The latest Hail Mary from the flailing DeSantis for President campaign is the launch of “Mamas for DeSantis,” kicked off with this grotesque video that urges “mamas and grandmamas from every corner of the nation” to support Casey DeSantis’s fascist fart-sack of a husband.
The repellant video recycles threadbare canards about mask mandates, transwomen in sports, and diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives in education. To me, the most striking thing is the dangerous escalation of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, with the video misleadingly depicting hordes of chanting queer people as a menace to “our children’s innocence” to set up the slogan: “When you come after our kids, we fight back.”
It’s helpful for the DeSantis for President campaign to foment a moral panic around vulnerable children because, if you don’t care who gets hurt or killed along the way, it can be an effective method of manufacturing enthusiasm that is otherwise absent because, say, your candidate is a lumpen dud who inspires nobody. Panics can get people to check their brains at the door and join a mindless mob, which is why all fascists employ the tactic.
But even though Casey DeSantis and her awful husband are lying about the source of the danger, there’s truth to the notion that moms fight back when someone comes after their kids. Maybe by flogging this fake moral panic about imaginary queer hordes menacing children, Team DeSantis will motivate the moms whose children are actually being menaced, silenced and oppressed: those of us with LGBTQ kids.
It’s happened before. Earlier this year, The New Yorker published a gem of an article: “How One Mother’s Love for Her Gay Son Started a Revolution.” It’s about Jeanne Manford, an unassuming New York City school teacher who, along with her husband Jules and 21-year-old son Morty, founded PFLAG in 1973.
The Manfords’ story is truly beautiful and tragic and inspiring, and I urge you all to read the whole thing if you can, but here’s an excerpt that resonates for me today:
“You would meet Jeanne Manford and you would never in a million years guess what she had in her,” Eric Marcus, the author of the 1992 book “Making Gay History” and now the host of a podcast by the same name, told me. “But as I came to know her I always felt that what was in her mind was ‘Don’t fuck with my Morty.’ ”
As The New Yorker notes, “In the sixties and seventies, fighting for the rights of queer people was considered radical activism. To Jeanne Manford, it was just part of being a parent.” Also: Jeanne Manford didn’t try to change her son; she changed the world instead.
So here we are 50 years later, and Repubs are trying to roll back the hard-won progress of people like the heroic Jeanne, Jules and Morty Manford by smearing queer people with lies and oppressing them with unjust laws. Children are indeed under attack in Florida, but it’s not the DeSantis children.
It’s kids like mine who are being silenced, oppressed and menaced and driven away, and the wife of the person leading that charge and trying to take it nationwide is exhorting “mamas and grandmamas” to fight back. Be careful what you wish for, Mrs. DeSantis. Also, don’t fuck with my kiddo.
Alison Rose
I’m not a “mama” (because God is good), but my own mother hates the everloving fuck out of DeSantis. A while back, she told me that as much as she missed her parents, she was glad they weren’t around anymore because 1) it meant they never had to live under this asshole as governor, and 2) we never had to visit Florida under this asshole as governor. After Bush, Crist, and Scott, I don’t know if they could’ve taken it.
Also, queer people are awesome and we’re not going anywhere, no matter how much they wish we would. And there are only going to be more and more of us, as the non-evil population grows more loving and welcoming and more folks feel comfortable coming out.
Brachiator
Fixed.
Disgusting campaign video. I wonder who did the production?
The “not your kids” reminds me of the stupid pushback against “it takes a village.”
Cruella DeSantis wants to be front and center in her husband’s campaign. Interesting.
Baud
If I were a parent, I’d be more afraid of DeSantis’s “feed me” mouth than anything else.
Burnspbesq
The panic isn’t fake. Hordes of people actually believe this shit, and it’s going to be really difficult to cure them of their idiocy.
anitamargarita
Not a “mama”, but I am the sister of a gay man and aunt to a trans man. Don’t fuck with my family
kindness
They’re selling hate. Fox News taught them keeping your people enraged sells anything you want to. Enraged people don’t use reason. They just use knee-jerk reactions.
trollhattan
How did the whole “Grizzly Mama” thing work out for Palin?
Rob in CT
I’m actually starting to hope that these fascists have overplayed their hand. They got a lot of mileage out of this bullshit at first, but since they are fundamentally vile people they started freaking out normal don’t-pay-much-attention types.
dmsilev
I assume deSantis is just going to get worse and worse as he continues to fail to pull the cultists away from Trump and gets increasingly desperate. While I suppose we could take pleasure in watching him flail, the collateral damage he’s doing is much too high to make this amusing.
Chris
“Now sign this law making it legal for the state to kidnap your children if you try to put them through any kind of medical procedure or counseling that remotely smells of the word ‘transgender,’ because the state knows best. Hey, we already did it for illegal immigrants’ children.”
dmsilev
@trollhattan: Tragicomically, she was shot by a hunter in a helicopter for her pelt.
waspuppet
First off, it’s worth pointing out that Jeanne Manford actually was who she said she was, whereas it takes about 30 seconds to find the connection between these “concerned Moms” and Republican Party officials.
Second, I’m 58 years old. I learned in school that gay people existed. I did not turn gay. Similarly, I’m white and I learned in school about slavery and racism. It did not make me hate white people. It made me think “Wow, people in power will do and say ANYTHING to stay there.”
To be honest, I kinda do hate white people now. But its been decades since school.
Josie
It’s not just the parents of LGBTQ kids who are angry. When my sons were young, I would have been angry if anyone attempted to keep them from being exposed to important (and factual) information. Luckily, there was no such movement when they were in school. Since I was a librarian, I could provide extra information that the school might have left out. I did the same with my library collection, and no one ever questioned me about it.
HumboldtBlue
@trollhattan:
That’s the first thing I thought of as well. She tried this brazen right-wing momma bullshit, and it was just another costume in her clown car of a world.
Again, looking at the message and the clunky, hateful was it’s presented almost make one think they are being sabotaged from within,
Then you remember, they are this stupid and hateful.
Plus, the rest of the country is not going to let DeSantis fuck over the country the way he has Florida.
MisterDancer
I think a lot about the Gallup polling on that very point. From an article on the trend:
And I think this is very much driving the panic in The Right, if very indirectly — they see how our culture (especially Entertainment) has responded to these changes and are freakin’ the fuck out. Horrifically, that freakout is about doing what The Right does best — hurting people in order to “get them in line”.
When they are willing to use every tool, including the kinds of terrorism that has been part of “keep them in line” since before we became a Republic, to do this, it’s hard to stop. But it is the issue of the moment, because the more violence that goes unchecked, the more these asshats will stoke it.
And the more we risk these already-marginalized people be hurt further.
MisterDancer
This only works when media looks and reports on this, and outrage is raised about the practice. Since the media rarely takes a look, they can get away with it, as they have for decades.
Baud
@MisterDancer:
Some of the freak out is about saving face with one’s cohort. Since anyone’s kid could end up LGBT, there’s an equal chance of these “Mama’s” kids could be LGBT, and they are scared to face their social circles if that happens.
piratedan
so is this toxic femininity writ large? Overbearing concern troll Moms wanting to ensure that their progeny enjoy growing up in Stepford Communities…
laura
If my coddled, pig ignorant son, that I was forced to stay home with during the Covid hoax (making it more of a challenge to ignore him than I was used to) cant be a raging bully to your thoughtful, sensitive, shy, gay/queer/trans/exploring offspring is this even America anymore?
waspuppet
@MisterDancer: Oh I’m fully aware that the wealthy media do exactly the opposite: They routinely identify So-and-So by their supposed occupation and blindly pass on their assertion that they were “not much interested in politics” until Trump was elected, and four seconds on Google tells you they’ve been chair of the county Republican Party for eight years.
Bring this up to the media superstars and, if you get a reaction at all, it’s to block you on Twitter.
Matt McIrvin
@MisterDancer: In the last Gallup poll the population got more evil and bigoted, not less. The freakout is having a real effect.
The big change was mostly among Republicans, though–I saw people making a big deal about acceptance among Democrats going down a bit, but that was probably mostly noise, considering Independents went the opposite way.
Matt McIrvin
@Josie: If I were in a state where someone like DeSantis was romping, I would most certainly feel they were coming after my kid, just because they’re messing with the schools and restricting what can be taught in absurd ways.
raven
@Alison Rose: I found this song that your dad wrote with Jerry.
The Only Time is Now.
rikyrah
The Last Word (@TheLastWord) tweeted at 11:00 AM on Fri, Jul 07, 2023:
Deforestation in the Amazon has dropped 34%, reversing trend under Bolsonaro https://t.co/X0mRLIngpR https://t.co/FPstCiww1c
(https://twitter.com/TheLastWord/status/1677346782555021312?t=k0akdRfLAFxM6iR85UKxvw&s=03)
rikyrah
NO LIE TOLD![]()
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QONDI(@QondiNtini) tweeted at 10:34 AM on Fri, Jul 07, 2023:
The only way both sides journalism can continue to exist is if they minimize the good Democrats are doing and minimize the harm Republicans are inflicting
The thing is both actions tip the scales to Republicans
This is not remaining “neutral” it’s a clear right leaning bias
(https://twitter.com/QondiNtini/status/1677340301172563968?t=9U4m2NVetNV3Zu52JfHZug&s=03)
different-church-lady
Too many tangled thoughts to cram into one comment, but I will say it seems like a complete rejection of retail politics. They’re betting “What are you going to do for me?” will be replaced by “What are you going to do to them?
Or is it the same thing for too many?
VOR
Watch the school board elections in 2023 and 2024. In the last cycle, a friend and I noticed both our school districts had coordinated slates of candidates who were anti-vax, anti-lockdown, and anti-mask. Some were outright COVID deniers. All of them claimed they were promoting these ideas because they cared about the children. In her case, the candidates had ties to a local megachurch. We were fortunate only 1 of the 5 candidates on that slate took any of the multiple open seats in my school district.
