Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Republicans in disarray!

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

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Fighting the Good Fight Open Thread: If Your Vote Wasn’t Important…

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If Your Vote Wasn't Important... - STOCKPILE

(John Deering via GoComics.com)
.

… The Repubs wouldn’t keep trying so hard to take it away.


Reader Interactions

48Comments

  1. 1.

    japa21

    To be honest, a problem is that a lot of voters think their votes aren’t important so why vote. And, unfortunately, probably most of them would vote for Democrats.

  2. 2.

    Woodrow/asim

    @japa21: Yes, apathy is a problem.

    Yet I’d ask we not rabbit-hole into diversions. The main issue here is the decades-long effort to erase the gains the VRA and other acts put in place.

    It’s important to keep in mind: the folx who come up with this stuff are willing to toss away a thousand White GOP votes if they can kill 10,000 Black Democratic votes along the way. They don’t care about anything other than collecting and maintaining power, while giving some masses the illusion of same — and Race is a major tool for that, and we need to start addressing that directly.

    This was the real cost of Jim Crow — the casual violence and anxiety, the crushing of any real economic hope, was horrific for my mom and dad, but stifled Southern economies, and the white folx living there, for generations as well. It hurt anyone not in the right group to gain real power over others thru Segregation.

    Racism hides all that, allows elite (and wannbe) people to exchange morals for power with ease. It’s why it’s such a useful tool for people like Trump to move a mass of people. It’s why Guy Galberson(sp), the early 1950s GOP chair, openly courted the White Supremacist Dixiecrats in order to start gaining power for the GOP in the Democratic-controlled South. We know how that ended up…

    …and that should remind us that not confronting what Racism is doing to Democracy once again, by raising tangentially related issues, is oftentimes deflection. Deflection that, no matter how well-intended, plays into the goals of the Racists who want power, again. It’s ugly and painful to look at Racism in the face, in America today.

    But the only way out, is thru.

  3. 3.

    Splitting Image

    @japa21:

    To be honest, a problem is that a lot of voters think their votes aren’t important so why vote. And, unfortunately, probably most of them would vote for Democrats.

    Very true, and another bloc of voters seem to believe that the best way to underscore the importance of their vote is to withhold it from politicians who aren’t quite good enough for them. People think they are “sending a message” when they are drifting out of politicians’ view.

  4. 4.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    Found this yesterday, from Vox:

    The DOJ’s lawsuit against Georgia’s voter suppression law is probably doomed

    Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Friday that the Justice Department filed a lawsuit challenging several provisions of Georgia’s recently enacted voter suppression law. And the Justice Department has a strong case on the merits against this law.

    Yet it is far from clear whether the strength of their case will matter: They will have to litigate this case before a judiciary that is increasingly hostile toward voting rights claims.

    The complaint in United States v. Georgia, which is signed by the most senior lawyers in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, alleges that several provisions of the Georgia law “were adopted with the purpose of denying or abridging Black citizens’ equal access to the political process, in violation” of the Voting Rights Act.

    The DOJ does not attack the entire Georgia law, and it does not directly attack the single most troubling provision of the law, which allows Republican officials to effectively take over local election boards that have the power to close polling places and disqualify voters.

  5. 5.

    JPL

    @japa21: That’s always been true, but what happened in GA changed some minds.   Abrams has done amazing work in getting out the vote.

  6. 6.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @japa21:

    A few months ago, I always wondered how these types would react to the argument that the GOP is destroying democracy and that both sides are not the same.

    I found out the answer the other day: “We don’t have democracy now!”, in response to the filibuster

  7. 7.

    Brachiator

    @japa21:

    To be honest, a problem is that a lot of voters think their votes aren’t important so why vote. And, unfortunately, probably most of them would vote for Democrats.

    We can’t do much about voter apathy. We can try to prevent voter suppression efforts.

  8. 8.

    JWR

    @Splitting Image:

    People think they are “sending a message” when they are drifting out of politicians’ view.

    Somebody, probably here, wrote that if you want to send a message, go to Western Union. Truer words and all that.

  9. 9.

    WaterGirl

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):   You have shared the most negative possible view of this.

    I hope you are not still wondering why your doom and gloom approach can be frustrating to people around you who are working to fight for democracy rather than rolling over and giving up.

  10. 10.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @WaterGirl:

    …..I’m not giving up. Where did I say I was giving up? That’s just the title of the Vox article. I think it’s fair to say that the result of the lawsuit is uncertain and might not work out, given the GOP court packing. Doesn’t mean I think all is lost. Because I don’t

  11. 11.

