We may not agree on what we should be communicating, but I think we can all agree that communication is key. Right?
different-church-lady suggested a good response to (something or other) the other day:
“You’re about to make a guy you pardoned the Ambassador to France. So SHUT THE FUCK UP.”
Let’s make a list, shall we? I would like to select the best of what we come up with and keep a short list at hand for when some Trump voter says something.
Everything on the list obviously doesn’t have to end in SHUT THE FUCK UP, though they could!
Or maybe there should be two lists?
Part 1 is the terrible thing they voted for or terrible thing Trump or the administration is about to do.
Part 2 would be the SHUT THE FUCK UP or QUIT COMPLAINING or WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU WERE VOTING FOR? Or a hundred variations.
Let’s do this. It will make me feel better.
Omnes Omnibus
Do we even need the first part? SHUT THE FUCK UP seems effective enough on its own.
Trivia Man
He was convicted of 34 felonies and never served a day behind bars. STFU.
Trivia Man
His wife refuses to move into the white house with him, STFU
zhena gogolia
He incited a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol and to try to kill his own Vice President and the Speaker of the House. STFU.
zhena gogolia
He was fellating a microphone the week before the election. STFU.
zhena gogolia
In the famous debate that was such a “disaster” for Biden, your candidate began by saying that Democrats kill babies. STFU.
ETA: I’d better stop or I will be up all night.
Trivia Man
He tried to trade Puerto Rico to Denmark in exchange for Greenland, STFU.
Trivia Man
He told police, “Don’t be too nice” when arresting people. STFU
Citizen Dave
Lincoln had his Team of Rivals. Trump has his Team of Criminals.
Chetan Murthy
@zhena gogolia: You are too generous. Mine is:
He led a coup to overturn our Republic. STFU forever you fucknugget.
Trivia Man
He said, “He’s not a hero, I like people who weren’t captured” when asked if John McCain was a hero. STFU
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
At first I thought, you had to be a rapist to get a job in the Trump administration. Then I realized, the jobs were open to all kinds of crooks and clowns. You voted for the guy. It’s on you.
WaterGirl
I think I like quit complaining, you fucking whiner. But I also like what did you think you were voting for.
WaterGirl
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: good one!
narya
I see the leopard eating your face; you voted for that leopard so STFU. No I’m not going to help you; I’m busy helping people who didn’t vote for the leopard.
hells littlest angel
He cheated his workers, he cheated his contractors, and he hates unions, what the fuck did you expect, Mr Steelworker?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I volunteer “You have no idea what you’ve unleashed on the world. You will never be able to wash the blood off your hands, no matter how hard you try to scrub it off, you fucking piece of shit.”
That one could probably go on both lists.
scav
Don’t complain about the dance track when you hired the band.
EZSmirkzz
Your Mom wears army boots.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
He’s fucked over working people, including me, his entire adult life, including in his first term as president. He appointed the judges that could declare the National Labor Relations Board, an agency that has held corporations accountable for violating the rights of workers, for nearly 100 years. His buddy Elon Musk is apart of this crusade, too. It’s because of the ACA and my union that I have health insurance that I pay nothing for. I’m not officially full-fime; if it wasn’t for the ACA (“Full-time ACA employee” work at least 30 hrs/week) designation, which Trump and the GOP repeatedly tried to repeal in his first term. You fucked me over, you asshole. What did you expect?
NotMax
The classics never go out of style.
“Have you no sense of decency, at long last?”
Nukular Biskits
Why is that not the default?
ETA: And, yes, I’m up WAAAAAY past my bedtime. Long, stressful day.
Harrison Wesley
I doubt if any Trump voters will engage me in conversation. If one decided to, I’m most likely to say “that’s nice” and walk away.
AM in NC
You voted for a proudly-bragging rapist, so SHUT THE FUCK UP
Jackie
@Trivia Man:
He’s trying to get a rapist drunk to head the DOD – because why not? They’re just a bunch of suckers and losers.
STFU
Trivia Man
When I lived in NJ, my congressman was the last of a very long line of very influential politicians. Like, 200 years at the center of NJ politics. Rodney Frelinghuysen was chair of Appropriations… and caved to Trump like wet tissue. His dad was in congress during the McCarthy era and gave some fantastic advice that I try to quote to Republicans when I can work it into the conversation.
Peter Frelinghuysen, in 1954: “By remaining silent we permit the public to believe that most Republicans condone the senator’s tactics. By remaining silent, we lend credence to the view that we prefer to risk losing our freedom than to offend a questionable asset to our party.”
Substitute president for Senator and we are spot on. “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
Nancy
His ‘first buddy,’ Musk, and sidekick, Vivek, want to cut Social Security. That will make my life hard so fuckin’ shut the fuck up.
RevRick
You might be fighting against me, but I will always fight for you.
kalakal
You voted for this.
You got what you wanted.
STFU
SpaceUnit
Not sure yelling STFU is going to save us.
Snarlymon
He’s actually not a very good businessman, but he played one on TV.
Martin
I hate the idea of blaming voters rather than the people in power. Don’t get me wrong, I’m barely talking to my mom right now, but that’s emotions and I think we should be trying to overcome that, not feed it. The post right before this is about solidarity of workers against owners, and this feels like ‘what if we did the opposite?’.
Plus, we seem to hate the grievance politics of Trump, and this is just a different kind of grievance. Sorry, WG. I still love you to the end of the world – that ain’t going to change.
Jackie
@Nancy:
Nancy, you aren’t alone.
Jay
@Harrison Wesley:
When the Leopard starts to eat their faces, there will be epic whinging. They will seek sympathetic ears, which don’t exist in their team.
Saw this with Bush II and Dubya, Dubya Me Too.
I found that “you voted for this, suck it up Buttercup” worked well.
Chetan Murthy
@Martin: Martin, I respect you immensely, but ….. this election wasn’t about workers somehow rising up against owners. It was about assholes deciding they could let their freak flag fly. Nobody got anywhere worthwhile by being nice to assholes.
Y’know what really makes me angry about this election? Of all the groups that got shafted, really shafted, the one that ranks up there is women. Women got really shafted. And what’ll really rankle, is when, in 2028, we’re told that we need to make nicey-nicey to these bros, these shitheads with their “your body, my choice” and all that.
I guess I’m glad you can see past that anger and think about how to reach out to these wastes of protoplasm.[1] I can’t.
[1] What’s worse than a waste of oxygen? A waste of protoplasm.
Gloria DryGarden
I’m really a fan of asking pointed educational questions instead of attacking and insulting/ blaming. I have to prepare this in advance, because random friendly conversations sometimes reveal I’m speaking to a trump voter who drank the Kool aid, and my default response might be less useful.
Questions I’m thinking of (I’m taking suggestions from a thread many days ago)
Was this what you thought would happen when you voted for these people?
Oh, you sound disappointed. What did you think would happen?
Or, how does this affect you? Are you surprised?
On a 1-10 scale, how bad do you think this is for you? What about for others you know?
What did you think was going to happen?
Like that. Encourage critical thinking.
Or, thank you for showing me who you are. Bless your heart.
( I understand this is southern for “Nothing I can do about you. Hush up now, I have to go”)
Noskilz
I’m partial to “what did you think you were voting for?”
Or perhaps ” they campaigned on this, you voted for them, didn’t you expect this?”
Jackie
@Noskilz: I’m more blunt: You’re getting exactly what you voted for – by who you voted for up and down the ticket. NFLTG
YY_Sima Qian
@WaterGirl: What you propose works for online discourse, especially social media. Offline, not so much I think, except to the ones you can clearly identify as committed nativists, racists, misogynists, authoritarians & militarists, & obviously acting in bad faith.
Related to the discuss in the AOC thread, AOC would not be effective in communications at all if she took this path w/ people who voted for her & for Trump.
Dangerman
There will come a point in the next 4 years where a decent number of The Ignorant Motherfuckers (TIMs) will be peeling TFG stickers off their cars and burning their MAGA flags and hats to destroy the evidence. Think of it as OJ and Robert Kardashian. Poof. Gone. There will be a decent number of the Loud and Proud crowd that will deserve mockery, a healthy STFU, or a properly disgusted eat shit, but a fair number of the Whiny TIMs will disappear into the night after serving it up for the Leopards.
Anotherlurker
You voted for a man who whose policies to end social security will put me out on the street. I depend on social security. You and everyone who voted for trump can —– off and –e.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@YY_Sima Qian:
I respect AOC, but there’s literally no excuse for voting for Trump and then her, when he made it plain throughout the campaign who and what he was. They knowingly (at least should have known) voted for evil. They have signed the death warrants of so many people
hitchhiker
I’m still much too angry to have this conversation.
All I want to do is be mean and snarky. “What are you objecting to? Clearly, America is great again. You won. If you need help, write to the president; I’m sure he’ll care a lot. Or you could just send him a donation. That will get his attention.”
It doesn’t matter to me that some of these people meant well and were working from bullshit information. I still loathe them all.
Yutsano
You fucking voted to fuck around.
Thanks to you fuckerheads, we’re all going to fucking find the fuck out. Some of us more than fucking others you fuckwads.
So shut the everloving fuck up, you fucking idiotic fucksticks.
I think I need more fucks in there.
Martin
On this, I would like to note that generally non-political Ms Martin just came back from band practice (she’s in a band) and the side discussion of these 50/60 year old liberal white suburbanites was that they hope the UHC shooter gets away.