I predict we will see organized and well-funded campaigns by groups like Moms for Liberty to infiltrate school boards in the next couple election cycles.
rikyrah
Yep![]()
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Qondi (@QondiNtini) tweeted at 10:15 AM on Fri, Jul 07, 2023:
I’ve been screaming this into the ether for months!!!
How can every story about Biden successes be “unexpected” or “surprising” for going on two and a half years now?
It indicates clear bias and an inability to readjust when presented with a fact pattern
(https://twitter.com/QondiNtini/status/1677335590897872896?t=11BmHQHuk5fmdH29MzEH6A&s=03)
Betty Cracker
@piratedan: The solution offered in the “Mamas for DeSantis” video is for the angry moms to elect Ron DeSantis as their “fighter.” It’s all very retrograde.
rikyrah
The MSM never actually REPORTED what was IN the GOP bills.
Never spelled it out plainly.
And were like,’ oh President Biden vetoed the GOP bill, because…both sides..’
Did y’all hear about this???
Because the way folk carried on abt the SCOTUS ruling & how weak POTUS is you’d think it’d be big news
Instead all I’m hearing abt is how close a car is parked to a room
.
.
.
The “main stream MEDIA” FAILS us everyday https://t.co/lk7PEzFlGe
(https://twitter.com/cbr_OLU/status/1677304959866396672?t=ymOdNBGpM9wNVNlmqV1w8g&s=03)
rikyrah
“When we’re creating jobs at an absolutely gangbusters pace; when unemployment is low; when so many economic indicators are hitting new records — that ain’t a recession!” – @JustinWolfers, Econ Prof & ice cream aficionado
30 consecutive months of job growth! #DemsCreateJobs https://t.co/gGjKAaeJuq
(https://twitter.com/Only4RM/status/1677320312956788738?t=2Dcb2HupGmYUmIXK8tmZuA&s=03)
MisterDancer
Hi. To be clear: I was responding to Alison’s comment about the population identifying as LBGTQIA+ increasing, not about the increase of bigoted opinions around same. This is why I linked to an article whose headline is “Gen Z is driving force among adults identifying as LGBTQ, poll shows. Here’s a breakdown.”
And indeed, if you look at the Gallup article on the poll referenced in the USA Today article I linked, you’ll see that the polling I’m citing only asks about LBGTQIA+ self-identification. There’s no questions in that poll about how you feel about LBGTQIA+ people outside your own identity.
This is why I call it out. Much like, say, the backlash to the rise in American culture of my own identity, so too are people with these identities being attacked more and more viciously. A time that should be as joyous and empowering as possible, is being subverted and harm inflicted to drive them back into a “norm” — if not just erased.
So yes, The Right is hijacking all that to raise up power thru the very bigotry you rightly note has been polled out, elsewhere, as increasing.
I’m saying — with a lot of words, sorry about that! — that bigotry you cite didn’t come out of nowhere. That there’s a tactile and real cultural shift it’s in response/backlash too. And it would be useful for us to think thru that connection in order to defuse this ticking time bomb in our culture — even as, every day, real people are harmed.
rikyrah
Ben LaBolt (@WHCommsDir) tweeted at 9:20 AM on Fri, Jul 07, 2023:
MSNBC: “New jobs report: Unemployment rate remains near half-century low. The economy has now created more than 13.7 million jobs since January 2021 — more than double the combined total of Trump’s first three years in office.” Bidenomics! https://t.co/EURolgfUeV
(https://twitter.com/WHCommsDir/status/1677321730367315968?t=kfYlR3tbXUkCLQAeRgp_TQ&s=03)
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
I expect a fair amount of that is Republicans who were still homophobic shitheads having given up the fight, resigned themselves that acceptance was the new normal, and just saying, sure, of course I’ve made my peace with this, I mean what even is the point of not making my peace with this? Except in the last half-decade or so the far right has gone so far in turning this into a crusade that a bunch of these previously resigned bigots are going, oh, wait, you mean there’s still hope? Sign me up!
Alison Rose
@MisterDancer: And of course, the right sees this as “the gays are turning our kids gay!!!!”
The reality is that being around queer people doesn’t make you queer — it helps you realize you are.
Alison Rose
@raven: Yes! It ended up on a box set release in the late 90s or early 00s and he got royalties checks :P
eclare
That ad was grotesque for a number of reasons, but what struck me was using footage from a school shooting in the ad about “protecting kids” when he signed legislation that made it legal to carry a concealed gun without a permit. And of course he will sign any future bullshit NRA legislation. Disgusting.
I wish some reporter would ask him how more guns makes kids safer, but I don’t have much hope. A seven year old in FL was recently shot and killed when he was caught in the crossfire between two groups arguing over jet skis. I bet he would have liked some “protection.”
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: LOL at DeSantis as a “fighter”. Let’s see, after Zuck beats the crap out of Musk, can we get Newsom to cage-match Ronnie? Or Fetterman, if he’s up to it? I mean…he’d barely need to do anything to KO the guy.
brendancalling
I haven’t been in a physical altercation since high school, but my kid is trans and if someone messes with them, I’m going to jail and that threat is going to the hospital.
robmassing
Biden saying “our children”: evil and dangerous.
30 seconds later. . .
DeSantis saying “our children”: hero for freedom, savior
Alison Rose
@brendancalling: You reminded me of this photo :)
Brachiator
@Rob in CT:
We can talk about how vile these people are here. But the Democrats will have to develop an effective strategy to counter the message.
Matt McIrvin
@MisterDancer: Right-what worries me, too, is that if that shift shown in the poll is real, it’s a recent thing–within the past 6 months. There are no signs of it in a Pew survey that was taken in late 2022.
The bigots are moving fast and going brazenly extreme. The backlash could warp the whole culture before we even really understand what’s going on.
different-church-lady
@Alison Rose: Putting Fetterman in the position to decide between crushing DeSantis and crushing DeSantis like a bug might put him back into depression.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: Polls are snapshots of moments. At this moment outlash against progress is very trendy.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Right–something along the lines of “shy Tory effect”/”social desirability bias”: some fraction of unreconstructed homophobes were keeping a lid on it but got the signal that it’s OK to toot their horn about it now.
eclare
@Alison Rose:
I have no doubt that there are several women on the hill who could kick his ass. And many who would like a shot at it. In my personal experience, when you finally fight back and hit a bully, all of a sudden the bullying goes away.
rikyrah
@kindness:
Period.
mrmoshpotato
Me likey!
rikyrah
@Rob in CT:
They are feeling themselves. And, continue to show their rotten hand.
It was all ‘ oh, it’s about the children’. And, while our side said that was bullshyt, and was tut tutted by the MSM, within a year, it’s escalated to everything that we said it would.
Their hatred is plain as day, and isn’t hiding behind any Frank Luntz-approved dogwhistles.
different-church-lady
@Rob in CT: I’ve observed before: Trump got some normies in his tent because he made hatred seem fun (to them). DeSantis thinks the winning ticket is making hatred seem even uglier.
rikyrah
@Rob in CT:
it also helps that everything they shriek about is actually projection.
That’s why every other day when some good ‘ Christian’ is accused of something heinous of a sexual nature is revealed…
I love when people go..
Not a Drag Queen.
For all their yelling about ‘ grooming’, it’s projection. They are being revealed everyday for their vileness.
Baud
@different-church-lady: I agree with you.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@rikyrah: they have been selling hate for years now. So far it has worked but I think the returns are diminishing.
What ever happened to “sex sells”? Seems like a gentler strategy.
Baud
@Mr. Bemused Senior: It only worked nationally in 2016. It is working regionally in various places, however.
Ruckus
@anitamargarita:
My sister was gay. Took her a while to figure it out. Her first gay partner and I were friends for 40 yrs, long after they went their separate ways. Met some interesting human beings along the way, people that were not rigid about life being exactly one way. Good humans that saw life slightly different than I did but so what, it’s their life not mine, they get to live their lives, I get to live mine. Their choices don’t lessen or change mine in any way, other than I got to meet some intelligent, wonderful people along this road we call life.
Why in the hell does life have to be this rigid, only one way thing? Why does it matter who I like/love in this world? Are some people’s lives so shallow that they can’t exist without the concept that every human has to be exactly the same? Because in my decades I’ve noticed that we are not actually the same at all. Hell that’s part of the wonders of humanity – we aren’t the robotic automatons that some humans think we are and are “supposed” to be. The people that view that if we aren’t all exactly the same we must be wrong about every damn thing. But it’s life, it isn’t that simple, it isn’t ABC or 123. If one takes one’s head out of their ass and looks around at all the shades, sizes, shapes of humans it should be pretty damn obvious that we are SIMILAR, but we are not all the same exact, boring model. We are different shades, heights, weights, languages, religious or not and that is not only OK it is LIFE. Enjoy it, learn it, damn it can often be fun if we actually let it.
Alison Rose
@eclare: Yeah, we could probably put together a nice little beatdown with some Congresswomen. I’m picturing that scene from Office Space when they destroy the printer in the field.
rikyrah
@VOR:
I agree and the Democratic Party need to stand up and fund opposite candidates.
That’s what our Governor did here in Illinois this year.
raven
@Alison Rose: Aw good! One of the guys who wrote Oodby Dooby for Orbison was a friend of a friend and he got check every month!
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: I think the message Dems are using now is effective, i.e., we’re in favor of individual freedom when what people do doesn’t harm anyone, and we’re for everyone else minding their own damned business.
Seriously, I think the MYOB angle is powerful. These busybodies are telling us what words we can say, what subjects we can study, what books our kids can read. They’ve put religious fanatics and and anti-science crackpots in charge of people’s personal medical decisions, imposing care that is outside mainstream medical standards.
They’re practically begging to be told to stop sticking their snouts in everyone else’s business.
eclare
@Alison Rose:
Damn it feels good to be a gangster
Baud
@eclare:
“Bugs eclare” has a nice ring to it.
Anyway
@eclare:
Don’t have a DVD player anymore but have the DVD. Fuckin’ A!
Martin
@Burnspbesq: We don’t need to cure them right now – in fact, only they can cure themselves. We just need to outvote them and take care of the people they are going after.
