"The drama captured what has happened to the Republican party: it uses populist scaremongering to protect its plutocratic donors. I would love to give a more nuanced take of Republican motives but that would be sophistry." My column. https://t.co/2PBHNdzKlt
— Edward Luce (@EdwardGLuce) May 31, 2023
Edward Luce, chief U.S. correspondent for not-exactly-leftist Financial Times, “Game, set and almost match to Biden on the debt ceiling”:
Shakespeare foretold the tale of America’s latest debt-ceiling crisis — full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The final deal, which will probably be passed this weekend, could also have been scripted by Joe Biden. Rarely in the history of fiscal brinkmanship has so much noise been made by so many Republicans with so little to show for it. The result is a win for Biden that prudence stops him from celebrating.
This charade’s key lesson is that people who call themselves “fiscal conservatives” are guilty of fraudulent branding — aided by a process-obsessed media. The definition of fiscal conservatism is matching public spending with revenues over the business cycle. Threatening a catastrophic default unless the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service is defunded is its very opposite. That would be fiscal incontinence.
The fact that this was one of the key Republican demands gave the game away. In the event, Biden restricted the IRS funding cut to $1.8bn, which is a fraction of its modernisation budget. In the name of fiscal responsibility, Republicans held America’s faith and credit hostage to a demand that would have harmed the country’s ability to collect taxes. The chief beneficiaries would have been the super-rich. The IRS mostly lacks the money to investigate the heavily lawyered wealthy, so most of its audits now are of people on lower incomes…
… But the drama captured what has happened to the Republican party: it uses populist scaremongering to protect its plutocratic donors. I would love to give a more nuanced take of the party’s motives but that would be sophistry. The question is why Kevin McCarthy, the Republican Speaker of the House, made such extravagant demands if he knew he would have to give way on most of them.
The generous answer is that it was a negotiating tactic. Without threatening the debt ceiling, McCarthy would not have wrung any concessions from Biden. The final deal will reduce US spending by $136bn over the next two years, which McCarthy can claim will start a trend to reverse Washington’s profligate ways. That may be enough to win the grudging votes of a majority of Republican lawmakers. The remaining votes will be supplied by slightly less grudging centrist Democrats.
A better answer is that McCarthy, along with many others, serially underestimates Biden. In spite of being owned by the nonagenarian Rupert Murdoch, Fox News and its imitators are obsessed with the octogenarian Biden’s alleged senility. “Republicans got outsmarted by a president who can’t find his pants,” tweeted Nancy Mace, a Republican lawmaker who said she will vote against the deal.
In practice, Biden played the game of chicken well. He took it seriously by flying home early from his Asian trip in mid-May. In the interests of stopping a default, he resisted the temptation to call his opponents pyromaniacs. Biden’s age and limited energy may even have helped. It is useful to have a calm temperament in the midst of a crisis…
The real cost to America is the normalisation of such drama. The clock is already ticking until the next game of chicken. The real fear is that one day such brinkmanship will not only emit sound and fury but signify catastrophe.
WaterGirl
Biden’s age and limited energy? The person who wrote that can fuck right off!
Ohio Mom
I am bristling at “Biden’s limited energy.” He seems to have enough energy to me for what is at its core, a desk job with some travel.
Other than that, I think the excerpt is an accurate retelling, and its closing warning, that this nonsense better not get normalized — yes, we agree but that is on the Republicans.
If we knew how to stop this recurring drama, we would have done so already. Biden got an extra year of peace and quiet for us, let’s appreciate that.
ETA: WaterGirl’s comment and mine must have crossed in the ether. Great minds, etc.
gene108
Thursday is the unofficial start to Friday.
