If you need a little boost during the day, check out Tesla stock 📉 pic.twitter.com/KBEh6pOZLW
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) March 19, 2025
Okay, it’s a rather limited, very Midwestern sort of road trip, and in defense of a cause we all support, so…
Governor @Tim_Walz has a message for Wisconsin voters, and for Elon Musk.
Early in-person voting is happening NOW. Go to https://t.co/8rmujCJmGK to find your polling place. pic.twitter.com/dcz1Zu9MQf
— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) March 18, 2025
Full house in Eau Claire tonight for @Tim_Walz to discuss rich dipshits buying Supreme Court seats and what we’re going to do about it pic.twitter.com/4ZLDo3O0mh
— Joe Oslund (@joe_oslund) March 19, 2025
Per Wisconsin Public Radio, “Tim Walz says pushing back against President Trump, Elon Musk starts with Wisconsin Supreme Court election”:
… The 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee also criticized Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Prairie du Chien for halting in-person town halls, suggesting he’s “scared” of hearing from constituents angry over federal cuts initiated by Trump and Musk.
Walz entered Eau Claire’s Pablo Center theater to a standing ovation by hundreds of Democrats from the Chippewa Valley region and beyond in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District. His visit served as a bit of a catchall for the state Democratic Party. It was a rally aimed at motivating liberals to help Crawford defeat conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel. And it served as an opportunity for liberals to vent their anger about Trump and Musk as they work to dismantle federal agencies and lay off tens of thousands of federal workers.
The Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s decision to hold its “People v. Musk” event in Eau Claire was meant to send a message to Van Orden, whose district is one of around a dozen the party is focused on flipping in 2026. Eau Claire is the largest city in the 3rd Congressional District, and throughout the evening, Walz and state Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler took turns criticizing Van Orden’s switch to virtual town halls due to what he has described as “George Soros-funded agitators” disrupting GOP events…
“We have to take this like you do cleaning the house or whatever, one chunk at a time,” Walz said. “And America’s first chunk of cleaning is the Wisconsin Supreme Court, April 1.” …
Tim Walz in Wisconsin: “I’m having the most unsatisfying I Told You So tour in the history of politics.” pic.twitter.com/4v88PQz2LX
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) March 18, 2025
Dave Weigel has a longer interview, at Semafor — mostly, in Semafor style, sneakily questioning whether it wouldn’t be more sensible for us Democrats to just shut up, roll over, enable the GOP. Walz, IMO, is good at rebutting / redirecting these tired tropes:
David Weigel: You told [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom that Senate Democrats should have ‘made Trump justify what he’s doing.’ How could they have made that happen?
Tim Walz: I’ve said this on budgets and stuff. I voted, at times when the Republicans needed another vote on the debt ceiling, to get it done. And I voted with George Bush. But I also think that we have to recognize this is so different. I think, as a governor, seeing the disruptions that it’s causing, seeing the system shut down, we can’t get reimbursement — I understood that the argument was, if we did a shutdown, if we fought Trump that way, it would cause pain to people. The pain is already here.
I will try and cooperate with anybody, but I’m not going to compromise on core values, whether it’s human rights or other things. The first time, with Trump, I tried to cultivate a relationship to a certain degree. He even praised me a few times. My idea was to keep my head down, not draw a contrast to Minnesota, and do the best we could. That’s not going to work this time with this guy. It’s not going to work for anybody. It’s certainly not going to work for Minnesota. So I said, I’ll follow the law, but if he issues unlawful orders, we’re not going to do it.
What did Chuck Schumer not do that a different leader could have done?
All of us on this could have had a clearer vision. We knew this [continuing resolution] was coming. I think there could have been, like — what are states doing? We were prepping for a shutdown, right? My team prepares for a shutdown. How do we hold things down? How do we use rainy day funds? What can we do? I think there could have been those conversations amongst us.
And look, I don’t want to question Sen. Schumer. He’s an expert at this. He’s been there a long time. He also, I think, has great compassion for what would happen with the shutdown. What I would say, if there would have been more communication with all of us: That pain is already in the states, and it’s not going to get any better. And I think the issue is, it muddied the water on who’s to blame for this, and it’s clearly Donald Trump…
One of the premises of this Republican campaign for the [Wisconsin] Supreme Court is that the Trump vote can come out for someone who’s not Trump. Looking ahead: Could JD Vance do it? How much of this Trump coalition do you think he can hold on to?
I don’t know. I think there’s something unique about Trump. Look, the people bought what he was selling. He seems to have a way to do this. He’s entertaining, or whatever. I’m not sure that there’s someone else who does that. Does that somebody else hold his 77 million voters? Probably. Does that person then alienate people, or not do enough, when all those other voters come out to beat him? Because you could easily bury them. I keep telling people, I don’t think you should be hoping that we get a charismatic Barack Obama [to] roll into the scene and get us out of this. I think it’s these things, these town halls, that does it.