MisterDancer
I went to the Pew website for your source, it this the right one?: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/
If so, this bit from a callout section indicates there was in the poll movement towards bigotry measured: “Most favor protecting trans people from discrimination, even as growing share say gender is determined by sex at birth”
You also have to keep in mind that polling is often a lagging indicator of trends. No business sells trends based on public polling.
Shalimar
DeSantis is so lacking in charisma it really makes you wonder why dollar-store Kari Lake didn’t run for office herself and let him be campaign spouse.
Citizen Alan
@piratedan: It is. People who complain (rightfully) about the fact that the majority of white women vote Republican despite the GOP’s misogyny underestimate how much white women who fit within certain demographics benefit from the status that the patriarchy gives them for being a good christian wife, a status they zealously protect.
Alison Rose
@raven: How cool!! Yeah, the Dead only played that song a few times in the verrrry early days, but we were so jazzed when it got added to the box set.
eclare
@Baud:
Hahaha…
eclare
@Anyway:
Same here!
Jeffro
Love the “logic”:
[anything I can’t deal with/don’t personally support/can’t just mind my own business about] = people “coming after” my kids
sick, sick people
trollhattan
@Shalimar: Maybe that’s the long game. None of them has a shot at 2024 but 2028’s right around the proverbial corner.
Bill Arnold
@Burnspbesq
Noticed that dougjballoon has this in his current twitter bio:
Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (C. Thi Nguyen, Episteme 17 (2):141-161 (2020)) (pdf download button at link
Or, if one truly loathes Fascists-In-Echo-Chambers, and one is inclined to engage in their playgrounds, when the reflective walls of an echo chamber shatter, the minds inside often break. (There are dark-arts methods to maximize damage.) And escapees can be very effective fighters because they know their former inside really well.
raven
@Alison Rose: I’m struck by how much that song sounds like early Airplane but, then again, I shouldn’t be!
Jeffro
Given that even Mike bleepin’ Huckabee wants an “intervention” for the DeSantis campaign, I’m surprised there isn’t already a Draft Casey movement brewing.
They wouldn’t have to change the website, yard signs, embroidered hats, any of it. And they’d have a much more capable fascist as a figurehead.
eclare
@trollhattan:
That is not going to work when TFG gives them all a demeaning nickname in 2024.
HumboldtBlue
@Baud:
lol
Salty Sam
THIS! As I mentioned yesterday, I went to northern Minnesota for my in-laws annual 4thJuly party. It is such a red,white and blue, Mom/Apple Pie crowd that I have a hard time there. A fair share of Fox quoting Trumper types, I had to take frequent breaks from the crowd to maintain my sanity.
But I’ll give them this- the sense of family solidarity is STRONG in this crowd, and if ANY of the 20+ grt grandchildren, or the throng of nieces and nephews were under attack by DeSantis types, they would have to get through an army of Aunties, Uncles, parents and grandparents.
Yeah, there are some who have drunk deeply of the Kool-Aid, but this country is not going to go back into the closet without a huge fight.
raven
@Alison Rose: I’m sure you’ve seen “Petulia” with Julie Christie and Georgi C Scott. This was a bizarre scene with Viola Lee Blues playing with various SF stuff.
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
The reality is that being around queer people doesn’t make you queer — it helps you realize you are.
My feeling is that being around gay people can open your eyes to the concept that there are actual choices in the concept of sexuality. That it becomes OK to ask yourself how you actually feel about your own sexuality. That it’s OK to actually ask that question, and that the answer will be OK as well. The best part is, if we actually acknowledge it, is that there is a choice. One doesn’t have to ask the question, but the option to ask should be there and unrestricted, and whatever the answer is, is acceptable.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: Youngkin’s already working that angle here in VA, too. His minions just pulled LGBTQ-friendly resources off of the state website.
(archives here)
Never mind that they were already developed/paid for, helpful, etc. They were pulled the. day. after. the Gov received questions from – god help us – Ben Shapiro.
Oh well, can’t have ol’ Ben or “Moms for Liberty” thinking ol’ Fleece Vest is anything but a RWNJ true believer!
Alison Rose
@raven: Yeah, it doesn’t sound much like a Dead tune, more traditional 60s hippie kind of thing…which of course is sort of what my Dad was. I mean, he didn’t wear love beads and all that, but you know :)
different-church-lady
@Jeffro: As far as interventions go, drafting Casey would be the political version of mainlining into the other arm too.
Citizen Alan
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I was born 7 months into Richard Nixon’s first term. There has never been a moment of my life in which the GOP was not selling hate to win votes.
Alison Rose
@Ruckus: Yeah, it opens your mind a little and helps you see what might be there beneath your surface. Same with gender identity. The right doesn’t want to believe it, but people have existed outside the binary for as long as people in general have existed, they just didn’t always have words or the mental capability to recognize or understand what felt different within themselves. But when you see others living as such, it’s easier to put the name to it for yourself.
raven
@Alison Rose: Indeed I do! Apparently the acid tests started right after that and things were never the same.
cain
@Brachiator: Betty posted this on twitter – my response was this from Quiet Riot:
I said mama, we are all crazy now!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMgqiqqzj_U
UncleEbeneezer
@MisterDancer: This is one of the reasons we, all of us, need to push back against even the most subtle forms of Transphobic lies, including anecdotal claims about hypothetical domination by Trans Athletes (that isn’t actually happening) being pushed by TERF’s (and their defenders) under the ruse of protecting Girls/Women. Our populace is generally pretty ignorant on gender and that is being manipulated by Qanon/TERFS/Incels and the GOP. It is our job to pushback and help educate others on the differences between Sex and Gender, point out the bullshit myths/hysteria and help people understand the reality of the horrific attacks on Trans Rights/Bodies and the importance of resisting them.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Citizen Alan: it goes back a long way alright. Lee Atwater called it, Newt Gingrich codified it. You can trace it back farther.
Being an optimist myself I think people are getting tired of it. My record on predictions isn’t good though.
Kay
They’re just so committed to the Christopher Rufo campaign plan. They must have some kind of “base” polling that leads them to believe this is effective, or maybe just grift and it’s made-up polling or something?
They really bought the whole Rufo package. It was kind of a big gamble, to plunk the whole wad down on “anti woke” when no one really knows if normies give a shit about it. I mean, the NYTimes and Substackers and Bari Weiss care about “wokeness”, but do normies?
Chris
@Citizen Alan:
When I first got on Facebook almost twenty years ago, I remember this evangelical who I’d noticed was in a group called “Future Hot, Submissive, Housewives Of America And The Men Who Love Them.” You clicked on the group and there was a whole anti-feminist fantasy spelled out in excruciating detail about how one day, when you were driving to your expensive manicure during normal business hours in the BMW your husband bought for you, wouldn’t it feel good to see those feminist bitches who gave you shit for not being a strong independent woman, sweating it out on their second-hand bicycles from Craigslist on the way to their minimum wage jobs or volunteer activities, which they’re still stuck with because they were too stupid to realize no one wants or rewards a woman for pushing into a man’s world? And wouldn’t it feel good to flip those women the bird as you buzzed by and then never think of them again?
Apparently, they all expected to marry Bill Gates, or at least a rich doctor or something. Lost touch with that person years ago, but I’d be kind of amused to look up the women in that group today and see how many of them have had to face the fact that these things more often than not don’t happen in real life, and how well they’re coping with it.
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t know if they do, but I also doubt normies care much about our push back against it. So I think it’s important to fight the hate, but not to get distracted by it.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: I think it’s important to note that these women are universally white. Their view is that the social stratification, while it keeps them from the top, it also keeps them from the bottom. At worst, they’re better than all non-whites, non-Christians, and non-LGBTQ members, and anyone poorer than they are, and while they are worse than the white men above them, they at least get to enjoy the trappings of their status. There’s a lot of downside risk in their world, and not much upside, so any change is terrifying.
The best way to fight this isn’t to try and convince them to take the risk. The best way to fight this is to elevate those who they see as beneath them ahead of them – in a way they can’t wave off – another reason why representation matters. Change that risk calculus.
Baud
@Chris:
Biking is in vogue these days.
Alison Rose
Dang. That’s ten cats’ worth of lives (NYT gift link):
rikyrah
@Kay:
It’s the hate Kay. They are committed to the White Supremacy. Biden, though the affable, old, White guy…
Has governed very progressively. His appointments, especially his judicial appointments, are speaking to the America THAT IS.
rikyrah
@Martin:
Absolutely no lie told.
Mustang Bobby
Both my parents went to the Undiscovered Country fighting against this fascist bullshit. One of the proudest moments I heard of was when my parents were at a dinner party with some neighbors and someone told a faggot joke. My father put down his fork and said in a measured tone, “My son is gay,” and my mom piped up, “And so is my daughter’s stepson. Pass the salt, please.” An awkward silence ensued, which, I hope, taught a lesson, at least that night.
Kay
@Baud:
I just keep going back to Michigan:
The Rufo/DeSantis appoach was a disaster there, and it shouldn’t have been, given the makeup of the state. There are enough Right wingers in Michigan to have turned the tide if they were actually enthused over the Rufo Hate Agenda, but it failed. Our turnout wasn’t all that good- AA turnout was down so the young people turning out were probably a wash.
So why would DeSantis take it national? The 2022 mdterms were the test case for “national” and it failed.
Chris
@Alison Rose:
There’s also the fact that gender dynamics have been so rigidly and extensively codified over the ages by the kind of people who are now the Republican base that it doesn’t take very much to deviate from it, and basically any deviation is the end of the world to them.
I can’t say I’ve ever found myself sexually attracted to another guy, but I have from time to time found this or that activity or entertainment that’s coded female but that I enjoy a lot more than the male equivalents, or found that I’m prone to behavior in certain social situations that society associates with women rather than men, etc etc etc. Which of course, to them, is also a crime, because it suggests that there isn’t just one Male way to do every single thing in the world and one Female way to do every single thing in the world.
