#you know you don’t have to vote for biden or trump right
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the amount of people forgetting about independent candidates is a little scary
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When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”
He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)
I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.
What is your objective?
Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.
I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.
I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.
Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.
Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.
How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?
Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.
Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?
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I keep seeing people say things like this: "You know what does matter to the politicians, even more than us voting for them? When we DON’T vote for them."
No, absolutely not. This is not how the US electoral system works. Under the current system, only votes cast matter. Only people who are going to vote matter to campaign strategists.
The last election, less than 20% of my district voted. The 80+% of the people who abstained? Their opinions on the results don't matter. The system does not take them into account. They gave up their right to have a say. Some strategists for future elections might look at the numbers and say: wow, why didn't those people vote, and can we GET them to vote? But ultimately, the system is designed so that if only one person votes, that person gets to decide the winning candidate. You get the representatives voted on by whoever shows up to the poll.
If a candidate thinks you cannot be swayed to vote (because, for example, you've joined a weird anti-voting movement), then ther campaign is not going to cater to you. Their strategists won't care about you. Someone in the next cycle might try for your vote, but you are giving up your right to have a voice for this cycle.... and voters with a history of voting are more promising targets for any campaign strategies.
(Your actual vote is a secret, but they DO monitor that you have voted. This will affect how much annoying campaigning materials you will get, because they do target active voters.)
Also, "if I don't vote, that will make a point!" is just a stupid take in general. If you don't vote in November, and then Trump wins, what have you really done? Do you think the Biden admin will care, as they're leaving office? Do you think the Trump admin will care, as they enter office? Republicans want fewer people to vote! Your abstention will be nothing but a footnote in history about how Trump won.
#'is this vote shaming?' this is a made up and useless term#voting is your RIGHT which i encourage you to USE. i will never encourage you to give up your rights.#i would yell at you to vote even in a less important election#i yell at coworkers and friends every november!!#(actually i just write up a voting guide for our area. but same mood)#greatest hits
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Overall, 61% of Americans say Biden did legitimately win enough votes to win the presidency, and 38% believe that he did not. Among registered voters who say they cast a ballot for Trump in 2020, 75% say they have doubts about Biden’s legitimacy.
CNN Poll: Percentage of Republicans who think Biden's 2020 win was illegitimate ticks back up near 70%
When I stop to think about these Chuds, I usually get to disgust and stop. But this story and the associated polling has made me stop and wonder what the actual fuck is wrong with these people.
Are they really this stupid?
Are they absolutely delusional?
Do they just ignore information they don’t like?
I mean, I know the answer is yes to all, but it’s still arresting to really think about it.
The Trumpist lunatics are doing the equivalent of staring into the clear blue sky right next to you, insisting that it is actually green, and anyone who doesn’t see the green sky is part of a conspiracy against the Green Sky Truthers.
Is there a way to bring them back? I don’t think so. A person who is STILL standing by this psychopath is beyond redemption. They are in a cult that rejects reality.
And when Trump goes to prison because he broke too many laws to count, when Biden is reelected because the overwhelming majority of voters are sickened by Trump and his movement, all these whackadoodles will have left is violence. That terrifies me.
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the weird thing is that. trump kind of doesn’t “want more genocides” than biden. that’s the alt-right’s problem with him. trump is hateful almost by happenstance. he’s half-assed about bigotry and has acknowledged that he plays it up because it’s what his right-wing audience expects from him. he’s definitely a “genuine” bigot, but, i’d say, in the “i’m so rich i don’t even remember what a human being is way” and not the “i am frothing at the mouth and getting hard at the thought of getting my teeth in the neck of an arab” way, the latter being the only thing keeping biden virile. it’s unfortunate that so many can only recognize bigotry-as-expressed-morality, because…..if you really think about it, what have the presidencies of biden and trump done MATERIALLY?
but who am i to play into the constructed liberal dichotomy? i don’t even have to bring up molotovs; an intelligent democratic party would break precedent and switch out their candidate. a democratic party that refuses to do this is one so assured it will win (or perhaps, that even a loss will make little material difference to it) because its candidacy will “vote blue no matter who,” that it feels free to do whatever. you know the decision of whether to participate is part of the express american democratic process, right? do you remember when gamestop and bed bath made all that money off of conspiracy theorist investors because the investors’ strategy was “give the company more money regardless of what it chooses to do or which direction the stock goes”?
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Least favorite thing about America?
I could probably make a joke here, but I think the “sports-ification” of political ideologies and parties is one of the worst parts about this hellhole.
This is gonna get real opinionated real fast, so if you don’t like that uhhhhhhhhh-
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Go read a book or something.
Voting for someone like Trump or DeSantis is treated with the same collective nuance as rooting for a sports team, or a boxer before a big fight. I’ve found that so many people who vote for them don’t even know what they’re rooting for half of the time, and if they even have a semblance, they don’t get the full extent of it; nor do they have the room to care.
It’s more about the charisma, and the arbitrary blaming of some minority group that hasn’t done anything wrong than it is actual progress. And if you think this sort of pattern only applies to the Right, you’d be wrong. This goes for the “Left” too.
To be clear; I’m very much NOT a Centrist, but I feel like politicians on BOTH sides are treated by some people like celebrities first and politicians later and it infuriates me SO much.
