza toping? Mushrooms bc I'm trash143: Am I afraid of the dark? Yes 144: Am I afraid of heights? Very 145: Have I ever got caught sneaking out or doing anything bad? Nope 146: Have I ever tried my hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end? Everyday fam 147: What I’m really bad at? Telling ppl how I feel 148: What my greatest achievments are? My academics for sure 149: The meanest thing somebody has ever said to me? Prefer not to say 150: What I’d do if I won in a lottery? Pay for college 151: What do I like about myself? Not gonna lie I've got some A+ boobs 152: My closest Tumblr friend? Hmmm idk 153: Something I fantasise about? Moving out of my house & being independent 154: Any thoughts on the paranormal? That it's scary as fuck 155: Free question: Any question you’d like to ask, be it rude, fun, curious, strange, sexual, random, meme related, etc! Lol one wasn't asked

That Night. (TLA Ch. 1)

'It's unthinkable': Donald Trump angrily denies report he called fallen US World War I soldiers ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’

Washington: President Donald Trump heatedly denied on Thursday night that he had referred to American soldiers killed in combat during World War I as “losers” and “suckers,” moving quickly to avoid losing support among the military and its allies just two months before an election.

Marching over to reporters under the wing of Air Force One after returning from a campaign rally, a visibly angry Trump rebutted a magazine report that he decided against visiting a cemetery for American soldiers in France in 2018 because he feared the rain would mess up his hair and he did not believe it was important to honor the war dead.

“If people really exist that would have said that, they’re lowlifes and they’re liars,” Trump shouted above the noise of the plane’s engines. “And I would be willing to swear on anything that I never said that about our fallen heroes. There is nobody that respects them more.” He added, “What animal would say such a thing?”

The report in The Atlantic magazine by its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, attributed the episode to “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day,” but he did not name them. During a conversation with senior officials that day, according to the magazine, Trump said: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” On the same trip, the article said, he referred to American Marines slain in combat at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

The article also said that Trump’s well-known antipathy for Senator John McCain, R-Ariz. and a Vietnam War hero, was on display after the senator’s death in August 2018. “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” the article quotes Trump telling his staff. He became furious at seeing flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides, according to the article.

The report could be problematic for Trump because he is counting on strong support among the military for his reelection bid. He has made his backing for increased military spending, troop pay raises and improved veterans care pillars of his campaign at the same time he boasts of ratcheting down “endless wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But he has also clashed with the military leadership by extending clemency to accused and convicted war criminals, seeking to order active-duty forces into the streets of Washington to crack down on demonstrations and trying to block an effort to change the names of Army bases named for Confederate generals.

A new poll by The Military Times taken before the party conventions last month and released this week showed former vice-president Joe Biden leading Trump, 41 percent to 37 percent, among active-duty troops, a stark departure from the military’s long-standing support for Republicans.

People familiar with Trump’s comments say he has long scorned those who served in Vietnam as being too dumb to have gotten out of it, as he did through a medical diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels. At other times, according to those familiar with the remarks, Trump would marvel at people choosing military service over making money.

Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, sought on Thursday night to capitalize on the Atlantic article, quickly issuing a statement condemning the president and saying it demonstrated that Trump was not fit for the office. Biden said the article, if true, showed “another marker of how deeply President Trump and I disagree about the role of the president of the United States.”

“I have long said that, as a nation, we have many obligations, but we only have one truly sacred obligation — to prepare and equip those we send into harm’s way, and to care for them and their families, both while they are deployed and after they return home. That’s the foundation of what Jill and I believe,” said Biden, whose late son, Beau Biden, served overseas. “If I have the honor of serving as the next commander in chief, I will ensure that our American heroes know that I will have their back and honor their sacrifice — always.”

Trump’s trip to Paris in November 2018 came at a tense moment for him. Republicans had just lost the House in midterm elections when he flew to France to attend a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.

During the trip, he was angered when President Emmanuel Macron of France seemed to rebuke Trump by saying in a speech that “nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying: ‘Our interest first. Who cares about the others?’”