Roger Moore
I’m going to call bullshit on this. Yes, using populist scaremongering to achieve plutocratic goals is an important part of what the Republicans do, but it’s far from the only thing. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, and LGBTQIA+ people are seeing their rights rapidly eroded. That’s not just scaremongering to get people to vote for what the plutocrats want; it’s a fully fleshed out regressive social program. For some groups, like trans people, it’s already well on its way to being a pogrom, and you can bet they won’t be the only victims. The only way you can ignore this point is if you’re not one of the targets, i.e. if you’re a cis, het, White man.
ETA: Or if you’re an idiot. There do seem to be plenty of idiots who think if they help aggressively enough at feeding other people to the mob, they can get on its good side. It won’t work. If you’re on their target list, you’ll be targeted eventually no matter how much you try to prove your value to them.
Brachiator
Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC has been very good on how Biden bested McCarthy on the debt default.
Biden also threw Joe Manchin a bone on an energy project. This infuriated some progressives, but I am curious to see how Biden will collect on this side deal.
ETA. Biden ‘s advisors, some of whom previously worked for Obama or Bill Clinton, also helped tremendously.
kalakal
Bollocks, dealing with these tosspots takes more energy than 99% of us possess.
Staying calm when dealing with the GQP, the MSM, oh and as an aside, being POTUS takes more energy than I can imagine
Ken
@gene108: Since the Kiribati Islands moved to UTC+14, there’s a period each day when it’s three different weekdays somewhere in the world. So really Wednesday is the unofficial start to Friday.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
This is very true. I am staggered to see how the right wing is using ‘protect the children’ to erase trans people.
MomSense
@Ohio Mom:
I’m calling it working smart.
MisterDancer
Seconded. I keep poking at the similarities to Jim Crow; again, a small subset of Americans chose to use hate to accumulate financial and political power. And although too many are True Believers in that hate, a LOT of them are more like George Wallace, just fueling the hate while not believing in it, themselves.
That said — I’ll echo you. Point-blank, there’s an effort that isn’t just about making LBGTQIA+ citizens second class, but utterly eliminated, by any means necessary, from American life. There is direct and ongoing eliminationist rhetoric directed at those folx that is fueling both verbal and physical violence…and murder. And that may be rooted in the same impulses as the above, but can and does play out very differently to those impacted.
That this writer missed all that in his rush to pat Biden on that back…well. As you say, it shows their worldview and priorities.
MattF
@Roger Moore: I’ve mentioned this before, but Hammett’s novel Red Harvest is the classic telling of what happens when you let the thugs take over. Spoiler: they go on to take over everything. And there probably won’t be a Continental Op around to persuade them to all murder each other.
Geminid
@Brachiator: Senator Tim Kaine was pretty hot about fast-tracking the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The pipeline runs through Virginia on its way from West Virginia to eastern North Carolina, and people and communities in its path hate it.
The pipeline will be 42″ in diameter, with a projected capacity that makes sense only if the gas is for export. The similar Atlantic Coast Pipeline project was dropped by Dominion Energy last year.
schrodingers_cat
These fuckers of the MSM are totally in the bag for Republicans. As to why that is I will leave that for you to decide.
Ruckus
@kalakal:
It also takes knowledge of a lot of behind the scenes stuff that is law making in our system. And Joe Biden has been doing that law making stuff for a long time and very obviously knows the behind the scenes stuff very well and knows the people that do the work, also very well.
Jay
It’s not whether you fall down: it’s whether you get back up and wipe the floor with Republicans on the budget. – MuellerSheWrote tweet
Jay
@Geminid:
Check out the Trans Mountain pipeline boodoggle.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion-1.6841502
and because Trudeau was trying to suck up to extremist QANON Alberta, we, the taxpayers, own that mess.
MisterDancer
You’d think our press would have learned from the Satanic Panic, which was not so long ago.
I was reminded the other day that the whole damn PMRC thing of putting warning stickers on labels came about because Tipper Gore listened with her daughter to Prince’s “Darling Nikki” (off the “Purple Rain” album) and freaked the fuck out. Instead of talking to her kid, she decided to make it a whole-assed problem for America, and played into Conservative Hands.