I cannot express strongly enough just how big a cultural shift that demographic cheering for vigilante justice is. These aren’t trump supporters cheering for some black kid getting shot, these are MSNBC viewers cheering for a white CEO being shot.
SFAW
@Yutsano:
Not disagreeing, but what will you do when you reach a state of NFLTG?
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Hey Gloria, this is the cookbook we talked about last night:
From a Times of Israel article by Renee Ghert-Zand, April 3 2021:
As I recall, the recipes are mostly vegetarian, with a few lamb dishes thrown in.
VFX Lurker
For some reason, this reminds me of Airplane:
“They bought their tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say, LET ’em crash!”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
OT: if people like Joe and Mika are so afraid of being on Trump’s “enemies list” enough to go down to MAL to kiss his ass, why couldn’t they have just retired, left the US, and renounced their US citizenship? They would’ve at least kept their integrity and I’m sure people would respect them more for it
eemom
@Martin:
Your apologism for trump voters is getting intensely tedious, as are your smug, self righteous scolds against the feelings of decent people who did their damnedest to stop this horror from happening.
That’s not even getting into your endless 8000 word pontifications on these threads that wear out the mouse to scroll past.
Are you a Silicon Valley billionaire with nothing else to do? Can’t really think of how else to explain your schtick.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
Your astro gear is twice as much now, Shut The Fuck Up!
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: Right, but we all generally agree that most Trump voters are also going to get fucked over too. Look at who the winners are here:
Trump: presumably billionaire
Musk: billionaire
Ramaswamy: billionaire
Linda McMahon: billioniare
Howard Lutnick: billioniare
Doug Burgum: billionaire-ish
Isaacman: billionaire (how convenient for the head of NASA to be a friend of Musk)
Vance: only ~$10M
RFK: ~$50M
Chris Wright: ~$150M
The billionaire owner of the LATimes who blocked an endorsement of Harris, Bezos who blocked the endorsement by WaPo. The $200M in contributions by crypto to Trump. Four donors gave half a billion dollars to Trump.
You cut these people out and leave him with just small dollar donations, and Trump would barely have gotten his message out. Not to mention USSC granting him immunity to avoid accountability.
No, most Trump voters won’t come out of this better off. Anyone with real money is going to do great, though.
I’m holding to my previous thesis – most voters, including most Trump voters don’t like Trumps policies. Polling supports that. But I think they see him as a change agent. I do think they want him to break the current system, at least to some degree. I don’t think people are really considering desperation as a variable. Isn’t that also an explanation for why my wife and her friends are cheering for the UHC shooter? It’s a kind of desperation for the system to change, and that shooter becomes the change agent.
Like, it’s not going to yield a better outcome. If everyone’s theory is correct that the shooter is a disgruntled customer or relative of a customer fucked over by UHC (just that everyone is in agreement as to motive is already pretty damning of the system), UHC isn’t going to suddenly realize that people are pissed and cut prices and expand services. They’re going to take money out of care and spend it on security for their executives. It’s going to make things worse. Desperate people don’t make good decisions, they make bold decisions. Nobody in a fit of anger makes better decisions, they just make decision that they couldn’t make when not angry because the anger overrides their reasoning. I think a lot more people are in that space than we want to acknowledge – and yes, you can wind people up as Trump did (as this post might seek to do). And I don’t think it’s Biden’s fault they are in that space, or Harris, I think it’s a lot bigger than that.
Jay
@SFAW:
Amazon delivers,…….
Martin
@eemom: Fuck off. You’ve been jumping on anyone who said they disliked what shoes Biden wore. You’ve been in dear leader mode for half a year at least, and that’s very much in keeping with how you treat people around here for what, a decade now? You shout down any dissenting voice – always have. And I try very hard to not call people out on this, but you just can’t resist picking a fight can you?
I’m not looking to scold people. I admitted I engage in the same thing myself right in that post. I just don’t think we should be indulging it, I think we should be trying to pivot to something constructive. Does anyone think telling people to fuck off is constructive to winning the next election?
Chetan Murthy
[insert LBJ quote about poorest white man, best Black man, and wallet]
But LBJ left out: if you can tell any downtrodden man that he can take it out on the women of his town ….
They voted for Trump’s policies, Martin. You just don’t want to admit it to yourself, because the policies they voted for are so despicable, so hateful.
Chetan Murthy
Telling people — the people who will be hurt by Trump’s -actual- policies that he ran on (which is beating on women, beating on immigrants, beating on LGBTQ) — that we feel their pain, that we’re angry for and with them, isn’t a bad thing, and I think it’s important to do. Enough of this milquetoast “oh lordy, we need to reach out to goddamn Cletus in his toothless glory as he gets busy beating Earleen to death”. Enough. Enough.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: And now a special mythology bonus about “Bözkürt,” the totemic Gray Wolf of Turkic mythology. From Wikipedia:
I’m not sure how the Romans came up with a similar myth 8,000 miles from Mongolia. Coincidence? Maybe a cultural anthropologist could find some deep connection. Carl Jung might have.
If you asked a Turk they’d probably tell you, “You know, we really got around back in the day.”
eemom
@Martin:
ooh, hit a nerve, did I? Exactly nothing you said about my personal track record is accurate.
Best of all, I didn’t even tell your insufferable ass to fuck off. But now that you mention it, I believe you did threaten to leave “for a third time” if we don’t stop calling your shit out. Not a bad idea.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
@Chetan Murthy:
This. These two comments are exactly right. I think it’s worth it to pursue anti-corporate policies more aggressively like Martin suggests; better that than DLC 2.0 and throwing entire vulnerable groups of people under the bus. That said, I don’t care for the excuses that are made for these people. I knew what Trump was. So did tens of millions of others. We had access to the same information, yet we made the right choice. What’s their excuse? I think a solid chunk of these folks liked what they saw. They liked the cruelty.
I think the idea that they choose Trump because they saw him as a “change agent” and were desperate for change is absolutely awful and lets them off the hook for willingly choosing evil. At the very least, it didn’t bother them enough to not vote for him
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Any Trumpist tries to engage me in political conversation this holiday season, I’m going with one response: “You voted to kill me.” Repeating as necessary until they get the point that this matters, beyond politics, beyond politeness.
Gloria DryGarden
This. thank you.
@hitchhiker: it’s very hard to not respond in anger. The rage and terror and horror are so deep, so intertwined. I’ve learned the hard way that if I reply in mean angry ways, it goes worse than nowhere, exhausts my adrenals, and spins me into overheating like a revved up motor.
So I try to process my rage by myself, venting alone, clapping or stomping or twisting a towel as if I were hurting someone- it’s just a towel- and then I try to swim out sideways, and look to the result I want to create.
It’s hard work, but it really does assuage my anger if I aim to “create the result”.
it’s a work in progress.
besides, if you’re in the mode of angry taunts and epithets, we’re stooping to the level of others who we don’t admire. (Understated her, but you get my drift)
im trying for effective communication. Maybe, I’ll just say simply, I feel angry about this because it harms me and bunches of others, and it matters, and makes things really hard.
I’ve found when people are angry with me and they just say so simply, with no name calling, everyone saves face. It leaves a door open for adult dialogue.
m.j.
What? Elon wants to liquidate the VA?
I guess all those patriotic lapel pins and, “Support the Troops!” bumper stickers were a lie.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Martin: I’m a 73 y.o. white woman and I hope he gets away too. My husband and I are also thinking that if he does get captured and goes to trial, he would not get convicted (jury nullification), especially a jury of his peers, who most probably got shafted by a health insurance company.
WereBear
“I think it’s sinking in that everything that makes your life bearable, you just voted away. For all of us. So you should go away and think. Really THINK.
“It won’t kill you, but Trump just might.”
Gloria DryGarden
@Yutsano: shouting these words into the night and across mountain valleys. Writing it in paper with a drawing of a house burning down. And then burning it. I’ve had this actually shift my health.
later, when I’m neutral enough, I find something constructive to say, or decide who to just walk away from because they can’t listen. But I do find questions get around hostility.
WereBear
@Geminid: Wolves have been raising human castoffs for centuries at least, probably more.
They have better social sense than we do. We did get together 50,000 years ago.
We now have Jungian memories in common :)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
As per the NYT
“In an attack that once would have been unthinkable for a sitting president, Mr. Trump all but accused Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman who now hosts the MSNBC show “Morning Joe,” of killing a staff member in 2001 even though he was 800 miles away at the time and the police ruled her death an accident.”
WereBear
@Martin: They have given us no other options.
I think, in the recent “great President” vibes re: Biden (and I think he’s done amazing things) but I also remember President Obama, certainly another contender for “Best President in my lifetime” too.
He got it done. If he hadn’t, there would be more vigilante justice already in operation. This is how a country gets de-stabilized.
And I think a considerable number of our leaders soft pedal crises “so there isn’t panic” but it’s here and it’s barely held in check.
We’ve got corporations killing people. About time MAGA realized their fabulous jerb creators want to kill them for money.
And I will simply tell them so.
BethanyAnne
So, it’s not precisely what this thread is, and it may be old hat to some, but I just read something that would be perfect for the tagline file: “Trump gets to be lawless, while Kamala has to be flawless.”
Gloria DryGarden
@WereBear: truly, and not just in myth?
Geminid, I copied the cookbook info to look up.
cool about the wolves, the connection acriss to Mongolia. They did get around.
My family hosted an Estonian exchange student. I ransacked my dictionary for all the related languages, and took an armchair travel across Siberia and into All the Turkic, Tungusic, and Turkish languages and where they were spoken. I took notes, cross referenced back and forth, as far as I could go with my Webster’s, into the finno Altaic, and finno ugric families.
autopredict didn’t like that.
when I found john mcwhorter’s great course on “language families of the world” I just lapped it all up.