One of the best rants on this I’ve read started with some right-wing idiot saying “remember fifty years ago when girls like this were just called ‘tomboys’ rather than requiring gender therapy,” and somebody latched onto that and responded with a whole rant about how, no actually, I don’t remember that, I remember being a tomboy and I remember the gender police of its day and age absolutely lost its shit and did everything it could to redirect me towards the “right” way to be a little girl, just like it does about trans people today.
Chris
@Mustang Bobby:
My otherwise pretty right-wing uncle apparently had a moment in the eighties when he had to tell his father-in-law to stop telling nigger jokes, because “I have black men serving under my command. I couldn’t look them in the eye knowing that I’d laughed at these jokes.” His father-in-law called him “my son-in-law the liberal” ever after when he needed to rib him, but he did stop.
Still don’t much care for the uncle’s politics, but I respect him for that if nothing else. Credit where it’s due.
Uncle Cosmo
Ain’t nobody’s business if you do. Or don’t.
Or did. Or didn’t.
Or will. Or won’t.
Or might. Or mightn’t.
If you’re not hurting anyone else,
It’s nobody’s business but your own.
Elie
These are frightening people — Casey actually may be worse than her husband. WAPO I think had an article on the two of them recently that described their weirdness and strange isolation. They frequently abandoned old friends and acquaintances for the sake of expediency —
This is not performance. They are actually this way.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/06/18/casey-desantis-power-profile/
Alison Rose
@Chris: Very true. It’s not just that they only believe in two genders correlating to two sexes, but that they have so narrowly defined what is acceptable gender expression. When I was a kid in the 80s, yeah, a lot of girls got called tomboys, and like the person you quoted said, many of them were constantly urged to be more girly, to wear dresses, not to play in the dirt, etc. And while some people were okay with girls not being “girly”, there was very little room for boys not to be “boyish”.
But we’ve always known there is a spectrum of gender expression even within cis people. My mother is a cis woman, and yet in my few-days-shy-of-43 years, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen her in a dress or wearing makeup. She’s just not “feminine” in that way, but I doubt anyone would question her gender over it. My father was decidedly NOT a “macho guy” at all, but no one ever gave him shit for it. We know that people can inhabit their assigned genders in different ways, so I don’t get why so many on the right are so terrified of seeing those variations which have always existed, and of it being broadened out to include people fully outside of the binary.
Like…they keep calling us snowflakes and babies, and yet the notion of someone wearing eyeshadow who happens to have a penis scares the fucking shit out of them.
Martin
@Kay: No, normies don’t care. DeSantis’ ‘woke’ speeches make him sound like a weirdo to normal people.
I think a lot of this stuff has a very limited shelf life. It’s kind of easy to take a few topical headlines and build a fear campaign out of it, but you have to move fast now. It’s pretty easy for other people that have a good reputation with the public – celebrities, etc. – to push against that stuff pretty effectively given how media reach works now, and it’s not like the LGBTQ community is as much in the closet as they were under previous efforts. I mean, fucking Rupaul Drag Race just finished season 15, trans artists are winning Grammys, Ricky Martin has been not assumed straight long enough now to get divorced. I mean, the moment has passed for this to work for more than a hot minute.
And I think so long as DeSantis has this stage to himself outside of all of the apparatus that comes out in a real presidential election, he can get away with it. Most people don’t pay attention to this shit day to day but the people he has been reaching do. But that’s going to change here in a big way. He’s going to have a half dozen reporters on his bus 24/7 and he’s going to have to answer for this stuff. Trump was talented enough at bullshitting the world (and himself) that he pulled off that particular song and dance in 2016. I do not see a universe where DeSantis is, and I think that’s a big part of why GOP primary voters are lining up the way they are. They kind of know this is a racket, and Trump has the skills to Harold Hill his way through it, and DeSantis doesn’t. Policy means nothing to any of these people. DeSantis is riding on this hook working, but it’s a dumb hook because it’s a policy hook and they don’t care about policy. They care about using the government as a weapon to get what they want, and Trump sells that WAY better than DeSantis does without getting tangled in the policy weeds.
“Many presidents never get the opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice. I had three. They are gold. Maybe we’ll get three or four more. Can you imagine?.. Let’s have seven or eight or maybe even nine.”
Now there’s all kinds of things implied in there. It’s aspirational. Let’s pick 9 justices. Is that a call to expand the court? Is that a call to assassinate or impeach liberal justices? Who the fuck knows or cares. It’s an expression to fight harder for white christians than any president has ever fought for them. Does it require demonizing your gay nephew? Nope. It’s a much easier sell.
I don’t know why people are worried about DeSantis.
Martin
I should say ‘I don’t know why people outside of Florida are worried about DeSantis’. In Florida, yeah, be very worried.
trollhattan
@Chris: @Baud:
Right? “You glide down the path on the De Rosa 70 your adoring husband bought you ‘Just because,’ and as you reach your Pilates studio, you happen to glance at the angry women stuck in traffic in their oversized SUVs and ponder how easy it would have been to fall into that particular trap.”
trollhattan
@Elie: Does it say whether she enjoys Thigh food?
Anyway
@Alison Rose:
Reminds me – the person responsible for the recent shootout in the Philly area was caught alive. Five men ages 15 – 59 were killed. He walked around randomly shooting at people. Terrible.
One of the rare cases where it wasn’t “suicide-by-cop”
Martin
@Elie: I think Casey is much worse than her husband. She’s the ambitious one, and Ron is trying to live up to her ambition. I wonder how many hours a day she makes him practice making eye contact.
Martin
@trollhattan: I think we know definitively that she likes Thigh food.
Brachiator
@Alison Rose:
Yep. Excellent point. And many societies have accepted other ways of being and living.
Elizabelle
Cruella DeSantis. Brownskirts. Klanned Karenhood. Keep it up, jackals.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Martin:
Almost makes you feel sorry for him. Almost.
It’s hard to understand DeSantis trying to out-Trump Trump. I mean, Trump turned the dial up to 11 and it just barely worked in 2016, failed in 2020. It makes me think of the Lenny Bruce routine about holding hostages. “If you keep ’em…”
Antonius
JFC. I couldn’t even watch the whole thing for the literal nausea it inspired.
Matt McIrvin
@MisterDancer: Yeah, that’s the one. Good point about the trans-specific wrinkle.
It’s odd–I remember hearing about trans people as far back as the 1970s and in those days, it seemed like they were treated more sympathetically in the media than gay people were. But I think it was because they were regarded more as vanishingly rare curiosities than as some kind of problem or threat. There was a kind of voyeuristic interest that wasn’t necessarily good. Also, a general idea that you hadn’t really transitioned until you had surgery, so the external equipment you had was still what mattered.
smith
@Chris: Those Respectable Republican Ladies are starting to find out, at least in FL. The dream of being taken care of by a rich husband gets iffy when he leaves you for a younger trophy wife, and now, the alimony many rely on may be disappearing.
Turns out the patriarchy is not so interested in protecting compliant women after all.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I want to be clear here. I vehemently oppose whatever agenda DeSantis is pushing and also oppose his wife to the extent that she supports her husband.
But I don’t see the point in demonizing her simply because she is ambitious. Hillary Clinton was often blasted and derided because she was supposedly ambitious, too ambitious, or ambitious in the wrong way.
The criticsm of politically active wives can often drift into misogyny and stereotypes of a baleful “power behind the throne.”
eclare
@trollhattan:
That story should be reported far and wide, how he tested whether or not a woman would correct him. A good friend who usually keeps up with politics had not heard it.
What an insecure shithead. Feel sorry for his kids.
Lyrebird
@Betty Cracker: Thanks for fighting the good fight!
Can anyone still find the video some grandmas and other well seasoned women made telling the orange menace to go F himself?
Matt McIrvin
@Chris:
The TERFish “trans advocates are the ones promoting rigid gender stereotypes” angle is maybe the most bad-faith element of this whole thing, since it’s so contrary to the actual behavior of any of these people. It’s the kind of thing that seems like a fascinating counterintuitive abstract argument if you never look into what happens in the real world.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: From what I’ve read, Dems’ messaging in Michigan in 2022 was about personal freedom, shared prosperity and people minding their own damned business. I approve! ;-)
Mai Naem mobileI
@Shalimar: with Biden’s inflation it’s impossible to have a dollar store Kari Lake being that Kari Lake is dollar store Sara Palin. Also too, I see her top revealing bare shoulders. I don’t think Hillsdale’s rules allow for wimmen wearing such revealing clothes.
tokyokie
@eclare:
Hell, my experience is that one doesn’t actually need to fight, because merely show a willingness to do so will cause the bully’s bravado to evaporate instantly.
Jay
Though google, I can finally get into Twitter, sort of.
I can get to the accounts I used to monitor, I get the mast head, the bio, but no content.
Elie
@Martin:
From what I gather (from the article) she is pretty weird herself. She cut off all her friends when “they” decided to run for office. You just get the sense in the article that these are very out there people who don’t send or receive signals normies do… Maybe they have lizard skin under their normal appearing skin…. I get the sense that they just don’t see their own abnormality or they wouldn’t have doubled down with this new ad after his freaky ad from a couple of days ago… they don’t get it
geg6
@Jeffro:
Not sure where this idea that she’s more capable than he is may have come from because, apparently, the media is saying she’s the brains behind his current campaign. Which is flaming out in pretty spectacular fashion. She’s as stupid as he is.
Elie
@Mr. Bemused Senior:
Who knows? If he fails his bid for President, she might eat him like one of those spiders (Black Widow) or Preying Mantis— the male has a brief time to lay down his rap and mate with her but if something is off and he can’t get the job done or can’t get off site quickly, he is dinner….
HumboldtBlue
@Matt McIrvin:
The Love Boat ran an episode with a trans character who was known to a crew member in college as male and who was on the cruise as herself many years later.
Elie
@geg6:
Totally agree. Stupid AND weird
Mustang Bobby
@Chris: My mom and dad lived in the WASP culture all their lives and they used to avoid getting into arguments with people because they didn’t want to make a scene. But as they got older and saw how I and my nephew were trying to live our lives, they spoke up, always politely. As Mom once said, you win the war one cocktail party at a time.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jeffro: To be clear Youngkin’s minor pulled suicide prevention information for LGBTQ youth. Suicide prevention. They want us dead.