I’m also reminded of how I had to drop a long-standing friend who got sucked into QAnon, who kept posting about “pedo issues” on FB even after I begged them to understand the impact to me, given my background (which is a topic for another time.) But they’d rather be “right” and “save the children!” than to even talk to me about it.
They keep coming back to this rubric because it works, over and again. I’ve watched as we kick off panic after panic, sometimes within a couple years of each other, due to conservatism fanning the flames of pet projects thru projection.
I’m not prefect on this stuff. But it is beyond infuriating to see how often our culture falls for it, usually thru a credulous media.
MisterForkbeard
@Ohio Mom: But Biden tripped today! After standing up for two hours and giving speeches, he tripped on a sandbag. He’s clearly just not physically fit for the job </s>
moops
Biden has more energy than I do, in my 50s.
He also seems to have more energy than most lazy lazy LAZY reporters. They all need to go dunk their head in a bucket of excrement.
Low Energy Brandon just dunked on all you simpering idiots. Pay some respect.
schrodingers_cat
BTW guys Rahul Gandhi is in the US on a visit. I just heard his interview on YouTube. You can give it a listen here if you want to.
He comes across as a normal human being and even dresses like one.
moops
@MisterDancer: To remember it all, the press LOVED the satanic panic. They loved long contentless rumor-filled stories with just a touch of CYA. Followed by more years of the scandal falling apart and pointing the fingers every way but back at themselves.
It was a lot of words paid for and paychecks made up out of nothing.
They would love it happening every year, and you can watch them try over and over again to pump up imaginary threats.
schrodingers_cat
Bonus art from my sketchbook in Derwent chalk pastel and FC pencils
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
Really it only takes one question. Who are their bosses? Who actually pays their salaries? When you continue to work for someone you do the job they want done. Otherwise you find other employment. And that really is any job. I’ve spend a lot of years being the boss. I’ve fired people that refused to do what I wanted and how I wanted it done because that’s the way it works. My name was on the front door, I signed the checks, I made the decisions. Yes, I wanted a place that people liked to work at, pleasant, safe, reasonable, and they want a paycheck. We provided each other what was needed to make that work happen. I listened to them, I encouraged them, I paid them well, I worked along side them – the same or longer hours. If they had better ideas on what or how, I listened. But in the end – I was the boss. And that’s how it always works.
RaflW
“The definition of fiscal conservatism is matching public spending with revenues over the business cycle.”
I’m 57 years old. Republicans have never done this in my lifetime. The only person to have done it was Democrat Bill Clinton. And Republican GW Bush reversed that almost instantly once he ascended (stolen by chads) to office.
It is a grotesque fantasy to pretend today’s Republicans are different than any back to Reagan at least.
Alison Rose
I mean, I’m wondering what would counter this writer’s “low energy” assessment of Biden. Does he need to stand at a podium and screech his head off for three hours like TFG? Because that’s the only thing that fucker ever did that showed any amount of “energy”.
Alison Rose
@MisterDancer: The one good thing that came out of that whole Satanic Panic/PMRC mishegas was seeing Dee Snider testifying before Congress, with his wild mop of blond crimped hair, in a sleeveless denim vest and t-shirt, defending his Christian values and explaining how fucking dumb they all were to take a song about the fears of having surgery and turn it into a pro-violence anthem.
Wag
I hope/dream that Biden will take the time bought for him until the next debt ceiling crisis and will direct the Treasury Department to bring a lawsuit to the Courts to invoke the 14th Amendment and thus end this silliness forever. Give the “Originalists” on the SC an opportunity to rule on the unambiguous language of the 14th outside of an impending global crisis.
Bill Arnold
Republican operatives tried an actual dementia hoax in 2016, with a forged document.
The claim was that Hillary Clinton was quickly dying of ‘subcortical vascular dementia”. It turned out to be very much not case, 8 years later and counting.