Georgia has several distinct language families, incidentally. He has a unit on that. Since Georgia is in the news.
Gloria DryGarden
@BethanyAnne: give us the link to what you read.? Please?
i found an incredible reading list about the world move toward authoritarian rule. It’s in a Facebook reel, but some people might be able to access it. I put in in one of the Thursday pm threads. Maybe the unión one, or the aoc one.
bjacques
@WereBear: I will laugh myself silly if the shooter turns out to be a Trump voter.
@Geminid: I was wondering what Samaritan tastes like.
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: they voted to kill themselves and take us with them, just to show us a lesson before the end.
How about FAFO instead of STFU? It still packs an F-bomb but can be delivered without direct hostility or even with just a shrug, and covers people who voted *once again* “just to shake things up” or “to teach the Dems a lesson” as well as those who didn’t vote at all.
A commenter on a Heather Cox Richardson post suggested putting it on a billboard. I’d go with stickers to add to gas pumps or a foreclosure sign on a Trumpy neighbor’s house, or posters to paste on the padlocked doors of a local Trumpy business.
Make FAFO the WHO Is John Galt? of the next few years.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
What she said, and picture a man 6ft tall screaming “Shut the fuck up” at a little old lady because of the way she voted.
TS
Anyone attempts to talk about trump to me
“I am the most left wing person you will ever meet in your life. I care about people – ALL people. There is nothing you can say about trump that can be seen in any positive way. He is a racist misogynistic excuse for a person and only cares for his own enrichment. Never mention his name in my presence”
The number of my ex friends is growing.
TS
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Any little old lady who voted for trump deserves to be called on it – politely or in any other way.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Meet the Indo-Europeans
Gloria DryGarden
@Gloria DryGarden: another “incidentally “ story. Since Russia and war are on our radar.
Our Estonian student was from Sweden. Her dad left ussr during wwll, rowed a boat across the sea to Sweden.
I think about the cold, the rough seas, the toughness of the conditions and the risks either way.
I’ve met others who escaped from or survived in warn torn places. The stories…
YY_Sima Qian
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Not all human beings can be rational at all times, or have enlightened views of self interest, let alone enlightened views about common interests.
My rational side could never fathom how anyone could have voted for Trump in ’16., ’20 or ’24, or any R since about ’08. However, if we write off all of those who voted for Trump (a clear majority of whom are committed nativists, racists, misogynists, authoritarians & militarists & thus unreachable, but not all), & more importantly the multitudes who did not bother to vote (& thus helped to return Trump to power), then where does that leave us? Where do we go from there? I am not opposed to slapping sense into people who voted for Trump or did not vote, when the inevitable consequences come, but that can’t be all we do.
Resignation that all Trump voters & all of the disengaged non-voters are lost causes, is tantamount to admitting liberal democracy is doomed to fail, its very foundational assumptions born of European Enlightenment proven dangerously naive, & what we need now is a “benign” authoritarian regime to turn back the tide of malignant authoritarianism.
It is also a doomed political strategy (including politics via other means, should it come to that), because together, the Trump voters and the disengaged non-voters form a pretty decisive majority.
Geminid
@m.j.: The Project 25 plan called for most VA functions to privatized. That’s a big pot of money to exploit.
WereBear
@YY_Sima Qian: I think the group “the disengaged non-voters” were thinking it’s like laundry detergent: you evaluate the claims on the label and make your pick on price and convenience.
And then find your clothes have dissolved in the wash. That, I hope, will leave a mark.
Gloria DryGarden
@TS:
Anyone attempts to talk about trump to me
not bad.
also the FAFO , instead of F you. Maybe write it out for the stickers and billboard idea: “F around and find out.
How’s that working for you? Or how’s that working out?”
Martin
@Chetan Murthy: Doesn’t that cut both ways? A lot of people voted for Biden’s Israel policy that fucking hate it. Adam hates his Ukraine policy.
I don’t like being labeled as complicit in the genocide of Palestinians just because of that vote. I don’t think Adam would appreciate being labeled as a sell-out on Ukraine because of his vote.
We only have a choice of two people here. We really only get to choose on the largest overarching characteristic. The system has one degree of freedom in the end. 2nd order effects don’t get to be controlled for. You just have to live with that stuff, which sucks, but we’re all stuck with the same problem at least so long as the electoral college forces it upon us.
My thesis is that change/no change was the overarching characteristic. I don’t agree that it should have been that – I think it should have been fitness for office and we kick the change/no change down one election until fitness for office is probably no longer a major variable. This election knocked the wind out of me. Still largely has. The biggest part of that is the choice I thought we were making, and I was in pretty close agreement with everyone else here, turned out to not be the choice that a sizable portion of the electorate was making. We’re still looking through a fitness for office lens. I think that was a 2nd order problem for a lot of voters.
I made a comment recently (yesterday, day before) that an argument was made that authoritarians, particularly vulgar ones like Trump are appealing to voters looking for changes to how politics are conducted because their vulgarity proves they are a disruption to that system. And the more vulgar they are, the more appealing they become, even to people who don’t want that vulgarity in the new form of politics they hope comes about. Basically revolutionaries almost always choose leaders that are more radical than what they are seeking, because the radicalism reinforces that they are not beholden to the old system. And that this is a contributing element to why, say, evangelicals can embrace such a vulgar man. I think his promise to protect and even enshrine (a radical position now) white christian nationalism is the main reason for their support, but they still see the vulgarity as a feature, not a flaw – he can be trusted because he doesn’t talk like Mitt Romney would revert to middle-way establishment politics.
I can’t find it but Adam commented a while back on this election and Trump as generally revolutionary (not the positive kind of revolutionary). And we weren’t thinking of this necessarily in revolutionary terms going in. I certainly wasn’t. I didn’t see Harris as revolutionary and she promised very clearly not to be. Maybe that’s what a large enough part of the electorate wanted though, and everything else they would just live with. Again, it’s not like there were other choices.
Ruckus
@Anotherlurker:
You can say FUCK OFF AND DIE. And if you won’t – I
willdid. Now I didn’t vote for shitforbrains but obviously enough idiots did. I wonder what they are going to do when he fucks them over and does not give one iota of concern or even acknowledgement. Is there any concept that they will ever learn from their asinine mistakes?Gloria DryGarden
I agree.
also
Martin
Like I said, you like picking fights and continue to do so. Do everyone a favor and pie me.
God I wish I could put myself in other people’s pie filters.
m.j.
Well you know, some people enjoy being lied to and some people don’t.
Gloria DryGarden
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: see also my comment #70
WereBear
As a liberal, we have to say, “There’s a lot of factors…” and we’ve LOST them. That’s why they fell for the simple lie.
We must not complicate the truth any more with our dutiful student ways.
Where are the Democratic spokespeople pointing out all the ways this will create mayhem for people? We tried the complicated positive.
So do the simple “here there be monsters” and maybe get through?
WereBear
@m.j.: MOST people enjoyed being lied to. Male or female, they are primed for the con that a manipulator hands out.
Because they are so good at it. Cons make your fantasies come true in your head and since there’s so little love in a vulnerable person’s life, “it’s just like Romance or the movies” has more power than a real person offering actual love.
It is hard for me to overemphasize their vulnerability. And how does Trump do it?
He doesn’t do it alone. I’ve been saying it was 20 years of The Apprentice that did it.
That was the Rump Magic. These people live in their dreams, utterly reality-free.
Or does no one remember American Idol?
TBone
@TS: I was accosted in the supermarket by said little old lady, who overhead me remarking on the price of a can of soup to my hubby (I said, simply, I’ll make soup at home). She screamed “THANKS, JOE BIDEN!” and I promptly yelled “Get a grip, lady! Inflation is WORLD WIDE right now and Biden has nothing to do with it!” I added “which you’d know if you stopped watching ONLY Fox News!” while she fled the aisle.
STFU! did not cross my lips, but it should have! Buttinski!
WereBear
@TBone: Gee, since I’m an old lady myself, I probably would have done the same.
I’m white and look good in pastels and have been mistaken for a Karen and told horrible things. I keep my temper, but honestly:
They have made that much harder now.
I don’t think telling the truth, even at volume, is ever a truly bad thing. I don’t want to hurt feelings, either, but this is a Forced Choice situation.
TBone
I have installed a bumpstock in my uterus so it will remain unregulated. My vagina now shoots bullets.
So STFU!
Martin
I cannot help but agree with you.
But this is what I’m getting at. We are a group of people that going into Nov 5 supported the candidate that promised to defend institutions, uphold the rule of law, support everyone and we are now endorsing vigilante murder – objectively the most revolutionary behavior a citizen can undertake, objectively in opposition of the rule of law, objectively in opposition to institutionalism.
Now, did we change that much because of the election? Are we okay with this shooter because we’re pissed off about Trump? Maybe. Or would we have had the same reaction before Nov 5 and we’re a lot closer to that revolutionary moment ourselves than we want to admit.
People have been accusing me of wanting to burn shit down, and I’m sitting here with almost unanimous support for vigilante murder – not just here, but in my real life – including a whole bunch of people with the ‘In this house we believe Black Lives Matter … kindness is everything’ signs in their front yards.
