Harris to Deliver Speech Urging Young People to Stay Civically Engaged – The New York Times www.nytimes.com/2024/12/13/u…
— Charlie Richmond (Gyro Gearloose) (@charlierichmond.bsky.social) December 13, 2024 at 7:38 PM
The torch is being passed to a new generation, which should please some complainers. Per the NYTimes, “Harris to Deliver Speech Urging Young People to Stay Civically Engaged” [gift link]:
Vice President Kamala Harris, who has kept a low profile since she lost the presidential election, will give a speech in Maryland next week urging young people to stay civically engaged, the White House announced on Friday.
The event will take place in Prince George’s County and will be Ms. Harris’s fourth visit to Maryland this year, the announcement said. She is expected to address an audience of high school and college students, recent graduates and apprentices who have been active in their communities, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans.
The official said Ms. Harris was not expected to focus on President-elect Donald J. Trump, and the announcement said her message would center on the “ongoing fight for the future.” The official said she would emphasize that young people’s leadership is more necessary than ever and remind them that young people have been at the forefront of pivotal moments of progress throughout American history…
“Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place,” she said on Nov. 6. “You have power. You have power. And don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before.”
In the weeks since her defeat, Ms. Harris has not made many major appearances. After taking a brief vacation to Hawaii, she has dropped in to surprise Black legislators at a conference, sworn in newly elected senators, signed legislation that instructed Congress to posthumously bestow Representative Shirley Chisholm with a Congressional Gold Medal and given brief remarks at the Tribal Nations Summit…
Throughout her tenure, Ms. Harris has led the administration’s outreach to young Americans, including a nationwide college tour and meeting with young activists in the United States and overseas. On Tuesday, she is expected to share stories of some of the young leaders and entrepreneurs she has met who have worked on issues such as climate, gun violence prevention, reproductive freedom, voting rights and entrepreneurship.
Four years of resistance is certainly better than the Permanent GOP’s proposed four years of abject surrender.The incoming maladministration will certainly give us every reason to remember their lies…
H.E.Wolf
MVP.
WendyBinFL
@H.E.Wolf: In both senses!
Jeffg166
Oh, what might have been.
Suzanne
I love her. I hope she got herself a few new pairs of Tiffany earrings after all this. Just to piss everyone off.
zhena gogolia
It’s OK because they never gave a shit about the prices anyway that’s not why they voted for him
zhena gogolia
My husband said the Christmas music wouldn’t be bothering you if Harris were president. True
Suzanne
I read this on Xhitter, and I get the feeling that this attitude is widely shared by social conservatives, and it’s part of why they loathe liberals so much:
Can’t “live and let live” when you’re seething, I guess.
WereBear
@zhena gogolia: Yes, gotta hand it to him.
My Christmas tolerance was already remarkably low, so I never considered retail.
lowtechcyclist
Good morning, y’all! I saw a shooting star early this morning when I was out for a pre-dawn run. It was visible for less than a second, but it was really bright on the way down. I kept on hoping to see another, but one was all I got. Still, that one was quite a sight.
Raoul Paste
@zhena gogolia: I am so stealing that one.
WereBear
@Suzanne: Yeah, but what kind of marriage, and what is it doing to the children?
I worked in offices where the Virus swept through, and so many singles either married or broke up under the pressure. One Bride magazine in the break room…
I’m just saying reasoned decision making is not a reliable trait in certain demographics who partied through life.
But for this person, the ornament on the tree is what counts?
Professor Bigfoot
Just gonna say– Jews and Black people were not fooled.
But whiteness and white adjacency puts blinders on people.
WereBear
@lowtechcyclist: And did you wish?
Professor Bigfoot
@zhena gogolia: Don’t you wish more people would simply acknowledge this fact?
They voted for him for one reason– white male supremacy is his calling card.
AM in NC
My form of resistance is going to be printing up a million or so stickers with the quote in the Telnaes cartoon, along with a phrase like “vote for liars, you get a bunch of lies” or “Vote for Cons, you get conned” or “Are you paying less for rent/gas/groceries now? Next time, vote better” And slapping them up all over everything. Especially at gas pumps and in grocery stores.
I want low info voters (and Trumpers) to be confronted with their choices, and asked to rethink their choices every single day.
NotMax
Five minute music break at Notre Dame.
Which prompts an idle musing. In France, do they call a certain brass instrument simply a horn?
:)
lowtechcyclist
@WereBear:
Nope, that slipped my mind. I was just thinking, “that was really cool, can I have some more?”
WereBear
@NotMax: I’m sure it’s from the 14th century and forbidden to change it, but musicians probably call it a “horn.”
RevRick
@zhena gogolia: Oh, I would never deny that a huge chunk of Trump’s support comes from racists and misogynists, but haven’t they sorted themselves into the GOP long ago? Like in the 1970s?
It’s the marginal voter. It’s the sudden swing to the right by Hispanic voters.
With them we need to take seriously their complaints about inflation, crime and immigration and not dismiss it as a mere cover for ugly motives, because then we will consign ourselves to permanently losing.
Suzanne
@WereBear: Eh. I partied a fair amount in college, and I am capable of mature, loving relationship. I mean, two days ago was my 15th anniversary.
I am just increasingly convinced that TFG voters are jealous of liberals and our lifestyle, and that’s one of the sources of the hate. I’ve also thought, for a long time, that one of the hardest things for religious conservatives is that they really, really want there to be a vengeful God and they’re deeply, existentially terrified that there isn’t.
NotMax
Bad linky above. Fix.
Five minute music at Notre Dame.
Which prompts an idle musing. In France, do they call a certain brass instrument simply a horn?
:)
Suzanne
@NotMax: SuzMom and I went to a symphony performance of the Messiah last week, and I noticed in the program that they listed the “Horn” players, not “French Horn” players. I was like, WTF?! Did they rename it?
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
It’s not just the supremacy, it’s the desire for vengeance and retribution. That Xhit that Suzanne quoted makes that point.
The targets of their vengeance won’t include straight, white, cis Christianist males, of course, but my WAG is that other than that, the choice of satisfactory targets can be almost random. But there have to be some people they either already dislike or can be talked into disliking who are going to get it good and hard.
different-church-lady
@zhena gogolia: They voted for an abuser. They’re gonna get abuse.
artem1s
@WereBear: I think the point is conservatives (Puritans) just hate seeing people have fun or who are not miserable. I’ve got 3 male cousins who were raised in an ultra conservative Lutheran sect. The oldest is an unmarried, self hating, finger wagging busybody. No woman was ever going to be as ‘good’ or pure as his mother. :P. The middle kid was constantly in ‘trouble’. Mostly I think just for not being like his older sibling – dour and serious and brooding – so was never going to be mommy’s favorite. I honestly think he may be in the closet. I’m not sure he knows. Pretty sure he’s suffering from chronic depression – not that anyone in that family was allowed to be depressed. The third son somehow got out and was able to escape the worst of the family malaise. He’s got a family and is fairly normal as far as I can tell doesn’t share his mother’s hatred of happy people.
It’s a hard thing to be raised in a family that believes joy is a sin.
Geminid
There’s a big meeting in Amman, Jordan today. Foreign Ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, the UAE, Qatar, and Turkey plus a US representing will confer on developments in Syria. They will probably issue a joint statement of broad principles that’s been negotated over the past week; a way of saying, “We’re all on the same page here.” Ed. …at least on these broad principles.”
Suzanne
@RevRick:
I would submit that plenty of people of various colors are also racist and misogynist.
artem1s
@Suzanne: french, tenor, baritone, flugel are collectively referred to as horns.
Chris T.
@artem1s: Yes, us baritone players are very horny.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
Reading the Xhit that you quoted got me to thinking: getting out and living your life is the best way to get to that point where you’re having a life that works for you. You go out, do things, find out what you like and what you don’t, what works for you and what doesn’t, you make relationship mistakes and fall on your face, and you learn from all that.
Yeah, not everyone does, there’ll be people who make the same stupid mistakes over and over again through their lives. But if you don’t figure out who you are and what you really want and need from life, you’re more likely to find yourself in a sucky marriage that either falls apart quickly or only stays together because your Christianist ‘values’ won’t let either of you admit it just isn’t working.
Suzanne
@artem1s:
And also who are successful not following their “script”. It is, in some level, humiliating….. if you are the kind of person who is concerned about social status.
One of the deepest frustrations I see when I lurk in the comment sections of social conservative blogs is that educated, secular-ish liberals are better at being married and having kids and living middle-class lives than conservatives are.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I was a total square in college, a straight-laced nerd, and didn’t do those things– I just didn’t want to regulate everyone else’s life. It was scandalous that I wouldn’t agree that gay people should be strung up. And I knew a lot of super-Christian conservatives who partied hard. Jesus forgave them for everything.
The Audacity of Krope
Kamala Harris is too good for this country.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s because you’re a normal person.
RevRick
@artem1s: The slur that Puritans hated fun is not backed by the evidence. Their 16th century marriage manuals all exhorted men to make sure their wives got their pleasure in sex. And when began a new town, the first three public buildings were the meetinghouse, a school, and a brewery.
The word Puritan has become synonymous with dour prig largely due to Van Wyck Brooks and H. L. Mencken.
gene108
@Professor Bigfoot:
What is white adjacency? I hear the term, but it seems pithy phrase meant to evoke a response rather than define a something. It’s like when Republicans talk about “coastal elites”, never mind Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia. South Carolina, and Alaska are all coastal states.
Starfish (she/her)
Good morning to Pennsylvania Rep Summer Lee and no one else.
“They want you to believe a Harvard graduate with over 20 years of exp., who happens to be a black woman, is not qualified, but a FOX News personality is qualified to run the Dept. of Defense and the WWE executive is qualified to run the department of education.”
Betty Cracker
I’m taking another run at being a normie. It will probably work out about as well as last time. But for the moment, I’m tired of banging my head against walls of spite and ignorance. Not gonna do that just now. I’m fucking tired.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Most of the world simply calls it a horn.
frosty
@Betty Cracker: I hope you can keep posting even as a normie. We still want to see your pictures and Tales of the Swamp. Plus Pete and Badger!
TBone
@Suzanne: hahaha! Me and Joan Jett giggle about this shit every damn day.
🎶
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nO6YL09T8Fw
TBone
Better late then never! Brought a tear to my eye…
RevRick
@Suzanne: Again, that sorting to the GOP occurred long ago.
Hillary Clinton won Hispanics by a 30+% margin. Joe won by 20%. Kamala by the low double digits. Did all these Hispanics suddenly become racists/misogynists, as if they forgot before and now suddenly remembered?
We have a choice. Will we take the complaints of these voters who shifted rightward or stayed home at face value or will we just ascribe to them shitty values? The latter may leave us feeling morally superior, but elections aren’t won by pointing accusing fingers at others.
WereBear
@Suzanne: It’s making these decisions while still in Party Mode I’m talking about :)
But then, I went to a small town high school. A lot of them had their life decisions made for them, and not for the better, which led to the frantic partying.
WereBear
@artem1s: Oh, absolutely. Which is why the joyous campaign of Harris/Walz… it really got to the miserable ones, I think.
Trivia Man
@Professor Bigfoot: one demographic that frankly shocked me was his improvement among gay men. The same gay men who hate Folsom street parades because it equates “gay” with “icky and weird”, they think if they help eliminate “deviants” they will be safe and considered part of the group. Spoiler: they won’t be.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Yeah, that seems to be a weird lesson to draw.
ETA: Happy anniversary.
frosty
Every high school has them, but it’s the opposite for me. Based on my high school reunions, these kids all grew up to be Trumpers. If in college, they were the frat jocks. If not, military then blue collar jobs.
The ones like me who ended up hippies, liberals, or Democrats, did well in school, and weren’t part of the partying crowd. Or if they were, I wasn’t invited!
Ramalama
@Suzanne: Gonna use the term “underage drank” for the duration. Or a duration. TBD.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: I’m very much not– in Virginia in the Reagan era my attitude was abnormal.
But it seemed like the super drunken date rapist frat boys then were all conservatives and the academic nerds were more likely to be liberals or leftists of some sort. It’s just that the gay people were too, and the stoners were all over the place.
There were some super repressed Moral Majority types and the people most likely to give them shit about it for a laugh were, curiously, other conservatives. Because they liked giving people shit about anything.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: Rest and hopefully rejuvenate. For you and those who care about you.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: Oh, how I wish that were so… but history tells me it isn’t.
That when the Italians and Irish had their immigrant waves, they weren’t considered white, either; but got it by way of anti-Blackness.
The “model minority” trope does the same thing for Asians— see the Asian lawsuit ending “DEI” admissions at the Ivies. I would like to believe this is doomed to fail because Uncle George will always remind us of the Japanese-American concentration camps, but I’m no longer sanguine.