I identify as extremely liberal (at least I think that general label fits me), and I still think stuff like YouTube or Twitter clips of people like Biden doing something perceived as funny, or “completely P’WNING a reporter” completely distracts from the very serious reality that he exists in. (Not saying I necessarily LIKE Biden either. Just using him as an example, even if he isn’t the MOST liberal/left in practice by a long shot)
As much as I like someone like Bernie Sanders, this EXACT thing happens to him too, and I hate it. It turns people in potentially powerful positions into two dimensional caricatures. At the risk of sounding like an old fogey, the fact that social media so often boils down such serious and subtle positions in the government is SO dangerous and distracting from the much more important details.
Of course, America isn’t the only place to do this, but from where I’m sitting it’s very much the worst. I don’t know the first place to go in solving an issue like this, or if it ever CAN be solved, but this is just something I’ve been frustrated with. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
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Do you think part of what makes people feel like voting isn’t worth it because things don’t get better under democrats is because we can’t see what would have happened? Like I see a lot of people saying “well biden hasn’t made america much better so there’s no point” but it’s like they don’t understand that under a republican they would actively do everything they could to cause more harm. It’s like they don’t understand that 1. The president can’t do much, and 2. IT WOULD BE WORSE. like they don’t understand the possibilities. Idk people just frustrate me
I'm sorry, as I know you're just relaying what these people think and not claiming so yourself, but the whole "things don't get better under Biden/Democrats" line to which we are subjected so very, miserably often is a lie!!! It is demonstrably a lie! It is peddled by people who deliberately live in their echo-chamber leftist misinformation bubbles and either don't read the news, don't accept anything less than the Magical Socialist Revolution Now, and don't think partial or incremental progress (aka the only kind of progress that exists) is valid. "Biden hasn't single-handedly fixed everything wrong with America and the world after the most damaging presidency ever to exist and 250+ years of flaws, while other countries actually are their own actors with agency making complex choices, so we shouldn't vote for him" is a bullshit lie and I'm tired of it!!!
(Again. Sorry. This is not directed at you. This is just my frustration with this entire ridiculous situation speaking.)
We have had multiple elections now where people voted for Democrats, which resulted in abortion protections, protections for LGBTQ people, the biggest climate legislation ever to pass Congress/be signed into law (the Inflation Reduction Act), vast improvements in the job market, executive actions both large and small, improvements in labor and the economy, a general democratic system, a defense of the rule of law, a warning against fascism, and everything else that Trump trampled on in 4 years and will finish the job of doing if this godforsaken country is either right-wing-zealot or left-wing-zealot enough to put him back into office. (Like, people. Google is free. You're welcome to look up the improvements Biden has actually made, but that would harm your Narrative.) So much of this misinformation is also peddled by people who are proud that they don't have a clue how the American government works and/or deliberately lie about it: see all the claims that it was Biden's fault for not magically stopping a Trump-stacked SCOTUS, selected for the express purpose of overturning Roe, from overturning Roe. Because the president could just unilaterally overturn the Supreme Court with no problems at all if He Really Wanted To, I guess. Even if that is literally not the way it has ever functioned in history.
All the noxious Republicans in state legislatures passing anti-trans/anti-abortion/anti-voting laws ARE NOT SOMETHING BIDEN CAN STOP. If you're going to criticize him for not doing something, for God's sake at least make it for something he can do (like not calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, though I would argue he's already taking a more nuanced approach than the entirety of the American establishment during the War on Terror). And then vote for him when/if he follows it up, not just throw your hands in the air and scream about how you Can't Possibly Sully Yourself (especially when there is some very selective support going on here and a deliberate white-washing of how many orders of magnitude worse absolutely everything else in America and the world would be under Trump. So.)
I'm tired of it. I'm really, really tired of it. I've been trying to cut back on my politics posting because my mental health is bad right now and I often feel like a broken record screaming into the void. But. Yeah. Anyway. Whoof.
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full offense intended to people who hate voting— they literally don’t know how government works. youre not just voting for the politician youre voting for their ability to make political appointments. like if you claim to be pro-labor and pro-union and you take a dump all over voting, it’s just crystal clear you don’t know what the National Labor Relations Board is. But most people just do not know labor law. Like understandable, it’s a complex field. I just have to roll my eyes at “both parties are the same”. On some issues, yea. On others no the fuck they’re not. Embarrassing behavior imo.
Yeah actual labor leaders are EXTREMELY clear that they want people to vote and vote Democrat. I've heard union presidents talk about how much progress they've made and how much easier it's been with the Biden administration as opposed to Trump. And on a local level, my state Democrats got me paid sick time when my union wasn't willing to fight for it, while multiple Republicans states are repealing their labor laws left and right. And sure, Democrats as a whole aren't great at labor - but negotiating is a hell of a lot easier when the starting position isn't "unions should all be burned to the ground and the organizers run out of town on a rail".
And that's just labor - I've heard similar stories from people involved in climate change stuff and I'm willing to bet it's the same with a lot of other issues. The problem is that people assume if it's not big, splashy front-page news then it's either not important or didn't happen, when a lot of the most important stuff is quieter. The New York Times isn't going to report on every judge appointed to the NLRB but it's still an incredibly important issue that the parties are extremely different on!
#the number of people I've seen claiming Biden didn't do something that he demonstrably DID is amazing#please don't rely on social media for your news#the big culture war issues everyone is up in arms about are important!#but so is the small stuff nobody pays attention to#us politics#labor rights
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I want to talk to everyone who's still saying "I know Biden is bad, but Trump is worse, so just vote Blue."