And a little affirmation for us jackals!
Walz proposes a "shadow government kind of thing" where "every day there's a press conference opposite of them."
"How, in God's name, Wisconsin, did we let Sean Duffy off the hook for planes crashing?"
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) March 19, 2025
NotMax
Fortify with some nice piano music.
Baud
I like his pleasant scornfulness.
suzanne
Walz has an ability to say insightful things without sounding like he’s trying to show off his SAT words or like he’s listened to 500 focus groups. I hope for good things for him.
Baud
The one critical thing I’ll say — and this applies to Democrats across-the-board — is that I dislike how we pitch our meesage in the form of advice giving. Just do the thing you think should be done.
I’m in the small minority of Dems on that point of view, I believe.
sab
@Baud: That is a really good description of what he does.
NeenerNeener
So the MAGAts are still blaming George Soros for any resistance from Democrats. I thought I read somewhere, well over two years ago, that Soros is in poor health and has dementia, so the idea that he’s planning and funding the resistance is just another MAGAt fever dream. They will probably still be blaming him 10 years after his death.
suzanne
@Baud: That’s a really good point.
Dems can come across as very scold-y and advise-y sometimes and that’s not a good look.
Suzanne
This was an interesting piece from Steve Kornacki about the gender gap amongst white voters, and “the gap within the gap”.
Baud
@Suzanne:
The inverse 27% rule.
AM in NC
@Suzanne: And one reason the Incel community is only growing.
This state of affairs should ultimately benefit my two non-MAGA-bro sons.
Waldo
@NeenerNeener: The Soros bogeyman scare tactic might play with the MAGAt base, but most folks couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. Elon, on the other hand, is the scary rich prick everyone knows and most people hate. At this point, he’s doing more harm than good. And that’s good.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Suzanne: Those men without degrees listen to right wing radio all day long. Had restoration of the Fairness Act been made a priority, their views of Trump wouldn’t be so positive. The negative news would be getting through.
sab
@NeenerNeener: Soros’s plans didn’t always work out well anyway. He did a lot of good helping eastern Europe transition back to democracy, but he mentored Victor Orban early on, and our current Treasury Secretary was also a protege, and he let the Muskrats into the IRS computer systems.
Almost Retired
@Suzanne: I would imagine this difference in world view with respect to Trump carries over to divergent world views between educated women and doltish males with respect to everything. Can’t imagine educated women are going to be interested in these unschooled Trump bros other than perhaps a girls weekend “slumming” in singles bars.
Baud
@AM in NC:
They should definitely lean into that.
suzanne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
The old ones do. The under-45 cohort listens to podcasts and watches TikTok videos.
Professor Bigfoot
@Suzanne: I notice from that piece (thank you, BTW!) that white people as a demographic, across the board, hate the Democratic Party.
I think I know why.
CaseyL
@Almost Retired:
Not even that, if contraception and abortion are no longer available to them. A weekend slumming = 20+ years being stuck with one of those wastes of protoplasm, raising their spawn… forget it!
Baud
@Professor Bigfoot:
They hate us cuz they ain’t us.
New Deal democrat
Via Chris Hayes:
bsky.app/profile/allinwithchris.bsky.social/post/3lkoz4ozghk2y
WATCH: Schumer says “our democracy will be at stake” if Trump disobeys the Supreme Court—but “we’re not there yet.”
I think the above summary is a little unfair to Schumer. He agrees at the outset that “there is a full fledged assault on the Constitutional order” ongoing. He waffled on whether already “democracy is at risk,” and dodged on what the role of the Congressional minority might be.
He seems to think that if T—-p disobeys a Supreme Court ruling, even GOPers will rise up, but appears to lay all the responsibility for the public to rise up.
Let me put this as charitably as I can: we should not expect Congressional leadership to be in the vanguard of protecting the Republic.
Baud
Via reddit
suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: I think there is a slight nuance to be made in your argument, which is that white people with degrees and white people without degrees are now different demographics. They don’t live in the same places, they live in different families, they attend different churches. Etc.
sentient ai from the future
So cantor Fitzgerald, the firm previously headed by Howard lutnick, current commerce secretary, this morning bucks the trend and upgrades tsla to “buy” without changing price guidance.
Huh.
Is that flop sweat I smell? It’s a bit musky in here.
sentient ai from the future
@Baud: I always appreciate an opportunity to post this gem
youtube.com/watch?v=pt8h5yBS0L8
Baud
@suzanne:
The country is suffering because the white demo has been in a cold war with itself for at least three decades.
Baud
@sentient ai from the future:
Bailout incoming.