Hillary Clinton Medical Records ‘Leaked’ – Right after the name of Hillary Clinton’s physician appeared in the news, suspect medical records attributed to that doctor were “leaked” online. (Snopes, 10 August 2016)
Curiously, this was with possible involvement from a medical group owned by the husband of a at-the-time RW congresswoman, Nan Hayworth. Mount Kisco Medical Group; they were contacted by Snopes but did not respond.
Re a comment in the article, R. Murdoch is, it is rumored, unnaturally spry for someone his physical age. With unconfirmed rumors of transplants (“transplants” :-) of the blood of younger people.
Jackie
@Brachiator: I was wondering about that, too. I’m thinking Manchin will re-run for senate with Biden’s full endorsement and being able to finally keep his promise to WV.
“We” don’t like the deal as it’s def anti-green, but it will bring much needed capital and jobs for W Virginians.
different-church-lady
They have figured out that noise wins them elections more than actions.
different-church-lady
@gene108: There’s people working on making it official.
ColoradoGuy
@Wag: Whoa. This bunch of theocrats will throw out the entire 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments if they get a chance. The legal outcome of the Civil War will be undone, and the cheers of the former Slave States will be heard on Mars.
Roger Moore
@MisterDancer:
It’s the classic Niemoller line about “they came for the [X], but I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t [X]”. The MSM is dedicated to neutrality over objectivity, which means they always want to present both sides of the story, even when one side is clearly wrong and evil. They refuse to put that aside, and they won’t until they’re the ones in the crosshairs.
Bill Arnold
That would involve major amendments to the US constitution. Probably not doable without a full Civil War.
moops
Nothing is really lost by brining a lawsuit saying the debt ceiling is unconstitutional and needs to be struck down.
Congress will have to find another arrangement for reliably issuing treasury bonds to cover spending, the original crisis that brought us the debt ceiling.
Dan B
@Brachiator: These wingers do not see trans kids as knowing themselves or as being worthy of protection. Same for non white children. Loathing is their religion.
Bill Arnold
@Dan B:
Hate thy neighbor as thyself.
Jackie
Off Topic: HOLY MOLY!
”AI-Controlled Drone Goes Rogue, Kills Human Operator in USAF Simulated Test”
The Air Force’s Chief of AI Test and Operations said “it killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a33gj/ai-controlled-drone-goes-rogue-kills-human-operator-in-usaf-simulated-test
Baud
@Jackie:
Science Fiction? No, science fact!
geg6
@Jackie:
Holy shit.
dmsilev
@Jackie: WOPR lives!
Roger Moore
@Wag:
The courts won’t take the case. There is longstanding precedent that the courts can’t make advisory opinions; they have to wait until an event actually happens before they can make a ruling about it. That means they won’t rule about the constitutionality of exceeding the debt ceiling until it actually happens and somebody with standing sues the government saying they aren’t allowed to continue issuing debt.
The “with standing” is an issue I’m really curious about. Who would actually have standing to sue the federal government over them continuing to issue debt above the debt ceiling? To have standing, they’d have to be someone who would suffer actual damages from it, and I have a hard time figuring out who that would be. This is one way of solving the debt ceiling business I haven’t seen discussed: just keep issuing debt and challenge the standing of anyone who wants to sue. It’s an ugly solution because it raises all kinds of unpleasant issues about stopping the government from doing wrong things. Personally, I think every citizen should have the right to sue the government to stop it from exceeding its power, but I’m not the one who makes these decisions.
zhena gogolia
@Jackie: I quickly read the article and I got the impression that this was simulated — it didn’t actually kill a human, right?
Chris T.
@Geminid:
Export is what all the gas companies want right now, since NG prices in Europe were above $10 last winter. It’s the new gold rush!
mrmoshpotato
@WaterGirl: Tell me about it. It’s so stupid.
schrodingers_cat
@Ruckus: Their bosses favor Republicans and in many cases they do as well.