In other news, Republicans are amping up their strategy of claiming that being LGBTQ is in itself obscenity. Seven Republican AG sent a threat letter to Target that accuses the company of violating laws that “protect children from harmful content meant to sexualize them and prohibit gender transitions of children” because it sells Pride clothing and merchandise.
On a related act of erasure OK Schools Superintendent says schools can only teach about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre if teachers don’t talk about how it was perpetrated by white supremacists against Black people.
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator: Perhaps ambition is simply the wrong word. Hillary clinton’s ambition was to obtain political power and use it to help people and improve the lives of americans. Casey Desantis’s ambition, as far as I can tell, Is to become a first lady so that she can wear fashionable clothes, get on magazine covers, and generally be treated like royalty.
Ambition is not bad. But specific ambitions can be.
Betty Cracker
@Mustang Bobby:
I love that.
eclare
@tokyokie:
I wasn’t taking any chances. She and her cohorts had bullied me for months because I was the new girl at school. They played keep-a-way with my magic markers. It was on.
And they never bullied me again.
Betty Cracker
@HumboldtBlue: Holy shit, that’s amazing! I was trying to think of trans characters in media back in the day, and all I was coming up with was the transwoman in “The World According to Garp.”
HumboldtBlue
@eclare:
And on that day, Bugsy eclare was born.
@Betty Cracker:
Indeed, I remember watching that episode.
I also think back to just how many men we saw in drag as kids. From Bugs Bunny in the cartoons to Jack lemon, the Cpl. Klinger, that shit was ubiquitous.
Uncle Cosmo
My take as well. In those thrilling days of yesteryear when I was competing for the companionship of women my age, I slowly came to realize there existed a whole slew of methods whereby a female with the second-tier status embedded in the patriarchy could manipulate the patriarchs into doing pretty much whatever the hell she wanted them to. Insidious, passive-aggressive, arranging that her chosen target “chase her until she caught him,” and (to paraphrase an old Cornell Glee Club drinking song) “waltzing him around by his willy.” Et cetera.
NB – I am not saying that women of that day, in that cultural context, were wrong to learn and apply whatever means made their lives more livable. One does what one must, and the alternatives outside the cultural norms were much more of a long and lonely slog. I’m only saying that those same norms persist today in large swathes of our citizenry, and those same methods still work despite the wider range of life-style options available in the larger society.
Citizen Alan
@HumboldtBlue:
I never saw the love boat episode. But both the jeffersons and Night court had episodes in which one of the character’s old army buddies showed up as a woman, without giving any advance notice of being transgender. As I recall, both episodes were fairly supportive of the trans character, but I found it strange as a kid that someone would visit their supposed best friend after many years apart and basically say “surprise! i’m a woman now!”
Brachiator
I know I have asked about this before, but how did DeSantis rise to power in Florida? Are the Democrats so entirely hapless? Is this the reverse of my beloved California, where the state GOP is weak and pretty much on life support?
Has the Miami Herald or other media sources done good background pieces on DeSantis?
I had not paid much attention to him in the past until he appointed an apparent quack as the state public health expert.
He seems to be flaming out as a national political figure, and the political press seems to have fallen out of love with him, but he is ruining Florida and there are other right wing leaders who are just as bad as he is.
And it is crazy to note that the fall of DeSantis may help Trump. The Demagogue vs the Mad Man. What a horror show.
eclare
@HumboldtBlue:
Hahaha. How are you doing? I saw your post yesterday.
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin:
While the MaryKayKayKay women are probably all-white it’s important to note that all of those pushing homophobia, transphobia and trans genocide are white women. For example, one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s nieces has been virulently homophobic for years. There’s plenty of other BIPOC women who I don’t have time to Google right now.
But the motivation appears to be similar. And while they may not play up the “being a woman is being the ultimate victim” rhetoric that white TERFs use, similar complaints do seems to play a supporting role — in particular that gay men are “victimizing” women by reducing the pool of men to date/marry.
Elizabelle
@Mustang Bobby: Your mom was one wise woman.
As Margaret Sullivan said last night, “talk to them.” Maybe just briefly, and perhaps even humorously, with as little information as a listener can take in at the moment.
CarolPW
@Betty Cracker: Little Big Man (book) came out in 1964. A valued member of the tribe he was adopted into was trans. I read it in high school soon after it came out, and it does not seem to have done me any harm.
tokyokie
@eclare: I’ve always been something of a troublemaker and a couple of times in my life I’ve felt the obligation to stand up to a bully, figuring that sometimes you just have to accept taking a beating to demonstrate your sincerity. But when I’ve done so, the bully has always backed down. It’s just an act with all of them. The scariest person I’ve ever known was a small, quiet Iranian kid, but one look into his perpetually dead eyes would tell all but the stupidest of people that he wasn’t somebody you messed with. But loudmouthed bigots? They have nothing behind the loud, stupid talk.
Mai Naem mobileI
This was on my newsfeed except he was inaccurately labeled a congressional rep not just a state rep.
Two employees accuse Fabian Basabe of sexual harassment in suit – Miami Herald https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article276825256.html
He’s accused of harassing male aides and he’s also the husband of the heiress to the La Perla lingerie empire whatever that is and,yes, ofcourse he’s a republican.
Brachiator
@HumboldtBlue:
This Love Boat episode was from 1982?
The clip was very sweet and sympathetic.
Lyrebird
@Mustang Bobby:
I got myself Not Asked Back to various homes by trying to do that same honorable work your parents did there. No shouting, no taboo words, just trying to be as non-disruptive as possibl e – I am no hero – while being able to look others in the eye. Like someone started off after dinner convo with, “What do you think of Clinton letting [gay people] in the military?”…
I said, gee, I don’t know, but the only Vietnam Vet I went to school with (GI Bill) was gay, and he was in the military, so I guess it’s not new, is it?
Next sound: silence
Next sound: hostess rushing over to grab some photo albums, “Have you seen our trip photos from…???”
eclare
@tokyokie:
Makes sense.
Wyatt Salmanca
@raven:
@Alison Rose:
Do you either of you remember these Al Franken and Tom Davis sketches with the Grateful Dead?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu-ruBgidKg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mEad63cPhI&t=327s
HumboldtBlue
@Citizen Alan:
I found it strange as a kid as well. Hell, as an adult, I find transgender strange only because it’s such a foreign idea to me. I’ve never been anything other than me, and I have no idea what it’s like for someone to want to live their lives as their true selves, and that may mean a change in gender.
That thought quite literally has never entered my mind.
My ignorance is one of experience alone, because where I differ from a lot of other ignorant folks on the issue of transgender is that I want people to live their best lives as they see fit and therefore support the choices they make.
Then there are the other ignorant folks who are assholes and who scream “Jesus” and “the children” and get their hate on.
@eclare:
Doing well. Had a long family zoom meeting yesterday, I have a brother and sister handling dad’s estate and all that stuff, so we met and talked through that, and then we decided who gets what of dad’s possessions and such.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Trump is telling a rare truth when he says he made DeSantis. RD was an obscure Freedom Caucus backbencher in the US House in 2017 when he noted Trump’s susceptibility to flattery and started appearing on Fox News almost daily to defend the then-POTUS.
Trump returned the favor by endorsing the unknown DeSantis over the establishment FL Repub pick for governor in the GOP primary, who everyone assumed was a shoo-in. With Trump’s help, DeSantis won that race and drew a weak opponent in the general because the FL Dems are indeed notoriously hapless and have been for the entirety of the present century. (RD came within a whisker of losing anyway but squeaked it out.)
In my opinion, the Florida dailies, including The Miami Herald, The Orlando Sentinel and The Tampa Bay Times, have done a good job overall of exposing DeSantis and the Repub Party’s jaw-dropping corruption and fuckery. Unfortunately, most people don’t seem to give a shit.
UncleEbeneezer
rikyrah
Frank Figliuzzi (@FrankFigliuzzi1) tweeted at 0:39 PM on Fri, Jul 07, 2023:
He echoed Trump’s “invasion” rhetoric, now he’ll spend his remaining days in prison: El Paso Walmart mass shooter Patrick Crusius sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences @NBCNews https://t.co/2uaeolJApJ
(https://twitter.com/FrankFigliuzzi1/status/1677371683185762304?t=4BtPwzA5dN7dS1uTO8WYnA&s=03)
Bill Arnold
@Jeffro:
I like how The Hill, though center-right, simply linked a web.archive.org copy of the LGBTQ-friendly resources page.
eclare
@Lyrebird:
A couple of Christmas’ ago my cousin’s wife brought up a racist meme going around town. I loudly said, that’s not funny. She may have mumbled something afterwards, but then the convo changed.
rikyrah
Airbnb seems to be having a hard time overall.
BowTiedBroke (@BowTiedBroke) tweeted at 7:23 AM on Wed, Jun 28, 2023:![]()
This one did:
Alright, let me chime in on this #Airbnb conversation since I have one left. Sold 9 in ‘22. I don’t care if this one gets booked since I stay in it when I’m working in TN, but yes, bookings are down
‘20 – $80K
‘21 – $95K
‘22 – $85K
‘23 – on track for $30K-$40K https://t.co/2vfuQPaLod
(https://twitter.com/BowTiedBroke/status/1674030770577342464?t=C7exW3cQoR8P0s-eHM8a8w&s=03)
mrmoshpotato
@Martin:
LOL!
Brachiator
@Citizen Alan:
This is true nationally, but we don’t elect a president by popular vote. State results show a lot of variation.
And white women are not a monolith. Unmarried and college educated women are more likely to vote for Democrats.
There does seem to be a trend that many married white women lean towards conservative values, but even here you can’t just assume that they are buying into the patriarchy.
eclare
@HumboldtBlue:
Glad to hear you have a brother and sister to help out.
Citizen Alan
@HumboldtBlue:
And then, fred grandy became a republican Congressman. Lord, what a strange world we live in.