Like, hold on, this is NOT a good thing. This is a ‘burn shit down’ event. It would not be hyperbole for the GOP to be running a ‘Democrats want to murder executives in the street’ message (I’m not seeing any outrage from Republicans by the way – this seems to be almost universally approved of other than the media). Doesn’t this potentially prove my point? We’re cheering for a murderer? Say what you will about Trump he didn’t literally shoot a guy on 5th avenue and not lose any votes – but the UHC guy DID. Are we not just as much seeking revolutionary change as I just suggested many Trump supporters might be? Are we not just as willing to contravene norms (excusing murder, no less) to achieve that change?
I’m not trying to put judgements on anyone here – I am emotionally fine with the UHC guy getting merc’d, any judgement 100% applies to me as well. But I think we need to take a step back and evaluate just how far over the line a LOT of people feel they have been pushed, because we should not be having this reaction.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The thing I noted in the conversation with the Trumpers at work was how their concerns parallel ours, just they end up voting for the other candidate.
TBone
@WereBear: she literally inserted herself into my private conversation with my hubby when she could have remained an innocent passerby. An awful lot of these freakin’ rednecks around here think they are entitled to run roughshod in public without guard rails. One lady at the market started ugly crying, screaming and wailing like a newborn baby, when I asked her to place her chin mask over her mouth and nose. “I CAN’T BREEEEAAATHE! WAAAH!” I was laughing too hard to say anything more!
WereBear
@Martin: I’m not cheering the murder. I’m saying that yes, this is a Kissenger/Osama Bin Laden kind of acknowledgement.
The victim was involved in stock market playing, that’s probably illegal but who is going to arrest people for that?
This group response is the sane one. Do we cry for organized crime leaders getting shot?
Because isn’t that what health insurance has become?
TBone
@WereBear: exactly.
YY_Sima Qian
@WereBear: & if the mark makes them realize & remember their mistake, then the anti-Fascist coalition should try to bring them onsite, rather than push them away.
WereBear
@TBone: Yes. High school in a red state taught me all I needed to know. Midway through college I fled to find a better dating pool, and more opportunity for women.
They will want to make it illegal for women to work or leave the state. Because despite the 53% white women vote, their assumption of being the “good ones” and that would protect them is not the case in Misery, where women showed up to vote only on the Proposition to secure reproductive rights.
First to find out it didn’t work.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: i have re installed my vagina dentata.
TBone
It helps immensely to vent here, in a sort of practice run, instead of hauling off on these fucks IRL without proper planning beforehand, IMO.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: ha!
WereBear
@YY_Sima Qian: I’m curious how you see us pushing them away.
Martin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: My thesis is that sure, again, there’s a shitload of asshole Trump supporters that would just as soon kill Democrats in the street if they could get away with it, please don’t accuse me of siding with them, there are enough voters in the margins that I think mostly just disagree on magnitude. They don’t think that incremental, technocratic change is sufficient, even if they agree with the incremental, technocratic changes being proposed.
I posted this link earlier. It’s a 6 minute video of something that happened today and it’s perfectly what I’m trying to get across. It’s a UK radio talk show host responding to a speech by Starmer. To be clear, he supports Starmer and the left. But his argument is that the state of the UK government is such that it doesn’t matter how well intentioned Starmer is, he can’t help but feel that change cannot be instituted in the current system sufficiently quickly, and that he thinks they’ll have a Trump moment in 5 years.
So he’s seeing Trump as a revolutionary figure chosen to tear the state down. Tearing it down isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. If I didn’t know better I would have thought he read my first 3-4 long posts that I put on here and mapped it right onto the UK – it’s precisely what my theory is.
TBone
@WereBear: FIFY
Jay
When I started at Raider Hanson, under Gio, (Giovanni), I loved the job. All I had to do was fix tools.
Then I learned some stuff, like while I was supposed to be and create a Mobile Repair Service, there was no budget, no process, no tools, but they did have a truck.
Then MGMT changed.
Things went down hill fast. Several employees, (denied raises, and subject to illegal non-complete clauses) suggested various changes, in the belief that if the Company made more, they would get paid more.
LMFAO,
The company paid techs $20hr, (retail) $7.40 less than a living wage, with a “promised” $2.50 raise upon passing probation, (key word, “may”) while charging customers $175 and hour for their work and a 90% mark up on parts.
I quickly walked away Work had become toxic.
TBone
I might have to get some of the songs that were made about “Eating the dawgs! They’re eating the cats!” cued up in my phone, ready to go at top volume in an instant.
Oh noes, the Humane Society wants to regulate puppy mills! The horror!
Martin
You sure as shit aren’t outraged that an institutionalist rule-of-law process have played out instead. Like, you’re okay with that being a viable substitute for an ineffective system. (Again, my argument that institutions are failing to function as the public needs, also noting that this is an institution that Biden/Harris are currently in charge of.)
Your note that ‘who is going to arrest people for that’ is another argument that the current institutional system isn’t working. Again, a system that Biden/Harris are in charge of.
Health insurance is another institutional system that isn’t working. This one Biden/Harris don’t control, but they do influence. HHS is part of the executive branch, and they can shape legislative policy, executive actions, etc.
To be clear here, I’m not blaming Biden/Harris for these institutions not working. I don’t think they fail to work because of them. I think they fail to work because of a large set of problems – some institutional rot, failure to adapt to new conditions, unclear scope, regulatory capture, legal paralysis (courts not permitting the agency to do the thing the public want), political infighting – all of that. It’s all piled up into a nest of dysfunction. And part of that is that we’ve empowered the free market to such a degree that they can pretty easily evade regulation and accountability, and by establishing them as people who can dump unlimited money into politics, they can buy their independence, and Democrats hardly have clean hands on that. Biden was notorious for his protection of the credit card industry, based largely in Delaware.
Put another way – what could Biden/Harris do to address those issue above that you acknowledge don’t work? If it’s nothing, then isn’t the only logical solution some kind of radical reform?
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: I think you’re saying, when trump voters realize vía FAFO that it was a mistake, that we need to include them in our liaisons and activism, let them know we’re working toward same goals, invite them to join in and help.
Even though we might be enraged and need to vent first. That we can cultivate returning to calm neutral, so we have more clarity and purposeful news in our actions and choices.
am i understanding you correctly?
Martin
@m.j.: Everybody enjoys being lied to. We all just disagree on how.
Fuck, everyone enjoys lying to themselves. It’s the only way to get through life.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
And my thesis is if you want positive change, you don’t vote for billionaire fascists, who campaigned against “Enemies Within”, because that change didn’t happen fast enough. That’s monstrous. Not to mention monumentally stupid. How is tearing down the fucking state going to reign in corporations and the rich?! That will only make it easier for them to fuck everyone else over!
There is no an excuse for that
YY_Sima Qian
@WereBear: Nothing said here is pushing them away. IRL if some Trump voter or non-voter wails at the inevitable injustices or negative consequences of Trumpian mis-rule, & all you have to offer is FAFO, that’ll do it.
You can still say FAFO, but follow up w/ “that’s why you should have voted D”, &/or “what are you going to do to correct this injustice being perpetrated by the Trump Administration”. Hopefully by then the Dems will have more populist rhetorics handy, shifting the bullseye from disadvantaged out groups to the kleptocrats.
TBone
Black womens’ work. Proficiency level: expert/genius.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:h4jtg73s6ewwf526ml4concq/post/3lcgo3gtibs2n
YY_Sima Qian
@Gloria DryGarden: Yes, you are correct.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@TBone:
Isn’t the Humane Society a very mainstream, well-respected non-profit organization? Does that fact not bother these people?
Gloria DryGarden
Except for the rich were all about to be in the same storm , but in a range of boats and rafts, unprotected in the elements.
i might say, I’ve called the karma department about you, because you voted for this, I’m not pleased, and yet right now, let’s find you a boat or a flotation device. Or, who can you ask for help from, amongst your trump voters friends? Cuz I’m all out of energy except for known Allies.
TBone
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): nothing, and I mean nothing, bothers the evangeluglicans where I reside! The nicest rumper mother I know once unironically wore a shirt promoting automatic weapons to my house for a visit! Big graphics of AK-47 all over it and down the sleeves. Her kids are all doing active shooter drills at school and she. does. not. care.
ETA that reminds me – THIS is fucked up so I’m reposting.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-selling-restricted-guns-posties/
YY_Sima Qian
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There is no excuse for voting for Trump at any time, or really any Rs since about ’08.
Then what? Do we think at lease some of the non-voters & a smaller portion of Trump voters are capable of changing their minds, whatever the stimulus? Or we write all of them off as unreachable & leave the anti-Fascist coalition w/ about 30% of Americans?
BethanyAnne
@Gloria DryGarden: I was just browsing imgur.com, and it was a comment in one of the posts there.
Gloria DryGarden
When we fight amongst ourselves here, we’re helping them divide and conquer, that’s their strategy. Waste of our energy.
It’s not easy to find tactful ways to reach civil discourse. But maybe it’ll be effective to learn, maybe it’s a next step for lots of us here.
On the indivisible zoom Wednesday night, they were full of practical tactical strategic ideas, groups working together. They didn’t sound angry, but rather, focused and practical.
since I’m hearing the edge of fights and accusations here, I’ll post a little forward looking poem thing I wrote off someone else’s philosophy comment days ago. Because it’s calming, and sort of positive. Poetry haters, just scroll past.
meanwhile, do things To get the anger out of your body, it’s wearing you down, it’s bad for your health, only useful as jet fuel in a fight or flight situation. Exercise, write and burn, call up the karma department with you opinions.
poem in a separate comment
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: you’re doing good work! Please poetry any old time in my vicinity!