    Martin

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think the point of the lawsuit is a bit different. The whole complaint lays out GOP lawmakers saying why they need  to disenfranchise voters. Now, USSC could uphold that, but boy does that establish a precedent that partisan forces cannot be trusted to run elections at all.

    Just as the infrastructure bill is about pulling Democrats in a given direction on things like the filibuster,  I think this is about putting pressure on Manchin, etc to show that the courts aren’t the greatest mechanism, or an adequate substitute to legislation.

  12. 12.

    Brachiator

    @WaterGirl:

    You have shared the most negative possible view of this.

    I hope you are not still wondering why your doom and gloom approach can be frustrating to people around you who are working to fight for democracy rather than rolling over and giving up.

    Please don’t be so hard on the guy. He accurately notes what some people think.  I don’t see this as an invitation to surrender.

  13. 13.

    Patricia Kayden

    So why not march against Manchin and Sinema as well? The filibuster should be gone in the face of the red state voter suppression laws but thanks to Manchin and Sinema, Republicans pretty much run the Senate.

  15. 15.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @WaterGirl:

    I will say that I was pleasantly surprised when SCOTUS declined to review a lower court decision striking down a school policy requiring students to go to the bathroom corresponding to their gender assigned at birth

  17. 17.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Martin:

    I hope you’re right and that’s a good point. I’m honestly surprised pork barrel hasn’t seemed to sway him

  18. 18.

    Martin

    @Brachiator: Yeah, the lawsuit is useful, but it’s not a substitute for passing the legislation, and people need to understand that. This is about 40% steering the Senate, 40% using the levers of government because they’re there, and 20% stopping Georgia. I mean, there are no laws saying Georgia can’t just pick their winners. That’s what people need to get.

  19. 19.

    Elizabelle

    @Brachiator:   I am on Team Water Girl here.

    I saw that article on Vox today; decided not to read it at the time because maybe the author is right; maybe he is not.

    No surprise that Goku threw it into the middle of this thread though.

    The author, Ian Milhiser, is a Duke law grad, clerked for a federal judge, and wrote a book that’s actually on my Amazon “maybe” list, think title is How the Supreme Court Comforts the Comfortable and Afflicts the Afflicted.

    From Ian Milhiser’s article:

    The DOJ’s complaint does an effective job of showing that many of these factors are present in Georgia. Yet while it has strong legal arguments on its side, the courts are now much more conservative than the Supreme Court that decided Arlington Heights — indeed, the current Supreme Court is even more conservative than the one that decided Shelby County.
    The Georgia case, moreover, is assigned to Judge J.P. Boulee, a Trump judge.
    The Justice Department, in other words, won’t simply need to prove its case, it will also need to overcome a judiciary stacked with judges who tend to be hostile to voting rights claims — and that are particularly hostile to claims that white lawmakers engaged in intentional race discrimination.
    That will not be easy.

    What straw man has said any of this will be easy?  And some of the conservative USSC “justices” have pleasantly surprised us, Scalito and Thomas excluded (Thomas did make me happy with one ruling, but cannot recall what it was …)

    There’s also another case (Abbot v. Perez; Scalito wrote the 2018 decision) that Milhiser claims will make for a tougher climb but — isn’t a lot of what the states are doing now even more nakedly political?

    Anyway, I don’t understand why some people here and elsewhere delight in throwing more cold water on already drowning people.

    I join Water Girl on the raft.

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Why did I think that?

    Because you shared the worst possible view of this with the article you chose to share – “it is probably doomed”.   With no counterpoint or commentary from you to say that you don’t agree that it’s doomed, it sure looks like you are sharing with us that you think it’s doomed, too

    I wasn’t trying to be mean here, Goku, or hurt your feelings.  Sometimes you seem to not understand why people react to your comments as being doom and gloom, and I was pointing this out as an example of how/why that is.

  21. 21.

    Elizabelle

    Also, a LOT can happen before the DOJ’s case makes it to the USSC.  A lot.

    Good to hear Biden is going out on a voting rights speaking tour.  That should help.

  22. 22.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @WaterGirl:

    I understand you’re not trying to be mean and I get what you’re saying. But just because I might have thought that the lawsuit is doomed doesn’t mean I think everything is completely doomed, y’know?

    @Elizabelle:

    Why couldn’t you respond directly to me?