That Rafael Eduardo Cruz and Marco Rubio may well be “Hispanic,” but first and foremost they are white.
It is and always has been *whiteness,* since Reconstruction was strangled by fire and terror.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
That wouldn’t surprise me at all.
I don’t know about ‘terrified,’ but I’m sure they’d be seriously pissed off by it if they had to accept that God wasn’t vengeful.
It’s weird, though – I could swear that the Bible they supposedly believe in quotes Jesus as saying they’re supposed to love their enemies. I’ve always loved what J.C. says right after saying that: “If you love only those who love you, what reward can you expect? Surely even the tax-gatherers do as much.” Yeppers.
WereBear
@RevRick: We have the same complaints. If we can fit it on a bumper sticker, it might help.
We have to stop explaining to do outreach in these underserved areas. Something more like Schoolhouse Rock.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: Oh, to be sure. They working on “Nuremberg laws” for trans people right now, and Nazis NEVER stop at one community of “others.”
It’s just that Jews, LGBTQ+, and Black people SAW THIS BEFORE NOVEMBER 5; and white people did not.
Kay
@Geminid:
Or, the US could lift the sanctions on Syria and allow Syrians to determine their own future. Maybe we should sit this one out. Our expert management doesn’t seem to benefit them.
WereBear
@lowtechcyclist: They don’t read the Bible, or understand it. They are told what to repeat and what it means.
Sit down and read the whole Bible, as I did as a teen, and you might stand up again as an agnostic.
TBone
A little levity is always in order.
https://bsky.app/profile/fancysplace.bsky.social/post/3ldazr727lk24
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: So true.
Another reason they hate us is our joy. Our sense of fun.
CERTAINLY NOT our joyful creativity— our communities; Black, Jewish, and LGBTQ+ are disproportionately creative, happy, and fun.
Fundamentally, it’s how we’ve survived.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: I think it more accurate to say that they perceive the advantages of whiteness, and seek to preserve it for themselves and their grandchildren.
Betty Cracker
@frosty: Pete and Badger! So grateful to have my little gargoyles around me.
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot: it is my survival instinct! Living well is the best revenge.
Spanky
@lowtechcyclist:
I heard rumors that there was a New Covenant, but maybe I’m mistaken.
Kay
I liked this election analysis:
But it isn’t going to get anyone elected. Doesn’t make it any less true :)
Matt McIrvin
@RevRick: In 2000, Bush actively courted and got a lot of the Hispanic vote and nearly all of the Muslim vote. This kind of outreach is not new. Bigoted movements can always divide and conquer, convince some marginalized people that someone else is your real enemy.
The party lost a lot of that when they went hard on anyone who seemed foreign after 9/11. But memories are short and a lot of voters only learn the hard way.
Professor Bigfoot
@Betty Cracker: well they put a smile on MY face!
Spanky
@Betty Cracker: If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had some snow on the ground.
Sunlight looks mighty blue out there.
BlueGuitarist
@lowtechcyclist:
Cool.
Someone described seeing a shooting star at an outdoor Dylan concert and speculating Bob had seen it too because his next song was ‘Shooting Star” (1989 song from Oh Mercy).
Jackie
@different-church-lady:
Unfortunately, it won’t be just them.
frosty
@Betty Cracker: Thanks! Looking out at your yard my first thought was “Snow! And they’re on the porch in that cold weather!” … then, duh, Florida.
Hope you’re enjoying temperatures above the 25 we’ve got here on the Mason-Dixon Line. In four weeks we hitch up and head to Arizona for a month. I’m ready!
ETA On closer observation I see cypress trees. Another missed clue.
Spanky
@lowtechcyclist: Ah yes. Forgot to point out that the Geminids are at their peak today. If the meteor seemed to come from high in the west this morning it was probably one of those.
BlueGuitarist
@zhena gogolia:
thanks for this excellent comment
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
PKs are notorious hard core college partyers. At least were in my day.
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m still waiting on voters to learn ANY way – hard, soft, or otherwise.
waspuppet
@zhena gogolia: It won’t be long before someone says that out loud, probably using the “seriously not literally” excuse they use—the one that only fools the people who make six and seven figures covering national politics.
As for Harris: There have been a few pieces lately about how, and whether, we need a Democratic demagogue, a Democratic Trump. Well, in one sense we do: Not in the lies and the violence, but we need someone who’s going to be out there every day of the next four years saying “Well, Donald Trump sure #%^*ed THAT one up, didn’t he? Remember when we had a president who legitimately finished high school? Wasn’t that nice?”
I want Harris to fill that role, but if not her, someone should.
Kay
I saw this and thought of you, Betty Cracker.
Also, there is a feminist birders group in Chicago :)
delphinium
@Betty Cracker: They are both so, so adorable! Wishing you all the best!
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
I’m starting to look at this more. Yeah, I’ve been on the Racist and Misogyny Hot Take Bandwagon but when I see that I’m joining in with some of the Always Wrong Chorus in that blanket explanation, I pause. And I’m always looking at these things thru a racial lens.
On a more serious tone, another thing making me examine this from the perspective you outline is, well, the outreach Hispanic groups have done post election to look at the underlying issues characterizing the Hispanic vote. And golly gee, it’s not what’s being mused upon by so many non-Hispanic sources:
https://unidosus.org/press-releases/hispanic-voters-back-harris-over-trump-by-a-62-37-margin-cite-economic-concerns-as-top-priorities/
According to their poll, Hispanic voters, in toto, voted 62%-37% for Harris. From CNN’s exit polling in 2020, that number for Biden was 65%-32% so we’re back to explaining that 3% drop off.
Which, according the linked article and at least a dozen more I’ve read since the election that have focused solely on the Hispanic vote, they all say the same thing, which is to infer that 3% drop had to do with better messaging (and lying) by the fascists about the good ole proverbial “bread and butter” issues.
NotMax
@Kay
See? See? No global warming.
//
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: The #1 pushback I got on Facebook for endorsing Harris was from Jewish voters calling her a Jew-hater over Palestine. Because she and Biden weren’t pro-Israel *enough*.
Of course, the vast majority of American Jews voted for her. But I also get the impression they were all getting this from some of their friends and relatives. It was a thing.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne:
I no longer work on the assumption that good is the norm.
different-church-lady
@RevRick: I bet they didn’t even really wear those funny hats.
Kay
@NotMax:
I love how he’s surveying the lake from his perch.
I had a barn owl in my cellar once. My oldest was in high school and he came to my bedroom door, late, and said “there’s an owl in the cellar”. I was asleep and first thought I was dreaming. But it was real! Huge wingspan. We caught him in a bedsheet and released him.
different-church-lady
@RevRick: I ascribe it to Trump being very talented at moving the Shitty Window.
BlueGuitarist
@Suzanne:
Excellent point.
but it still seems weird that their beliefs about the importance of always staying on the straight and narrow path don’t prevent them from voting for you know who
UncleEbeneezer
@Suzanne: Happy Anniversary! Yeah, I partied very hard and have all the privileges except wealth and I somehow managed to become a decent person who cares about Women, Black People Transgender People etc., and doesn’t support Fascists.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Kay:
It’s a nice historical read but the conclusion is nothing other than the venerable Davis X. Machina’s observation (which is right up their with Cleek’s Law and the Crazification Factor):
different-church-lady
@Suzanne:
Trump is the most talented modern politician at the art of weaponizing resentment. But that resentment doesn’t need a rational basis: it can be manufactured, because resentment is a raw material, and the “rationale” is a by-product.
That’s the thing we’re wrestling with: we keep looking for reasonable explanations, but at the core it’s just raw emotion, doing end-runs around reason.
Omnes Omnibus
@UncleEbeneezer: Decent person? But you hang around here. I’ve run circles around you logically.
Starfish (she/her)
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: A 3% drop off is not that much.
It could just be that the bought and paid for Supreme Court’s voter suppression efforts are working out as intended. This in addition to all the other more minor voter suppression efforts and the major voter suppression efforts throughout the South that were never addressed. Timber larceny is a disenfranchising crime in Mississippi. 10% of Mississippians have lost their right to vote.
different-church-lady
@WereBear:
I did that with the New Testament, and by golly it’s a page-turner!
UncleEbeneezer
@Matt McIrvin: Definitely. I’m a gentile but I saw a lot of that with my Jewish friends. They all had some relative screaming at them about how Kamala would let Israel be destroyed. It was every bit as insane as the calls to not vote (or vote 3rd Party) because Genocide!!1!, from Progressives.
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s it, now I have no choice but to go full-Nazi…
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, intercourse the penguin.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Starfish (she/her):
I don’t disagree with that as another possibility that *could* explain some of the numbers in certain states, particularly in the New Confederacy.
But it doesn’t explain the general drop off in places like here in CO where we are basically the gold standard for enabling people to vote.
TBone
I have decided to party hard right now (as hard as I can at my age, which merely involves wake and bake, hot cocoa, various snax, and a hot shower). Hell, I might even put mascara on today. Woo hoo!
Omnes Omnibus
@UncleEbeneezer: @different-church-lady: Well played, both of you.
different-church-lady
@Jackie: True, but they’re the ones who aren’t expecting it.
horatius
@AM in NC: The Democratic Party doesn’t. They’re quite comfortable letting billionaires and fascists own the news space until August of a Presidential election year.
Kay
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I remember how disappointed I was when no one cared that the expanded tax credit halved child poverty. In half. Americans yawned and went back to dramatically wailing that they couldn’t afford eggs, while every fun and leisure spending index climbed and climbed. I guess their egg budget was… different than their Carnival Cruise budget.
They don’t really like liberal economics, sadly. They don’t care if the Taco Bell worker makes $2.50 an hour as long as they don’t have to wait longer than 40 seconds for food that is 5 dollars.
Spoiled. Coddled. Whiny. Selfish. There’s my fucking stump speech. I’m going to tell them the truth.
UncleEbeneezer
I really appreciate Dana Houle’s energy:
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I work with Hispanics, they constantly bad mouth blacks in the crudest terms. The answer is “always where”.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: Aye and you’ll have heard about the rush of Black men to Trump for “a check.”
First I question whether these people are actually Black or Jewish; and then I recognize that all of us have our idiots among us.
There just seem to be far fewer Black and Jewish idiots… ;)
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all!
I fired up the laptop, saw there were only 40 comments here, made my coffee and now it’s over 100.
You guys/gals have been busy beavers!
NotMax
Amazon just effing with my mind now.
One Black Friday ordered item, all along marked “Delivery December 18” now shows as “Arriving Thursday” on the Orders page (that’s the 19th). Clicking over to the Track Package option brings up “Arriving Tuesday.”
Ah well, just so long as it shows up intact. ;)
Professor Bigfoot
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: ‘Pon my word and honor, but I have a meme of that quote that I deploy on SM regularly.
William of Ockham and Davis X. Machina would get along famously.
p.a.
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: There was word of this before the election: internet messaging in Spanish pushing any bullshit meme conceivable to weaken Dem support. A Putin-like effort thought to originate in domestic conservative sources. There’s a tumblr page “maps on the web” that posts lots of stuff, political, economic, ethnic, culinary… from multiple (some iffy, some ok) sources on serious and comic topics, and one recently showed a real flip from blue/purple to red in the Texas Rio Grande counties. Of course that wouldn’t affect Texas’ EC- they would be red anyway, but if it worked there…
Soprano2
@RevRick: I agree with this. We can either comfort ourselves by saying the only reason Harris lost was racism and misogyny, or we can be honest and realize there are many different reasons people vote the way they do. People were telling pollsters and focus groups for three years that high prices and immigration were the two issues they were concerned about. I don’t think all of them were lying. I had a co-worker almost yell at me when I said the economy wasn’t that bad.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: Look, if we go down the road of doing spiritual biopsies of motivations, then we will condemn everybody.
Everybody born in America is a white supremacist, a misogynist, a homophobe, because we got all these things from Europe, which came to us from the history of the whole fucking world.
Don’t believe me?
Well, the apostle Paul wrote these words, alluding to a baptismal creed/hymn, to a church in Galatia in about 50 C. E.: “There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male and female.”
He was asserting this claim about Christian faith in the face of the worldwide belief that humanity was and ought to be divided by race, class, and gender.
What do we gain by doing spiritual biopsies? Nothing.
Because human beings are complicated and have multiple motivations for everything.
Would it really hurt us to listen?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Never been in the same room with the Vietnamese and the Chines, you say?
BlueGuitarist
@Kay:
thanks!
The Audacity of Krope
What is adjacency? Being next to and alongside something.
So what does being next to whiteness look like? Nonwhite folk upholding white patriarchal values. Performing white culture. Voting for white supremacist leaders.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I agree with this, too. They’re mad that the “bad” people they think should be punished haven’t been. It’s the way we all feel about TCFG.