I know that American Politics sucks right now. Everyone is a bad option and every year our options get worse. I get it, and it sucks, but here's the thing: If we keep saying "Vote Blue no matter what!" then the Democratic party is never going to get better. In fact, it'll probably get worse, because if ignoring the voices of their voter base doesn't lose them votes, then why bother listening?
If you want things to get better, if you want politicians that you can vote for without feeling like you've betrayed your ethics, then we need to show that we WILL stop voting for people who we don't agree with. We need to show that the American people have heard Biden's Administration say "There are no red lines for Israel" and we do not agree.
Politicians only care about us for our votes. If supporting genocides demonstrably loses votes, then politicians will take note and change their policies in accordance. But if we vote Biden no matter what, if we vote Blue no matter what, then they aren't going to listen to us when we call and protest and scream.
Now, some of you may be thinking, what about Trump?
There is a chance he won't be able to run after all; he's currently in a legal shit storm that got his ability to do business in New York revoked. And with many of his co-defendants and associates pleading guilty things aren't looking good for him. Even if he can dodge the numerous felony fraud charges he's been hit with, this is going to be an expensive, embarrassing, dragged out process that will severely limit his time and funds for campaigning.
That doesn't mean he won't find his way onto the ballot anyway, but he hasn't won the Republican nomination yet. Even if he does though, sticking by Biden doesn't mean you're putting someone better in the White House. Given the ever climbing death toll that Biden is not just ignoring but enabling, it’s getting increasingly difficult, at least for me, to believe that Trump is actually worse. They’re both bad, and they’re both hurting people, so instead let’s look at why so many are clinging to the democratic party, even in the face of a genocide.
I know the biggest reason so many folks are hesitating to cut support for Biden is that they're worried about what that means for those of us in the United States.
Who will stop the anti-trans bathroom bills that keep popping up? Who will keep abortion bans off the books? Who will prevent censorship in schools?
Well, in point of fact, not your president!
Think about it. Did Biden being president put a stop to Florida's "don't say gay" bill? No. He had zero impact there.
Is he what stands between Virginia and the Abortion Ban currently being proposed for the state? Also no. He's not involved at all.
Has Biden stopped the bans on Drag Shows so many states are trying to implement? No, the Federal Courts have been doing that, including judges who were appointed by Trump.
See, the President of the United States is all about the big picture. Their opinions matter, and they can set a tone for their party, but they don’t control everything. Their impacts on the governing of states come from the people they appoint, like judges, but even then, most people will still do their jobs over pleasing the person who got them that job. Especially so because federal judges are actually really difficult to remove, and that only really happens if they’re so bad at following the rules that congress gets rid of them.
I’m not sure if Biden can’t stop states from making laws or if he just wouldn’t, but either way he’s not protecting us.
The President honestly can’t do a hell of a lot to the American people, especially not in just four years. That’s why we survived Trump’s first presidency, and it’s why we as a whole would survive it if he got a second term.
The place where a President’s influence is immediately and drastically felt, however, is in the international sphere. The American people are protected, the citizens of the world are not, and with that fun little “well we’re not declaring war” workaround, the President, aka the Commander in Chief of the US Military, can do a hell of a lot of damage.
The people of Palestine may not survive another four years of Biden’s presidency. If things carry on like they are, they may not survive the remaining one year of his term.
So we the American people need to show that we will not stand by a president that endorses genocide. We need to show that we will not stand by a party that endorses genocide. We need to start talking, and loudly, about how we will not be voting for Biden next year. We need it to be clear that it is specifically his foreign policy that has lost his support, and that we will not be willing to just switch him out for a newer model who reminds me of no one so much as a modern day Aaron Burr.
There are a lot of things that we can do to express our displeasure for Biden, and for Israel, and there are a lot of people who can help you call for change, plan boycotts, organize marches, and determine where to aim direct action to have the greatest impact. But all of that needs to be done while putting our votes where our voices are, or else all of that rage will burn out and nothing will really change, just like it has in the Black Lives Matter movement.
In this case, as we do not currently have a better option, the place to put our presidential votes is with no one.
It’s not an ideal solution, I know. After all the years we’ve spent saying, “Vote! Vote no matter what! Vote or else you can’t complain about what happens!”, not voting feels like one of the most counterproductive moves to make. The reason we have to do it though, is because voting in the same sort of people and hoping they’ll make things better isn’t working, and we’re never going to get new options if we keep supporting the old ones. Cutting support for Biden, for Democrats on the national level, without a viable alternative isn't an easy choice to make. It's scary and I admit that it's kind of a gamble. No one has ever tried it before, not the way I'm hoping you all will.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” It’s time for us to break. No more unconditional blue votes.
We have to force the Democratic party to recognize that their voting base will not just mindlessly support them, and that the candidates they put forth will be expected to hold up a certain moral standard. Our democracy is skewed to favor the opinions of corporations and the mega rich, but politicians do still need the masses to vote them into office, just like companies need us to buy things so that they can make money in the first place, and voting margins are tight enough that just like in the Speaker of the House vote, it won’t actually take that many of us to throw a wrench in the party’s bottom line.
We might not be able to win, but we can make sure that they lose until they shape up and start making meaningful changes.