Baud
@sentient ai from the future:
Trump will declare eggs a weapon of mass destruction.
sentient ai from the future
@Baud: I dunno. Bloomberg reported on it as “lutnick’s cantor Fitzgerald” in the headline. The biz press is noticing.
suzanne
@CaseyL: There’s a lot of research about how Gen Z is having much less sex, especially casual sex, than previous generations. So I don’t think too much slumming is going on these days!
Baud
@suzanne:
I blame video games.
Professor Bigfoot
@suzanne: But they all still view the Democratic Party negatively.
I have my own theory as to why, but I’d love to hear others.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Me too.
suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: I have a theory as to why, too. It’s really more like multiple theories. Looking for more data.
RevRick
@Suzanne: Education has become a real dividing line in politics, and not just in the United States. We see it in the U.K., France, Germany and elsewhere. Rightwing populism appeals to the downwardly mobile, because it displaces their anger towards others, who are “to blame.” It’s a weird alliance of the working class and the 1% that makes our heads spin.
sab
@suzanne: As a white person with a degree, my experience is that a lot of them may not be MAGAs but they are still mostly Republicans. My own mother ( born in 1928) didn’t leave the party until the reaction to Obama’s election. Then she finally had to admit that racism was their only consistent value any more. I think Obama was the only Democratic president she ever voted for.
Betty Cracker
@suzanne: I read something the other day suggesting that the education gap we’re seeing here, i.e., less educated people trending right while more educated people tend to skew left, is a global phenomenon. Interesting if true.
@RevRick: Breaking that nonsensical alliance may be the key.
Glory b
@Professor Bigfoot: As discussed previously, Democrats haven’t won a majority of the white vote since the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
LBJ said that Democrats would lose the white vote for a generation. It turned out that he was wildly optimistic.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: If they are not Republican they are mostly on the Bernie bro spectrum bleating about income inequality and loath to acknowledge their privilege.
There are plenty of credentialed RWNJs, they populate RW thinktanks, econ and law department of major universities and Republican administrations at the federal and the state and local levels.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: That’s been a long-standing reality, but there has been no rightward shift amongst white voters since 2016. All the gains Trump made were among conservative minority voters.
pajaro
@New Deal democrat:
I heard from a couple of members of Congress earlier this week. (Both opposed the CR and the Senator was not one of the Schumer 10). I think they both believe that overt disobedience of court orders (standing up before a judge and saying we refuse to comply with your order/s) is a break glass moment, and that, so far the Trumps haven’t gone that far–their obstruction so far is kind of “the dog ate my homework” excuses.
As to demonstrations, the one MOC who has already participated in some said, more or less, that if Trump ignores Congress and defies the court’s there may be no other option than demonstrations, and that we would know when it was our time to have to put on our walking shoes. If that happens, I am sure we will have the company of at least a few members of Congress.
stinger
The one thing I know about George Soros is that he’s not prancing around on stage waving chainsaws in the air and skipping like a dipshit.
RevRick
@Betty Cracker: It’s a marriage of convenience, with working class people voting on values (translation: fear of change), and the wealthy voting on protecting their wealth, and they both see Democratic candidates as engines of change funded by taxes and regulations on the rich.
Professor Bigfoot
MAGA Broadcasters Grow Suspicious of The Jews
The shade of Pastor Niemöller shakes his head in sorrow and disbelief.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
This isn’t aimed at you, but rather all those idiots who use this kind of stat. What I mean is, this “79-point net rating gap” isn’t on a scale of 100, it’s on a scale of 200. (A flip from 100-0 to 0-100 would be a 200-point gap by their way of calculating it.)
The people who do this don’t ever say that, so their ‘gaps’ look twice as big as they really are.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Too many mouthy people in the Democratic party unwilling to sit by the feet of their white progessive betters and receive wisdom.
That and black elected leadership that wields considerable power. Would Hakeem Jeffries have got so much grief from the bro left if he was white? IDK.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: The root of all of it.
”There is no horseshoe. There is only white people who are at best uncomfortable with any power being held in Black hands. Those white people are at all points of the ‘left-right’ spectrum.”
RevRick
@stinger: At 94 that would be quite a feat.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: A point here and a point there; but ONLY WHITE PEOPLE give that son of a bitch over 50% of their votes.
Y’all cannot blame this on anyone other than white people.
suzanne
@sab: I think there’s probably a very significant difference generationally. There’s been a big rise in the number of women going to college, and a big rise in assortative mating by education.
To note: the Millennial age cohort voted for Harris pretty significantly.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: The “change” being that they might have to report to a Black, or brown, or female boss.
White men HATE that.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: The rise of white hate for the Democratic Party closely aligns with the rise of Black power within it.