NotMax
@RevRick
Just as there’s no One Weird Trick there’s no such thing as One Weird Reason.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Oh, what a gorgeous owl! We have the barred variety around here. Often heard but rarely seen! Cities are great for birding. Central Park amazed me with all the species!
ETA: An old college chum recently retired and moved from FL to NYC. Looking forward to visiting her and birding in Central Park!
Professor Bigfoot
@TBone: Save for coffee in lieu of cocoa (but with Snickers chocolate creamer ;) sounds like my idea of a party, too!
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
Just curious: What kind of shipping/delivery timeframes do you deal with there in the Islands?
And it would be interesting to see a map showing where all your order went before arriving on your doorstep!
zhena gogolia
@The Audacity of Krope: Yes.
Geminid
@Kay: Actually, the US is not even the most powerful nation there, at least regarding Syria. That would be Turkiye. The Turks stuck with the Syrian opposition throughout this war while Western nations turned their backs. Now they have way more influence over the interim government headed by HTS leader Mohammed al-Jolani than the other nations including the US.
There was some interesting video from Damascus Thursday. It showed visiting Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin riding in the passenger seat of a shiny Mercedes sedan. The driver? Mohammed al-Jolani. Then yesterday there were pictures of Kalin praying at the famous Ummayid Mosque.
You might get a kick out of the way the Turks threw shade on Anthony Blinken Thursday night. He’d flown in from Jordan for meetings with President Erdogan and Foreign Minister Hakim Fidan the next day.
There’s a picture Blinken being greeted on the airport tarmac– by a single deputy from the Foreign Ministry Office of Protocol. Oof!
Both Erdogan and Fidan were waiting for him inside the airport terminal. It turned out the Turkish President had other business the the next day but still wanted to greet the honored guest. So a picture was taken of the three men sitting in three chairs at one end of a nice reception room.
Erdogan is in the middle, with a big picture of Kemal Ataturk hanging above him. Hakan Fidan is to his left in another chair turned slightly towards the center. Blinken’s is seated to Erdogan’s right, on a similar chair. But for some reason, there’s a round coffee table right next to Erdogan’s chair so Blinken is crowded into the corner, literally and symbolically marginilized.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
Nominated!
Kay
@Soprano2:
I agree with you, but I’m trying to grapple with something else, which is that voters don’t actually prefer liberal economic policy. We have to look at the fact that we had the most liberal domestic policy of my lifetime, heavily influenced by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and voters rejected it. They prefer ultra cheap credit, low prices and low wages (for the people who serve them) and they worship rich people.
That’s a tough nut to crack!
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I was mostly the same. I heard you could have two of these three – work, good grades, and partying. I had to work and wanted good grades, so…. I’m not that much of a partier anyway, one drink is enough for me. I had a classmate who could do all three, that guy seemed superhuman. I’ve always wondered where he ended up. Google doesn’t help because he has a common name.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Unlike Central Perk. Fungible pseudo-yuppies.
(Friends reference.)
:)
Professor Bigfoot
@NotMax: Oh, man, I’m on tenterhooks right now because Mrs. Bigfoots present— *two* electric bikes because she didn’t want one if I didn’t get one and since her birthday is also Xmas day… anyhoo, supposed to be delivered on the 23 or the 24; so “oh please lord, let Jolly Saint Bezos PLEASE be on time!”
zhena gogolia
@waspuppet: Please check what the general response was every time Hillary Clinton criticized Trump.
Nukular Biskits
@RevRick:
Interesting you should say that because I wonder if the answer sometimes would be “Yes”.
I won’t get into details but I’m in a major funk right now because of a discussion with my youngest son (grown) that turned into a heated argument wherein I issued an ultimatum to change the subject or I’d leave.
Could I have handled it better? Yes. At the same time, some of the things being said are so damned ridiculous and removed from reality they represent an assault on sanity.
So … maybe Watergirl should have a thread on dealing with close friends/relatives when opinions greatly differ.
different-church-lady
DOING IT WRONG: “Incomes are rising faster than prices. Be happy.”
DOING IT RIGHT: “We’ve been fighting for the working class. We’re putting more money in your pocket. Now we’re going to focus on inflation.”
Would that have been so hard?
NotMax
@Nukular Biskits
it’s a coin toss. But a week to ten days is not at all uncommon.
Kay
@Geminid:
Good. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him if I were Syrian. Let’s just allow those incredibly brave people to find their own way. We’re the country that just rejected democracy because we wanted cheap credit to buy more landfill contents. They’re tougher and more resilient than we are.
sab
@Chris T.: Thank you for the laugh.
Gravyboat
@NotMax:
Royale with Keys
different-church-lady
@Kay:
Also nominated.
Nukular Biskits
@NotMax:
Interesting.
That’s not too different than the shipping times for me, a non-Prime member, here on the Gulf Coast.
different-church-lady
@Gravyboat: No more calls, please, the thread has been won.
Soprano2
@WereBear: It was the same for me. I think a lot of them couldn’t see beyond the small town, they didn’t think they had more possibilities than their parents had. Our class valedictorian (my best friend) had a mother who was jealous that my friend was able to go to college, because she had to quit school after 10th grade to work because her family needed the money. She didn’t want her daughter to achieve more than she had! It was hard on my friend.
frosty
@Nukular Biskits: That’s why I have my coffeepot on a timer. I load it the night before and there’s no time wasted until I can read the brilliant, wisecracking, snarky comments. //
Chat Noir
@The Audacity of Krope:
Yeah, that’s my thought too.
NotMax
@frosty
Both of them!
:)
TBone
Dorothy Parker
TBone
@Professor Bigfoot:
no flirting hahahahahaha!
frosty
Great way to put it. Nominated!
frosty
@different-church-lady: You beat me to it! I guess I don’t have to navigate the nomination page now.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: I hear you. I am as White as they come, British ancestry, American since the 17th century. But my nephews and niece are half Asian and my granddaughters are Black. I worry about their safety in a way my own parents never had to about us.
NotMax
@TBone
Holiday sentiment from one of our faves
“Christmas at my house is always at least six or seven times more pleasant than anywhere else. We start drinking early. And while everyone else is seeing only one Santa Claus, we’ll be seeing six or seven.”
– W. C. Fields
;)
TBone
@Gravyboat: lol!
Nukular Biskits
@frosty:
Don’t tell anyone else but my primary motivation usually is to get in before Baud!
TBone
@NotMax: gawds I luv ya, you made me flirt!
Thank you, he’s one of the best. We grew up on the same streets in different eras.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nukular Biskits: Baud usually just sleeps on one of the couches here. He seldom leaves. Unless you count passing out as leaving.
Nukular Biskits
@Omnes Omnibus:
Drunk AND pantsless?
To quote George Takei, “Oh my!”
TBone
@Omnes Omnibus: lol!
Omnes Omnibus
@Nukular Biskits: I never said drunk.
UncleEbeneezer
@RevRick: Many of their complaints are loaded with anti-Black racism masked as principled anti-government sentiments. It’s the same bullshit move that my white, Libertarian relatives with their BlueLivesMatter bumper stickers make when they claim they vote GOP or don’t vote because Dems just don’t listen to them. When you dig below the surface it’s just the same racial resentment and misogyny. It works because it’s the easiest plausible deniability excuse in the world and we largely will assume it is offered in good faith, especially if you couch it in terms of a marginalized community. It’s a way of weaponizing “Listen to __ People.” And I think it accounts for much more of the Latino shifts than many people here want to admit. It’s exactly (part of) what Prof Bigfoot means when they write about White-Adjacency. Dems have been trying to do outreach to Latino/a voters for a decade and have done focus groups to understand their concerns/issues and yet it’s made little/no gains. That leads me to believe that just like White People, a significant swath of Latino/a voters want Republican rule but without the stigma of being associated with the bullshit that enables. So they do the one thing that no one will ever question: blame the Democrats.
Nukular Biskits
Hey, Watergirl (wherever you are), can I nominate Omnes Omnibus’s post for the rotating tag collection?
Nukular Biskits
@Omnes Omnibus:
True. But it would be irresponsible to not speculate.
Betty Cracker
@Professor Bigfoot: Our motorcycle phase started when Bill said, “I think we should get a motorcycle.” I replied, “You okay with riding bitch?” And he said, “I think we should get TWO motorcycles.” ;-)
Hope your e-bikes arrive on time!
Starfish (she/her)
@Geminid: I didn’t really appreciate how bad Blinken was at his job until this year.
Kay
The economy was so booming here, thanks to Joe Biden and the Democrats (the people who “forgot” the working class and the rust belt according to Bernie Sanders and elite media) that even 3% unemployment wasn’t sufficient to meet demand, so everyone was getting tons of overtime. So Donald Trump swoops into that environment and tells them they shouldn’t have to pay tax on this massive windfall overtime and they all shout “yeah! why do we have to PAY for anything?”
In between egg budgeting, of course. That and boat buying.
greenergood
@Betty Cracker: Hi Betty, just read this in the Guardian – have you got these scarey critters near you? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/13/the-burmese-python-problem-how-20ft-predators-are-wreaking-havoc-on-the-everglades
TBone
@Betty Cracker: I like yer style.
peter
@Kay: Thanks, Kay. This was very insightful and well-argued. Not encouraging, but it rings true.
Kay
@Starfish (she/her):
Just the nerve of the US to expect “input” at this juncture. Lift the sanctions or shut up. And. And shut up. And try not to kill any of their kids on our way out.
Kay
@peter:
You’re welcome. I liked it a lot in terms of meat but I thought it could use an editor. Each thread could be an essay and it’s disorganized.
Starfish (she/her)
@UncleEbeneezer: I think that the way that people choose to perceive the Latino vote is a mess.
The “Latino vote” is not one thing. There are Chicano families that have been in the US before we had a border with Mexico. There are the Cuban Americans in Florida.
There are Hispanic folks who are white and those that are not white.
There is colorism within Latino populations with certain groups looking down on other groups.
When someone chooses to put all those different folks in a single bucket, of course they are going to reach outcomes that make no sense.
Ksmiami
@Trivia Man: nope, they’ll be the next targets. Idiots
Geminid
@Kay: The US is still directly involved in Syria, in the form of a ~800 soldier Army mission in Northeastern Syria. This mission dates from the Obama administration, and was part of the efforts to suppress ISIS which at the time had taken large swaths of Syria and Iraq.
A similar mission across the border in Iraq will be withdrawn next year under an agreement reached between the US and the Iraqis. The Syria mission will likely be withdrawn by the Trump administration.
The principal fighting force aligned with the US in Northeast Syria is the Kurdish YPG militia, and that involves us in the question of what the ststus will be of Rojava, the independent enclave the YPG has carved out northeastern Syria. That has yet to be worked out.
John S.
@Matt McIrvin:
@UncleEbeneezer:
Conservative Jews are a small (but vocal) minority here. I’m related to a bunch of them, so it’s easy to forget that their views aren’t representative of the mainstream Jewish voter.
The Thin Black Duke
People need to realize that one aspect of white privilege is it allows white people to be blissfully ignorant of the consequences of their actions. You can ignore the bigots next door, especially if they’re polite.The struggles of marginalized communities are out of sight, out of mind. And when the fascists inevitably goose step into their neighborhoods, it’s too late.
Elizabelle
@Jeffg166:
That is my take on this whole post-election existence.
Starfish (she/her)
@Matt McIrvin: If you see what I posted up thread about Summer Lee, it seems like AIPAC was raising money for her opponent in the Democratic primary because she was not pro-Israel enough for them.
Steve LaBonne
Speaking of resigning, it’s very disturbing that the FAA administrator, who has only been on the job since October 2023, is going to resign on inauguration day. There’s a reason why some top administrators have terms that don’t coincide with presidential terms, and the demise of that arrangement (we’ll see how long Powell holds out) is a significant piece of the slide towards corrupt authoritarianism.
John S.
@different-church-lady:
I think this was the greatest error of the 2024 campaign. Let’s see how we handle the messaging once Trump tanks the economy and fails to make grocery prices come down.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve LaBonne:
I have trouble criticizing anyone who decides that they cannot be a part of the coming Trump administration.
John S.
@Starfish (she/her):
Any Jew who isn’t a Trump supporter or a Likudnik (i.e. more than 75% of us here in America) absolutely despises AIPAC — especially after the shit they pulled this past election cycle.
They literally bought their preferred candidates, which by and large meant turfing out liberal Democrats for much more conservative ones.
Kristine
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Maybe someone with an Econ background can explain how this could occur because it’s been my understanding that things don’t work that way.
UncleEbeneezer
@sab: Good for you. I wish my Dad had the same level of concern for his Chinese-American Grandson…sigh
Harrison Wesley
@Steve LaBonne: Probably will be replaced by a Boeing exec.
UncleEbeneezer
@Starfish (she/her): Agreed. That is also what makes things complicated.