And you may be thinking, won’t that just leave us in the hands of Republicans?
I want you to scroll back up. Look at all the bills I brought up that Biden didn’t stop. We are already in Republican hands, and the majority of Democrats are not willing to actually stand up to them.
That said, not voting across the board isn’t what I’m asking you to do.
Our choices for President may be shot to hell, but there will be other people on that ballot in 2024. Local people, who will very directly affect your hometown and not much outside of it. Vote for your local sheriff, for your school board members, for your mayor and your state delegates.
These are the people who control whether or not your senator can pass a drag show ban. These are the people who enable or block bills that hurt LGBTQ+ students. These are the folks who vote on whether or not to pass abortion bans. And in local elections? Your vote really, truly counts in a way that it just can’t on a national level.
And it’s not just people who wind up on your ballots. Local initiatives for conservation, funding for infrastructure, redistricting drives, and changes to your state’s constitution appear on your ballots too, and those are things that you’re going to want to have a say in.
There’s more to this mess than just voting or not voting, of course. There is always going to be more than one step we have to take to force change. That's why we cannot and do not vote inside a vacuum. We still have to make calls, and go to protests, and put our money where our morals are. Change isn't easy, and when you're fighting a decades old machine it's not quick either. But the longer we drag our feet about pushing back, the longer we keep betting on the lesser evil to change, the worse our options will get.
It might feel hopeless right now. Like our voices don't matter, and that we're screaming our lungs out alone. We can't give up though. We can't give into despair, and we can’t let up the pressure before new voices step forward, even if it takes time, and even if it takes more effort then checking a box or sharing a post.
One step will never be enough on its own, but every step we take adds up, and when we take those steps together we magnify our voices into something that cannot be ignored.
This is how we force our politicians to change: consequences and losses. If we start up early enough we might even get better options who could actually win the presidency, but we can't balk if we don't.
I know you might be scared to lose this election. As I write this, it feels counterintuitive, and it's something I never could have imagined saying years ago. But we can't change our political options unless we force politicians to change, and that only happens if they can't get elected as they are.
So don't elect them, and make sure they know that you're doing it on purpose and for a reason.
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Please read, don't scroll pass this. (II)
One the previous post I talked about the KOSA Bill and the TikTok Ban Bill as you can see above, but now for this post I'm going to talk about something of even greater importance. Project 2025.
Project 2025 is a plan from Republicans / Conservatives to seize total control of America from the inside out while destroying democracy in the process, ultimately turning America into a Christian nationalist militarized state. One of the main ways they plan on making this a reality is through Trump getting a second term as president.
If this comes to pass, this will ruin and even end the lives of many, and to make it worse, the changes caused by Project 2025 will still be in effect even long after Trump's second term ends.
We cannot let Trump when this election, and as much as I hate this, Biden is really our only choice since voting on a 3rd party will most likely won't work. I know Biden has a lot of problems, but we don't have a choice.
Here is some more links with some additional info (including the actual Project 2025 website), please look more into this and spread this around (even if you're not in America)
Website
Project 2025 | Presidential Transition Project
Videos
youtube
The Conservative Plan to Take Over the Country (you need to know about this) (youtube.com)
Project 2025: The Fascist Plan For America (youtube.com)
Tweets
Project 2025 (@Prjct2025) / X (twitter.com)
STOP THE COUP 2025 #StopProject2025 (@stopthecoup2025) / X (twitter.com)
https://x.com/oogamretsim/status/1769776085221220774?s=20
BMB Empower Network on X: "A guide to #Project2025, the extreme #rightwing agenda for the next #Republican administration, aims to roll back #civilrights and destroy the #federalgovernment. https://t.co/TVhHMRjjTD" / X (twitter.com)
NowThis Impact on X: "When conservatives tell you what their plan is, believe them. Here’s how Project 2025 aims to break down the U.S. government, dismantle the education system, institute a national abortion ban... and that’s just the beginning. https://t.co/htZORS5whU" / X (twitter.com)
https://x.com/cardon_brian/status/1772756740016099494?s=20
David Pepper on X: "🚨 🚨 NEW WHITEBOARD 2024 is being framed as Trump vs. Biden. But Trump’s unhinged Ohio speech the other day, his past actions, the ominous Project 2025, and more, make clear that the election really is about: Trump vs YOU… and your FREEDOM. WATCH, RT and then… https://t.co/qG0Nr5SYOj" / X (twitter.com)
https://x.com/ruthbenghiat/status/1770499903640264865?s=20
Kanis The Arctic Wolf 🔜 Florida on X: "WE CANNOT STAY SILENT ABOUT THIS! Project 2025 and KOSA are DANGEROUS, it’s a threat to all of our rights and democracy as a whole. If we don’t stand up for our rights now, we won’t have them to fight for later on. SPREAD THE WORD, DEFEND OUR RIGHTS, IT TAKES ALL OF US!" / X (twitter.com)
https://x.com/batzless/status/1770583846540509549?s=20
Tumblr Posts
#project 2025#vote blue no matter who#election 2024#2024 election#christofascists#us elections#kosa#donald trump#trump#trump 2024#trump indictment#fuck trump#omori#student loans#abortion rights#lgbt rights#conservatives#facism#Youtube
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i want every single white piece of shit on that post calling people fascists or misguided or privileged or stupid for not voting for biden to look a palestinian person whose entire family got killed by biden in the eyes and tell them you think they should vote for biden. tell them you think they're privileged for not voting for biden. look them in the eyes and condescend to them about how much danger they clearly don’t know they’re in.