It’s really pretty simple.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Maybe to you and me but not to the proponents of
#notallwhitepeople
Glory b
@schrodingers_cat: As ever, White grievance dominates the left, even when the faces put forward are people of color…
reclaimthefight.com/2021/02/white-grievance-dominates-woke.html?spref=fb&m=1
artem1s
this stock John Birch Society, antisemitism. It’s part of the whole ‘new world order’ takeover by Jews that has been going round the wingnut ‘osphere since the Rothschilds were blamed for everything. Soros also committed the unpardonable sin of admitting that his taxes were too low.
stinger
@Professor Bigfoot: I have no argument with your overall premise, but a point here and a point there are decisive in our current environment.
Betty Cracker
@RevRick: I think that’s true, but maybe the present moment offers an opportunity to showcase what a scam it all is. I mean, in this country, we have literally the richest man on the planet gleefully slashing institutions that working/middle class people depend on to fund tax cuts for gazillionaires.
We’ll see, I guess. The demonstrations in Eastern Europe are encouraging. I need to read more about what’s happening there.
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: White Culture indoctrinates us to have a strong You’re-Not-The-Boss-Of-Me attitude that takes a long time and a lot of work to unlearn. It’s a direct (and often never even spoken) lesson we learn from White Supremacy. The Democratic Party is the hard-working, divorced Mom making us all do our homework, do our chores and be respectful to others, as she somehow miraculously feeds us, gives us a roof over our head and never-ending love. She knows how the world works and is honest about the ugly story of how it got the way it is. So we hate her for it and throw tantrums and call her bossy, a scold and constantly complain about how she communicates and everything else she does. Meanwhile Dad is a deadbeat, drunk and abusive asshole but he lies to us about the world and tells us we can have cake for every meal if we want because f*** that b*tch. So we make excuses for him and ignore all his toxicity (or even worse, celebrate them!) and go right back to bashing Mom.
This is White (and a lot of Non-White too) voters, in a nutshell. And one of the most crippling problems in America. The way people indignantly reacted to Dr. Fauci, the world’s leading expert in his field, because he dared to tell them something they didn’t want to hear, and suggested making small sacrifices/changes to try and save a million lives, really illustrated our problem with expertise, authority figures and listening to anyone. To paraphrase Liam Neeson, in a brilliant Atlanta episode “I’m White, I don’t have to learn a damn thing if I don’t want to.” Dems have to teach us stuff, because that’s part of the work. And they will always be punished/resented for us. Even when they dumb-down the language and make it as general as possible (as Harris, Biden, Hillary and Obama all did) people will still complain that they are being lectured. Look back at their speeches and they were filled with saccharine phrases like “we want an economy that works for all Americans.” Nothing scoldy at all. But Republicans, Libertarians, Independents (mostly White People) all cried bloody murder and act like those Dems were “lecturing/scolding” us all the time. Meanwhile very online Progressives threw their own fit because all those politicians didn’t use their preferred social justice slogan, phrase or terminology. Or they got mad because Dems words were TOO general and didn’t single out one specific group as the victim or as the source of the problem (something that no politician in their right mind would ever do).
Dems are in an impossible position. The only question is which criticism they will get: 1.) Too brainy, condescending, scolding or 2.) Too mushy-mouthed, not specific enough, won’t “speak the truth.”
Being the good Mom, is a thankless job in America…
schrodingers_cat
@Glory b: Spandan C, is totally on the money there
His old Twitter avatar (back when it was still Twitter not DipshitterX) of a red rose made of MAGA hats was so awesome and accurate.
Glory b
@Betty Cracker: i don’t think I’ve recommended it recently, and I know that others here have read it,but the US has a BUG cultural/demographic difference.
Read “Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland” by Jonathan Metzl
Much of working class America is primed to make significant sacrifices to maintain a racial status quo that Eastern Europe doesn’t have to be concerned about.
stinger
@UncleEbeneezer:
Good analysis.
sentient ai from the future
@UncleEbeneezer: and this is going to be the hottest of takes, but
that’s kind of why we need a rabble-rouser with no hope of actually winning in the primary, to provide the contrast with the more straitlaced element of our coalition.
How to operationalize that without sparking internecine warfare is gonna take some doing though. And the fan club of said rabble-rouser is gonna be problematic. But it still needs doing, somehow, to make that appeal to normies palpable.
Joe Falco
@suzanne: Casual sex? In this economy?
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Betty Cracker
@Glory b: I’m not an expert on what’s happening in Eastern Europe, but right-wing demagoguery worldwide targets immigrants and weaves in racial and ethnic resentments. Different countries, different histories, etc., but there may be important lessons to learn from those experiences.
Glory b
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, that avatar said it all.