WereBear
@Martin:
That’s why I’m saying it was inevitable. Durbin refused to let President Obama reform campaign financing. And this from OUR side.
Yes, I’m extremely upset that white collar criminality has become the New Way to Do Bizness. Why can’t we have Kefauver-type hearings on how we are now routinely ripped off?
I wanted Truman stuff on profiteering to happen. Crickets.
I’m not happy about any of this. Also, not surprised. I thought we campaigned with damn good goals and the other side was insane.
And it was still so close. That’s the only thing that gives me hope, going forward. Because all this time of conservatism and they haven’t conserved a damn thing.
I still reserve my wrath for the outright criminals, and right now, that includes the late CEO of the worse health insurance company in the nation. He let kids die.
Everyone knows that. They don’t know what to do about it, and a good third of them are clinically insane.
I’m not sure any nation has faced so much dysfunction since the middle ages, when ergot in the grain drove whole villages insane. Or the pellagra epidemics in Italy.
Gloria DryGarden
@BethanyAnne: copy paste it? If it’s useful? Did you save it..?
nevermind.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: i sent this to you in email, but you might not have seen it with all you’re in the middle of. I thank you for the encouragement. Coming up..
billcoop4
Rodney was the biggest weenie in NJ politics ever. (i worked with and for Leanna Brown by whom he felt threatened, even just for being short while she was tall).
A member of one of the oldest families in the Republic kowtowing to the likes of the parvenus Gingrich and Trump. Revolting.
BC
WereBear
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Facts are what bother these people. It’s constantly clashing with their religious indoctrination, which has been transferred to the Orange Menace.
Fortunately, he’s demented and there is no mini-me waiting in the wings. It took twenty years of The Apprentice to cement “that geenhus biznezman” in their brains.
In typical conservative fashion, they don’t have a backup.
Gloria DryGarden
I prefer to imagine Frege breaking through to some later time period briefly as if in a dream”
— Randy Chase
New in This Brief Moment; Breaking through Time Periods,
an epigraph poem
Imagine:
You touch in on yourself and become new
In this brief moment.
Looping back toward what you knew,
You found thoughts sprouting up,
Newly germinated, fresh as spring.
The land is transformed, your path emerges.
What you thought, has become rearranged.
Your relationship to anything is new.
You break through to your own alternate path, your own next future.
Was it a dream?
Out of the mists of sleepiness
You rise up,
Palm to cheek, to heart, to shoulder,
you slide a hand
Down to touch your other hand.
You have two, this is so wondrous.
Your heart is new, rising up, awake,
Even in the thick fog of morning.
Gradually you understand,
You are not dreaming.
copyright Gloria DryGarden
TBone
@WereBear: your comments are deeply appreciated by me. Especially that one.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): But you qualified the change. You say ‘positive change’. What if nobody is offering positive change. What if the choice is positive incrementalism, that in the face of rapid change in the economy ends up feeling like negative incrementalism after 4 years (consider an investment that grows slower than inflation – yes, it has a positive return, but your value of money has gone down even with that positive return) vs just ‘change’ with no clear answer of whether it’s positive or negative, just that it’s going to be big either way.
I think people make that choice all the time. I offered that theory when McCain picked Palin as his VP. He was trailing Obama, and he needed to shake up the race. It was a go big or go home moment. And Palin was a big pick and she did shake things up. She was a bad pick and it didn’t work, but he was probably going to lose anyway. She didn’t do any harm except to his reputation, and she might have helped.
I can’t tell you how many times I was working on some kind of project and it didn’t seem like anything I did was making it better and I just threw it in the trash and declared I needed to start over. It’s often out of frustration. I don’t know how to make this better, I just need it to change. And you whack the big red ‘reset’ button.
Now there’s a countervailing force here which is somewhat contradictory to the reasoning. The US government is extremely stable. Like, you throw all kind of shit into it and it barely changes. It’s possible that even Trump can’t fuck it up – that the GOP will have enough infighting in Congress that he can’t get anything passed, that Democrats will prove effective at obstruction, that the courts will intervene on the worst proactive shit, that state governments will fill in the biggest gaps (I’ve been an advocate to consider some degree of dismantling just because I think weaponizing some of these agencies would be worse than not having them and relying on states to pick up the slack) and so on.
After all Trump got very little done in his first term to shape government. He had fewer lunatics around him but even the lunatics he did have didn’t do a lot of harm because the system is indeed so calcified and prone to regress to the mean that it stymied them as well.
As to positive rhetoric, I think Dems need to acknowledge the full scale of the problem – at least to themselves and work on a plan to address it. The marginal tax rates aren’t the thing to fight over so much as ‘how to we bring people to justice faster’ or ‘how can we react faster to economic problems’. That won’t work as a campaign strategy, but I think that needs to be in there somehow. I think ‘controlled reform’ is part of what they need to aim for, and having reform of the relationship between government and big business and the wealthy is a big part of that. I don’t know how you do some of that other than constitutional amendment or some kind of radical court reform, since they’re the ones that have cut off so many reform possibilities.
BTW, if you didn’t see my response in the last thread, I just wanted to say again that I’m sorry I responded the way I did. It was uncalled for, and thank you for calling me out on it. It was shitty of me.
WereBear
@TBone: Here’s another: we had pellagra epidemics in the South one hundred years ago.
They took the germ out of the corn altogether, and asylums had to be build to house so many insane.
The hated government put B vitamins in (enriched flour) and saved the Confederacy. Again.
MAGA has to change its culture, and they’d rather die. Okay. I’m not making these decisions. They are.
Martin
@TBone: I’d like to see that front paged – it’s insane.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: there you go. See #127.
Thanks for noting my efforts here. Not sure who’s noticing or finding it useful.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: thank you, I have not yet looked at email and it’s usually my first to-do in the morning while I’m waiting for my body to catch up with my brain so I can ambulate.
Gonna do it soon, first I have to medicate the kitty, and medicate my lips, and try to tempt kitty into eating something (an all day recurring task involving many small plates of kitty tapas). He’s not eating the Gerber baby food my vet wanted him to, so he gets as many cans of Gravy Lovers as he will sniff, stick his tongue into, and walk away from while I desperately try to think of something else. He does not like tuna or anything fishy. Beef and chicken baby food are not doing it for him. Fancy Feast is the only thing he’s showing any interest in. Gah!
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: many heart emojis and kisses of perfection.
TBone
@Martin: it is absolutely, horrifyingly colored all over in wtf!
WereBear
@Martin: It’s not that I don’t agree with you. I do. :)
I’ve been wanting Q to be seen as the public health crisis that it actually is. That’s a crack the size of the Grand Canyon, and yet no one in charge is sticking a crowbar in it.
Q damage has created similar pent up rage with no public outlet.
We have delusions on our side, too.
Martin
@WereBear: Yep. I’m not sure Obama could do anything once corporations were people and money was speech, it seems all possible avenues are blocked off apart from a constitutional amendment.
And yeah, I think Democrats are complicit in this problem because they have advocated for the current state of the institutions. I don’t buy the argument that Democrats are trying to fix this stuff because there’s so much evidence that they aren’t reform-minded. I don’t know if we’ve gotten kicked in the ass hard enough yet for that to change (I’m skeptical to say the least).
I can’t undo the election and I don’t want harm to come to people, but there is a part of me that is resigned to Trump having to break so much shit just to get Democrats get their act together and finally agree to stop fucking around. I wish that wasn’t necessary, but man, it sure seems like it is.
WereBear
@TBone: Try warming it up. More scent to tempt the appetite.
I go bistro. Parmesan cheese on top.
Also, my use of L-Theanine, an European veterinary agent, had a lot to do turning things around for my elderly cat boy.
Works for people, too. Morning nausea is something I deal with. Cortisol resistance.
Gloria DryGarden
We fold our thoughts like origami cranes:
(middle of the night poem)
Anger folded in on itself,
Naming, reclaiming,
pointing sharp fingers and sharp words
In anonymous directions.
If you want to end up with peace cranes,
you’ll need to understand the delicate folding
and reopening along the creases,
folding the words back on itself,
Stopping to shake out the dust you’ve swept up,
and then to fold in,
So carefully,
Your beaten egg whites so that your soufflé or cake might rise.
You need that lift.
Fold carefully.
WereBear
@Gloria DryGarden: That is lovely, thank you.
WereBear
Also, the Haitians who were reviving that town where they were accused of eating cats and dogs?
They have sensibly decamped. I hope they wind up okay.
The town will die. And I bet they voted for that.
The entire Confederacy longs for death, trust me. They are miserable and trapped and told living in a blue state will turn them gay.
I’d long for death, too. Why I got the heck out.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: bless her heart.
next time she comes by in such weird mags, hate apparel, I hope you have your “trump is a rapist lying grifting mother fucker“ Tshirt, right by the door. Put it on.
Some sort of counter- incendiary message. Cuz she’s in your face..
Gloria DryGarden
@WereBear: thank you…
TBone
@WereBear: thank you! I have tried heating things up but he still turns up his nose.
The good news is that the vet called yesterday with kitty lab test results – he doesn’t have any disease, cancer, or anything else EXCEPT inflammation – just like his mama, no abnormal readings except for the inflammatory markers.
At least my other kitties like the baby food he has rejected so it’s not going to waste.
WereBear
@Gloria DryGarden: I’ve considered simply handing out a business card.
On both sides: “We tried to tell you.”
Gloria DryGarden
@WereBear: they decamped? The Haitians left town feeling unsafe, abandoned their homes and the lives they were building?