Sister Golden Bear
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s a common dynamic experienced by multiple minority groups. E.g. Hispanics in small Midwest/Eastern towns were treated more of a curiosity when there were only a handful of them. But when the local meat packing plants, etc. starting hiring lots of Hispanics — often deliberately hiring undocumented ones — there’s been huge anti-Hispanic/anti-immigrant backlashes. Though from what I’ve read, over time this often dies down, at least somewhat, as 1) the white people get to actually know their new neighbors, and 2) white folks start realizing that the new influx of people is revitalizing their towns, which often have seen better days.
Some of the came from the medical gate-keeping of the time, where trans woman had to say they were heterosexual. Saying you were lesbian trans woman, or a gay trans man, would disqualify you from trans healthcare treatments, and they conformed to gender stereotypes for women (and men).
But also, this approach didn’t challenge the gender binary. I.e. one might have been born on the “wrong” team and switched teams later, but there were still only two teams, both with rigid standards for being on those teams.
hilts
The more people see of DeSantis, the more they dislike him. Given his widespread unpopularity, I fully expect him to withdraw from this race after the NH primary. His campaign has become an absolute laughingstock.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Golden Bear: & @Martin: Chalking this particular moral panic up to white supremacy (and the associated women’s auxiliary wing to white women exclusively) seems increasingly anachronistic from my perch in Florida. Plenty of POC here eat this shit up. If, FSM forbid, DeSantis were elected POTUS, his lieutenant gov, a Latina, would carry on the same campaign of LGBTQ persecution.
Miss Bianca
@Sister Golden Bear: Um…how exactly *are* you supposed to talk about the Tulsa Massacre then? “There were good people on both sides”?
Dangerman
I’m not wasting a single brain cell watching that shit. The Dude is clearly desperate (perhaps Casey cut him off or threatened to cut it off unless his polling improves). Since he is roadkill, it’s just gonna get worse. Trump could be convicted, in prison, sending out inappropriate pictures of his Daughter, or servicing Putin and he’s still the nominee. Kinda wild these strange days we live in.
eclare
@Miss Bianca:
I saw a revised history textbook, I think for FL. Discussing Rosa Parks in the original, the text was something like she was forced to sit in the back because she was Black but she bravely maintained her seat on the bus. The revised version simply omitted “because she was Black.”
HumboldtBlue
@eclare:
Oh, there’s a whole gang of us.
@Citizen Alan:
Yes he did, served a few terms.
Bill Arnold
@Jay:
Twitter is trying to game Google, which normally downgrades links to walled gardens, pushing them down in the search engine results list. That may be just a side effect of twitter’s inept tinkering.
Probably, twitter advertisers will not believe in this manipulation.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: Well boo hoo to that unregulated hotel bullshit.
Rusty
@Matt McIrvin: I’m not surprised. I’ve watched some formerly moderately conservatives really start to lose it about trans issues. I don’t really know the brain worm that conservatives set off, but it has had an effect. A cousin that is conservative, but was never racist or homophobic has really started to slip about anything trans. Sadly this looks to have long term consequences.
Doc Sardonic
@Betty Cracker: in addition to Trump’s fat ass on the scale for that election, the FBI Jacksonville field office in conjunction with the Tallahassee resident office also had their weight on it. Especially in the last weeks of the campaign the leaks out of the FBI were coming fast and furious. That the vote was as close as it was showed how weak DeSantis was. Interesting that none of the stuff the FBI came out with resulted in convictions.
Citizen Alan
@mrmoshpotato: I had to stay in an airbnb this past weekend because all the hotels in the town I was going to for a going away party were booked for summer registration at ole miss. A woman had bought a condominium and decorated it to be an overpriced boutique hotel. Miserable experience.
gwangung
That’s more true about white liberals than marginalized POCs and LGTBQ folks, I think. The latter are on to that REAL quickly as a matter of survival.
Taken4Granite
@geg6: Her being stupid and her being more capable than her husband are not mutually exclusive. The latter is a rather low bar to clear.
Wyatt Salamanca
@UncleEbeneezer:
The last time I saw Sullivan on Real Time, Bill Maher was slobbering all over him and bragging that he had the most frequent appearances of any guest on his show.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
You and I are on the same page here, but the hypocritical right wing message is that the evil liberals are the people who are interfering with families.
Ultra conservatives reject the idea of public health. Masks and shutting down businesses during the pandemic is a continuing sore spot with conservatives. The DeSantis ad sneered at the idea of “respecting the science.”
And there was lots of stuff about “rescuing” children from evil liberal policies. And they are asserting that some parents are harming their children by supporting their decision to come out as trans.
And of course DeSantis asserts that even allowing gay issues to be discussed in books available to innocent children, liberals are harming society.
It’s all bullshit, but I don’t know if the response that they should mind their own business is adequate.
I don’t know whether any of this resonates with the average voter. But DeSantis is trying to reach beyond those lost souls who believe everything they see on Fox News.
Sister Golden Bear
@Betty Cracker: All in the Family had a sympathetic treatment of a drag queen/trans woman over the course of six episodes in 1975. (IIRC the character was referred to as a drag queen, but actually was portrayed as a living as a woman full-time.)
FWIW, both NCIS and CSI Las Vegas both had episodes — both in 2004 — involving trans people that while not unproblematic, were ultimately sympathetic.
I know there’s other sympathetic TV/movie portrayals over the past decades, but I don’t have time to love for them at the moment. However, it is notable that 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in SF — subject of the excellent the documentary Screaming Queens — while it got little attention at the time, did result in better treatment of trans people by the SFPD, thanks to the yeoman’s work of a sympathetic police sergeant.
mrmoshpotato
@Citizen Alan: The only Airbnb I’ve ever stayed in was a small house in Michigan for a weekend. Enough room for the 7 of us, but the place was a dump.
The grass out back looked like it hadn’t been cut in at least 6 months, so the backyard was unusable (and it was unseasonably nice weather for December), and sections of the crown molding in the kitchen were missing – like 3-foot sections.
Also, they had these living room chairs that were a crime against humanity – the sides of the backs jutted out at a 90-degree angle, so you couldn’t sit back if you had, ya know, arms!
Airbnb can really be a slumlord’s dream come true. Fuck ’em!
Sister Golden Bear
@Betty Cracker:
Same in CA. Definitely transphobic Hispanics and Asians (both of a variety of origins) here who eat that shit up as well.
Brachiator
@Sister Golden Bear:
@Matt McIrvin:
I guess as a preteen I read about Christine Jorgensen. I think that this was the 60s.
Let’s see. From the BBC.
Even back then, I think that I thought it was good that this person became who she wanted to be, though I don’t remember talking about it much with anyone.
I didn’t know about the gatekeeping to push a heterosexual identity on these individuals.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: White Supremacy is a system/ideology that appeals to people of every race, gender, ethnicity etc., always has, always will. Just because Latinx, Asian-American, or even some Black people buy into policies, doesn’t change the fact that those policies are rooted in and perpetuate White Supremacy.
Elizabelle
OT: Aren’t we way overdue for a new version of the Mueller Report, with less redactions? Didn’t the Biden admin say that was going to happen? Did it? If not, why not??
eclare
@Sister Golden Bear:
All in the Family was so far ahead of its time.
That answer by the police officer, wow. So simple.
UncleEbeneezer
@Miss Bianca: “There was this thing called Black Wall Street. The End.”
Jay
@Bill Arnold:
since the MuskAttack, all I got from either a search, bookmark or a link, to accounts I regularly would view, was a demand to either sign in or sign up.
Today, I can see the header profile of the twitter author, but no content.
Only when I click the “something must have gone wrong” tab, do I get the demand to log in or sign up.
I havn’t used my Twitter account for over 4 years and I am not going to create a new account.
Jeffro
Yeah but she can actually talk to other humans, and speak without flying off the handle.
eclare
@UncleEbeneezer:
Line from “Fuck tha Police”:
Cause they’ll slam ya down to the street top
Black police showin out for the White cop
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Sister Golden Bear: Twin Peaks had a trans character.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
Two things: first, it’s a pretty narrow majority. Like 53-47 in 2020 IIRC, and that was a bigger margin than the previous election.
Second, they’re voting roughly 20 percentage points more Democratic than white men are voting. There are a lot of white women who are voting Dem while all the men in their lives are voting GOP, and probably disparaging us ‘woke’ types at random moments. IMHO, that 20% of white women voters deserve some serious credit. They’re keeping us in the game.
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: Maybe if you educate Latinx Mamas for DeSantis on the origin of their hate-fetish loudly enough, they’ll see the error of their ways.
Jeffro
@Kay:
I’m starting to wonder if they keep doubling doubling and doubling down some more on the hate because to change course would mean they have to come up with actual policies instead of just railing against any number of boogeymen.
I mean, massive amounts of dark (and Russian?) money + gerrymandering + a captive SCOTUS + a ‘both sides’ media has kept them “in the game” well enough to this point. Why abandon ship and try to come up with actual workable solutions/policy alternatives to things like immigration, climate change, etc?
So much easier to just “WOKETY-WOKE-WOKE-WOKE!!” your way through the day/campaign and hope that it works.
Annie
@Kay:
DeSantis et al are so deep inside the bubble, they think everybody believes this garbage. High on their own supply.
Citizen Alan
@UncleEbeneezer: That’s racist! It should be “There used to be this thing called REDACTED Wall Street.”
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
In Toronto, there is a new twist to the AirBnB.
Person A rents it for month.
Person B occupies it and searches for documents that can be used for Identity theft.
Person C does the Identity theft and puts it up for sale.
Over 30 houses and condo’s have been stolen and sold this way since 2022.
That’s over $45 million dollars in real estate fraud, and unless you have title insurance, ( which many didn’t have), you are kinda screwed.
Glidwrith
@Citizen Alan: Because they literally have no accomplishments of their own.
Jeffro
I haven’t seen anything saying she’s more capable (meaning ‘intelligent’ or ‘the brains behind his current campaign’). But she does know how to string sentences together and not angrily bark at people, so she’d be an upgrade.