Stevo
The last tweet is it. Have a shadow cabinet that counters maga every day.
suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot:
One nuance to your theory that I think it’s important is that I think there’s a pretty strong ideal among blue-collar white men to not have a boss at all.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Uh…wasn’t that what Biden was doing?
Doing the right thing but not taking clear credit for it, even bragging about it, is not the correct path these days, IMO. I think the best approach is to do the right thing AND provide bread and circuses.
Not my style, but I think necessary.
different-church-lady
I dunno… Uh… Good morning?
different-church-lady
@Baud: “Democrats: Perhaps We Shouldn’t All Be Assholes?”
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: Undoubtedly that’s part of it, and it’s also those people moving into my neighborhood.
moonbat
@UncleEbeneezer: You nailed that right down to the ground.
different-church-lady
@Professor Bigfoot: They’re dumb as fuck?
different-church-lady
Y’all overthinking it: Social Media gives dopamine hits for being on the hatred wagon.
Yeah, some demos are more susceptible to it than others, but it’s not a big sociological mystery. Hatred is more fun, and assholes are getting rich off of it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Joe Falco: You’ll never live like common people
You’ll never do what ever common people do
Never fail like common people
You’ll never watch your life slide out of view
And then dance, and drink, and screw
Because there’s nothing else to do
UncleEbeneezer
@sentient ai from the future: Rabble rousing is fine so long as it gets people riled up about unfairness, fascism, oligarchy, racism etc. Rabble rousing that gets people mad about the Dem Party, is not helpful and sadly the more common/popular approach. People like Liz Warren, Jasmine Crockett and AOC (sometimes) do it well. People like Bernie and Ralph Nader, do the opposite and just end up reinforcing the idea that Mom is the real problem.
There’s also some research that getting people riled up doesn’t actually help our side. The we end up losing more voters than we gain with that approach. I don’t think we really know for sure, but there’s definitely reason for caution/debate.
ExPatExDem
Muzzling Walz was a mistake by the Harris campaign brain trust.
WereBear
No wonder “the media” hates us.
We state the obvious and then it’s harder for them to spin — do — make money — their jobs!
We point out their betrothed is usually out on bail and they scream that we are harshing their buzz.
Omnes Omnibus
@suzanne:
It pops up in the “I would have been a Ranger/Marine/etc., but I knew that the first time the Drill Sergeant told me what to do I would have popped him in the face” people wearing camo and talking guns.
WereBear
@Professor Bigfoot: Also, we show up and point out the shameful state of the naked emperor they have pinned their hopes on.
All the time! Buzzkill people smashing their dreams.
RevRick
@Glory b: In Eastern Europe it’s immigrants/refugees from the Middle East. In Italy,it’s people from sub-Saharan Africa arriving by the boatload across the Mediterranean.
Glory b
@Betty Cracker: True, but not just them. There’s been several stories about growing resentment towards immigrants in countries hailed as socialist success stories.
If I’m not mistaken, a couple of the Scandinavian countries have surprised American lefties by discussing withdrawal government benefits from recent immigrants.
Geminid
@Glory b:
@schrodingers_cat: I’m glad to see Spandan is still in the fight. I’d lost track of them.
WereBear
@Betty Cracker: When I see a glimmer of class consciousness in people who LOVE the false sense of superiority they get from their bigotries, I think it’s meaningful.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
Going with the William Shatner cover:
William Shatner – Common People – YouTube
tam1MI
I am wondering when that slur took hold. It seems to me that it was hung around Hillary’s neck the first time she ran for office in 2008 and then expanded out to cover any Dem who advocated for Dem policies anywhere.
We are not going to get anywhere if we have to constantly apologize for believing in the things we believe in.
Deputinize America
In these gloomy times, I find small comforts feeding warped ideas into DeepSeek with interesting parameters, and enjoy reading and tweaking results.
I would watch the shit out of this.
WereBear
Gosh, yes. All of the responsibility, none of the power.
WereBear
@Deputinize America: Heck yeah!
Soprano2
@Baud: I blame easy access to porn.
oldgold
I hope Tim Walz is not on the road in the upper midwest today. We are experiencing brutal weather conditions. Forecast:
“The snow could be heavy at times. Some thunder is also possible. Widespread blowing snow, mainly before 4pm. High near 34. Very windy, with a north wind 30 to 40 mph, with gusts as high as 60 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime snow accumulation of around 9 inches.”
WereBear
@Suzanne: Regardless of education: smart women don’t want to date Trump men.
WereBear
@Almost Retired: Never slum mentally.
Deputinize America
@WereBear:
It was literally a two sentence command.
Omnes Omnibus
@Soprano2: I blame Baud.