Steve LaBonne
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s the point- he’s not supposed to function as “part of the administration”. Same with the FBI director. And the Fed chair.
Kirk
@Professor Bigfoot:
A lot of us did. Just not enough. Only 40% of men. Only 47% of women. But that’s still enough that the implied absolute of “all white people” is a wedge.
And a source of frustrated shame, but that’s on me not you. I’d just ask that you be a bit more aware.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
matt
@Suzanne: It’s their fucking priest who’s telling them all that shit.
NotMax
@John S.
“Lowest prices in American history.’
True. No. Not by any measure.
But repeat it enough times, amplified through the MAGA bul((sh*t)horn….
Geminid
@Starfish (she/her): The tableau the Turks staged relates mainly to our nations’ longstanding disagreements about US Syria policies, especially our arming the YPG militia. But more recently, they’ve been pretty unhappy with US policy in the Gaza war as well.
R. T. Erdogan’s first year as Prime Minister was 2003, the same year George W. Bush blew Iraq up against Turkiye’s wishes and interests. So his first impressions of US foreign policy were not positive. Erdogan has griped about us ever since, with good reason for the most part.
He and Joe Biden seemed to have reached some sort of understanding in July, 2023 at the Vilnius NATO summit. US-Turkish cooperation increased a lot after that. This was a very good thing cconsidering what has happened since in the Middle East.
But Turkiye is a major regional power and Syria is next door to Turkiye, not the US. So the Turks are not about to follow our guidance in these matters.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kirk: I love it when white people patronize black people’s experience.
Kay
I canvassed with my middle son – the IBEW member- in Toledo. Heart of the (allegedly) “forgotten” rust belt. We hear Trump’s promise of no payroll taxes on overtime over and over again. My son, who is an electrician who was and is also receiving tons of overtime in the Joe Biden Depression economy, told them over and over it wouldn’t matter because they won’t have any overtime under Trump. They didn’t care. They wanted the short term bump from the Trump payroll tax rollback. Now. This second. We barely pulled Marcy Kaptur out and that was with every labor union in the city out in full force.
Manufacturing is cyclical. People in places like Toledo used to understand that boom times like that are fleeting, and they would gleefully bust ass while the sun shone and do things like make extra mortgage payments (in addition to boat buying). Now they don’t even want to pay for Social Security and Medicare.
different-church-lady
@John S.:
He already never said that.
Starfish (she/her)
@Geminid: Destabilizing Iraq was not a gift to anyone in the region.
The Audacity of Krope
Bears repeating.
I’m legitimately weighing where is safer when Trump brings the army to bear against protestors or non-compliant state governments like he has long fought to do. He is not hiring people who will stop him this time.
So is it the city with my friends or the burbs with my family, who half of them like Trump? What population is more under threat? Where will mutual support hold better? I don’t know.
Betty Cracker
@greenergood: So far, the giant snakes are hundreds of miles away.
lowtechcyclist
@WereBear:
Unlikely in my case. I’m a Christian because of an ongoing religious experience.
Besides, though I haven’t read all the Bible, I’ve read all of the New Testament and most of the Old. (I’ve always gotten bogged down in Leviticus, the Psalms and Proverbs, Ezekiel, and a few other places. Don’t ask my why I can’t manage Leviticus but I have no problem reading Deuteronomy. It’s a mystery. ;-)
Anyway, it hasn’t seemed to turn me into a nonbeliever yet, and it’s been 54+ years now.
Kirk
@The Thin Black Duke:
Not my attempt. My apologies if it came across that way.
What I object to is “all”. Absolutes tend to miss opportunities.
edited to add: Let me put it this way. The phrase “all” means putting John Cole, Betty Cracker, and Tim Waitz in that group.
matt
Trump’s talking about getting rid of the USPS. Serves rural voters right. Hope they enjoy paying 5x.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Snakes on an airboat!
Harrison Wesley
@matt: DeJoy has been working on that for a while.
Fair Economist
@RevRick: I suspect the main driver behind the shift in Hispanic votes is that conservatives bought Univision, the biggest Spanish-language media company.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kirk: Fair enough.
The point I wanted to make was LBJ was wrong when he spoke of losing white voters for “a generation”. Ever since the implementation of the civic rights act, the Democratic Party lost the majority of white voters.
That statistical reality hasn’t gone away. That’s an absolute.
The Audacity of Krope
Some white folk are well-seasoned; even if they, themselves, prefer bland food. The best thing about this group is they don’t seek constant validation for their existence against the broader horrors perpetrated by White Authoritarian America.
Michael Bersin
@Suzanne:
An old music joke:
“What’s the difference between a bull and an orchestra?”
“A bull has the horns in the front, and the ***hole in the back.”
matt
@Harrison Wesley: I guess I see a difference between nibbling at the edges and chopping off the head.
Geminid
@Starfish (she/her): That’s why ISIS was able to gain so much power early in the last decade. The US missions Obama put into Iraq and Syria were cleaning up a mess we had made.
This has been a major source of friction with the Turks because the YPG is a rebranded branch of the PKK which has fought a 40 year-long insurgency against the Turkish state.
Fortunately, with good communications and some luck, US and Turkish forces in Northeast Syria have not physically clashed over the past 10 years. It probably helped that our two Armies have a longstanding relationship as NATO partners. Some of the officers in our respective “deconfliction” centers may well have met each other in Germany.
cain
@Suzanne:
I always felt those ‘bad’ people were the ones that turned into social conservatives as soon as they got jobs and got married.
It’s like those big hair bands who constantly sleep with women but end up being quite misogynist.
Kirk
@The Thin Black Duke:
agree with the point, absolutely. Even made the same point a few threads ago. We’ve got this chunk of people that won’t vote for non-white, non-male.
My opinion is that misogyny outweighs racism, but that’s weighting not denying.
lowtechcyclist
@Spanky:
Geminid is actively posting today, I don’t know if he’s at his peak or not – after all, he’s consistently quite good. (You use the plural, are there more of him? ;-)
Yes, it did. Not too far from the setting moon.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@WereBear: I think it’s more in reference to how liberals tend to marry later and have more stable families. They may have partied when they were younger, but grew up.
Hildebrand
@Fair Economist: I am not sure. I think there is a significant strain of religious and social conservatism in a number of the Hispanic communities. Religious conservatism comes from both the Roman Catholics and Evangelical Fundamentalists – which is where the vast majority of Hispanic religious folks attend. Not many mainline or progressive Protestants with significant numbers of Hispanic members.
Social conservatism, especially in regard to gendered roles and expectations, is deeply rooted. It’s just a matter if that flame is fanned or not.
Add to that the disdain many have for newcomers. They may have had the same experiences, but there is definitely a distaste for ‘those’ people. I’ve listened to some older Mexican Americans absolutely reject the folks who have just come across the border as ‘illegals’.
I guess I just don’t think that conservatism in Hispanic communities is all that surprising, nor is it new.
WTFGhost
Lady Justice should have six blackrobes trying to dismantle her, and one perv trying to look up her skirt. (If I were a betting man, I’d put even odds between Thomas and Barret – the latter, I’m sure, just to see if it’s like her old Barbie under the dress.)
Geminid
One good news item out of Syria: most public schools will reopen tomorrow.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Hildebrand:
IGMFY is becoming as pertinent a universal observation as Cleek’s Law, the Crazification Factor, etc.
But then IGMFY goes back to what, the proverbial “Dawn of Mankind”?
Melancholy Jaques
@RevRick:
What are the complaints of the voters who went fascist? That Democrats need to be more corrupt and dishonest?
The question isn’t why were voters unhappy with Harris and Democrats, but why did they choose a corrupt, bigoted, liar who tried to overthrow our democratic government by violence?
BlueGuitarist
@lowtechcyclist:
Thumbs up emoji.
geminid
Melancholy Jaques
@Kay:
Never stopped the USA before. And the incoming group is convinced that they are the smartest & bestest people ever.
trollhattan
Thank goodness that in one month, folks with deep experience
handlingfucking up pandemics will be back in charge. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.Emphasis in case RFK Jr is reading.
The Audacity of Krope
Indeed, maybe we should get our own act together before we start trying to police the world.
I understand the bipartisan but mostly Republican consensus around international policing hinges on the the theory that we can wield power abroad without the pesky Constitution getting in the way like it does at home. And wielding power is what it is all about.
What we need abroad are friends and partners, not vassals and defeated enemies
Kayla Rudbek
@RevRick: I’d add Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter to that list of why everyone thinks that the Puritans were scolding killjoys (because everyone reads it in high school)
RevRick
@Chat Noir: Dailykos in cooperation with the Civiqs poll has a daily tracker of President Biden’s approval rating: it stands at 37% approve, 57% disapprove. No President with those sorts of numbers could ever win re-election. Those are Nixon on the verge of impeachment numbers.
I was hopeful that Kamala Harris would win, based on the outpouring of enthusiasm and $ support she generated. But the GOP hung the albatross of Biden’s disapproval around her neck. And that factor, coupled with the headwinds of inflation, immigration and crime, leads me, in retrospect, to conclude it was nothing short of a miracle that she came within 230,000 votes of winning.
WTFGhost
@cain: Honestly, “constantly sleeping with women” is often a symptom of misogyny, if the women are so frequently changing. Why wouldn’t one of them had that spark that turned into something meaningful?
The root of a lot of misogyny is, a lot of guys want to get laid, and don’t have an easy route for it. A lot of them don’t think masturbation is real – the Proud Boys (I kid you not) have rules about how often, and under what circumstances, a man can jerk off, and “while in videoconference with his wife” is not considered sufficient. Talk about family unfriendly!
But we knew it was “family unfriendly,” because when Loretta Lynn wrote *the* most family friendly, sex unmentioned, song about not having to say “no” to hubby, because now she’s got the pill, well… it’s like, the idea that maybe hubby wants a healthy wife unbroken by too-frequent pregnancies is *insane* compared to a woman being in control of pregnancy.
(Seriously: it’s a fun song to listen to now; next to Louie Louie, the least sensibly song banned on US radio stations.)
The depth of misogyny, like the depth of racism, is hard to imagine, if you’re someone like me who finds both confusing. They’re there, and they’re real, and you find bits of them in surprising locations.
I went through a phase in which I was amazed at how socially skilled women were expected to be, when everyone (including some sex positive people whose responses disappointed me) thought, that a woman who called the cops, on a man harassing her, “should have had a better way of handling it.”
Sight unseen, how could *anyone* know that? You know some pervs will commit assaults that *merit* police involvement. And, I know, most women learn all kinds of tricks to avoid turning a handsy seatmate into a 911 call, my point is just, for all a woman’s mindfulness, defensive awareness, and appropriate use of force, there are harassers who deserve, and possibly “need”, to be arrested.
If aggressive gangs of women would forcibly restrain men, and punch them in the balls, people wouldn’t suggest that men needed a whole bunch of leet skillz to avoid being caught by surprise and ball-punched. Well, we know individual dickheads (in this case, the term is *most* appropriate) will perform evil sexual assaults on women – it’s really *kind* of the same situation.
And yet, hearing “woman harassed, cops called” causes a lot of people to think “that woman needs some tutoring.” That’s not *hateful* misogyny, but it’s tainted with misogyny, if you see the distinction.
RevRick
@Kayla Rudbek: Hawthorne was a notorious Northern Doughface Democrat who wrote the campaign material for Franklin Pierce’s presidential campaign.
In the Antebellum era, the two sides in the fight over slavery were the Southern fire-eaters and the anti slavery New England Puritans.
Kayla Rudbek
@lowtechcyclist:
@Suzanne:
I’m having trouble finding a great blog entry I just read recently about this (maybe it was a link from Roll to Disbelieve) about how and why religious women are so vicious about enforcing patriarchy. It boils down to jealousy and regret (jealous that other women took the opportunity to get educated, regret about settling for a particular person and having kids too young).
AWOL
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The most openly racist humans I have ever met are Latinos/Hispanics and people from India/Trinidadian Indians.
They must assume because I look white that I loathe Black people as much as they do. Or they figure racism is an essential part of being in the ruling class.
Latino/Hispanics are more conscious of the one-drop rule than most cultures.
I’ll avoid religious complications.
WTFGhost
@The Audacity of Krope: What you’re saying is true, the US and the world would be better if we were all trying to be better trading partners, BUT, individual people wouldn’t be able to make the same individual killings they were hoping to. (I’m leaving “killings” deliberately ambiguous.)
Hm. In point of fact, most powerful people in the US seem to have *wanted* royalty, they just wanted to be the *closest* to the throne. I wonder if they accepted “democracy” because it meant a lot of smaller thrones to try to get close to?
The Audacity of Krope
Maybe the problem, hear me out, is that we fixate on polls too much and react to them rather than use them in any sort of informed way.