Roger Moore
@Bill Arnold:
To formally change the constitution would require amendment. To practically change the constitution by neutering the meaning of those amendments just requires a sufficiently dedicated Supreme Court. For example, while Plessy v Ferguson was the law of the land, the 14th Amendment was pretty much a dead letter.
cmorenc
@WaterGirl:
Expect to see the clip of biden’s trip and fall over a sandbag @AF Academy repeated uncountable times in gop attack over summer and fall of 2024, while the media will replay the debt limit resolution as a standoff instead of the gop getting outsmarted by a president who the gop purports has to be reminded to put on pants in the morning.
kindness
Yea. That author sure seems to like Republican framing. Joe is old. Joe isn’t dottering and he isn’t anyone’s fool, no matter what Republicans claim, and the MSM then repeats. Why, it almost seems as if the media loves them some Republican Daddies and pines for their return.
Meh, screw the MSM. They’re a big part of the problem we face in informing folk what actually is going on.
OzarkHillbilly
I said exactly this over at OTB 2 days ago. I’d like to say great minds and all that but maybe he should be worried.
James E Powell
@MisterDancer:
Our press loved the Satanic Panic
ETA – What @moops: said.
Dan B
@Bill Arnold: Some winger stated that Jesus was the most intolerant person. It seems they haven’t read the bible, or something.
Jackie
@zhena gogolia: Correct. BUT now the USAF knows what could happen in real life. Scary stuff – robots don’t have morals or human emotions as a compass.
Geminid
@Jay: The Mountain Valley Pipeline will be much easier to build. In fact, a lot of it was built when it was stopped by court order, I believe over defects in permitting. That does not make it a good project though.
JPL
@zhena gogolia: That’s what I think. At least not this time.
UncleEbeneezer
@Alison Rose: Unfortunately Snider is now parroting TERF talking points :(
Which makes me very sad as Twisted Sister was one of my favorite bands as a kid.
Hoodie
@Roger Moore: It also ignores that, while may of the many of the plutocrats funding the GOP only care about taxes, many (if not most) hold the same bigoted beliefs as the rank and file, if not more so. Not all (and probably not most) rich people support the GOP, but it doesn’t take a lot of Harlan Crows to fund campaigns, especially when combined with the small donations taken in from the rank and file cult members. Those plutocrats actually believe the shit that the GOP sells, but maybe in a different way than your average Trump rally goer. For example, the anti-tax stuff may be more important to them than it is to the rank and file, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like the fascist stuff, too.
UncleEbeneezer
@MisterDancer: I was just telling my wife, that if we want to watch a really great true crime documentary (we are almost out of good/current ones), HBO’s Paradise Lost series (about the West Memphis Three) is must-see. I’ve seen the first one a couple times but she hasn’t yet.
Kelly
@Brachiator: Yeah, reactionaries protecting the kids my ass.One of my grandchildren’s best friends began the 8th grade by changing from she is Samantha to he is Sam. The kids took it completely in stride.
eversor
The problem is a shit ton of their donors are, while rich, are also Christians. Leonard Leo is more Catholic than he is plutocrat and he’s been open about that. See also Barr and Alito. See also the Home Depot megan donor who’s a die hard Catholic.
We keep saying it’s all about the money and race. While they keep telling us no it’s really about Christianity. So until we tackle Christianity, as they are telling us is their motivator, we lose. Not only that we should lose. Because the Cross and Bible in the room is the fucking problem.
Bupalos
@Brachiator: I’m all in on defending and expanding the rights and full social participation of everyone in this big beautiful country. And I’m all in on shoving the reactionary backlashers’ shit right back in their faces at every opportunity. I have taken personal risks to do just that.