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):   Hi there.  You saw the comment, so mission accomplished.

    Milhiser seems to be a savvy observer; I get that.  But why always look for information that will aid in pre-disappointing us?

  25. 25.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Elizabelle:

    But why always look for information that will aid in pre-disappointing us?

    Well, honestly, it’s not that I look for it. The news feed that shows up whenever I open a new tab in Chrome displays these stories a lot and sometimes I like to get others’ takes

  26. 26.

    Brachiator

    @Elizabelle:

    The author, Ian Milhiser, is a Duke law grad, clerked for a federal judge, and wrote a book that’s actually on my Amazon “maybe” list, think title is How the Supreme Court Comforts the Comfortable and Afflicts the Afflicted.

    Thank you very much for these references and comments!

    I don’t see  Milhiser as just throwing cold water on already drowning people. I don’t agree with him in many places, but he does usefully  talk about some of the potential obstacles to be dealt with.

  27. 27.

    Kattails

    Well all I have to say is that cartoon makes Mitch look a lot better than he really does. Which I thought was against the rules of political cartooning.

  28. 28.

    Uncle Omar

    While wool-gathering today I remembered out of nowhere a Bill Mauldin cartoon from the mid-60’s.  It showed an eagle marching up a flag pole and saying to the (Jim) crow at the top, “I’ve decided I want my seat back!”  Of course with my limited search skills I can’t find it, but if anyone can I’d like to see it posted.

  29. 29.

    schrodingers_cat

    I agree with Watergirl and Elizabelle and what they said about Goku’s comment. However I can’t help notice that when Kay says the same stuff she gets an amen chorus not brickbats like Goku. Why is that.?

  30. 30.

    Brachiator

    @Uncle Omar:

    While wool-gathering today I remembered out of nowhere a Bill Mauldin cartoon from the mid-60’s.  It showed an eagle marching up a flag pole and saying to the (Jim) crow at the top, “I’ve decided I want my seat back!”  Of course with my limited search skills I can’t find it, but if anyone can I’d like to see it posted.

    Fortunately, it is not too hard to find.  The cartoon and some good commentary here.

    But placing Jim Crow at the top of the flagpole is a statement about sovereignty that, once more, transforms simple symbols into much more eloquent and meaningful statements. And the line of dialogue makes it clear that Mauldin is not simply shouting “Hurray for us!”

  32. 32.

    Elizabelle

    @Brachiator:

    But placing Jim Crow at the top of the flagpole is a statement about sovereignty that, once more, transforms simple symbols into much more eloquent and meaningful statements. And the line of dialogue makes it clear that Mauldin is not simply shouting “Hurray for us!”

    Quite the opposite. “I’ve decided …”

    Look at the eagle, I would tell them. Now look at the crow.

    Is there going to be a battle? Hardly.

    The eagle could have taken back control of the country any time he wanted.

    This brilliant cartoon is an indictment, not a celebration.

    Like the crow and the eagle, that would have flown right over my head on a quick look at that cartoon.   Art flying under the radar.

    Good site.

  34. 34.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Elizabelle: It is a combination of these factors below:

    Some animals are more equal than others. Current FPers don’t criticize former or current FPers. Kay’s analysis (even when I disagree) is cogent and she makes good points.

  38. 38.

    WaterGirl

    Wow, Bill Penzey is taking on the Pope and the Catholic Church in his latest email.  It’s too long to quote all of it here, and I don’t seem to be able to find it on their website.

    Twenty years ago, when support for the LGBTQ+ community was in the low twenties percentage wise, a business once a year placing a rainbow in its window was a valuable thing to do. Now that’s not enough. Today if you are not using the elevated voice being a business gives you to directly call out those who keep the persecution of the LGBTQ+ community alive, you are just pulling the spotlight from where it needs to be.

    It is great that we have a Pope that in his personal correspondence hints at an empathy for those whose lives his Vatican office, in its official capacity, labels as sin in the eyes of God. But it’s not enough. The Pope knows, along with everyone in senior management of the Church, of the suicide problem among the young LGBTQ+ people within their community, especially among those who are transgender. They also know that these people are not rejecting God by the path they are on, but are instead moving to where God/Nature/ the Universe wants them to be.

    To admit the truth that God wants LGBTQ+ people to be who they are is to admit the Church has been wrong in interpreting God’s plan. I get that admitting error and asking for forgiveness are tough, but it is the right thing, and it’s the very thing those most vulnerable in the Church’s community need most. For the Vatican two months ago to needlessly issue a statement not just calling gay lives sin but actually labeling their love a sin in the eyes of God is inexcusable. That this Pope who clearly knows better has yet to condemn this statement his office put out into the world is heartbreaking.