So how about instead of running away from ANY person, group, policy the second we see a bad trend line — because those numbers wouldn’t be that way if we hadn’t been playing that cowardly game; not just this year or this term in office, but for decades. It took time for those numbers to get that bad. And numbers can change. Polls aren’t immutable and we don’t need to cater to the desires of people who take polls. I’ve been on this for decades and some people can’t get that through their thick effing cranium
trollhattan
Louis DeJoy couldn’t deliver the goods, even if he crippled the USPS to a notable extent, but Donny’s not done.
Keep an eye on that pension fund; it’s the real prize here.
The Audacity of Krope
Not democracy, capitalism. Capital provides you a power base without popular electoral support. You can own enough capital to rival a small government and move big governments.
It is the fact that democracy applies only to the laws but not the nation’s wealth or production that allows the Musks of the world to live as petty kings.
RevRick
@Melancholy Jaques: I was calling a Trump a God-damned fascist on X all the time in my online duels with the MAGAts there. But they were always in his camp.
But as I pointed out elsewhere, Americans have been in a pissy, angry, dissatisfied mood for almost the entirety of this century. Except of Obama’s 2008 victory, handed to him by the financial meltdown, all the Presidential elections in the 2000s have been very narrowly decided in the popular vote.
Glory b
@Professor Bigfoot: Thank you, saved me the trouble of saying so.
Steve LaBonne
@trollhattan: Well, eliminating voting by mail is also high on the fascist wish list.
Geminid
@Melancholy Jaques: It’s fortunate the culmination of Syria’s civil happened before Trump’s team took over. We’ve been behind the curve throughout but we’ve still managed to muddle through without messing up anything too important.
There are still issues regarding the YPG forces we have trained and equipped. The Turkiye wants them disarmed and the top leadership expelled from Rojava. U.S. has some leverage there, but not much. The HTS-led temporary government will probably get what it wants with regards to the status of Rojava and the YPG.
Ed. And they’ll pay attention to Turkiye’s stated interests here.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Someone once told me:
“It’s always better to live and let live, than be pissed off 98% of the time – about things you can’t change. Like the rotation of the earth, the sun coming up – or going down and most of all humanity. It is what it is, the good, the bad, the smart, the dumb, the great – the horrible, it’s humanity, in all it’s glory, all it’s amazingness, and all it’s pure shit walking.”
I have to say, this has been a truism for my entire life.
WTFGhost
@Kirk: When I was younger, I, too, hated “absolutes”. Then someone pointed out “humans eat food” is a failed absolute – some have stomach tubes – but a perfectly good *generalization*. I started to understand the use of different voices and styles in writing, without worrying about absolutes.
So, we can say that the average human has one tit and one testicle, and not go into the weeds about “slightly less than one testicle” and less/fewer… I know “fewer” makes some guys wince, in testicular discussions.
There was a time I would have cringed at “white people don’t understand what Black people go through,” but that’s probably an absolute, or close to it; in any event, it’s a generalization that works perfectly.
I later came to realize that “too many” more of the things I hated as absolutes were fairly fine generalizations, eventually realizing that part of my feelings were a defensive response. But that was my path.
To me, it feels fair to say white people didn’t represent if they didn’t go 50%+1 for Kamala. Which, as a white person, hurts, because I don’t have any whiteness-brakes I can push, no whiteness wheel I can turn, and, if I wasn’t a total gimp, I would have worked my heart out for Harris/Walz.
It’s kind of a shame there can’t be both scolding and compassion, woven into the same message, to energize those who did what they felt they could, and enervate the bad guys.
Another Scott
@The Thin Black Duke: +1
I think most normies, especially majority normies, don’t want to think about politics and the functioning of government very much. They’ll vote for people in their tribe, because that’s what they’ve always done, and figure that their leaders know what they’re doing. Screaming by the other side about dangers and horrible policies? Well, that’s what the other side does, and the press and their preacher isn’t talking about it, so it’s just a bunch of noise, amirite?
There’s an Eastern expression that “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down” – don’t stick out. It might be kinda universal. People mainly want to go along and get along and (in most cases in civil society (as opposed to entertainment)) don’t like people that don’t do that.
That kid with the piercings and the plaid hair listening to that hippity-hoppity music? They make me uncomfortable. What are they talking about?? Why don’t they speak English?? Why don’t they just be normal like everyone else?? Why do I have to think about bathrooms and puberty and diversity?? Why are we talking about women’s problems all the time??! I don’t have a problem with normal people, why am I being lectured that I have to change?? We’ve never had a woman president before, who knows what she’ll make me do??! Why can’t everyone just be normal and let me live a normal life without thinking about this stuff??!!
:-(
It’s a very privileged viewpoint. It’s a conservative viewpoint. It’s the viewpoint of someone who is afraid of change. And the monsters take advantage of it to thwart essential progress (while, totally coincidentally, grabbing more power and national wealth for themselves).
And given the rapid change in the world these days, it’s a dangerous viewpoint. The US is 4.2% of the world population and 26% of the world GDP. The days of us thinking that white male conservative Christian Americans are all that matter in society and the world are very long gone.
What’s the answer? Dunno. My guess – just a guess – that it’s yet more incremental progress in the states is the path forward. The needed Democratic trifecta and an expanded SCOTUS that reduces the powers of the monsters is a ways off, but progress is possible in some/many states. Expanded civil rights. Expanded education opportunities and making education a livable, respected profession again. Investment in efficiency and climate change mitigation. Stuff like that.
Yes, we have to keep pushing to win nationally, but we have to also build “from the bottom up and the middle out”.
It’s a slog. It’s going to continue to be a slog.
[ sigh ]
Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WTFGhost
@trollhattan: Republicans want to privatize mail delivery so grifters can grift. Fed Ex, UPS, they’d love to deliver mail in dense population centers, drawing off the USPS funding, so rural areas – what was the Jim Carrey quote? can “…piss and moan like an impotent jerk, then bend over, and take it up the tailpipe!”
I think that was the quote, and, I do believe it also fits the situation.
Democrats will then provide welfare to rural mail delivery, and Republicans will forever blame Dems for wrecking the postal system. NYT headline: “Republicans staked the USPS, cut off its head, stuff it with garlic and holy wafers, fought off one SCOTUS judge who wanted to *eat* the head with a little olive oil, buried the head and body in separate sides of a crossroads, on holy ground, after piling twenty tons of highly radioactive waste on tops, but the rollout of rural mail *was* pretty rocky, so, both sides killed the USPS.”
RevRick
@The Audacity of Krope: Yes, I am stupid.
I am of the opinion that politicians are not indispensable. Parties have tossed aside incumbents all the time. Nixon in ‘74, LBJ in ‘68, Truman in ‘52, VPs Garner in’40 and Wallace in ‘44, Arthur in ‘84, Hayes in ‘80, Johnson in’68, Buchanan in ‘60, Pierce in ‘56, Fillmore in’52, Tyler in ‘44. Plus a bunch of VPs whose names escape me.
Politicians are the delivery vehicles of party aims and policy, and if they become an obstacle, they deserve to be shown the door.
Now, there’s a world of difference between an individual politician and a targeted group or a defining policy. The latter need to be fiercely defended.
Professor Bigfoot
@UncleEbeneezer: The challenge, as always, is getting white Americans to recognize these things.
There’s a reason why the Democratic Messaging Problem doesn’t apply to Black folks, Jews, or the LGBTQ+.
trollhattan
@Steve LaBonne:
In a tip to Idiocracy, we’ll have Election 2028 Brought to you by FedEx and it will cost everybody [checks FedEx letter with Monday delivery inside California] $41.20 to vote. Extra for receipt requested.
Professor Bigfoot
@Starfish (she/her): Rafael Cruz and Marco Rubio are both “Hispanic,” but they’re white as fuck, ain’t they?
Kirk
@WTFGhost: Ah, I think I see the difference.
To me, generalities is “most”. Absolutes is “all”.
Generalities warn to watch the margins. Absolutes form stereotypes. It is, in my admittedly limited experience, difficult for those who have settled on stereotypes to change them barring extraordinary encounters. Usually instead you get, “but he’s one of the good ones.” (/spit)
Ruckus
@Professor Bigfoot:
It may be his calling card, and it is true and bullshit at the same time.
Maybe it’s my over 3/4 of a century breathing and meeting a few humans with the same attitude, that their shit doesn’t stink but their problem is that it reeks and they think it’s normal. Most of the rest of us didn’t use to be fooled but maybe there are enough like minded, with the same basic concepts of living, and with dramatically more open communications than when I got here, that exposes them to a far wider audience. I don’t call him shitforbrains without reason. I also imagine that any old fart has seen, met people that are similar, because it’s humanity, which takes all kinds, from saints (never actually met one) to pure shit walking (met far, far too many of these), it’s just that he is possibly one of more/most pure……
jowriter
@Kay: Snowy owls are so beautiful. Years ago, my dad who walked the beach daily on the southern Connecticut shore remarked on seeing one–a rare and beautiful sight these days as the climate changes. Unless you live in the far north it is a big moment.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kirk: Oh, I’m well aware… but it doesn’t change the facts on the ground; and I’m damned if I’m going to be as soft and nice to white people about their racism as they are to themselves.
FUCK THAT, and I mean it in the very kindest way possible.
If you don’t like it, you need to deal with your own white relatives and friends; not tone police Black people.
AWOL
@RevRick: Strong disagree. That she was running against a moronic, clownish, lifelong criminal and convicted rapist who attempted an autoglope after killing a million people by neglecting Covid means we don’t need to listen to the morons who sat it out or voted against her. Morons have nothing to offer and they’re not persuadable by logic. Fuck. Them.
Protect yourself and your fellow travellers and just watch our enemies—and they are enemies—moron themselves to death. I’m not saying it as succiently as Kay, but I know exactly where she’s coming from. Fuck. Them.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kirk: NONE OF US EVER says “all.”
EVER.
The fact that you seem to have heard that non-existent “all” says quite a bit about YOU.
“Hit dogs holler.”
The Audacity of Krope
I didn’t call you stupid. And I don’t think you’re stupid. Though that you read my comment and came away from it still talking about one instance with one politician, you obviously missed the entire point.
What happened to Biden was a particularly egregious example, but not the only example this year. Democrats are failing because too few stand up for themselves, their work, or their values.
Right wing media pushes a right wing narrative and polls its own viewers, hearing that narrative repeated back at them. And rather than push back, like leaders, top Democrats with regular cable speaking slots prefer to concede the point and promise to make it better.
The poll fixation is what the abusers trying to handle us want. So, again, not just about Biden. It’s about not standing for gay people for all those decades or police reformers or campus protestors again for decades or I can go on and on. But this is the oldest, most consistent problem among Democrats. Few will lead in the face of bad or even mixed opinion polls.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: Can you engage with exactly why Biden had those numbers?
Rather than simply accepting them as acts of God?
Professor Bigfoot
@WTFGhost: The conservative movement is entirely about straight white Christian male domination.
Every single thing they do and say works to advance that need, and it is working.
Hildebrand
@Melancholy Jaques: Bingo. That is exactly the question.
Folks re-elected someone who has demonstrated his venality, knavishness, cruelty, and bigotry, and they certainly didn’t do that solely out of ‘economic anxiety’. We have a whole chunk of folks in this country who wanted what Trump was selling.
I’m not sure any persuasion, or messaging, will ever reach them.
So, we are left with trying to get those people who stayed home up off the couch – somehow helping them to understand that the perfect is the enemy of the good – and perhaps even dig into the tranche of folks who never vote.
Renie
@Professor Bigfoot:
You can state no one says all but you omit many or most when you say “white Americans”. That infers all.
Ohio Mom
Today got off to a rough start in Ohio Household so we took ourselves to the neighborhood diner to eat a second breakfast and symbolically start the day over.
Skimming through this comment thread while I wait to order my eggs and bacon, I will suggest that any number of you would also benefit from symbolically starting the day over. I hope your neighborhood diners are less backed up than mine is.
Going off to scroll through decorating sites.
lowtechcyclist
@Kayla Rudbek:
I’d add Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter to that list of why everyone thinks that the Puritans were scolding killjoys (because everyone reads it in high school)
Let’s take it all the way back to the Bard. According to Wikipedia,
RevRick
@AWOL: What separates your verdict from those of the philosophers Thales/Socrates, who used to say there were three blessings for which he was grateful to Fortune:”First, that I was born a human being and not one of the brutes (slaves); next, that I was born a man and not a woman; thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.”
Or this same cliche with a Jewish twist, where Rabbi Judah asserted:
There are three blessings one must pray daily:
Blessed art thou, who did not make me a Gentile;
Blessed art thou, who did not make me a woman;
Blessed art thou, who did not make me uneducated.*
The Hebrew word for uneducated is bor, from which we get boor.