Not that I want them to upgrade! Ron sucks so…go Ron!!
Jeffro
That guy is a complete psycho. I saw a clip of him talking to schoolkids in OK a month or two ago, and you’d have thought he was at CPAC.
Barbara
@Sister Golden Bear: The tv show “Missing” had a sympathetic portrayal of a transwoman. She had been a suburban dad with a couple of kids when she transitioned.
Jeffro
That guy – Ryan something? – is a complete psycho. I saw a clip of him talking to OK schoolkids a month or two ago, and you’d have thought he was at CPAC.
Sister Golden Bear
@Brachiator:
Another key aspect of gatekeeping was the doctors had to decide that you could successfully “integrate” into society. At the time, for most trans people, it was like entering witness protection — you were expected to quit your, move, cut all ties with family and friends because No One Must Know.
Often that mean you had to be able to physically pass for cisgender — meaning someone like me would’ve been denied treatment. And more than one doctor’s criteria for “passing” was whether he personally found the trans woman fuckable.
The doctors would only accept a specific kind of life narrative as well, i.e. you knew since childhood that you’d been “born into the wrong body.” Naturally, trans people learned to work the system and lie if needed to tell doctors what they wanted to hear.
There’s a reason for trans people remain suspicious of the medical establishment for reasons that continue to this day, e.g. “trans broken arm syndrome.”
Geminid
@Elie: I remember when Charlie Kirk organized a speaking tour for DeSantis last year. DeSantis was going to speak at Roswell, New Mexico but then they switched the venue to Las Cruces. I thought, maybe they’re afraid someone at Roswell might recognize him as a fellow “immigrant.”
DeSantis might have slipped up and given them one of those winks where the eyelids close from the sides.
Chris
@Jeffro:
I mean, yes.
Goes at least as far back as European monarchists in the nineteenth century, promoting the shit out of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and then tying them to the progressive movements of the era. They knew damn well they had nothing to offer that could beat what the liberals or the socialists were offering (the whole point was ensuring that the people would never get things like that), so they had to find something other than policy issues to base their politics on.
Two hundred years later, here we are.
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: That last reminds me a lot of the struggles fat people (esp. fat women) have to get any kind of medical issue treated with anything other than an admonishment to lose weight. It gets to the point that a major health risk of obesity is just that doctors won’t take your concerns seriously.
trollhattan
@Wyatt Salamanca: Those two can always bond over the FACT that no matter what, Hillary is the worst.
Sully was correct on torture and normalizing gay marriage. Thus endeth the Sully was right list. Okay, I’ll grant him the beagles.
Steeplejack
Amid all the turmoil and bad news, I will note that today is Ringo Starr’s 83rd birthday! 🌟 🎂 “The biggest fool that ever hit the big time”—and one of rock’s greatest drummers.
“Act Naturally.”
“Ticket to Ride.”
Ringo is dreadfully underrated. A friend who is a professional musician once told me that you can almost identify any Beatles song just from the drumming. “Ticket to Ride” sticks in my mind because it is sort of a “bumpy” song —a stop-and-start feel, then a smooth bridge. If you take the simplistic—and inaccurate—view that a song is “done” and then drums get added to it, it’s hard to think what to do with it. But Ringo’s approach is perfect. And evidence that the drums are integral to the creation of the song.
trollhattan
@Jeffro: She’s relaxed on camera, perky even, putting her leagues ahead of Meatball. NB Do not gaze at her more than 30 continuous seconds. You have been warned.
mrmoshpotato
@Annie:
High on their own supply of their own farts.
trollhattan
@Steeplejack: Never heard another drummer say anything negative about Mr. Starkey’s abilities as a drummer. Maybe it’s that he never called attention to himself but put everything into the support of the group, that folks don’t generally think of him as a skilled musician. He certainly is, and I’m so happy he’s still living his best life.
Miss Bianca
@Steeplejack: I have noted before that Ringo SWINGS as a drummer! He seems to be always just a tiny bit behind the guitars/bass and he just drives the whole bus forward that way. Deceptively simple, I calls it. During my short-lived foray into rock.and roll drumming, Ringo was my model.
Jackie
@eclare: Norman Lear was a treasure. My dad wasn’t a belly laugher – chuckling was his laugh – but All In The Family – especially Archie’s reactions/facial expressions – made dad cry tears of laughter!
Eta: Lear is still alive at 100!
Chris
@trollhattan:
Quite possibly the worst thing Andrew Sullivan has ever done is make me feel sorry for Sarah Palin. (That whole demented crusade to prove that Trig Palin wasn’t Sarah’s real baby).
raven
@Wyatt Salmanca: Jesus no, that is awesome!!!
mrmoshpotato
@Jay: Wow. But you gotta hand it to the people who would rent out their place but leave around personal documents.
Geminid
@Steeplejack: Wednesday was Robbie Robertsons’s 80th birthday.
Wapiti
@Lyrebird: Yeah, my go-to example was a case where a guy had told the (Vietnam era) draft board that he was gay, and they drafted him anyway… years later, when the Army tried to boot him for being gay he sued, and though he was discharged, eventually won a retroactive promotion, back pay, and retirement benefits.
Matt McIrvin
@Rusty: Enough gay/lesbian people have come out that Anita Bryant-level fearmongering purely about them doesn’t work on that many people any more. They’ll just go “that’s not true, my cousin isn’t like that at all.”
But most people don’t know a trans person very well, or don’t know they know. So you can make up really lurid shit about them and it won’t get that pushback from direct experience.
And once the brain worms are active, they probably have a chance of spreading to your attitudes about anyone who isn’t completely cishet and square. Drag Queen Story Hour, oh no! Your cousin’s OK, maybe, but when an evil cabal of trans people are “coming for our children”, well… better safe than sorry.
lowtechcyclist
@Brachiator:
Fifty years or more ago, a lot of women expressed their ambition through their husbands’ careers, because the barriers between them and the possibility of their own careers were so high.
Casey DeSantis can have a career of her own if she wants one, and be as ambitious as she wants. But at this point in our history, being ambitious through one’s husband just feels a bit weird, like she’d just stepped out of a time machine from 1962.
And not that their relationship can be very healthy anyway because they’re both horrible people, but it’s a weird place for a wife to put a husband in, making him feel like he has to be more than he’s really up to being, because he’s the only outlet of that ambition. It strikes me as pretty sick, really.
Dollar-store Lady Macbeth. But at least Lady Macbeth had the excuse that she couldn’t be king.
raven
@Citizen Alan: Ours has turned out great. We completely rebuild a 900 sq foot “cottage” with one bedroom, a living room/kitchen and bathroom/laundry room. We’ve been doing it since January and had nothing but 5s star reviews and my bride became a “super host” as soon asa she was eligible. Up until last week we’d had great tenants and the couple that was there most recently had a son-in-law with 1776 shit on hhis ride and the lady gave us a “god bless you, your family and your business” note when they left. We live next door and my wife loads it with fresh flowers and nice goodies along with it being a brand new funky old house.
Jeffro
@Taken4Granite: sorry – I responded to the same question before I saw your shorter and better note here. =)
SteveinPHX
@Betty Cracker: @Mustang Bobby:
Images of Gatsby’s East Egg and West Egg just popped into my skull!
eclare
@Steeplejack:
He was my fave because of his general goofiness
raven
@Matt McIrvin: Tull, Fat Man
Don’t want to be a fat man
People would think that I was just good fun, man
Would rather be a thin man
I am so glad to go on being one, man
Too much to carry around with you
No chance of finding a woman, who
Will love you in the morning and all the nighttime too
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
In one case, all the AirBnB “renters” needed, was an Ontario Hydro bill that arrived in the mail, while they were there.
Using that as their wedge point, (proof of identity, proof of occupancy), they quickly amassed other documents as “replacements”, enough to fake title and sell the place for $3.2 million. Not bad for a month’s work.
Jeffro
Starbursts?
Or will I be turned to stone?
(or worse, a Republican?)
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie: Don’t you go scaring us like that! :)
japa21
Up until recently, transgender meant that a person had already transitioned and people, though maybe uncomfortable with that, could accept it. Every portrayal above in television shows was post transition.
Additionally, it was always about adults.
Now, the talk is about kids being forced to undergo sex changes and HS boys getting to go into girl bathrooms and athletic inequalities.
These concerns resonate more with people even if they are ridiculously either overblown or downright falsehoods. People that could support adults who have gone through transitions are struggling with the new perceptions.
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
as a comment upthread pointed out, due to Bideninflation, it’s now the $1.25 store Lady MacBeth.
eclare
@Jeffro:
They are Old Testament Christofascists: pillar of salt
brantl
@waspuppet: I don’t hate white people, I hate entitled, bigoted hateful white people, which while a substantial PORTION of white people, isn’t ALL white people. At least, yet.
Dan B
@Lyrebird: Thanks for being a vocal ally.
Sister Golden Bear
@japa21: Not to mention an explicit effort — created by Christopher Rufo — to portray all LGB-and-especially-T people as sexual predators. Plus, there’s been exposes that the Christofascists explicitly planned to use their “protect the children” approach (including banning healthcare for trans kids) as a strategy to mainstream their moral panic before going after trans adults and the wider queer communities. Which is exactly what they’ve done.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Ringo in A Hard Day’s Night.
Matt McIrvin
@japa21: Claiming a child is in danger is definitely a way to make many people’s critical faculties go right out the window. Even when the ultimate consequence may be to put children in danger.
lowtechcyclist
@mrmoshpotato:
We’re staying an an Airbnb for the first time when we’re down in FL next month visiting family in Plant City. My FIL’s house doesn’t have room for the three of us, and besides, it’s got bedbugs. And this seemed to make more sense than a week in a hotel room. (Up until last year, we’d always stayed in my wife’s late grandmother’s house, but we sold the house last fall.)