don't actually do that. don't actually ever speak to a fucking brown person lmao. eat shit actually.
i want every single one of you genocidal freaks to think for two seconds about why you think it's acceptable to tell brown people to vote for the man committing genocide on their fucking families. to tell disabled people to vote for the man committing eugenics based genocide on them at home via covid. (you do realize the largest amount of covid protection rollbacks occurred during biden's presidency right? you do realize a thousand people a week are CURRENTLY dying from covid?)
using the threat of our rights being taken away as a cudgel against Black and Brown and disabled ppl as if the biden admin hasn’t overseen more covid deaths than the trump admin, massive attacks on immigration rights (including the recent immigration proposal increasing mandatory detention and allowing mass deportations), massive attacks on reproductive rights (they knew abt roe v wade for WEEKS. we can bypass congress for genocide & for worsening immigration rights but we can't do anything about abortion?), as if we aren't looking at the current highest levels of homelessness since 2007. and all of that on top of the fact that joe shitstain biden is LITERALLY COMMITTING GENOCIDE.
the audacity. the absolute audacity. of this white bitch going ""vote for them: the most marginalized, the most vulnerable"" BIDEN IS KILLING "THEM." BIDEN IS KILLING US. How dare you speak for us? biden's complete rollback of covid protections have killed more people than trump. biden's admin has utterly abandoned disabled people to die. he is committing a eugenicist genocide against all disabled and immunocompromised people. he is committing a genocide against palestinians. the audacity to call those people "privileged" for refusing to enable THEIR OWN GENOCIDES.
"boohoo we have no choice but to vote for the genocidal fascist or else there'll be fascism!!!" you dumb fuckers we are already living in a fascist state. you don't care about stopping fascism. you don't care about stopping genocide. you care about fascism and genocide not hurting you. if spineless liberals and dems want so badly to beat trump they should put forward a candidate who hasn’t alienated the voter base that let them win the last time, not the candidate that barely won four years ago before reneging on his promises (student loans, environmentalism, etc), killing half a million people from covid, and killing 20,000+ more via colonial genocide.
to every dumbass in those notes going “uwu he isn’t perfect uwu he isn’t my first choice uwu we can't let ~disagreements~ get in the way uwu voting is like public transport <3 voting is like a group project”: ten thousand children are dead. ten thousand children are dead. ten thousand children are dead. biden killed ten thousand children. what the fuck is wrong with you.
i hope you all rot.
#quasartalks#us politics#politics#joe biden#palestine#israel#covid#covid19#genocide#ableism#racism#jesus fucking christ this is infuriating. this is so fucking infuriating.#the sheer condescension and audacity of these white pieces of shit#i hope every single one of them is haunted for the rest of their lives by Every Single Person who died of covid during the past 4 years#by every single child that Biden and Israel murdered during the past 2 months#i have scarcely been this fucking furious in my life.#i hope you all rot.#i made this post like two days ago and then left it in my drafts for a bit but yeah i’m still just as furious lmao#how dare you tell a people being genocided to support the man doing it#this is rebloggable for now but if people clown i’m throwing hands
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Look closely enough and you’ll find that Eric Johnson was always a Republican, or at least very susceptible to becoming one. Conservative “Democrats” are one bribe or one hurt feeling away from switching parties.
This highlights the significance of how much more important primaries are, because after the primaries are over, then it becomes an endless chorus of, “vote for the lesser evil” and “vote blue no matter who,” and we have more than enough bad examples of where that can lead to, right??
Honestly, always vote for the most leftist, progressive candidate you can in the primary elections, before it comes down to voting for a Republican vs. Republican-lite in the general election.
I don’t think there are primary elections for mayoral races, but I still love the idea that if a candidate switches political parties (any time after the primaries, I’d suggest), then they should A) not be allowed to hold the office they ran for until they run + win as a member of their new party, B) pay heavy fines from their personal funds, C) they should be forced to resign, and D) the election should be re-done.
The Democratic Party needs to tighten up and make some rules regarding who can and cannot run as a Democrat.
Literally months before SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade, Nancy Pelosi was backing a homophobic, anti-abortion, “Democratic” 🙄 candidate named Henry Cuellar, saying that a candidate’s stance on abortion wasn’t important. And Cuellar’s opponent was a young pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ immigration attorney named Jessica Cisneros! And it was a relatively safe blue district, meaning that whichever Democrat the DNC backed, they were likely to win and a Republican hadn’t won that district in forever. AND before that, Pelosi and the DCCC threw their weight behind another openly homophobic “Democrat” named Dan Lipinski.
Could you even imagine Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy openly throwing their support behind a pro-abortion candidate who wanted gun control? No? So why tf does Democratic leadership constantly foist GOP-lite candidates onto the Democratic Party when other viable options exist?
Just a guess on my part, but if you want fewer anti-abortion laws getting passed, then you should probably back fewer anti-abortion candidates. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Vote blue no matter who” has bitten Democrats in the ass wayyy more than any converse slogan has bitten Republicans. Because Republicans actually vet their candidates and make sure that those candidates want the same deplorable things that their deplorable base wants.