WTFGhost
@Betty Cracker: I’m glad your transition was smoother than Hank Hill’s awkward “…I’m not sure it’s even *spelled* the same!” when it came to motorcycle seating.
@Nukular Biskits: “… or I will end this visit, and get dinner at McDs instead!” is *always* an acceptable “ultimatum”. Yes, people see it as rude, but, oftentimes, people who are *being* rude, and *causing you pain* are the ones who claim offense at the rudeness.
You always have the right to engage in passive resistance to protect yourself – i.e., removing yourself from the path of the “fighting”. Um. But if you’ve got issues with the family, this type of retreat does tend to cause them to float to the surface, so people can start bobbing for outrage.
Hildebrand
@Professor Bigfoot: Yep – we need to ask why. Unfortunately, it’s an answer that some seem unwilling to accept.
Approval polls nowadays are always going to be underwater for the incumbent. That’s the partisanship factor, and until that particular fever breaks, we have to take those numbers with a grain of salt – and we can’t use previous trends to say anything of value because the whole picture is different. We have to start thinking in pre- and post-2016 thinking and modeling.
Additionally, the right-wing noise machine has so trained their side that any Democrat immediately gets negative ratings from that side. That’s the new partisanship factor in play.
At the same time, too many Democrats tend to allow the perfect to the be the enemy of the good. ‘Biden didn’t do it my preferred way, thus I am throwing him under the bus.’ Or ,’Yes, yes, it’s a deeply complicated problem, but for some reason Biden couldn’t fix it, therefore he is history’s greatest failure, I cannot support that.’
Of course, let’s not forget legacy media’s thumb on the scale. The best messaging in the world doesn’t mean squat if the press buries or sidelines it because general competence and good governance is perceived as dull and therefore won’t generate views or clicks.
When it comes to the Harris campaign – well, she had all of that and the added crushing headwinds of racism and misogyny.
laura
@Betty Cracker: Spouse and I took a winter trip to NYC a decade ago. On a walk through Central Park we stopped to enjoy an icy pond with a stunning reflection of the trees and buildings surrounding the area. He was gesturing or pointing at something in that enchanting city scape when a Cardinal alighted on his hand and stayed for a couple few seconds. He has never, ever gotten over it. We reminisce about it often, fondly and with great tenderness.
MagdaInBlack
@WTFGhost: Oh! That’s such a good description. “Bobbing for outrage” perfectly describes my once upon a time sister-in law.
I’ll be using that, thank you.
And I agree it is usually the offenders who are most offended when you withdraw or call bs.
The Audacity of Krope
Only if you’re both white and overly self-conscious for…reasons.
Look at it this way. White is a made up category imposed to prop up the early landholders who invented it by giving them common power over an other based on common physical traits.
Over time, this flattened any culture of sufficiently light skinned groups into one common white American culture. This culture is what the supporters of white patriarchy are most desperate to enforce by law and violence if necessary.
No matter the color of your skin, if you are standing against that supremacy or at least consistently operating with respect for others, you are not “white” in that way. You are not the one being referred to.
“Whiteness” is simply the destruction of culture. Blackness is the response. We won’t have a unified America until the disparate American cultures integrate in a healthy and respectful way. And stopping clinging to whiteness, no matter the color of your skin, is an important first step.
Soprano2
@Kay: I heard that at work, too. I’ve said for a long time that people want things but they don’t want to pay for them.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Yonhap news:
More at the link.
Good, good.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Renie
@The Audacity of Krope:
I disagree 100%. If someone looks at me they will say I am white. Your interpretation of ‘whiteness’ is voided when that happens. So if someone says ‘white Americans’ that includes me and I am not like the ‘white’ people who voted for trump. Trying to complicate ‘white’ as you do, does not reflect society’s concept of who is white.
Sister Golden Bear
@lowtechcyclist:
While Christian fundies love invoking Jesus’ name, they clearly only believe in the vengeful God of the Old Testament who conveniently hates everyone they hate.
RevRick
@lowtechcyclist: Old Willie was a notorious Tudor apologist who, of course, wanted to defend the perogatives of Elizabeth from those meddlesome, pestiferous Puritans.
tam1MI
I think a simple “You voted for this” will suffice.
Harrison Wesley
@Hildebrand: The two things I heard as reasons both were flogged by Our Liberal Media, Afghanistan and his age. Both seemed ridiculous to me. I believe (but can’t prove) that he was also expected to make COVID vanish immediately.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
Means, “as a rule, hit dogs holler.”
Sure, it doesn’t say ‘ALL’ hit dogs holler, but it means it. It means: if you’re a hit dog, you holler. Hit dogs are a subset of entities that holler.
You provide an example of a hit dog that doesn’t holler, and the person saying it might, in that conversation, say, “okay, most hit dogs holler.” Then he’ll go back to saying “hit dogs holler” once the conversation is over.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
I’m considering getting an e-bike for local errands. What kind did you get? I want to know what you and Mrs. Bigfoot think of them once y’all have had a chance to ride them a bit.
AWOL
@RevRick: Interesting, I grew up in a Yiddish, not Hebraic, household, so this Hebrew word is new to me. However, I’m unsure of the etymology you cite, and am myself doubtful if Western languages took a liking to Hebrew, as they looked to emulate Hellenic and Latin mythos/philosophy to legitimize themselves:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/boor
Personally, I doubt if what most ancients are attributed to have said is what they actually said, and in some cases, I’m unsure if many historical/religious figures ever even existed. YMMV.
As for the Marching Morons: Fuck. Them.
MagdaInBlack
@Renie: When someone looks at me they see white. They have no idea how I voted or how I feel with regard to “race.” That’s how I get lumped in with the generalization. I take no offense at that, and I feel no need to “not all” it. I get it. It’s on me to BE “not all”, not proclaim my “not all.”
The Audacity of Krope
Why do we need a concept of who is white? Who does that serve?
There may be a difference of experience here. After you’ve been in rooms full of people a couple hundred times where the people in attendance would complain at length about “white people.” Inevitably someone would feel bad or gently chide something someone would say, subtly referring to my pasty white ass. “We don’t mean you.”
And that’s how it goes. If you aren’t upholding white supremacy either deliberately or through obliviousness, you aren’t the target of the criticism. But, just to be safe, maybe find an opportunity to take account if there are any ways you might be supporting white supremacy, just to be safe.
That feeling isn’t coming from nowhere, after all.
AWOL
@Harrison Wesley: Ad nauseam: The media is a propaganda tool owned by billionaire scumbags. They performed their roles brilliantly and won.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: When he first took office, he had a net favorable rating, but as inflation rose, his ratings sank, and then went into steep decline after the Afghanistan pullout.
Now, I will acknowledge that they got an ugly shove from the media with their yammering about gas prices and the aftermath of the pullout, but his approvals never recovered, and have been stuck in the 37-39% range ever since. Inflation, immigration, and crime created traumatic shocks to many communities, and they blamed Biden.
Harrison Wesley
@AWOL: I should have used a sarcasm tag.
lowtechcyclist
@RevRick:
That might may be so, but the point is that this definition of Puritanism goes back that far. And when the Bard said something, a metric ton of people heard or read it over the intervening centuries. One might call him an ‘influencer.’ ;-)
tam1MI
@Betty Cracker: Pete and Badger! So grateful to have my little gargoyles around me.![]()
It’s too bad our blogfather banned emojis, or else this post would be getting all the hearts!
Renie
@MagdaInBlack:
If that’s how you feel that’s fine. I am different from you and since I am horrified by the fact people voted for trump I do not wish to be in that grouping.
The Audacity of Krope
There are three lines of communication in American politics that invariably make me want to slap someone:
Republicans talking about immigrants.
Republicans talking about queer folk.
Democrats talking about polls as though they are immutable laws of nature or recommend any particular action.
MagdaInBlack
@Renie: Never said I wanted to be in that grouping. Said I get why and it’s on me to show I’m not.
Renie
@The Audacity of Krope:
It’s very condensing of you to equate my posting about who society views as white, which is a category I fall into, as equating I have feelings of being a white supremacist. Perhaps it may be best for you to not interpret other’s feelings – which you don’t know – to rationale your own theories.
tam1MI
QUOTED FOR TRUTH!!!
gene108
@The Audacity of Krope:
Patriarchal values have nothing to do whiteness. Almost every civilization that’s ever been has been patriarchal. The Assyrian Empire, the Maurya dynasty, Imperial China, the Mongol Empire, etc. were all patriarchal.
Outside of black people, who have developed their own internal American culture and Native Americans trying to hang on to their’s, other minorities should not assimilate into the dominant culture in the USA. The Chinese, Vietnamese, Indians, Nigerians, etc. should all live in ethnic ghettos, so they avoid taking on aspects of white culture? How does one avoid taking on aspects and “performing white culture”, when white culture is fucking everywhere?
As discussed by RevRick and others on this thread, the reasons why people vote the way they do are probably more nuanced than we want to admit.
Voting for Republicans and rejecting your culture are not the same thing. Plenty of people who are minorities and liberal in the USA fit in better with white culture than where their parents are from and they vote for liberal candidates you’d approve of.
“White adjacent” is used as a pejorative term with no real thought put into it, other than a minority group is not conforming to what white liberals and black people think is acceptable for those groups.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
As a person that rode road motorcycles for nearly six decades and worked within the industry, on the sports side, for a number of those decades I say welcome to the crowd. I stopped a not all that long ago while back, just because of age and living close to where I worked before I retired. But I’ve ridden in many states, in New Zealand, and I enjoyed at least 99% of the over 350,000 miles I rode.
My best advice is PAY ATTENTION, and then, PAY MORE ATTENTION. And when you aren’t doing that, park it.
The Audacity of Krope
I’m not trying to interpret your feelings. I’m interpreting the culture we live in. We all have different experiences and different gaps in experience. Even the most well-meaning, thoughtful person will do the occasional culturally/racially insensitive thing at times because they are not perfect and don’t know everything.
So I didn’t try to interpret your feelings. I asked you to examine them. That fragile impulse, that “not me” impulse to discussions of what “white people” are doing is the core vulnerability exploited by white supremacists.
I’m not saying this to insult or denigrate you, but to help you operate more comfortably in your own skin. If you’re doing your best and, most importantly, open to honest criticism when a failing, whether major or minor, comes up; that disparagement of “white people” doesn’t mean you. Like for real.
tam1MI
Well don’t you worry, I’m sure his replacement will be a vast improvement. [/sarcasm]
RevRick
@The Audacity of Krope: Both my cheeks are fully available for slapping.
Omnes Omnibus
@Renie: As POC have said about white people and women have said about men for years, “If it’s not about you, it’s not about you.” Don’t take it personally. I am a middle-aged, fish belly white, straight guy. I assume that people are going to have their doubts about me until I prove to them that they shouldn’t. People who resemble me have done enough damage that it is safer to assume the worst.
RevRick
@AWOL: And yet Harris won voters who read newspapers by 3-1, and by 54-46 among those who watched TV news ( which includes Fox News and its ilk).
Renie
@The Audacity of Krope:
Your constant posting of rationalizing your own theories may require you to examine your own feelings of the need to keep posting them. Inferring someone may be a white supremacist is an insult and you know that and I take offense at it; and such talk shouldn’t be permitted here. I wouldn’t be reading this blog since Obama was elected, if I was a white supremacist.
Starfish (she/her)
@Renie: There has been a lot of this lately.
The Audacity of Krope
Maybe if you’re talking about dictionary definitions, but I’m talking about the America we both live in where those values have been surgically grafted together.
I prefer a natural push and pull among individuals to formulate culture organically than having a uniform culture we all conform to. A mixing pot, not a homogenizing force.
Assimilation should happen in both directions.
I took the time to define it for you and you still insist on its meaninglessness. I encountered this term listening to black academics on YouTube. You may disagree on its usefulness, but to deny it’s very meaning suggests a somewhat closed mind.
Oh, the white fragility on this thread.
Find me a term that better explains the behavior of Clarence Thomas. I’ll wait.
Renie
@Omnes Omnibus:
I appreciate your comments. I will be honest that it has bothered me the constant posting of ‘white Americans’ by the Professor to be the problem of trump’s election. Now that Audacity has inferred I may be a white supremacist is definitely over the line. As a 67 year old white women growing up when society demeaned a lot of working women and now being a Boomer and announced as the cause of today’s generation’s problems, it is insulting to be told I am now a possible white supremacist. Do we really need each other to throw a label on someone that really don’t know? Again, thank you for your comments, btw I have always enjoyed reading your postingss.
zhena gogolia
@Melancholy Jaques: Bingo.
The Audacity of Krope
If you read what I wrote and came away with the notion that I was calling you a white supremacist, just walk away. Reading clearly isn’t for you.