No!
I’m calling the karma department on that. Jesus, fuck.
TBone
@WereBear: that’s a great idea
WereBear
@TBone: Then definitely try the L-Theanine!
Both of you. It’s scary times and my cats covered me like a blanket after the election.
They knew I was upset. This makes them upset.
L-theanine is a natural antagonist for cortisol, the stress hormone that shuts down the immune system because we’re being chased by a tiger, here!
It’s supposed to shut off, after. But I’ve been in this state since 2016, yanno?
Gloria DryGarden
@WereBear:
I’ve considered simply handing out a business card.
i love it¡!
Martin
I’ll again note, even in red states, in every case ballot measures protecting abortion got a majority of voters – often a large majority. A lot of Trump voters needed to cross over for that to occur.
Yes, I agree that in the end the effect may be that what you say happens, but somehow voters (a lot of voters, no less – way more than Harris would have needed to win) were separating that issue from Trump, and I don’t think they were buying his ‘I’ll protect women’ thing. I think they voted for him despite that potential. I think they had a bigger issue on their minds.
I can only speculate what that is, and I have, but I think it’s pretty evident that maybe apart from a few places like Alabama, the electorate doesn’t want that outcome. The problem is that Democrats aren’t offering them abortion rights plus the other thing they want. That’s what they need to figure out.
But none of that explains why Democratic turnout was down. We have a lot of explanations for why Republicans didn’t vote for the Democrat (as if we need one) but we don’t have any for why Democrats stayed home, nor why Democratic voter registration went down since 2020. Those things need to be answered (mine works here as well – and the pro-UHC shooter coalition only reinforces my sense that thesis is correct).
Baud
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
My favorite.
Gloria DryGarden
@WereBear: i was trying L theaniñe in am, for happy uplift. But if it shuts down cortisol, than maybe in am I need cortisol, since waking up is tough for me. When then to take theanine? Will it cause wake up at night?
i also use phosphatidyl serine for night/ cortisol decrease.
please, what are your thoughts?
apologies for my autocorrect shenanigans, it’s so much work to catch and fix it all
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@bjacques: In my particular case, I’m sticking with “you voted to kill me” because of a medical condition that in the absence of ACA insurance may lead to a destitution-or-death choice in the near future.
NotMax
@TBone
Sartorial satirical oneupmanship. Do they still make NUKE A GAY WHALE FOR CHRIST shirts?
(Yes, kiddies, they did exist during the heyday of the 60s and 70 as a reaction to the hyperbole of the right wingers and god botherers.) :)
Gloria DryGarden
@NotMax: i remember that. Eme as a bumper sticker, and call it up often. Interesting juxtaposition of issues people were activist about, absolutely hilarious,
and prevented the alternative: breaking down and sobbing.
btw, so happy watching the mentalist on my new Hulu streaming! Enjoying fiction with good people catching the bad guys, and coworker kindnesses w flirtations, & romance in the undercurrent.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: see also #139, and
#142.
The thread rips by so fast ..sometimes I find I have to backtrack, or fold my attention back . 5 comments come in while I’m writing something..
Martin
@NotMax: Just to make clear how far we’ve come as a country.
Back in 1983, Alfred Regnery was going through a confirmation hearing to be named the head of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and his fitness for the office was questioned because he had a “Have You Slugged Your Kids Today?” bumpersticker on his car. He defended himself by noting he also had a “Nuke the Whales” bumpersticker.
He was a Reagan appointee.
I think a ‘Nuke a trans whale for Christ’ sticker would sell like gangbusters with young people today.
Gloria DryGarden
@Martin: nuke a gay whale for Christa.
TBone
@WereBear: yep! Kitty has asthma and lung damage (which we knew, but it showed up on his imaging). I’m pretty sure we both have long Covid.
I will try that supplement after clearing with vet (kitty goes back soon for follow up appointment). He’s getting better medical care than I am currently. He’s on a round of oral steroid (liquid).
Good news: he just ate almost a whole can of Gravy Lovers and a couple of mouthfuls of his dry food!
I’m still trying to find time to read up on Sally Norton’s stuff you shared – the plumber finally fixed our toilet BUT it won’t stop running every ten minutes so I must call him to come back because our water bill is already ridiculously high.
WereBear
@Martin: My theory about the people who stayed home was how I’ve heard stories from the small towns I live among.
Everyone knows everyone, including how they vote. Since Trumpers have no shame and everyone knows what they think, they will show.
But quiet blue voters in such place didn’t trust the privacy when small town MAGAs were in charge. Quite sensibly.
Not the only reason, because blue areas were affected. What I hear from them is that they HATED the Pandemic and HATED the high prices that drove them out to vote for change.
Basic blue voters, but they don’t like thinking about the Pandemic anymore and decided to let the rest of us be the adults in the room.
They are very sad and upset, too. They FAFO’d, too.
I’m more likely to think they might learn something from it. Far more than I am seeing the MAGA group. Who will never.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: my cat git organic ground chicken. He was not willing to eat it much. But he was dying, for real. The last few weeks on a hot pad, with subcutaneous water. The doc assured me there was no pain, just kidney failure, 17 year old cat. Looked a lot like Seamus, in the B pet calendar. Long haired black and white guy, bossy as fuck, but sweet and beloved.
Chetan Murthy
There’s a difference, and that difference is between foreign and domestic policy. Yes, there are those who see no difference at all. Those people think that Americans are no different from anybody else, and our votes should reflect that fact. What you’ ve done, is to reduce everything to a mere political question. But not everything is such: some things are existential, and among those include my rights as an American, those of my family, those of other Americans.
These are not mere political questions. And yes, foreign policy is indeed just a political question.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: sometimes the stupid toilet flap doesn’t seat. Or the flusher mechanism gets stuck. Ask plumber to show you what to do, in case it’s simple.
glad kitty ate. It’s a good sign. If you like, there’s a note up above, and a second poem.
TBone
@NotMax: thank you for that lol!
After J6, the mother in question has not said or done anything political near me – she does have a sense of shame and knows right from wrong in that particular case. She knows how angry both me and hubby still are about treason. She knows she must tread carefully now, and the rest of the family has also toned it the fuck down.
WereBear
@Gloria DryGarden: Did it give you the happy uplift? Because if it did, you are dealing with cortisol resistance. Like insulin resistance, but with cortsol. And like a favorite doctor online puts it: “the next stage is death.”
I think it’s why stress is linked with autoimmune. Cortisol shuts down the immune system. In modern life, unless I’m dodging a MAGA pickup truck wandering right into my lane and forcing me off the road (this happened a few weeks ago) I don’t need that cortisol.
But MAGA standing on the sidewalk is now perceived as a threat. And the constant stress messes with our immune system.
Using this theory, and being vigilant about every single food I eat to avoid the nerve toxin oxalate, I have low low inflammation on blood tests. I’m still wrestling with recovery, because this turned out to be a lifelong problem I’ve had. Growing up as a white woman in a red state.
Not as bad as any non-white people, of course. But the basic “non-person” feeling one gets from being viewed by bigoted eyes?
I do understand that feeling, as much as I can.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: thank you! Both hubby and I will play around with that inside the tank that has all new innards, gasket, and all new bolts today. Hubby had installed the new innards before plumber had to come do the new gaskets, bolts, washers, etc. – all the old bolts/washers had disintegrated and the toilet is only six years old.
I’ll shop vac all the water out again if we can’t figure out why the flapper doesn’t work …
Gloria DryGarden
@Chetan Murthy: I believe like parts of foreign policy and international relations are existential. They do have influence.
if ruzzia gets to invade more of Europe, even retake some of former ussr territories, the changes will likely be felt.
i have to go take a nap so I can work. And I need to fold my next origami peace crane.
Chetan Murthy
Bullshit, Martin. Bullshit. You refuse to admit that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE TRUMP VOTERS decided that their -whatever- was more important than women’s most basic rights. Every one of them. For starters. Yeah yeah yeah, they did it because they wanted fundamental change yadda yadda yadda. Doesn’t change that they were willing to sacrifice women on the altar of their Orange Anus God, to get it.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: GOOD.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: thank you for the poetry pointers!
TBone
@WereBear: cortisol was my nemesis during menopause. Grrrrrr…
TBone
@Chetan Murthy: blam! Shazam!
WereBear
@NotMax: The way I see it, we already won the culture war. That’s what the Confederacy is so butthurt about.
Their own children must be shackled with lack of education and exposure to any culture, and while youth doesn’t know what they want, they do know what they don’t want.
A certain paranoid dictator and a cement bunker comes to mind. If they can’t have it, they will burn it all down. That’s what all the “prepping” is really about. And, guess what?
Trump will make sure you eat those Bakker buckets. Every last one. What a guy!
Gloria DryGarden
I hate it when some people attack others on here. Can’t you just say you disagree, because. Without attacking. Please stop.
martin, I find your point of view adds depth and useful insight. I don’t always agree, or understand, but often I do.
making each other wrong is repellant. It’s a sign of anger, and that’s a valid feeling. Verbally attacking isn’t the only choice you have.
If I have to I’ll write sharper poems about it. Bless your hearts.
MagdaInBlack
@Martin: I’m so very late to the party, but: Martin, sometimes people just need to blow off the steam. Let us vent a wee bit?
WereBear
@TBone: Oh, yeah, body trying to make up for missing estrogen. I turned to pregnenlone and sufficient animal fat: that is what makes hormones.
And I still need some, bio-identical, to make my body work right. Doctor approved, as is my L-theanine regimen.