But it was Trump’s failure to go through with a planned visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought that drew the most attention.

Aides at the time cited the rain in canceling a helicopter flight, but the president’s absence went over badly in Europe and in the United States. Trump did pay respects to the war dead the next day at the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris.

At the time of the visit to France, advisers were blunt in confiding that Trump was in a foul mood and was quizzing aides about whether he should replace John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general and his White House chief of staff at the time.

Several White House officials at the time said the decision that Trump would not take Marine One to the Belleau Wood cemetery was made by Zachary Fuentes, a deputy White House chief of staff and close aide to Kelly, without consulting the president’s military aide.

Others argued that a motorcade trip by road would have taken too long, at roughly two hours. Administration officials said at the time that Fuentes had assured Trump it was fine to miss the visit. Kelly traveled to the cemetery himself in the president’s place along with General Joseph Dunford, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Trump insisted on Thursday that it was the weather, not disrespect, that forced the visit to be scrapped. “It was raining about as hard as I’ve ever seen,” he said. “And on top of that, it was very, very foggy. And the helicopter was unable to fly.”

To go by ground, he added, the motorcade would have had to wind its way through congested areas of Paris for more than two hours. “The Secret Service told me, ‘You can’t do it,’” he said. “I said, ‘I have to do it. I want to be there.’ They said, ‘You can’t do it.’”

A half-dozen current and former aides to Trump backed him up with Twitter messages disputing The Atlantic article. “I was actually there and one of the people part of the discussion — this never happened,” wrote Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was then the White House press secretary. “This is not even close to being factually accurate,” added Jordan Karem, the president’s personal aide at the time.

The reported comments about McCain, though, were consistent with Trump’s publicly expressed view of the senator. In 2015, while seeking the Republican nomination over McCain’s opposition, Trump famously mocked the senator’s military service and 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

McCain remained a thorn in Trump’s side after he won the presidency, blocking an effort to overturn President Barack Obama’s health care programme, a vote Trump never forgave and still speaks about with bitterness. When McCain died, aides said at the time, the president had to be shamed into lowering the flags and he was not invited to the funeral.

But speaking with reporters Thursday night, Trump insisted that he respected McCain even though they disagreed.

“I was never a fan. I will admit that openly,” Trump said. But “we lowered the flags. I had to approve that, nobody else, I had to approve it. When you think — just thinking back, I had to approve either Air Force One or a military plane to go to Arizona to pick up his casket. And I approved it immediately. I had to approve the funeral because he had a first-class, triple-A funeral. It lasted for nine days, by the way. I had to approve it. All of that had to be approved by the president. I approved it without hesitation, without complaint.”

He seemed to suggest that The Atlantic’s article came from several former aides that he had in mind. “Probably it’s a couple of people that have been failures in the administration that I got rid of,” he said. “I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough. Or it was just made up. But it’s unthinkable.”

Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman c.2020 The New York Times Company

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Remember This? Parkland, 2018

In February of 2018, there was a mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a 19-year-old gunman with an AR-15 killed 17 students and faculty. Clear warning signs and tips were ignored by the FBI. Which led President Trump to take to Twitter and blame the FBI for focusing on the Russia investigation. Really, that happened.  

Nobody expects Congress to ever do anything about guns. We’d had 200 school shootings since Sandy Hook in 2012. But the urgency of the student survivors at Parkland made the moment feel different. They were angry. They were organizing. They were TV-ready. They were calling BS. And they seemed determined to make change.    

It also felt different because the all-powerful NRA was taking a beating over the incident. Companies like Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods began cutting their ties to the NRA and banks began rethinking their relationships with gun manufacturers. Even their tried-and-true talking points felt outdated, out of touch and devoid of empathy. Public opinion looked like it had finally shifted.

Trump’s wanted to arm the teachers. He also claimed that if he were there, he would have run into the school without a weapon to save the kids. At one point, he held a roundtable (just like he had on immigration) where he told Republican lawmakers they were afraid of the NRA and actually started supporting Democratic positions. Probably because he has no actual political convictions and the Democrats sounded tougher in his head at the time. The reaction of Diane Feinstein to the whole thing was priceless, by the way. When Mike Pence tried to step in, Trump dismissed what he was saying and blurted out that we should take people’s guns. Just like that. “Take the guns first.” 