WTFGhost
@Renie: I actually discussed this in a long comment – short form is, really, “white people” implies a sound generalization, not an “all”. We say “men have two testes,” knowing some men have three, some have one, and some have none, but, as shorthand, we discuss the general, and then the specifics.
You’re still allowed to suspect a generalization is too broad, of course. To be a good ally, you don’t want to make people feel shut up and shouted down, even for an overbroad/overstrong generalization, but, that doesn’t mean you have to think they’re right about everything.
Ruckus
@Kay:
They may or may not worship rich people, but they do like MONEY.
Of course we all like money, because in much of anything more than 2 humans living in a cave and cultivating/hunting for their food, money is what makes the world work. In theory, we work, we get paid – hopefully, realistically enough and we spend it on clothing, housing and food – and possibly a few niceties to make living a little easier and possibly actually fun. We all like money. Some like money more than anything else in the world. But once you have/earn enough to be reasonably comfortable and well fed, raise your kids/send/pay for them to attend college and get/have their own lives, desiring a lot more is just greed. (One of the more common human traits I believe) And to me it seems that most of the rather/very wealthy seem to think it makes them a better person. To me it seems like it makes some of them complete and utter assholes. Likely if we all named a few names, many of the selections would likely be the same individuals. One springs to mind….
Glory b
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Ill say this again. People know who we are and what we stand for. Our policies are popular, that’s why they win when they are on ballots as ballot measures.
They don’t want to vote for the party with the black people in it, especially when those black people have positions of power.
Renie
@The Audacity of Krope:
I believe you need to walk away from your computer since you first imply I’m a white supremacist and now I can’t read. Perhaps make it a trifecta and throw another label on me. I’m done with you.
The Audacity of Krope
I didn’t imply you were a white supremacist. Not in the least. I didn’t hint, infer, suggest, or propose, or anything of that nature.
My consistent message has been that you’re being too sensitive about something that isn’t intended to target you personally. You’re reaction to that is to say I’m calling you a white supremacist.
This is how I know you can’t read.
ETA: Obligatory.
Renie
@WTFGhost:
Statements saying ‘white Americans’ does not indicate many or most. Do you think the Professor would appreciate me constantly writing ‘black Americans’ followed by a statement about what I think about them? Of course not, In today’s world of discord, people need to be very careful of their wording. I don’t know you but your postings have a very therapist-like vibe to them. Now can you honestly say it would not bother you if I posted over and over again for weeks, that ‘therapists’ are horrible charlatans?
I believe you would because a lot of hard work goes into being a good therapist and to be lumped in with ones who are bad, is insulting.
Kay
@tam1MI:
My youngest son, the Lefty, said “you’re the Bill Cosby for white people now!”
I think he liked me better as a liberal wine mom, feeling their pain.
Democrats are supposed to be the mommies. I don’t want to mommy them anymore. I want them to grow up.
Renie
@The Audacity of Krope:
“But, just to be safe, maybe find an opportunity to take account if there are any ways you might be supporting white supremacy, just to be safe.”
tam1MI
They lost this election for us and they are still trying to blame their victim.
And by the way, that Civiqs poll that is supposed to be so determinative? Shows Biden’s approval AMONG DEMOCRATS at 78%. In Michigan (a key electoral state Harris lost) it’s at a healthy 82%. Wisconsin (another key state Harris lost) has the approval even higher at 85%.
So what was the key driver of this horrible approval rating?
Republicans, of course.
Republicans disapprove of Biden at a whopping 97% rate, and that tilted the polls to put Biden in negative territory.
We ditched an effective, hardworking president at the behest of Republicans and then we wonder why we lost.
Steve LaBonne
We white folks need to grow thicker skins and stop insisting that every conversation has to carefully work around our delicate feefees. That’s exactly the wrong way for privileged people to go about being allies.
The Audacity of Krope
@Renie: Which I went on to say we all do in small ways. It not just a you problem. It’s an everyone problem.
I’m asking you to examine why you feel so threatened by generalized comments about white people.
Nobody’s perfect does not equate to everyone is a white supremacist. But this going out of your way to take offense is, itself, starting to get a little offensive.
So I’m walking away from this with you, I’ve said my piece.
bluefoot
@The Thin Black Duke:
This. Not having to be *aware* all the time – and I mean all the time – is the essence of privilege. I was just having this conversation with a friend about when do we get a chance to just live?
Renie
@Steve LaBonne:
Everyone is allowed to be proud of who they are. For others to casually state everyone like you is part of the problem today is ignorant of the fact we are all different people with different views regardless of the “group” we belong to. I live in a lily-white red part of Long Island, I know what those trump voters are like and I go to great lengths to make sure others don’t think I am one of them just because of where I live. To now say ‘grow a thick skin’ because you disagree with how I feel is not productive. All of us have feelings and should feel free to state them without having them be judged by others. Feelings are part of being human.
RevRick
@tam1MI: Biden’s approval of 78% is abysmal. No party candidate can survive without at least a 90+% approval in his/her own party. And if it was that poor among Democrats, think how bad it was among Independents.
And high disapprovals from the opposition parties are the rule, not the exception. The last time favorable approvals of the opposition parties happened was with Bush 1, following the Gulf War and Bush 2 in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Steve LaBonne
@Renie: You have a lot to learn about the history of “whiteness” as an artificial category (continually expanded over the years as needed) designed to other those excluded from it. I take pride in my Irish and Québecois ancestry. Being proud of being “white” is bullshit. Whereas Blackness is a genuine ethnicity- which came about of necessity because the slaveowners stripped Africans of the ethnicities into which they were born. Unlike whiteness it is not something created to enforce dominance. And by the way no, everything doesn’t have to be about your feelings. Learning that is a big part of learning to be a decent human being.
AWOL
@RevRick: I think we’re having two different conversations, Rev Rick. Both of your responses seem like non sequiturs to me. But I admire your positive attitude and desire to continue outreach.
My only reach is to save myself and those I care for from their culture, their smells, their ignorance, their cruelty, their greed, their apathy, their reading habits, their genocides.
tam1MI
You don’t all of that 78% to stay home to throw an election. You just need some of them. In at least 2 key states for the electoral college – Michigan and Wisconsin – Biden’s approval is higher than the overall average. Yet Harris, the fabulous Not-Biden, lost both of them. Us Biden supporters keep being told to ignore the fact that Harris managed to lose states where Biden support was strongest – states where she put in a mammoth effort to win. Occam’s Razor suggests the explanation is that Dem voters at least in those states didn’t want Harris, they wanted Biden. And they expressed that preference in the only way that was left to them – by staying home and not voting.
Renie
@Steve LaBonne:
Learning to respect other’s feelings is a big part of being a decent human being. You don’t have to agree with another’s feelings but you don’t get to judge them either. Judging other people is why we have so many problems in this world.
Steve LaBonne
@Renie: Do you respect Trumpers’ feelings? Whether feelings can be respected depends on what kind of feelings they are- it can’t simply be unconditional. White people making everything about their comfort is a big part of white privilege.
Hildebrand
@tam1MI: I’m guessing a not insignificant number of them just couldn’t pull the lever for a woman, definitely not a black woman.
We have three test cases against the same execrable person – Clinton loses, Biden wins, Harris loses (both the popular vote and the electoral college). I just don’t think it’s all that mysterious why.
Hildebrand
@Renie: Sure I can. If someone’s feelings leads them to hate, act with cruelty, and applaud ignorance, well, yep, I am going to declare that that person is not a good person.
We don’t get anywhere showing respect for things that are not respectable.
Omnes Omnibus
@Renie: You told that you respect what I write and then it seems that you completely ignored what I wrote this on this thread.
tam1MI
Oh, I am certain that misogyny and it’s evil cousin racism played a big part of it as well. No doubt there. Thanks to that, she was already in a hole when she accepted the nomination. I’m just saying that forcing out Biden in such a public, humiliating way turned that hole in a chasm.
RevRick
@tam1MI: If you think Biden could have won the election with that miserable an approval rating among Democrats, nothing I say a convince you otherwise.
I can only point to the massive jump in data about enthusiasm among Democrats when Harris replaced Biden, and the massive increase in small $ donations in her campaign, compared to Biden’s.
I would have voted for Joe, but he was a dead duck. Given all the headwinds Harris faced, she still came darn close to winning, falling a total of 230,000 votes short in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Ruckus
@Nukular Biskits:
My advice, as an old fart (one who was a mental health counselor in a public city clinic for 4 years) sometimes you can’t. And the answer the same question is sometimes you can.
My best advice goes something like this:
Is this person an adult and not a 30 yr old child? If so, it is their life, they have the biggest say in the matter. What do you do if they screw the pooch? They have to deal with the result. If you raised them, showed them a good, or a few good pathways and they took their own way, that’s their path. Sure it feels like you should interfere, but how often does that actually work?
I had a mother that demanded her view of her 3 kids lives. And none of us actually went where and how she wanted. I did for a while but to me it was just a job. It helped me in various ways, l learned a lot about manufacturing, made tools for plastic and metal things. I machined Barbie doll molds when I was 13/14 yrs old. I’ve helped or made molds for a lot of things that many people would recognize. Some of them stick in your head, like the above sample…. But that wasn’t my calling – not according to the concepts in my brain. But in the end it worked out and I’ve enjoyed and still enjoy a decent life. Also learned to swear rather well, before I served in the USN…. Not sure if that’s a positive or a negative. Also learned when not to – likely a tad bit more important.
The Audacity of Krope
What they did to Biden was emblematic of a trend of behavior among Democrats. Biden was only the most public and most egregious example.
I swore Democrats as a Party right then. I voted for Harris. But as an individual.
Repeating because if you think this is about who would have had a better chance, still, after all this time, you are lost. It is decades of that very process of trying to cater to superficial transient whims of the public, I mean polls, that created the situation where no one can win.
The problem wasn’t tossing Joe Biden, it is letting a hostile media led by Republicans guide you by the nose for decades and still being so clueless to the game.
Decades of participating in the media game, exemplified by but not limited to Biden’s defenestration, is what created the situation where no Democrat could have won.
Bougie Donorcrats and their allies among the primary voters have an outsize say over the broader Party and are the ones who never seem to get this. This is why I gave up on Democrats as a Party in July.
Democrats will be chosen to lead when they lead, not follow.
Soprano2
@Another Scott: Dead thread, but I wanted to say that the part in italics is SPOT ON in my experience.
RevRick
@Hildebrand:
@tam1MI:
While it is true that Hillary and Kamala lost their elections, I wouldn’t say they only lost, because they were women. Let’s not forget that Hillary actually won the popular vote and Kamala won the third highest vote total in history.
More importantly, both women were trying to get elected in exceedingly trying circumstances.
Hillary was trying to be elected for a third consecutive Democratic Presidental term. That only happened three times in the 20th century: McKinley, TR, Taft (1900, 04, 08), FDR, Truman (1932, 36, 40, 44, 48), and Reagan, Bush (1980, 84, 88). In addition, the Obama recovery from the Great Recession had been weaker than most. And, of course, the 25 year hate campaign against the Clintons.
Kamala, meanwhile, was tossed the anchors of upsurges in inflation, immigration and crime (all COVID aftereffects), and still Trump’s popular vote margin was one of the smallest in the past 100 years.
Ruckus
@RevRick:
As someone not all that younger than President Biden I am one that personally thinks he should have stepped aside. He is a very good man but we all get old and slow down to some extent. I also believe that Kamala Harris would make a stunning president. She is smart, she is not a pompous arrogant asshole, does not seem to be in any way racist, is experienced at the job – being next in line for the job, is smart, and I consider her to be a rather good democrat. I won’t comment what I think of the republican candidate. I will comment about the premise he sees about what the job requires and how he didn’t met the minimum standards doing this job his last go round. At least I have zero expectations that he will be anything but vindictive, pompous, arrogant and stupid.
tam1MI
I have to wonder if this year’s election was a case of, “It just wasn’t in the cards, and nothing would have helped”. It’s almost a hopeful musing, because that means all the Dems have to do to get back in the saddle is wait.
The Audacity of Krope
The crime and inflation has gone back to their normal trends by 2024. The public may have had a more nuanced view on this if we had a better media.
You also missed the part where she had to put together a campaign in five months that she hadn’t begun to plan for because a handful of power brokers decided to substitute their judgment for the voters and she was the only correctly placed rescue/fall guy.
Talk about your white Democrats taking black women for granted.
tam1MI
Do you feel the same way about the clearly faltering Nancy Pelosi?
Steve LaBonne
@tam1MI: That is how I see it and why I don’t find the cacophony of postmortem analyses useful. This viewpoint is also a guide to action- we have to do everything possible to make sure they CAN be voted out again. That can’t be taken for granted but will have to be fought for and must be a top priority.