WereBear
@Baud: Gotta admit they turned that situation around.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: well played
frosty
Deleted
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: gotta focus on what’s important
@sentient ai from the future: Cantor Fitzgerald has now squandered the incredible amount of goodwill they had after 9/11. GWB did it much faster.
@lowtechcyclist: like proof with alcohol. Total scam!
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus:
For those not in the know
Deputinize America
@WereBear:
Holy shit – more fantastic potentials to watch.
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist:
@Steve in the ATL:
One of you is a very messed up human being. The other one posted a terrible cover of a song.
Steve in the ATL
@Deputinize America: and you wonder why SAG-AFTRA is striking….
WereBear
@Omnes Omnibus: Spot on.
Old School
So you’re just going to leave us hanging?
WaterGirl
@NeenerNeener: George Soros has a son.
frosty
@Deputinize America: What were the two sentences?
Steve in the ATL
@Old School:
Wanna know the rest? Hey, buy the rights
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@tam1MI: “Scoldy” as a stereotype is less about Dem politicians, and more about “political correctness” from left leaning individuals. Older white people really get annoyed by being lectured by their youths.
suzanne
@tam1MI:
I think there’s definitely a layer of misogyny in the idea of “scold-iness”, but I also remember that being a criticism when I was a kid in the 90s. “Political correctness” was often described as scolding.
UncleEbeneezer
@RevRick: We went to dinner Monday with my boss (who I suspect is a Never-Trump Republican) and his girlfriend. She used to live in South Pasadena and loves to act like she’s an expert in the history of the area. She also acts like she has more refined taste than the rest of us, in a kinda snobbish way. So yeah, I find her pretty damn annoying, lol. Anyways at one point she said something like “Southern California didn’t have any REAL Mexican restaurants” when she lived there in the 60’s-70’s.
1.) I’m pretty damn sure there was good Mexican food in places like East LA (that she would’ve been too scared to visit) and
2.) She left out the part where her own town of South Pasadena banned Mexicans from buying homes and
3.) Most Mexican restaurants called themselves “Spanish” (even while selling tamales, enchiladas, etc.) because Los Angeles property-owners romanticized the Spanish colonizers, missions etc., while detesting those pesky Mexicans.
Deputinize America
@Old School:
Deputinize America
@Steve in the ATL:
YUP – intellectual property is now toast.
Deputinize America
@frosty:
stacib
@tam1MI: I don’t think it’s the fact that we believe in “things”, but how we pounce on anybody that doesn’t believe the exact same thing all while attaching ‘ist and ‘ism to their name. There isn’t a lot of patience among progressives to win people over by persuasion, facts and / or science. It’s either believe me RIGHT NOW or you’re wrong. That attitude makes far more enemies than friends.
Professor Bigfoot
@suzanne: Indeed, but they’re not OFFENDED by having a white boss.
They may not like it, but they’ll live with it.
Give them a not-white-male-Christian boss and watch them react. They will lose their shit.
WereBear
@Deputinize America: So what is it doing sitting on the deep web when it could be an incredible fantasy book series?
The great thing about fiction writing is the unlimited budget.
terraformer
@Stevo: Yep – this. The Brits have been doing this awhile, where (I think) every person in a Cabinet seat and in charge of a key government entity has a “shadow” who puts forth what they would do differently.
That approach seems to work very well, and it has two important elements:
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: Corollary: “I am offended by the EXISTENCE of these people near me! I demand they be removed forthwith!”
Followed by ethnic cleansing, or pogroms, or “race riots,” depending on which hateful tradition they follow.
Betty Cracker
@Glory b: True — that’s a great point.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@stacib: This.
Professor Bigfoot
@different-church-lady: It’s been a dawning realization over the last ten years.
Yup, as a demographic, dumb as a sack of wet mice.
WereBear
@Deputinize America: Reminds me of a classic by Paul Gallico, The Hands of Mary Constable.
The TV movie missed all the nuance.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Not being lectured. They get annoyed by the mere acknowledging of the existence of systemic and cultural isms/phobias.
They get mad at completely anodyne expressions like: Transgender rights are human rights.
Or: Black Lives Matter
Or: Me too!
Or: Schools, not guns
“Stop lecturing me” almost always means “stop pointing out things I really don’t want to think about.”
This is the no-win situation Dems are in because our more activist coalition members INSIST that they not only address those things in policy, but talk about them in their messaging. And threaten not to support them if they don’t say the thing and say it perfectly.
frosty
@Deputinize America:OMG!!! All that from a two-line suggestion. It may not be AI, it may be just a LLM but it’s going to shake up a lot of people who write for a living.
I’m glad my watershed planning career required me to do some field work. Drones can’t do all of that. Yet.
I presume the next step is to have it write the dialog?
Deputinize America
@WereBear:
Absolutely true!