And just for clarity, because I know how the internet works and how sycophants love twisting words: I am NOT saying don’t vote for Biden in 2024. I’m not even saying to support a third party candidate. I want Trump and all Republicans gone in the next few election cycles. What I am saying is, once the election is over and hopefully Trump/DeSantis have been vanquished, we need to seriously rework how the Democratic Party has been run. Losing Roe v. Wade is indicative of how poorly it’s been mismanaged.
Anyway, new laws can be made, so especially after the Supreme Court has ignored and undone so many standing legal precedents, I don’t wanna hear jack shit about “pie-in-the-sky” or “be realistic.”
This centrism bullshit ain’t working, yo.
#politics#eric johnson#dallas texas#centrists#nancy pelosi#neoliberalism#neoliberals#vbnmw#vote blue no matter who
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Why Are People Happy (or like, at least Not Freaking Out) About the USA Midterm Results?
(or in my case exhaling a held breath as I slightly lift my finger off the "oh fuck me and my spouse should worry for our future survival if we stay in the country" button for now)
So for newer voters there is the very valid question: why the hell are people acting like this is a victory for progressives/Democrats when they'll likely lose the House and barely hold on to the Senate?
Short Answer: because by historical pattern and all the usual indicators, anyone who even slightly caucused with Dems should have been trounced, and the fact that they weren't trounced has the far hardline right shaking.
To borrow from a great Reddit comment I saw; the GOP is freaking out because this was like a pro boxer went up against a sick six year old, and the boxer may have scored higher in the end but the six year old beat the shit out of them in the process.
For decades the pattern has been that the president's party loses at LEAST 20-40 seats in the midterms. Add in that Republicans tend to turn out more for midterms, gerrymandering, and the fact that in the past swing voters are swayed by inflation and gas prices and...it should have been so much worse. With how everything was stacked up this ended up being a historic turnout for an incumbent executive branch, the career politicians pay attention to shit like that.
And yeah with how things are, "holy shit it could have been so much worse" is worth something.
So I'm not like, popping bottles and cheering, but this to me is a great example of Voting as Harm Reduction in Action.
Voting did not Fix It. It can't. Voting will not stop fascism, strike that expectation from your mind and also really see that that is not what voting's role is in an action plan. Voting is the Minimum. Meaning if you can't do anything else you vote, but you don't rely on voting and expect it alone to fix problems.
(long post with more of a breakdown below. Tho this isn't a breakdown where I pulled sources and exact numbers. It's more of a General Take Away.)
The ultimate proof that this wasn't great for the far right is the fact that they're very openly freaking out. Go to the far right outlets and they are losing it. It has been loudly shown that they can't assume they can point to inflation and get away with OPEN pushes for total take over.
On one hand, we very VERY likely gained a couple more years to fight (either to stop a fascist take over or to at least set things up to save more lives, or to even reduce the power hold a fascist take over could keep.) On the other hand, people like Nick Fuentes are now openly saying "we are the minority and these results show why we need a dictatorship." Whether it's a good thing they're saying the quiet part even louder or not remains to be seen.
(My optimistic take is it may be a good thing, as it's way harder for moderates to accuse progressives of hysterics when the wackos won't stop saying the quiet part out loud and are in fact saying it louder. I kind of WANT the wackos to be louder and louder, there's now good evidence that freaks voters out.)
The More Definitive Good:
-The GOP majority is not NEARLY what they were wanting, and a lot of their moderates are spooked. The status quo holders are seeing that hardline regressive politics like the overturn of Roe is BAD for them, and they can't rely on "but the gas prices." The GOP generally falls in line together yes, but remember how much they struggled to pass big change legislation when Trump was president? They're gonna have even more inter-party tensions now as the hardline right gets frustrated that they can't impeach Biden every week and the status quo moderates get more hesitant to back up policies that they KNOW won't be popular with their constituents. They will not be able to coast whatever they want through. Even if they end up flipping the House AND Senate it will not be with big enough majorities to do whatever they want.
-Listen if nothing else, if you're a petty bitch like me who enjoys a nice dish of shadenfreude, its probably gonna be very funny watching McCarthy struggle to keep his party on track if they retake the House.
-Cannot possibly stress enough that the fact that it's STILL not 100% certain the GOP will flip the house is buck fucking wild.
-GenZ turnout is giving me hope that the Youths are properly viewing voting as a minimal first step in an action plan and not as a "if it doesn't fix it why bother?" scenario. If voting is all you can do, do that so you can help give people who are fighting better ground to work on and more time. Stay involved in local elections especially!
-For me at least, this has let me take my mental finger off the PANIC AND FLEE NOW button so I can focus slightly less on survival for immediate family and more on helping others.
-Speaking of, LOOK UP HOW TO HELP YOUR NATIVE AMERICAN COMMUNITIES. The Indian Child Welfare Act is on the line at the supreme court. Look it up, look up how you can help.
Best Case Scenario Outcomes/Dreams
-Trump vs DeSantis actually does turn into a GOP civil war. Will this fight be good in the long run? I don't know but I know that at this moment it's very fun watching them claw at each other. Thoughts and prayers towards an ongoing GOP civil war. The established GOP wants Trump gone and see this midterm as proof he's bad for elections, but he's not going to go easy. I'm gonna be like Cersei Lannister looking out my window sipping wine watching them fight.