The NRA, who gave Trump $30 million, eventually got to him. They’d already gotten to lawmakers in Tallahassee who voted not to even debate guns, while also declaring pornography to be the real health threat. 

At the end of March, the Parkland survivors held the March For Our Lives in DC, with 800 similar marches all over the world. Hundreds of thousands filled the streets to demand gun legislation. It was the largest youth protest since the Vietnam War. And highlights impassioned included speeches from Emma Gonzalez and the granddaughter of Martin Luther King Jr. Rick Santorum suggested the kids’ time would be better spent learning CPR. Laura Ingraham went after David Hogg, personally. But incremental change had already been made. And people wondered if the momentum could be sustained into the midterms.

By May, 10 people were killed at another high school shooting near Houston. No one was surprised. And we were back to accepting this as just a regular and inevitable part of life in America.        

2018 Midterm Guide

It is absolutely imperative that the Democrats take back one or both houses of Congress next fall. Two main reasons:

We need to be able to stop the dangerous Republican agenda without Republican help, because they are not dependable. It is not right that people have to mobilize en masse every few weeks so that premature babies aren’t thrown out of critical care.

Democrats need to take back at least one house of Congress to put any meaningful brakes on Trump. Remember, whichever party is in the majority of a house of Congress controls all the committees in that house of Congress, which means they control what bills make it to the floor and what gets publicly investigated. Right now, the Republicans get to decide what there are hearings about and if those hearings are open, which witnesses are called to testify, who and what gets subpoenaed.  If Democrats get one house of Congress, they might not be able to get rid of the Trump regime, but they would be able to bring it to a screeching halt.

This is not going to be easy. Thanks to Republican gerrymandering (drawing district boundaries to their advantage), Democrats could win 54% of the total votes cast for members of Congress and Republicans would still win 47% of the seats. The Senate is similarly imbalanced, mostly because it overrepresents rural states. Voter suppression, which is already a small-d democratic crisis, is likely to be made worse by Pence’s “voter fraud” commission. And all shadiness aside, there are more Republican incumbents and most incumbents win re-election. This is an uphill climb.

After last year it’s tempting to gloss over those obstacles by saying that “anything” can happen – but the bizarre surprises of 2016 broke in the Republicans’ direction for specific reasons that won’t happen for us. Foreign oil barons aren’t going to intervene to help Democrats. The FBI isn’t going to break the rules to stage 11th-hour interventions in favor of the party that wants to curb police abuses of power, especially since they’re no longer led by a weak-willed narcissist who lets himself be led around by the nose by Russian kleptocrats who aren’t going to intervene again anyway. Republicans didn’t just get lucky and draw a good hand last year. Bad people chose to do bad things and were rewarded for it. We have to be aware of those things and commit to fighting them, and part of that is acknowledging that it might not be enough.

Another part of that is understanding how these elections work procedurally, as well as the baseline politics. 

The House of Representatives is pretty straightforward: there’s one member of Congress for every congressional district, and every congressional district has an election every two years. There are 435 seats in the House, which means that you need 218 for a majority. Right now, there are 240 Republicans, 194 Democrats, and 1 vacancy in a red district.*  

The Senate calendar is a little more complicated. There are two senators for every state, resulting in an even 100 senators. Every two years there are elections for 1/3 of Senate seats. Senators then serve a six year term. If a senator leaves before their term is up, then there has to be a special election for the person who will fill the seat for the rest of that term.** 

National parties take the lead on Senate elections. Generally speaking, it’s better for both parties and individual candidates to be the challengers, and that’s kind of good news/bad news. Good news: in midterm elections (elections that, like 2018, happen between presidential elections), the president’s party has historically lost seats. Bad news: it’s harder in years that your party has more seats up for re-election. Twenty-three Democratic senators, plus both of the Independents who caucus with the Democrats, are up for re-election in 2018. Republicans only have to defend eight seats. Several of those Democrats are running in states which went for Trump last year, while only one Republican is running in a Clinton state. 