    That there seems to be a growing entanglement between the messaging of the Vatican and the American Republican party’s anti-LGBTQ+ platform for the upcoming 2022 elections should leave no red flag un-raised.

    So as American businesses how do we turn this all around? Our initial response to the Vatican’s gay love is sin letter was to raise over $200,000 for The Trevor Project who are very good at saving at least some of the young lives the Church’s continued persecution of LGBTQ+ people puts at risk. Please send them money if you can. But going forward as a spice business we can do much more than just shifting where money goes. Spices are amazing in so many ways, but one of their best traits is how all you have to do is sprinkle them on but then they bake in. Over the years we’ve learned there’s things we can do with that.

    Fighting the Good Fight Open Thread: If Your Vote Wasn't Important...

  39. 39.

    Elizabelle

    @schrodingers_cat:   And some animals exist to disrupt and redirect a thread.

    @WaterGirl:  Calling out Francis, who swims in a sea of conservatives and has to maneuver around them, seems to me like throwing rocks at the firefighters.  The Catholic Church is one of the slowest moving ships out there, but Pope Francis has made some serious attempts at bringing it into the electric lights world. Let’s just snap our fingers, shall we, Mr. Penzey.  It is that easy!

  40. 40.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Elizabelle:

    And some animals exist to disrupt and redirect a thread.

    Perhaps.

    But there have been a lot of gloomy takes lately on the FP from more than one FPer. With most people (not necessarily you) chiming  in to say how much they agree. I just found the contrast ironic. That’s all.

  41. 41.

    TomatoQueen

    @WaterGirl:  What a long way Penzey has come. He mentions the Trevor Project & that’s the 2nd or third mention of it I’ve seen this week, so as things go in threes it’s worth more than a look.

    Meanwhile Independent Lens has The People Vs Agent Orange.

  43. 43.

    Elizabelle

    @schrodingers_cat:  I will be watching more closely now.  Albeit, there are characteristic behaviors for many of us, myself included.

    I see so much that I don’t put up because it might be deflating.  One has to find the courage to keep moving forward, and there are so many forces that shout or whisper “Stay. Give up. You’re not strong enough.  It will never get better.”

    I just do not believe that.

  44. 44.

    BruceFromOhio

    WH press sec Jen Psaki to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp: “If you have such a fear of making it easier and more accessible for people to vote, then I would ask you what you’re so afraid of.”

    Duh, black people voting, Jen. The two-bit soulless criminal ratfuckers in the GA legislature have made that abundantly clear.

    It’s important to keep in mind: the folx who come up with this stuff are willing to toss away a thousand White GOP votes if they can kill 10,000 Black Democratic votes along the way.

    Yup. See also, Texas. Upside is, the game plan is radically clear, and some dozing giants are fixing to wake.

    @schrodingers_cat: 

    But there have been a lot of gloomy takes lately on the FP from more than one FPer. With most people (not necessarily you) chiming in to say how much they agree.

    “gloomy takes,” LMFAO. The fascists are playing a different game with different rules where no one wins except the precious few, with my country a smoking ruins in the rearview mirror. How about SHIT IS FUCKED. Too much cold water, delicate flowers? So not sorry. To reckon a solution means honestly assessing the depth of the problem. And we have some really big, ugly, gnarly, hard-to-solve problems before us. The good news is reality has a liberal bias.

    I offer my apology to you S_C, as this comment thread has me spectacularly fucking cross at the moment, and that is not due to you or your comment.

  45. 45.

    WaterGirl

    @BruceFromOhio:

    …this comment thread has me spectacularly fucking cross at the moment…

    I am sorry if that is my doing.  It really is my intent never to drag a thread down with my comments.  I may have failed at that tonight.

  47. 47.

    WaterGirl

    @Elizabelle:

    There’s a difference between saying “this is going to be really hard” and “this is doomed.”

    I totally agree with that.  I was trying to figure out how to say that myself without being too wordy.  Now I don’t have to.

  48. 48.

    BruceFromOhio

    @Elizabelle: ​

    Understood, and agreed. Make no mistake: this is going to be really hard, and I do not read Vox (and many others) for exactly that reason. It’s okay to carry sunblock and an umbrella: hope for the sunshine, plan for the rain.

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