The Thin Black Duke
Things will change when non-rich white people find out that their “complexion isn’t their protection” anymore. Marginalized communities understand how to survive in a society designed to kill them. Some white people’s ignorance is going to have fatal consequences. So sad.
Gloria DryGarden
@TBone: the tank is clean water, just put your hands in there. When I had to struggle with it, the ace hardware folks helped me figure out which one. Oh the frustration….but it nearly always works ok now. So many other frustrating home issues.
TBone
@Gloria DryGarden: yes, that’s how I Found Out the washers and bolts had disintegrated! After we “fixed it” ourselves before calling in the delightful plumber who I’d met in a store parking lot years ago and who charged me a very low fee. Thank gawd. I’d forgotten about him for our other plumbing needs last year and was ripped off (screwed without even a kiss).
TBone
@WereBear: thank you!
Gloria DryGarden
@MagdaInBlack: venting , yes. Attacking and fucking with people, please no. As a witness, I don’t like it. I’m not the only one. It’s just pissing me off to read the tone, when it’s attacking.
I don’t mind disagreeing. But it doesn’t need to go spinning on repeat, attack and defend. But may that’s fun for some people. I’ll just scroll by. Or have pie.
MagdaInBlack
@Gloria DryGarden: I’m not talking about the attacking. I’m referring to the simple venting of the STFU one liners.
And yes, the attacking and the joy-stomping is why I have backed way off this blog. Allowed myself to get sucked into it, and now I’ve checked myself.
Good Morning ! btw =-)
Jay
@TBone:
If the tank/toilet is constantly recharging, it’s most likely that the float is set too high.
The tank fills, overfills over the overflow stack, and “flushes”.
Just set the float lower. On the old style toilets, bend the float lower so it shuts off the water flow about and inch below the over flow stack. On the new toilets, it’s a plastic “stop” screw on the tower stack.
MagdaInBlack
@Jay: And Good Morning to you as well. Hows things?
Gloria DryGarden
@WereBear: no happy uplift. Just trying to get a spatula to peel myself off the bed, motivate me for any of the heinous overwhelming difficulties. Theanine
seems to help. Just tiny lifts off the ocean floor. Coffee , which is sort of a cortisol booster only makes a little mind clarity, a little boost so I don’t crash in the afternoon. I suspect adrenal exhaustion. Early childhood terror situation, totally blocked until I was 30.
never heard of cortisol resistance. Lots to learn.
Gloria DryGarden
@MagdaInBlack: mornin’
if you’re one of the folks who likes my poem thingies, I have 2 in this thread. Maybe 127 and 139.
MagdaInBlack
@Gloria DryGarden: I saw them and I thank you for them =-)
Gloria DryGarden
@WereBear: i think I need more information. Would it be useful to move this conversation to email? Request mine, if you’d like.
m.j.
@Martin:
Yes, I get that.
I suppose the point was to verbally hurt someone who thinks in dichotomies.
Gloria DryGarden
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: you voted to kill me
is a great line for a song. There are folks writing these kinds of songs.
we might need a nice, venting, pissy marching song with a cheerful melody.
Gloria DryGarden
@MagdaInBlack: cool
TBone
@Jay: THANK YOU!!!
I will now not need to call plumber back for such a simple fix!
I just reminded hubby to Read. The. Goldang. Instructions! from the box which contained all the new innards he installed (I saved that box!)
It’s a longstanding issue between us – he NEVER wants to wait to tackle anything until I’ve had a chance to read the instructions first. It bites him on the ass all the time!
Thank you for putting the service into “full service blog” again and again!
WereBear
@The Thin Black Duke: Yes, they have been coddled. It’s why mediocre white men get stuck in junior high because it worked…
and their lack of any kind of radar, forever afterwards.
It is an incurable condition. We really don’t have treatments. It is sad, but I’m not mentally donating to Search for a Cure as the pundits and consultants advise.
They are part of the problem. Corporate boosted them. I could not get through anything David Brooks has written without feeling pain in my brain. And he’s our corporate Public Intellectual.
Broadcast stations used to be licensed. Why do we let something labeled “News” lie when we have labeling laws and sponsorship laws?
They should have sicced the FDA on them, not just the FCC. Public health is still important, you fools! It also means Public Mental Health.
Ramona
@Gloria DryGarden: to add on to election broken heartedness is that Ace Hardware donated big to Trump.
WereBear
@Gloria DryGarden: Yes, a similar journey. It’s not adrenal fatigue. Mine are still going at it like I got them from a Doberman Pinscher.
But the doctors didn’t understand cortisol resistance back then, and a lot still do not. Didn’t help that my my cortisol tests were messed up. (Kept hearing “high side of normal” and dismissed.)
Figured out the right test on my own, but the specialist ordered it wrong and had it done wrong. Even so, he gave me my results and threw me out of his office with another offer for the Prozac, Lipitor, Proton Pump Inhibitors which would suppress symptoms and not touch the underlying problem.
There are others, like me, 200-600 L-theanine daily. Also for anxiety.
YY_Sima Qian
@Gloria DryGarden: Lovely poems, thank you!
Albatrossity
Until the Civil War, black people’s rights changed when they crossed state lines too. How is that different from abortion rights today, and why is it OK with you to have arbitrary geopolitical boundaries determine your rights?
WereBear
@Ramona: Also GEICO. It’s not the company we’ve been with for 20 years.
MAGA might as well have “I will rip you off” stamped on the merchandise.
Baud
@WereBear:
I didn’t know about GEICO. I have them too. Have to rethink.
WereBear
@Baud: Opensecrets.org
AM in NC
@eemom: Come on. PLEASE let’s not attack each other here. We all might have different approaches to these things.
MY emotional approach was to post “you voted for a proudly-bragging serial rapist, so STFU”, but would I say that to a non-MAGA who voted for Trump because they were frustrated and lashing out at he sucky status quo? Not if I actually wanted to get them to vote differently next time.
But PLEASE let’s not piss inside the tent and attack each other.
WaterGirl
@eemom:
I love Baud’s pithy comments, and I also love a lot of Martin’s comments. If the idea he promotes in one out of 10 or 20 comments he posts pisses me off, or I think he’s dead wrong, then I stop reading it and move on to the next one.
They contribute two completely different things to Balloon Juice, both of which are valuable. Love them or hate them, complaining about there length of the comments seems like a cheap shot.
Agree or disagree with the content of what he writes, surely we can all understand that the complex ideas Martin talks about can’t be explained in a just a few words?
WaterGirl
@SFAW:
Thanks for the laugh!
Trivia Man
@Jay: one version i had was a chain – choose a different link to make it shorter or longer
WaterGirl
@TBone: It’s a great idea, but it doesn’t appear to be live or available yet. Looks like maybe they just got the patent.
WaterGirl
@Gloria DryGarden: I am shaking my head.
You wrote:
Isn’t that exactly what we are doing in this post?
As I said, shaking my head.
*No Trump voter has been harmed in the post itself or in the comments.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: I think people get a little miffed when they are effectively being told that anger against “the system” or corporations can be seen as a valid reason for their being underbussed by a large group of Trump voters and non-voters.
different-church-lady
Now look what I started…
YY_Sima Qian
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t think anyone has suggested that the reasons are valid. We are searching for explanations, not excuses. The question remains what is to be done about the 3rd of the country who are Trump voters, & the 3rd of the country who are non-voters, & how can the 3rd of the country who are anti-Fascists be in a stronger position to do something about them.
After all, the solution to genocidal German & Japanese regimes of WW II was not genocide or enslavement or even disenfranchisement of the German & Japanese peoples, it was to reform & rebuild German & Japanese polities anew (however incomplete & self serving for the great powers that the efforts ended up being).
Omnes Omnibus
@YY_Sima Qian: I think the dispute over the word “valid” is what is motivating a lot of the anger in the push back that Martin is getting. I agree that we need to figure out what exactly happened and why. We also have to recognized that inchoate anger at the system caused people it be, at best, indifferent to the rights of other frequently less privileged people. And that those less privileged people and their allies have a right to be incandescently angry about it. It helps to read the room.
different-church-lady
@Martin:
When used strategically, I do.
different-church-lady
I think I need to clear something up: “…SO SHUT THE FUCK UP” should only be deployed in the face of patently disingenuous actors who are being rankly hypocritical. ‘SO…’ is the most important word in the phrase.
My feeling is: SHUT THESE FUCKERS DOWN WHEN THEY START. It’s not an attack, it’s a counter-attack. It’s a way of breaking the asymmetry.
TBone
Am ready to throw toilet out a window. More careful time and attention resulted in nothing but hurt feelings! Tank water level: good (1/2″ under overflow valve). Bowl water level: good.
Until you walk away. Then the water in the tank STILL mysteriously disappears and the flapper is clean and clear and APPEARS to be doing its job. There is no water outside the toilet so nothing is leaking through new washers/bolts, etc.
I give up and will just throw some more cash at the plumber guy. Instead of launching this fucking toilet through a window.
P S. The instructions book for the new innards ends with a big, congratulatory “YOU DID IT!” in bold print 😆
different-church-lady
@TBone: I haven’t read the whole thread, so I don’t know what you’ve already tried. But my toilet does this now and again, and for whatever reason just one plunger treatment clears it up for months. I don’t know why, but some people think it has to do with gas in the vent pipe.