The Democratic senators whose seats seem safe: Dianne Feinstein (CA), Chris Murphy (CT), Tom Carper (DE), Mazie Hirono (HI), Ben Cardin (MD), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Martin Heinrich (NM), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Tim Kaine (VA), and Maria Cantwell (WA).

Independents Angus King (Maine) and Bernie Sanders (VT) also seem safe.

Democrats who seem at risk are: Ben Nelson (FL), Joe Donnelly (IN), Debbie Stabenow (MI), Claire McCaskill (MO), Jon Tester (MT), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Sherrod Brown (OH), Bob Casey (PA), Joe Manchin (WV), and Tammy Baldwin (WI).

I’m not sure what to say about the New Jersey race. New Jersey is a safe Democratic state. Its current senator, Bob Menendez (D-NJ), is currently on trial for corruption, because New Jersey. That may or may not matter, because, New Jersey. 

Of the Republicans, Roger Wicker (MS), Deb Fischer (NE), Orrin Hatch (UT), and John Barrasso (WY) are almost certainly safe.

Republicans Dean Heller (NV) and Jeff Flake (AZ) are the biggest targets for Democrats to pick up.

There are also two long-shots. Tennessee is a deep red state and Senator Bob Corker would almost certainly win if he were running for re-election, but he has announced he’s retiring. Last but hardly least, Ted Cruz’s term is up. Now. Texas is Texas, and while Democrats narrowed the gap to single digits last year, it’s still a red state. But! Texas Democrats have been making a long, sustained push to mobilize the non-voters that can turn the state blue, and if you’re in Texas you can be a part of it. Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, people fucking hate Ted Cruz. 

A word about primaries: They should only be happening when there is not a Democratic incumbent. In 2018, it is unforgivably irresponsible to primary an incumbent Democrat in federal office. There is no outcome which makes it more likely that we will get into a position to put the brakes on Trump and the dangerous Republican agenda. The biggest thing a candidate running for re-election has going for them is incumbency advantage. In the unusual event that a primary challenger pulls it out, they’re less likely to win the general because they’re not incumbents. Even if the incumbent seems really safe now, every cent that they spend dealing with a primary challenge is money that they don’t have for the general election. So either they just run a general election with fewer resources, which makes their safe seat less safe, or they have to raise that much more money to make up for it. They get that money either by spending even more time schmoozing with donors, or from the state or national funds, which means there’s that much less to go around for races that could go either way.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Electoral politics aren’t the only important way to contribute your time or money, but they are an important way, so here are some places to start:

No matter where you are in the US, you can contribute financially. Swing Left collects donations for the races they think are most winnable. They’re starting with the 24 Republican members of Congress who serve districts that voted for Hillary Clinton. Coincidentally, 24 more votes would be just enough to get Democrats a majority.

If you’re represented by a Democrat who’s up for re-election in 2018, in the House or in the Senate, they can probably use your help now, whether in time or donations. If you’re in a state or district that’s represented by a Republican, contact your state or local Democratic party. You probably won’t have a candidate yet but you can help lay the groundwork so that when you do have a candidate they can hit the ground running.

This post is specifically about congressional midterms, but state offices are really important too. Flippable is an organization working to make state governments more Democratic.

If you’re a progressive millennial who doesn’t feel represented in your local government, Run For Something. 

*There’s a special election in Salt Lake City, Utah coming up this fall.

** There will be one of these special elections in December of 2017, to replace former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who vacated that seat to become Trump’s Attorney General. This is a longshot pickup for Democrats, but it’s really important that we try, not least because the Republican nominee is like the worst of Trump plus the worst of Pence. If you are in Alabama or know people there, please register to vote and encourage your friends to do the same. If you can, please consider contributing to Democratic nominee Doug Jones. 

'i hate the party that doesnt explicitly support trans people as well as it should and the party that explicitly wants to make it legal to be violent towards trans people equally' is absolutely a reasonable, responsible position. yup. nice work. it's not just your life on the line, pal. that holier-than-voting attitude hurts the entire lgbt community.