-GOP realizes "being seen as the social regression party is bad for us" and they stop being obstructionists. Best case here is they open up to climate legislation. That or they buckle down harder and piss everyone off more. Either way is likely to work out for progressives. Ultimate Dream is a GOP civil war and party shakeout leading to a conservative party with like, disagreements on tax policy and regulations being the biggest thing to worry about in the future.
-Bigger Dream; this is a death knell for the rise of Christo-Fascism. They overshot their reach with the Roe overturn and the power hold the hard right Christian block has on the conservative party goes downhill from here. This is more of a dream and not a realistic expectation though.
-I don't hold as much hope here but there's a CHANCE that this also signaled to Democrats that they can be more pushy and not suffer for it. Biden is a political beast and I wouldn't be surprised if his more openly progressive (by his standards) moves recently were to test how voters would respond to it. If Dems payed attention (big if) they got the message that people want more action.
-Trump probably lost the political backup he hoped for if he gets indicted. There's a GOOD chance that the establishment GOP won't stop the legal freight train about to hit him even if they get both House and Senate. I think it's silly to say "it's over for Trump!" but it's fair to say his tower is less protected than he likely hoped. It's likely the establishment is less afraid of his power than they were even after 2020.
-can you imagine if he made a third party and wrecked the GOP voting base? Like to charge reblog to cast.
-If nothing else; between Alex Jones, Elon flailing like an idiot and maybe taking down Twitter, and far right pundits screaming in confusion, there is entertainment to be had.
Now What:
-The fight is not over. It will never be over. The hill to fight up is less steep than expected now, but it's still there.
-We will likely not see much passed before 2024. This midterm was less about getting progressive platforms pushed and more about making it harder for regressive policies to pass. It'll be frustrating but with how things were stacked that's the best we could've hoped for.
-The GOP have gerrymandering and can win that way (it's likely how they end up winning the House) BUT more people are aware of it now and districts that should have been EASY wins were closer than the GOP would like. They're likely to try to gerrymander harder, it's now our job to be very very loud about that. Push for districting reform.
-The conservative voting bloc is ALSO sick of the two options. Peeking around in r/conservative revealed a surprising amount of support for rank choice voting. This is an area to plug your nose and work with people towards a common goal. Rank choice is at the moment, the most realistic strategy for breaking up the two party system.
-Hard to swallow pill: the majority of this country is moderate. It sucks. But it is. You cannot depend on the dream of a socialist revolution. Lying down and accepting that as a reason to give up is also not an option.
-Expanding on that; this midterm may be a sign that the moderates are more politically aware than they used to be, and that they're more persuadable towards progressive policy than I had expected. Try to keep that up, because it makes it harder for the hardline right to try to push their shit quietly.
-There will almost certainly not be a time where progressives can relax and say they fixed it.
-Celebrating "holy shit that could have been so much worse" can't be a sign that It's Fixed. I also don't think people view it that way. My big hope is that younger progressives have realized that they can't go "the system is fucked beyond repair so why bother."
-Celebrating increments and enjoying some shadenfreude can be good for your mental health. Shitting on people for celebrating "oh good I don't need to flee the country asap" doesn't really help anyone.
-There was a ZERO chance this midterm would have given total big majorities to progressives. If you are set on only celebrating Perfect Wins you're going to have a BAD TIME and will burn out fast.
-Fight for an ideal you don't expect to reach. Take every half step you can, push for bigger leaps. Do not give ground for the sake of not reaching the goal.
-If DeSantis is smart he will moderate his "anti woke" openly social-regression talk. Don't let him get away with remaking his image as "the nice safe moderate compared to Trump." Pull out the petty shit he did with Disney, point out every way he is JUST as low and mean.
-GenZ: the far right is now terrified of you. Good. Keep em scared.
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A lot of the problem with calling people “Zionists” is people online throwing it around as an accusation don’t know what it means. It literally just means thinking Jews should have some kind of self-determination in the area they are originally from, and the most common version is believing the State of Israel shouldn’t cease to exist, but there are a lot of subtypes and some don’t even believe in a state. But the actual definition encompasses something the vast majority of Jewish people as well as a lot of others believe. It also doesn’t mean that one agrees with the current Israeli government at all, and it doesn’t mean you oppose Palestinian self-determination. But that seems to be how people online use it… and then half the time the people they’re accusing of being “Zionists” are just “people who think Hamas is bad” (which any progressive person should think since they are far-right fundamentalists who oppress people in Gaza who don’t follow their religious extremist ideas) or “people who call out antisemitism among popular users” or “people who say its wrong to tear down hostage lost and found posters” or “people who don’t think you should not vote for Biden since Trump is worse.” None of those four things require supporting any kind of Zionism, and tumblr users are not using critical thinking skills in seeing how a lot of people calling those people “Zionists” are tankies or have other extreme beliefs that should lead to more scrutiny. One was literally celebrating the Russian invasion of Ukraine and denies the Holodomor happened. But the lack of understanding of what “Zionism” means among people making accusations goes way beyond Tumblr.
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Please tell me if you're a zionist or not. Because the notes on that post of yours are absolutely rancid regarding Palestinian people and I need to know before I submit your url to the zionist block list
No, I am not a zionist. Israel, like any ethnostate, should not exist and what they are doing to the Palestinians is unquestionably genocide. I fully support Palestine and their right to resist in the face of annihilation.