Hildebrand
@RevRick: I would say that Clinton ran into the buzzsaw of a few issues: 1. American complacency. We just can’t seem to handle slow and steady progress. 2. The media’s desire to have something new and outrageous to cover – they have never loved competent governance in the internet age, not spicy enough, which means not lucrative enough, and the legacy media especially are just profit machines, they couldn’t give a fig about truth or the news. 3. The ghastly effects of Clinton fatigue (and make no mistake, misogyny played a huge role in people not liking Hillary) 4. While people may have guessed that Trump would be singularly repugnant, we didn’t have proof, at least governing proof.
Which is why Harris is a different story – people knew, they knew who Trump was, they knew what to expect, they knew his depravity, his constant grifting, his deep well of bigotry and resentment. They knew. And they voted for it. They wanted what he offered. And yes, part of what he offers is a return to a time when white men ran everything and could treat women and people of color and LGBTQ+ folks like shit. That some black and brown men thought, ‘hey, cool, I also want to treat women like second class citizens’ does not mean anything other than some men don’t see women as anything close to equal.
Yes, the economy and a covid hangover mattered, but even these rationales can’t be uncoupled from people’s desire to embrace Trumpism – and Trumpism means deliberate cruelty and bigotry.
Professor Bigfoot
@Renie: “It’s not all of you and we damned well know this. It’s just that it’s SO MOTHERFUCKING MANY OF YOU that we’re only rational to assume it of any one of you we run across, *until demonstrated otherwise.*”
THAT is something that you white people simply WILL NOT RECOGNIZE OR DEAL WITH. “Not all white people,” we fucking well know that. But if you insist on defending yourself when a generalized statement such as that is made, it makes me wonder *WHY THE FUCK DO YOU FEEL THE NEED TO DEFEND YOURSELF?
The Audacity of Krope
Never mind that the economic and COVID issues were explicitly due to Trump’s mismanagement. He inherited a good economy, fucked it up, and got it handed back to him the second it was trending right again.
May he fuck it up harder and faster than last time and may the accountability chain be undeniable.
Professor Bigfoot
@Hildebrand: Here’s the thing, though— the Democrats to whom you refer are, almost entirely, *white.*
What y’all refuse to recognize is that whiteness overrides party affiliation.
The Audacity of Krope
Just so we’re clear “you” white people doesn’t mean “I” white people right, RIGHT?!?!? I need validation that I’m not a racist…🥺
Ruckus
@tam1MI:
2 things.
First yes I do.
Her job is not quite as stressful and maybe not as difficult but she is 84 yrs old. And a lot of us are there or near there and in many ways we depend upon the government for things like Social Security, etc. I am not that old, although I’m not all that far behind her, and I retired 3 yrs ago. Now I worked in a machine shop, on my feet 8 hrs a day, so there is likely some difference in the stress and danger level. A representative is supposed to represent all the people they work for and someone her age very much may be able to do that in the right job. And it isn’t like she doesn’t have the experience…
But. Can anyone her age really represent anyone say 18 yrs old? She may have a perfect memory of being 18 yrs old but that is a very long time ago for her. And me. Most citizens that work for a living retire before they are 84, so maybe those a lot older don’t always get represented as well as they should either. There can be 2 sides to this discussion. Maybe more sides.
Second.
But those of us that fit in the old fart category will remember 18 likely a lot different than an 18 yr old of today. Me, I was worried about being killed in a war when I was 18.
I want to reiterate that she may be fine at her age in this job, it’s not like she doesn’t have the experience. But we all get old and slow down to some extent and at some point we have to consider that the next, or the next after the next generation very likely has a lot more time ahead of them than the old farts do. And more energy, more to lose if it all goes wrong, which of course has never happened in humanity…….
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: I kinda doubt we’ll be using them before spring, but I expect to use them for much the same things.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: It reminded me very much of an old Usenet friend of mine–I actually attended his wedding–who eventually joined the AEI and became a somewhat well-known figure in US right-wing douchebag activism. He’d always had this maximalist super-Likud view of Middle East politics. Israel had to crush the Palestinians and annex all this territory or else its Arab neighbors would destroy it with “one brilliant tank thrust”. And that was the most important thing in the world.
Professor Bigfoot
@MagdaInBlack: I learned this lesson years ago when I piped up with “not all men.’ and oh my the sisters and aunties that gathered my ass up!
They helped me understand at a cellular level that “it’s not all men, you idiot, but it’s so goddamn many of us that any woman is only rational to assume asshattery of any one of us she runs across until demonstrated otherwise.”
Viewed like that, *I know they ain’t talking about ME, because I’m not that guy! But I bet I know the son of a bitch.*
So I talk to OTHER MEN.
You need to talk to OTHER WHITE PEOPLE.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: There’s a lot of ’em I just gave up on. There’s only so much you can do…
Professor Bigfoot
@gene108: What adjacency describes those folk who are ostensibly “minorities,” that is, not “white,” but who ascribe to anti-Blackness to curry favor with whiteness and white supremacy.
Neither the Italians or the Irish were considered “white” on their immigrant waves, but they became white by embracing anti-Blackness.
This is why we have the stereotypes of the “beefy Irish beat cop” and the “wily Italian detective.”
Vivek Ramaswamy is plainly not “white,” but he hopes to gain whiteness for his *grandchildren,* just as the Italian and Irish immigrants did.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Audacity of Krope:
I’m not saying this to insult or denigrate you, but to help you operate more comfortably in your own skin. If you’re doing your best and, most importantly, open to honest criticism when a failing, whether major or minor, comes up; that disparagement of “white people” doesn’t mean you. Like for real.
QFT— again, the lesson I learned from having piped up with “not all men.”
This EXACT lesson.
BLOODY WELL SAID, SIR.
Professor Bigfoot
@Renie: White fragility on display. <sigh>
Hildebrand
@Professor Bigfoot: I do recognize that – you are 100% correct.
Renie
@Professor Bigfoot:
Here we go again. I worked in NYC in the 70s and 80s and rode the subways. How do you like me saying “young black guys are all criminals”. And then I say it constantly ‘young black guys’ over the course of a few weeks in a negative way. Why do you refuse to add a simple most to your statements. If I take Audacity’s theories maybe you should example your feelings to why you insist on saying ‘white Americans”. But go ahead add your insults to his insults and then get offended when I call you on it.
Professor Bigfoot
@Renie: Y’know, if you seized on pride of being Irish, or Scottish, or German, or French or Italian… we would all join right in with you.
Those are all ethnicities, incorporating language, cuisine, culture and tradition.
What is “white?” What is is the cuisine of “whiteness?” What are it’s cultures and traditions, other than the ruthless oppression of all those not deemed “white?”
Ask yourself these things, if you have the courage.
Professor Bigfoot
@Renie: I would really love to understand why you feel the need to defend your whiteness.
Omnes Omnibus
@Renie: You are not listening to what people are saying. A lot of people have been very gently trying to point something out to you and you continue to rephrase what we are saying to make it be insulting. I hope you merely having a bad day. Nevertheless, I don’t have any more patience for it. Good day.
WTFGhost
@Renie: Well, there’s detachment – no one is perfect at it. Some therapists could listen to a person complain about therapists as charlatans and fakers for a long time, others _would_ find it becoming too personal, after a time. And context, like, “in therapy” versus “chatting at the coffee shop”.
I’m not a therapist, per se, but I guess what I’m trying to say is, if I’m on a woman’s blog, I’ll let people say stuff about “men” that I would find more troublesome here, and that (if I were a boss) that I would forbid in the workplace, because the context of the discussion matters so much.
For women/men, I have the advantage that I’ve learned that women have to see men as a source of risk – not “this man is bad,” but, “I don’t know this man is good.” And “good, safe, men” have been known to throw a woman on a bed, and jerk off onto her stomach, and expect that it immediately “didn’t happen” if she is upset by it. And worse, but….
So there needs to be space to grouse, without having to watch language too carefully . Detachment helps some, but it’s not always enough.
One thing you’re right about: somewhere, there’s a hazy line. There was an “in your face” campus sign in the 80s, looked like “MEN RAPE” but if you got close, it said “MEN can help stop RAPE”. This was in the 80s – 40 effing years ago! – and I can still remember the bit of sick anger I felt, even after I saw the punchline, which I had to admit I agreed with.
Well – the sick anger was the *point* of the sign, so, it worked as intended, but, it hurt me more than needed. If the sign hadn’t ended with a clear statement that “no, we’re not saying what you were afraid we were saying,” it would have been too much in my opinion. (But what does “too much” mean on a college campus, where people are supposed to take risks?)
In a Women’s Studies class, I heard more, and more painful things, but, there the line was much further forward than the sign, which was public consumption. It hurt, and made me feel dirty a lot.
And I’ll tell you: I might be too quiet, when women grouse, because I’ve learned to detach too much, and I’m not sure where the line for talking is. You don’t want to hurt feelings too much, like “MEN RAPE” with no punchline. You can’t be *too* afraid of hurting feelings, because, the sign dragged me right the heck in. And you have to trust that hurt feelings can be soothed, but that doesn’t mean you drop a nuke on someone’s feelings and tell them “deal, or you’re not an ally.”
Sometimes, I leave a situation. If this thread was upsetting me, I’d leave, even if I think people are being TOO hurtful, and that’s probably not the right action either. I’m neurodivergent, so, if I express pain, I usually do it wrong. But I have learned, before you can complain about a pain, you need to make it visible.
If you can say “this statement makes me feel like you’re blaming all white people,” for example, then a friend or friendly stranger can unload more… but you also don’t want to make every person have to explain that they don’t mean all white people, or all men, etc., because then they’re trying to be too careful, so they’re not grousing freely… which they need to be able to do, in some spaces.
Bah. It’s complicated, and I feel for you, more than you might think. I have some neurological pains that can surge and make bad memories, and that means a human’s not-unkind words can make me feel *hideous*.
And I’m never aware of when or how to say “I need you to stop, if you care about me, I’m in pain, even if you don’t know it.” In the end, I got here by learning to ignore a lot of pain, and I *never* want to suggest *that* as a path of growth!
So I do understand. If I suggested you remove yourself from “a situation”, you do know, I mean “if this particular thread is making you feel bad, maybe stop reading just this one thread, and read some others, or do something else,” right? Sometimes that’s the only way to stop bad feelings.
It’s a shame it’s not a household where a couple-three people could notice you absented yourself, and just come by to remind you that you are part of the family, and if folks let some anger slip, it’s because you’re trusted enough to hear it, but, they know it can feel bad to listen to, hugs if you’re a hugger, etc..
dnfree
@lowtechcyclist: Deuteronomy is a much more readable version of Leviticus and Numbers, if I recall. There’s a reason that readings in church services are from the Deuteronomy re-do.
dnfree
@Renie: You have “infer” and “imply” backward.
If a speaker intends to convey a certain impression subtly rather than explicitly, they are implying it.
If the hearer interprets what the speaker says a certain way, they are inferring it.
if you are the hearer, and you are interpreting something the speaker did not explicitly say, you are inferring it. The speaker will be the judge as to whether they intended to imply what you are inferring.
Citizen Alan
@RevRick: honestly, it’s not that much of a surprise to me and it’s something that i’ve been worried about for many years now. If you are an american of hispanic or latino origin, but you are fairly light skinned, speak impeccable english free of any spanish accent (and ideally, with a bit of a southern twang), and belong to a conservative religious group (either right wing catholic or evangelical), there is really no reason why you would not be accepted with open arms into the republican party. Granted, a few of those people are in for a shock when a few beloved relatives turn out to not be here as legally as they thought (and a very big shock, if it turned out that their parents weren’t here illegally, and their own citizenship is in jeopardy), but I doubt it will be in big enough numbers to bring back most hispanics who have already joined the leopards eating people’s faces party.
Ruckus
@Professor Bigfoot:
I like to say that I’m just a pale shade of possible human skin colors. And I can change it by being in the sun a fair bit. Of course if it’s 1 minute over a fair bit I’ll likely get skin cancer – again.
I like that dogs and cats can be all numbers of colors and people accept that easily. And for so many eons, and in some areas of the world white is
right, the minority. And often not a very big one. I live in a senior’s apt complex and we have everycolorshade of human under the sun here, some barely speak english. I also like that many white people like to tan, because it looks better than a whiter shade of pale. We walk upright and don’t bark or chirp, most have the capacity to learn, at least to a minimal level, but if you are going to learn, it would seem to me that learning goes in all directions and levels, we are for the most part not all that limited to learning that the shade of skin is not all that critical. And yet many do, and for all the wrong reasons.Unless one wants to be a racist ass.
Ramona
@laura: Ooh, how lovely! So jealous! I’d never forget something like that either!
Ramona
@The Audacity of Krope: you put that very well! Whiteness is an artificial construct and one may choose not to identify as White.
Ramona
@Renie: So Renie, you are proud to be White?