Betty Cracker
@stacib: I agree. The left side of the spectrum doesn’t have a lock on scolding, but it’s definitely a thing that alienates people.
Sure Lurkalot
@tam1MI:
The right is loud and proud about fascism. Obama flirted with Simpson Bowles and a grand bargain throwing Americans’ earned benefits into the pot.
Not only apologize but too often bend over backwards to the opposite POV.
Deputinize America
@frosty: I assume – you’d need to go episode by episode, and undoubtedly would need to do some cleanup.
I’m assuming that my requests tend to be produced in a verbal and rhetorical style similar to the structure of all of my prior queries. The end products are extremely easy for me to follow.
ETA – sometimes I set really elaborate parameters.
WereBear
Then I’m not a progressive, though I must admit they are what should persuade. Yet they have a terrible track record when up against state-of-the-art crazed-billionaire money aimed at lost people with no sense of identity.
A mind-virus is a kind of parasite, as it constantly seeks reassurance and drama to keep the cognitive dissonance suppressed. Ruthless devotion to their feelings means less energy for actual thinking.
They can do it. They’re afraid to. They haven’t had their psyche touched in so long they settle for “empty” or “enraged” according to their socialization.
Their own lack of identity frightens them into unthinking conformity. When it’s not the cure, it’s the problem.
Professor Bigfoot
@ExPatExDem: Assumes facts not in evidence.
suzanne
@Professor Bigfoot: So you are bringing up a topic that I find interesting, which is about people’s relationships to their bosses. As more women and people of color get degrees, the demographics of my field and the adjacent fields are changing pretty rapidly. Architecture is still dominated by white men at the leadership level, though there is a significant percentage of Asians and Asian-Americans (close to 40%, last I read) in leadership positions in architecture and building engineering in the US. I find it interesting that Asian men were advanced to leadership (as a cohort) ahead of white women. These fields have big pipeline problems, so I think it is very much the result of the sexism of pushing sons, but daughters less so, toward education.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@UncleEbeneezer: That activist coalition includes a whole lot of young people who angered their parents by lecturing them and other family members for not saying ‘They’ in reference to someone who wasn’t in the room or for saying something was ‘retarded’ or ‘gay’. There may be good reasons for changing the language, but it really makes old white people angry. It’s also where the reputation came from for being ‘hectoring’.
Steve in the ATL
@suzanne:
tam1MI
Muzlling HARRIS was a mistake by the Harris campaign brain trust.
Deputinize America
@suzanne:
Do elder architects slurp money out of the system and away from the young and mid-career architects with consistently annoying outstretched palms demanding excessive partnership shares compared to the work they’re putting in?
Professor Bigfoot
@Deputinize America: OH MY GOD that’s BRILLIANT!!
kwAwk
My longwinded thoughts for today are that people are still trying to blame Democrats for all of this but as I’ve said before Donald Trump is a Republican problem and not a Democrat one. We can’t fix them.
Republicans have brow beat us, hazed us, hectored us, lectured us and called us stupid for decades saying ‘You can’t tax your way to prosperity!’ Well, Trump now says we can indeed tax (his supporters haven’t figured out yet a tariff is a tax) our way to prosperity and not only that MAGA agrees with him including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley and all the rest agree with him. We can take that as a win.
Republicans have brow beat us, hazed us, hectored us lectured us and called us stupid saying government can’t interfere with the economy, can’t pick losers and winners, and the free market must decide everything. Now Trump says in fact we need the government to interfere in the free market to make sure everything is fair and we’re not being taken advantage of and not only that MAGA agrees with him including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio Nikki Haley and all the rest agree with him. We can take that as a win.
A year ago Trump was calling electric cars dangerous wasteful unnecessary garbage. Fast forward to now and Trump is hawking electric cars on the front lawn of the White House. Even Ted Cruz, the bastard progeny of Texas oil billionaires is calling electric cars the coolest thing he’s ever seen. We can take that as a win.
We rightfully mourn for our trans friends and their harassment, but lets be clear. We’ve gone from ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ in 1993 to now having trans people being stripped of their right to serve openly in the military. They’re not attacking LGBs and Qs in the military. We’ve won so much, let’s not lose hope over this temporary set back.
Donald Trump is winning on one level in the present, but by doing so he’s making it incredibly difficult for the next Republican to run. He’s stripped them naked of their conceits.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
In moderation.. eyeroll
WereBear
@Omnes Omnibus: That was the dating pool I left when I fled the region.
Raised on constant battles for dominance until they are dumped out into the real world where they are uneducated and proud of it and mostly unemployable.
Thus, they do compete with immigrants, because of the kinds of jobs one can get with a high school degree and no further education.
Can they type? Do math? Take orders? Work with other low wage workers?
Much like the Fundie LDS, Confederate culture generates men born to fail. And then, they do. And it’s the women’s fault.