YY_Sima Qian
@Omnes Omnibus: People have every right to be angry, fearful, & frustrated at the election results, & indeed the travel of US politics for the past 3 decades. I’ve felt these emotions myself, though physically far removed as I am. However, at some point, we also have to move beyond that. I also don’t think it is productive to vent our pent up feelings at each other here. There is no one sympathetic to Trump or the reactionary counterrevolutionary cause here.
I am worried by the suggestions that we withdraw into our own “circles” & “take care of our own”. I understand the sentiment. However, that is a recipe for letting the reactionary counter-revolutionaries defeat each of us in detail. There will be no space that is safe, not even outside of the US, given how malevolent & militaristic the reactionaries are & how the USG likes to enforce its laws extraterritorially.
TBone
@different-church-lady: I will try that before the plumber arrives, thank you! Sometimes, the old ways are best!
ErikaF
@TBone: Having had to replace toilet innards on my own a few times, here are some things that got me:
If the bolts for the main washer(that big thing) between the tank and the bowl are too tight, the washer may be deformed just enough to make it leak. If you tighten the plastic bolts too much, they might deform the rubber washers. Loosening them a little bit (talking about 1/8 turn max) helps. If the washer insides are not perfectly round, water will leak. A small ovalish opening will mess you up! I spent 2 days on this before I figured it out. You can get replacement rubber washers if yours is bad. Make sure the water supply tube (the tower thing) is perfectly straight. Make sure the toilet handle doesn’t stick when you flush it. If the chain for the toilet handle and the flapper doesn’t have enough slack, it will keep the flapper open just enough for water to leak. If the rubber pipes for the water supply aren’t entirely solid, they can leak and mess up the flushing.
Hope this helps!
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: there’s venting, there’s spinning on and on, and there’s attacking.
It’s a fine line. Who can determine where that line is? It’s not even about opinion, it’s more about individual tolerance for spinning and relitigating, and the times of argument.
I really appreciated your comments to eemom about Martin and Baud. I get a lot of value from Martin’s well thought out writings.
When people show me an angle or a depth I might not have seen, I appreciate it.
Btw NFLTG about harm to Trump voters
Gloria DryGarden
@WaterGirl: maybe I’m just venting, too.
Maybe, it’s just like how some people don’t like another’s comments or opinions, or disagree, or won’t try on their POV.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t read Martin as saying that was a valid reason. I read it as him saying the he recognizes why they may have done it, not that it’s a valid reason.
But you know what they say about communication.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Hold on – I’m not saying it’s valid, at least not in the way I’m interpreting your statement.
Is our reaction to the UHC shooter not underbussing a class of people due to anger? And I don’t mean ‘healthcare CEOs’, I mean anyone who might be falsely accused. I bet most of us don’t know shit about the CEO. Maybe he was hired last week to reform the company. We don’t bother to check because we’ve decided it doesn’t matter – his title makes him guilty.
I was in NYC when the Central Park 5 got fucked over by people like Trump. They were innocent but the public was angry, and they took that anger out on innocent people. They didn’t want to wait for the institutions to operate, they wanted vengeance and those kids got railroaded by the cops, the DA, an asshole billionaire, and a couple of million random people cheering them on plus however many the national news sucked in (probably half the country). Some of us weren’t the least bit shocked when they were vindicated because it was so obvious what was happening.
The most notable thing about the CEO is that he’s not the usual target. Usually the target of vigilante justice is a black or latino kid, usually an innocent one. That shit happens all the damn time so lets not give too strong an endorsement for shooting people you feel might be deserving of it, because their ain’t no civil rights norms down that road. Nobody here should need to be informed who is going to suffer the worst under that regime. It sure as shit isn’t CEOs. If they aren’t all uparmored by now, I’d be shocked.
My point is that anger causes you to make bad decisions, and particularly shortsighted ones. You are invested in feeding that anxiety or anger or whatever is consuming you that you lose sight that the person getting fucked over might be you, or someone you care about, or a group of people that you don’t actually wish harm to. Note, I’m saying this as a rule for life while violating that rule this second because I can’t find that outrage for the UHC shooter. I know it’s the wrong reaction, it’s socially bad, it’s going to hurt people that I don’t want hurt if this becomes a norm of our society, but I want this stuff to change that maybe I’m willing to trade that out? It feels bad that I can’t get to the correct emotion here.
Yes, it’s a less direct cause and effect, but it’s not an unforeseeable cause and effect. We can see it, we just think the benefit (emotionally, sending a message, whatever) is worth the cost. We don’t get to claim to be the good guys, regardless.
What I’m getting at is that malice is being ascribed that maybe doesn’t exist. If a Palestinian came up to me 3 months from now under a hypothetical Harris presidency after she sold Israel a bomb that killed his family would he be right to ascribe malice to me? Harris told us she wouldn’t change the Biden policy. We can’t say were weren’t warned. We could argue we thought that was a political answer and that she would actually change policy (something I believed) but that could then excuse anyone’s political position (‘Trump said he wouldn’t sign a nationwide abortion ban’, or ‘I didn’t believe he’d actually send the military to round up immigrants’). I could also argue that yeah, I was aware of that but I thought harm would come to this other group of people I care about if I didn’t, and now I’m stuck weighing the lives of various parties. Of course I don’t want harm to Palestinians, but my options were limited, and I made the best choice I could balancing a range of factors – I couldn’t control for each one. And I’m not above saying ‘that guy made me mad, fuck that guy, I’m voting for Harris’ without giving much thought at all to the consequences of that choice. I remember when Peter Navarro ran as a Democrat in my district and I voted some 3rd party person knowing nothing about them with that exact justification – I knew Navarro was a fucking asshole and I wasn’t going to vote for him even if he was a Dem. But my vote for Harris wasn’t a malicious vote against Palestinians. It might have been an ill informed one. Maybe I should have voted for Jill Stein (I should not have).
Note – the story that Google searches for ‘did Biden drop out?’ spiked on Election Day is true. A lot of voters were sufficiently checked out that they didn’t even know THAT. Everyone gets to vote no matter how fucking stupid they are. And between that and a nuanced consideration of Trumps policies is pretty much every voter that voted on an incomplete picture of Trump and his policies – almost nobody followed all of it – and that likely skewed pretty hard toward knowing not all that much. And Trump is so all over the place that you scarcely tell what to believe, which should be disqualifying but depending on how cynical you are about politicians renders it not disqualifying, but normal. I guess you can take the view that voting while uninformed is itself malice. But you can also then assert that not voting is malice (which is something we kind of do to Democrats that didn’t turn out even the ones that were uninformed – it’s a trap, you can’t force people to pay attention).
You’re suggesting that I’m defending anger against the system as being a valid reason to harm say, disadvantaged populations. I’m not saying that. I’m saying anger against the system is valid. Period. I’m saying anger is a bad state to allow the electorate to get into because they make bad decisions when they are angry, just as I’m arguing we are making a bad decision by not condemning the UHC shooter. I’m saying voting for Trump to resolve that anger is a bad decision. But if we accept that making bad decision while angry is axiomatic (this can certainly be debated, I’m merely asserting it here, and I think we can agree that for many people it’s true and I submit all of TikTok as evidence) then the problem isn’t so much with the voters but the failure of the democratic process to produce the change voters have been asking for (for however long) that would prevent that anger from developing. After all, that’s the operative theory why Democracy is good – we get to shape how the system works, and that produces a positive feedback loop. But that process isn’t producing the results needed. It doesn’t seem to matter who you vote for, government seems to steadily get less effective at responding to problems, inequality grows, etc. that anger builds and we make worse decisions, not necessarily out of malice but because humans simply don’t function well in that state.
To be clear, Trump had plenty of voters with malice in mind. I’m not trying to argue against that. I have trouble resolving that it was all of them, because it’s not like the ‘go fuck yourself’ message is nuanced and trying to understand a voters motivation – it’s a pretty cut and dry indictment of every one of them. I’m totally fine with the GFY message to those one that voted out of malice. I think it’s counterproductive for the ones that didn’t.
I’m not trying to validate their decision, I’m trying to explain it so we can respond to it and not lose next time.
Citizen Alan
@Martin: They’re a death cult, Martin.
Citizen Alan
@Martin: One factor you are ignoring is that the fucking billionaires did this! You think brian thompson and united health donated to democratic causes? You think he was sad that trump was reelected? The bastard got paid 10 million a year working for a company that is objectively evil and his job there was to figure out how to kill his company’s clients more efficiently. The rule of law is nearly dead because the billionaires killed it because they want to live in a lawless society that they think they can rule from their gated communities. Hell, yes, I want them to know what fear feels like.
Martin
@Citizen Alan: I’m not ignoring that at all. I’ve been long arguing that should be our focus, not on GOP voters.
But if you think the system of justice is in such dire shape, why didn’t we see a more determined push by Biden/Harris (or Clinton and Obama before them, or almost any other elected Dem for that matter) for more substantive reforms or actions against the billionaires. I mean, in 2008, Obama had a ton of them all lined up with voters ready to flog them publicly and let them go home and make another billion off of our losses.
If we’re sufficiently pissed off that our own candidates failed to do anything meaningful to address this that we’re ready to throw in with the hitmen, why is it so hard for people to accept my argument that Republicans might be as well?
Just saw that they’re offering a $10K reward for information on the shooter. I mean, they’ve already accrued about $75K in salary savings off of him – surely they can do better than that.
WaterGirl
@Martin: $10k is pocket change to them. It’s an insult.
edit: I mean, really. If I lived in TX, I could make that just by ratting out my neighbor for taking the “vacation” in another state.
*not mad at you just pissed about where our world is headed.
Martin
@WaterGirl: I know you’re not mad at me. :)