I guess we’ll find out when we get there whether this particular house is OK for a week, or whether it’s a disaster. It’s in town and fairly convenient to my FIL’s house, so it’s got that going for it.
mrmoshpotato
@Jay:
Just a f’in water bill (without their name on it) was enough for proof of identity? Holy buckets!
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: Pushaw went a step further with the “groomer” epithet and effectively claimed that all allies of LGBT people are child molesters. Depending on how you count it, that could be a majority of the United States population, all child molesters. Once that notion caught on, things really started to get crazy and I think some people started to be a little afraid of expressing public support.
eclare
@Steeplejack:
Thanks! I’ve seen it, but it’s been a while.
Bill Arnold
@Annie:
The Christopher Rufo campaign is hurting a lot of people, but it is also hurting the GOP because of their seriously distorted from-the-bubble view of the American polity.
rikyrah
@Jay:
Wow..hadn’t heard of that.
rikyrah
@Sister Golden Bear:
There was a show, Council of Dads, that had a trans child.
mrmoshpotato
@Matt McIrvin:
Basically the point of Reverend Lovejoy’s wife on The Simpsons.
rikyrah
Edith was devastated by her death.
Bostondreams
@Betty Cracker:
I regret every day that Gwen Graham did not survive the primary. I think she was a far stronger candidate. :/
mrmoshpotato
@lowtechcyclist: I’m not saying all Airbnb properties are trash, but the one I’ve stayed at was.
Also, it’s basically a company running an unregulated hotel industry using other people’s properties, and fuck them for that.
rikyrah
@Jackie:
Useless trivia fact.
Lear owns one of the copies of the Declaration of Independence.
Dan B
@Wapiti: My draft board told me that I couldn’t be gay because there were no homosexuals in Medina County. But… there were men cruising in the main park in my hometown. They were married men.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: I don’t know what will convince those people. They WANT White Supremacy and Patriarchy.
My point is that the whole “but Latinx/Asian-American people support Y, so it can’t be racist” argument is one of the bullshit arguments that White Supremacists have been using forever to try to minimize Racism/White Supremacy by restricting their definitions to the point where almost nothing meets the criteria. Systems and Ideologies of Oppression aren’t about who buys into them. Nor are they about what’s in peoples’ hearts/feelings. They are about results of inequality. In a time when fascists are trying to literally ban/erase the work of people like Nikole Hannah Jones and Ibram X. Kendi, it’s all the more important that we follow the lead of the academics and historians that study these things and use their definitions. Latinx Mamas 4 DeSantis may not believe they are being lured by White Supremacy, but they are.
rikyrah
@Sister Golden Bear:
Never about ‘ the children’. Because, they never stopped with ‘ the children’.
Martin
@Brachiator: The point is that she’s not taking the consequences of that ambition. I’m fine that’s she’s ambitious, but Hillary herself also ran for office and she took the hits directly for her ambition. Even when Bill was president, she didn’t hide behind the First Lady shield, as evidenced by Hillarycare and more amusingly by her submission of the Toll House Cookie recipe whenever media tried to keep her behind that shield.
If Casey wants be ambitious then great – get the fuck out there and own it. Don’t make your husband be the conduit for it so you can spend your days cosplaying as Jackie O.
Martin
@Sister Golden Bear: I don’t argue that only white women do this. I’m arguing why they do it, and why they can organize this way and get this kind of fawning coverage.
You think a group of homophobic black women could even so much as get a mention from a national news publication, let alone a positive mention?
The homophobia isn’t uniquely white, but the reach of the group is because they are white.
Jay
@mrmoshpotato:
In Toronto, it’s water, gas and electrical power. To get an account, you have to show proof of residence and one Government issued photo ID.
We just got out passports, ( not a renewal) a week after applying.
We had to have “guarantee’d” photo’s, which just required one Government issued photo id, scanned by a retail clerk.
We had to have 1 guaranteer who had known us for at least two years, and 2 references who had known us for at least two years, filled out on the paperwork.
Passport Canada never contacted them, did no background checks, and I am pretty sure that all they did was see if “our people” had passports.
It’s not hard to fake up a drivers lisence and care card good enough to pass a cursory check.
To a realtor, you are in occupancy, you have 3 pieces of Government issued id, ( or is close enough), bills, any title search will turn up your “adopted” name, the market is hot, we have no such thing as escrow, ( you make a deposit, show mortgage documents, sale is complete, title is transferred), so basically, from offer, to the money in your bank, ( where it disappears quickly offshore), is a week and voila, $3.2 million dollars.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: Oh, probably. But make no mistake that it’s all part of the same dynamic.
Don’t take white nationalism so narrowly. White nationalism requires having bought into a system of social stratification – a caste system. If you buy into the caste idea, you get to then argue over where in the stratification you belong and so you get to recruit those below you into the cause because they get to argue they are not at the bottom. Whites recruit latinos into the scheme because they can tell latinos ‘at least you aren’t black’ and so latinos are susceptible to buying in as well. And a political party, being that their job is to get at least a narrow majority, will invite, however temporarily, anyone into that majority as they need, and shove them out as soon as they are no longer needed, as the Log Cabin Republicans have observed.
And to Sister Golden Bears point, even if you are near the bottom as a black woman, at least you’re not gay. There’s always a neck you can stand on in a social strata.
So yeah, you fight the white nationalism but not by arguing that you belong higher up in the strata, but by arguing that there is no social strata.
Martin
@UncleEbeneezer: They don’t necessarily want white supremacy and patriarchy. But they do believe it’s unavoidable. That is, they don’t think it’s possible for human societies to not stratify, and so if stratification is inevitable, then what matters is who is on top and who is on the bottom, and you might as well advocate for yourself. To conservatives, stratification is the natural order of things and it doesn’t matter if they like it or not, they’re stuck with it. And so when liberals yell ‘Black Lives Matter’ they can’t help but interpret that as a demand for a reordering of the strata, and since blacks and whites can’t inhabit the same strata because no two groups can, calling for black to move up the strata is implicitly a call for whites to move down. That liberals argue there should be no strata (debatable, but I’ll be generous here) is seen at best as childish and at worst as duplicitous.
Cameron
What was that country song – “Mamas, don’t let your babies throw up on DeSantis” or some shit?
Sister Golden Bear
@Miss Bianca:
That’s the Republican Retcon. When they’re not denying that [insert bad thing] never happened.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
I didn’t realize how much Trump’s anointing had helped DeSantis. Thanks very much for this.
It’s frustrating to see that DeSantis has shrugged off the impact of good political coverage.
He seems like such a weasel. And yet voters seem to like what he has done.
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin:
Fair enough, it just didn’t read that way. Glad we’re in violent agreement.
@Martin:
Plus there’s been an ever-evolving definition of who qualifies as “white.” At various periods in American history the Irish, Italians, Greeks, Eastern Europeans, and other Caucasian groups weren’t considered “white,” or more accurately “conditionally white” depending on whether it was more useful for WASPs to deem these groups white or not in specific circumstances (which could conflict with other specific circumstances).
Yes it was a lot more complex and I’m over-simplifying, but my point is that one reason Latinos, Asians and other ethnic groups can buy into the scheme is because they’ve seen how other groups have moved from “not (quite) white” to “white” in the caste system.
Sister Golden Bear
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s also similar to the way all women often have healths problems dismissed as just part of “being a woman.” From the “trans broken arm” article I linked to:
In my own life, my mother’s complaints about severe back pains were dismissed as merely part of “being old.” It turned out to be pancreatic cancer, and by the time it was diagnosed it was so advanced that she only had six weeks to live.
Brachiator
@Sister Golden Bear:
The crazy thing is that in America, “whiteness” is a very mutable category. It almost seems ready to fade away. Black people and Native Americans are among those who have had the greatest problem in overcoming discrimination, at least with respect to ethnic groups.
AWOL
@Brachiator: Ed Wood’s infamously bad “Glen or Glenda?” was the first attempt at exploiting Christine Jorgensen in the mid 50s. Wood, who drank himself to death while reduced to writing and filming porn, was a cross-dresser who acted out his angora-sweater fetish onscreen in that flick.
Origuy
I’ve stayed at four AirBnb/Vrbo locations. The first was in Whitehorse, YK; it was a basement apartment with its own entrance. The couple were very nice and the place was well kept up. It was also two blocks from where the shuttles to the places I was going picked up. The second was a Vrbo, but I think it’s now AirBnb, in Truckee. Again a separate apartment with a full kitchen and two beds. The only drawback was that it was on the main street and along the railroad tracks, so it was very noisy. In Vieste, Italy, I stayed in a basement apartment that doubled as a jazz club. There was a stage with all the sound and lighting you’d expect in a small club, along with a kitchen and tiny bathroom. It was noisy and the AC didn’t work very well, and it was damp but a block from the Adriatic Sea. Very convenient. The fourth one was in Naples. Quite a nice place close to the central station. It was called “La Casa de Nonna” and looked like a grandmother had decorated it. I wouldn’t want to stay in a place where I was sharing the same facilities with strangers.
Citizen Alan
@Bostondreams:
And not to beat a dead horse, but I blame the Bernie Bros. Gillum was the one they backed over Graham, and I think that was what allowed him to narrowly win the primary.
Manyakitty
@Steeplejack: Ringo playing “Photograph” at the Concert for George brings me to full-on tears every time. His drumming changed the rhythm of the show.
https://youtu.be/n8lbjwXtGeQ
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: We disagree on some fundamentals, but the important thing is we’re on the same side. In the present context, that’s all that matters.
Elizabelle
I watched the Mamas for DeSantis video. I don’t think it will play well with normies.
Elizabelle
Some background on the “We’re coming for your children” chant in the video.
NBC News:
‘We’re Coming For Your Children’ chant at NYC Drag March elicits [rightwing] outrage, but activists say it’s taken out of context
Organizers say the NYC Drag March is meant to be lighthearted and to poke fun at anti-LGBTQ sentiment.
Jinchi
@rikyrah: It’s hard to judge economic numbers for the Covid years. Are the AirBnB numbers today similar to what they were pre 2019?
Or has the market collapsed?
caphilldcne
@brendancalling: it’s justified. Fuckem!