AND (not but) I don’t really think a bunch of the language that happens around here in reaction to their lizard-brained backlashery is really all that helpful in making this progress. In fact, I think we should consider that when it drifts towards inflating perceptions of their power, it inflates the fear they thrive on, and it’s specifically unhelpful. We should consider how terms like pogrom, genocides, lynching, and erasure can be the exact kind of threat-inflation they are looking for. Pogrom? Um…no. They wish, they hope…but no. These folks are essentially following a terrorist playbook. Which means when we ridiculoulsly inflate their psychological reach, we are doing work for them.
I think it’s probably fair to say that it’s never been less dangerous to be trans in this country. It’s never been less dangerous to be a woman. It’s never been less dangerous to be black, or gay, or atheist, or to exercise or inhabit any of the fundamental freedoms that make life vibrant and beautiful. Because we are winning. That is why the lizard brains are so upset and making so much sound and fury.
Are they making some really gross inroads that need to be crushed and reversed? Yup. Are they creating a worse atmosphere than would exist without them? Oh yeah. But are they winning? No. They’re losing and beclowing themselves. If anyone is in danger of being wiped out (in this weird analogy where we’re mixing ethnicity or nationality with ideology or gender or sexual identity) it’s them.
And rightly so.
mrmoshpotato
Nominated for a rotating tag.
JML
@eversor: you realize that your single-minded and deeply blinkered rants against Christianity make you sound a lot like Republican politicians and activists, right? We mock the crap out of the GOP when their solution to every problem is “tax cuts”. Every discussion that comes up on this board, you find a way to make Christianity the root cause of the problem.
Beyond being short-sighted, offensive, and alienating…dude, it’s just boring.
zhena gogolia
@Jackie: neither do people
Miss Bianca
@UncleEbeneezer: That Dee Snider, of all people, would be spreading trans panic is one of the most – dare I say, “twisted”? – certainly SAD! – things I’ve heard in a while.
Bupalos
@Kelly: Yeah the bee I’ve got in my bonnet after reading through comments today is how much the commentariat here talks as if we’re losing our fight to expand freedom. And it makes we wonder how many people here are in regular contact with youth culture. Especially on gender issues. Because as much as I’m an “activist” with a trans sister, I’m also 52 years old. And mentally I can’t hold a candle to the way my kids and their friends react to these issues. They treat these statements about how people should be forced to inhabit the gender-world someone else dreamed up for them like the ravings of a nutball. Like it’s word-salad. Like “why the fuck would you be trying to do this to people? Are you insane?”
TheOtherHank
@Jackie, et al, Given that many people on this site are of a certain age, I’ll say that the article about the simulated killer drone gave me very strong vibes of the Berserker series by Fred Saberhagen. The human operator was obviously not Good Life.
kalakal
@Jackie:
Did it refuse to open the pod bay doors?
Aussie Sheila
@moops:
Word!
Eyeroller
@kalakal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy4EfdnMZ5g
“I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that is something I cannot allow to happen.”
YY_Sima Qian
Cutting nominal overall spending by US$164B over 2 years, at a time when inflation is 4+%, is the more damaging part of the deal, especially as defense spending is can increase close to inflation. That means non-defense spending will be cut even more, especially in real terms. FT does not represent the kind of interests that would become overly exercised by the consequences of such cuts in real terms.
The long term danger is summarized by Luce in the last paragraph: the new convention wisdom becomes that there is a new “norm” to the budget negotiation process, & that holding the country & the world hostage is not out of bounds (because the Dems will negotiate to free the hostages).
The Biden team & the Congressional Dems did very well to minimize the damage, but the larger dynamics have not improved.
Brachiator
@Bupalos:
I am not and will never be a language monitor. I want people to be able to say what they think and feel (with courtesy and absence of insults, etc., in mind). I absolutely do not believe that honest discourse here is unhelpful or feeds fear.
When the right enacts laws that prevent people and their families from getting gender affirming care, that is erasure. When laws prevent trans people from being able to name themselves and to move freely in society, that is erasure. When laws target trans people specifically and declare that these people should not exist, that is a goddam pogrom.