That’s not what I fucking said.  If it was that simple then duh.

I hate the party that abuses minorities to fit their political agenda and wants to shape the country in a way i believe is harmful for my future (as in, collapsing the economy so bad that I die) as much as the party that believes freedom of speech is more important than my inalienable rights and safety as a human being.

Big democrats don’t give a fuck about me any more than big republicans.  They just want to keep themselves in power by going after the people who were shunned by the other side.  A lot of republicans don’t want us dead either, they just want us to conform to their side.  Quite frankly, the democrats aren’t any different than that.  Dare I point out how Hillary Clinton’s husband used the whitehouse to assault women, and how she defended them, and I’ll be called a nazi apologist.  I always want to be careful with any potential racism or antisemitism that I may have internalized, but I’m also not going to shut up about how the Clintons are NOT good people.

And im not holier than thou!! god bless the people who go out and vote!!! but i for one do not have the mental stability to exercise that right at the moment because of blatant political lies from both sides and the fact that tumblr likes to fearmonger and spread rumors.

I reblog things without fact checking but unlike on tumblr, IRL me ACTUALLY CARES about fact checking, and fact checking thoroughly.  And sometimes I factcheck things on tumblr and they’re a load of crap.  Other times they’re very real.  But it’s exhausting to have to do thorough research on everything, especially when even mainstream media (and i dont mean in a “CNN and New York Times are Liberal Scum but Fox News is an objective source” way btw, fox news sucks absolute ass and most other news sources just depend on the author) isn’t reliable.

I can’t handle the stress of participating in democracy when I’m being manipulated at every angle and will never get my facts straight until I’m able to read Complex Shit That I Don’t Understand (like actual statistics).

I’m not allowing you to emotionally manipulate me into voting your way when I can’t make an informed decision.  I’ll do things my way and I’m not going to let you make me feel bad about myself for taking care of myself.

And do you think I was fucking having a panic attack over MY life?  I could care less about my own life.  It’s my friends lives that I’m worried about.  All the kind trans people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting throughout my life.  I’d live the rest of my life in the closet if it meant they could all be respected for who they are for the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe republicans or democrats will give that to us.  Or rather, I don’t believe the people I would be able to vote for at these midterms would affect it.

I’ve actually done legitimate research into the house representatives running for this election in my area and I’ve had a very hard time finding their stances on issues I care about.  The republican candidate’s policies on government spending make the most sense to me, however her votes for LGBT rights are all over the place.  The democratic candidate’s policies on government are exactly the problem with California, and I want no part of that spreading to the federal government, thanks.

Keep in mind that the richest fucks in the USA live primarily in California.  All those hollywood abusers?  California!  They’re friends with politicians and shit-whatnot and California hasn’t done hell about it.

California is such a different state than most of the USA.  Part of the reason I put a “don’t RB” on my original post (but not the primary reason) is because it’s something that only a select few individuals in the USA can relate to.  A lot of places have a VERY different culture than California, and I know this.  I’m not voting between someone who wants gay people dead and someone who wants gay people alive - there’s much more to them than that and furthermore, there aren’t a lot of republicans in southern california that are on that extremist side.  Homophobic republicans, yes of course.  But my parents are shocked whenever I bring up violent homophobes despite being VERY homophobic themselves.

In my case, I’m voting between someone who has had a very wish-washy stance on LGBT people (re-elected) and someone who wants to reform healthcare and government budgets in a way I don’t agree with.

I just turned 18 less than a month ago.  In the future, I plan to exercise my right - in particular I will for the next presidential election (altho lets face it, unless an independent candidate makes it, California will go blue anyways and all its votes will go to the democratic candidate).  But I am not going to make an uninformed vote when I know I’ve been fed propaganda from both sides.

(I’m saying both sides not because I’m equating democrats to rebublicans btw, I’m saying it because I’ve been fed conservative propaganda all my life, and I’m still working to unlearn it.  And the lies that float around the leftist internet don’t help me unlearn my biases at all.)

So fuck off, anon.