I am also not anti semetic, for the record, and stand with the many Jewish people who support Palestinian liberation.
I also recognize that while Biden or any president is unlikely to ever stop supporting Israel as it’s too critical to colonial and capitalist action in that area, Trump has voiced support for Israel straight up nuking Gaza.
There is unfortunately very little we can meaningfully do with this particular election for the Palestinian people. Continuing to pressure the democrats may mitigate the damage to a degree, but I’m aware how thin a comfort that is to a country currently being massacred.
But we cannot help ANYONE if our democracy is actively overthrown, as Trump has made extremely, unambiguously clear he intends to do. He has every intention of making himself a Putin style dictator, with the full support of Putin himself, who knows he can use Trump as a puppet, in a manner so like the way we’ve overthrown democratic countries and installed puppet dictators in the past that the dramatic irony would be heavy handed were it fictional. We almost deserve it.
But we are a country full of innocent people the same as any other, who don’t deserve to suffer and die to punish the idea of western imperialism, which the vast majority of have zero control over.
The one tiny bit of control we DO have is through voting.
This is not a situation I’m happy with, but this isn’t a situation of trading Palestinian lives for American ones. This is a situation where saving Palestinian lives isn’t even on the table, and refusing to acknowledge that is only going to make the situation worse. We can either save American lives and hope it doesn’t make the situation in Palestine actively worse. Or we can refuse to do anything like petulant children and watch everyone die.
Vote, and then get back to organizing your community, participating in protests and direct action, volunteering and donating to relief and evacuation funds, and voting in local elections so that we can maybe end up with some better options next time!
And if yall ever get the violent revolution off the ground, I’ll be right behind you! But if you tell me you’re not voting because the only moral action is firebombing a Walmart, you’d better firebomb the goddamn Walmart.
And to the assholes in the notes of that post and talking shit in my asks, for the record, I’m a disabled trans lesbian living in goddamn Louisiana, living on less than $1000 a month. Aside from my friends in Florida, no one is getting the ass end of this garbage government more than us. And for the record, yeah, I’m boycotting McDonald’s, and anything else I can. I’d boycott Starbucks too if there was one within 50 miles. I vote in every local election. I organize as much as I can in rural Louisiana. I take direct action whenever I get the chance, which isn’t often given my lack of mobility and remote location, but I’m willing to bet I’ve done more than most of the assholes in the notes.
Let me put it very plainly, TLDR: if you refuse to vote because you think it doesn’t make a difference or you think it’ll make you complicit in this country’s crimes, you are actively putting your personal comfort and moral purity above the lives of the Palestinian people, as well as above every vulnerable person in this country on top of it. If you want to save Palestine, start by not letting our god damn democracy go up in flames.
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What do you think about trump possibly getting arrested for fraud?
If he does get arrested it’s nothing more than a maliciously motivated political ploy to keep him from being voted in as the next president. If you’ve paid attention at all to anything since 2016 you will know they’ve been saying they will “get Trump” since he won the election but they never had anything to get him for.
And they still don’t. There’s no real evidence of any crimes and the case against him is so weak it can’t be anything but political. Even anti-trump prosecutors have refused to take it in the past because it’s simply too weak to prosecute. Even the illegal things he supposedly has done were so minimal that the statute of limitations has passed for even the most serious charge they could realistically put against him. Which means they would have to create a crime, read through the lines and misapply the law, all of which they are willing to do to “get Trump.”
Take 5 seconds to research DA Alvin Bragg and it’s obvious he’s doing this for political points. Look at the crime he’s been ignoring in his own district and then ask yourself why. And ask yourself why he’s ignoring those crimes but going after a decades old flimsy case against Trump that there’s next to no evidence for. Even if he gets prosecuted no reasonable jury would ever convict him on such a weak case.
Why are actual serious known crimes committed by the Biden family not being prosecuted but hypothetical crimes by Trump are?
Where is the indictment for Hillary Clinton whom there is a much stronger case against for similar and more serious crimes?
The whole Stormy Daniels case is bs and there’s nothing to prosecute there because while paying hush money is shady and less than decent it’s not illegal. It’s not a crime. Which means if they try him for anything in regards to that they will have to make up a crime and charge him for it.
And anyone who understands what is happening here, even if you hate Trump to your core, should be furious. Because even if you want Trump locked up or whatever, the way this is happening is a disgrace to our country. The way it’s supposed to work is a crime is found and then they find the person who did the crime and in this case what they are doing is finding the person they want to prosecute and then trying to find a crime. And right now people might not care because it’s Trump and Orange Man Bad but forget that it’s Trump. Maybe next time it’s you. Or your mom. Or the kid down the street. The fact that they are doing it to Trump means they are willing to do it and if they get away with it they will do it again.
Another reason this should infuriate people is because it’s an attempt to keep him from being the president. And that should upset you even if you don’t want him to be the president because what they are doing is trying to override the voice of the people. They are trying to choose the next president when it’s not up to them. It’s up to the voters. They want to keep us from being able to vote for or against Trump because they don’t want him to win. We should not allow this because this time it’s Trump but next time it won’t be. We can’t let the establishment pick the candidates and keep us from voting for people just because they don’t want them to be the president. That is not a choice they get to make. That is up to us, the voters.
This is actual election interference.
I know you might not have been looking for that much but that’s how I’m feeling about it right now.
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