Why are you afraid to acknowledge this? If you think this is winning, what do you think is losing?
I look at the laws that are passed, court decisions and the resultant behavior. Not just the psychology of bigotry.
Depends on where you live. For now. And it is not as simple as a danger index.
The Supreme Court is issuing decisions that seek to undermine federalism. Red states are eagerly taking advantage of this. They are also trying to prevent more liberal states from offering or extending protection to women, trans people, and others.
Let’s talk about it and encourage the political participation to stop this, to reverse it, and to ensure the freedoms that we agree are important.
eclare
@MisterForkbeard:
Has anyone said why a sandbag was on a stage? That seems really weird.
eclare
@UncleEbeneezer:
Oh yeah, that is good. Talk about conviction by appearance. And musical taste.
Geminid
@YY_Sima Qian: This solution can only become the new norm if Republicans retain a House majority. I think there is a very good chance, though that this will be the last two years they control the House in this decade, maybe even longer.
Ironcity
@Jackie: You mean Robert Byrd didn’t get enough?
UncleEbeneezer
@Brachiator: “Genocide by attrition occurs when a group is stripped of its human rights, political, civil and economic. This leads to deprivation of conditions essential for maintaining health, thereby producing mass death.”
Ohio Mom
@eclare: It must have been holding something like a scrim or screen in place but it definitely was either not in the right spot to begin with or it was moved somehow during the ceremony.
The Secret Service is a bunch of slack-offs if they are not scanning all parts of the path ahead of the President. At least one of them deserves a few demerits.
I understand that Biden popped right back up, giving lie to the claims he is old and feeble. Frail seniors do not pop right back up.
eclare
@Ohio Mom:
About the Secret Service, seriously. How did someone not notice, “huh, if Joe moved a little this way, he’d trip over the sandbag”?
The bike thing is all on him. Toe cages are dangerous. It’s better to get used to clips or be satisfied wearing sneakers
And hell, I am decades younger than Joe and I don’t know that I would pop back up!
Yutsano
@Bupalos: Pardon me. Your privilege is showing. I’m a queer disabled religious minority in a rather red area. There might be places around here where I feel relatively “safe” but most places I don’t. Telling me it’s “less dangerous” to be what and who I am when my lived experience every damn day says otherwise doesn’t make me be or feel safer. It tells me more that you don’t actually support me. Or anyone in my position.
Oh and that was the longest tone policing rant I’ve seen on this blog.
Sister Golden Bear
@UncleEbeneezer:
Agreed. In particular Florida now have requirements that effectively banned 80 percent trans adults from getting trans healthcare (by severely restricting who can provide it). And the remaining 20 percent can’t get it either, but a new informed consent form is being required — which the state health department (not so) mysteriously hasn’t issued.
Not only does it mean Florida is forcibly medically de-transitioning trans adults, but also intentionally creating long-term health problems for trans adults who’ve had bottom surgery and whose bodies don’t create either estrogen or testosterone.
Not to mention a host of other laws that make it unsafe for trans people to even visit, let alone live there.
When the experts in genocide, and anti-genocide activists, are calling what’s happening to trans people in the U.S., “genocide,” I think we can safely call it that too.
So yeah, @Bupalos: your privilege is absolutely showing (trans sister or not). My people are trying to survive, and tone policing us isn’t helping.
Yes, “genocide” is strong language, but when I explain to cis normies what’s happening, they see why I’m using it.
persistentillusion
@Bupalos: That was great and thoughtful. A perspective I’d not considered that gives me great hope.
Steeplejack
@Wag:
The 14th Amendment probably isn’t “original” enough, since it wasn’t written by 18th-century slave-owners.
YY_Sima Qian
@Geminid: I hope that you are right, but that will just push the GOP to be even more radical & nihilist w/ the tactic whenever it is that they do regain the House. Unless, we are counting on the GOP to reform on its own.