Steve in the ATL
@Deputinize America: translation: are architectural firms just like law firms?
suzanne
@Deputinize America:
LMAO YES.
Like, most architects don’t even get partnership, and then there’s usually mandatory buy-ins, and junior staff are paid garbage. Definitely a weed-out profession.
satby
@UncleEbeneezer: That is totally accurate.
WereBear
@frosty: See, this kind of thing can be done with plot wheels and a just-squiffy-enough brainstorming sessions using the same words like “dark” and “nature” and “phenomenon” like Mad-Libs.
And I can tell you a character is funny all I want, it’s in the plot wheel, but only TALENT creates comedy.
That’s where the AI Hollywood is falling down so hard. After they shoot these abominations, they usually have to re-shoot, because now the AI has more ideas and they already shot this crap — and they try again.
Never worked yet.
Suits of whatever kind kill creativity, and how they are the creative directors. You see the state of pop culture without talent.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steve in the ATL:
No, they have far fewer lawyers.*
*As a general rule. Not applicable in all situations. Don’t hold me to it.
WereBear
@suzanne: They wil accept a black male boss, possibly from Pluto, over a female from any galaxy.
Women are appliances.
Deputinize America
@Steve in the ATL:
LOL
As a profession, we genuinely eat our young with greed, and the state bars and disciplinary commissions do nothing about it.
Lately, I’ve taken to try and demand proof that lawyers are paying their associates, paralegals and support staffers the hourly amounts that show up as invoice entries in family court fee requests. I take the position that unless they’re actually paying that, that it is unethical to claim that for the time entries.
Of course, I’m always rebuffed.
Deputinize America
@suzanne:
“One day, when I’m dead and you’re 70, you too can hold your hand out. Now, you’ll be too old to really enjoy it, but you’ll eventually get your chance….”
suzanne
@WereBear: There’s a picture circulating on X…. some MAGAt spray-painted on their truck “MAKE WOMEN PROPERTY AGAIN”.
WereBear
@Steve in the ATL: Or academia?
Under Rump, all systems are con games.
tam1MI
People who write for a living who’s work was stolen to train the AI.
AI is theft. Pure and simple.
Professor Bigfoot
@suzanne: Fair point— goes with the observation that the “model minority” trope was a de facto offer of “whiteness” to Asian men; the advancements of which you speak would seem to be part of that.
Steve in the ATL
@suzanne: so “chattel” isn’t just a misspelling of “cattle”?
Deputinize America
@WereBear:
There’s a lot of terrible garbage on Netflix and even more on Hulu.
WereBear
@suzanne: When medicine was dominated by mediocre white men, interns and residents were ruthlessly driven without sleep or proper food as a cheap form of labor.
It took more women entering the profession to say, “Maybe it’s not so good we have young zombies and old drunks making life or death medical decisions.”
Machismo kills.
Professor Bigfoot
@WereBear: If they cannot dominate and control their women, then who are they?
I suspect that misogyny is actually the base of all the “right’s” hierarchical machinations: they absolutely have to absolutely control their women, because if they can’t control them, how can they dominate and control anyone else?
ETA— remember their reaction to the Obama administration? And how their hardcore moves towards voter disenfranchisement (such as gutting the Voting Rights Act) is obviously aimed and ensuring they never have another uppity n-word “over” them ever again? Yeah.
Omnes Omnibus
@WereBear: To be fair, law firms have been that way since long before Trump.
WereBear
@suzanne: Yup. Works for him.
And that’s as far as anything goes. Maybe some serious investment in virtually reality rooms and free admission would save us money in the long run.
Best case, they never leave, because they sure don’t learn.
Professor Bigfoot
@Deputinize America: Sturgeon’s Law.
suzanne
@Deputinize America:
Historically, we bill clients between 3 and 4 times the actual hourly rate we get. Isn’t that typical?
Professor Bigfoot
@WereBear: Billionaires should worry about Saint Luigi, but this stupid fuck better consider Saint Lorena, IYKWIM.
“Try that shit, boy, and some of y’all will never write your daddies again.”
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: None of those are “lecturing” though. They are challenging problematic language in the mildest possible way. Nobody actually flips the table and screams TRANSPHOBE!! in real life. More likely they say “Dad, Brienne is non-binary and prefers ‘they/them’ for pronouns.” That’s it. Or “Mom, don’t say ‘gay’ like that, half of my friends and Uncle Bob are all gay and we all love them.” To me, in these sorts of scenarios, it’s pretty damn clear who is actually being ridiculous, and it’s not the person pushing for language that is more in line with the times. It’s the one getting defensive whenever someone corrects them or points out that their old-fashioned way of speaking is disrespectful, mean and harms marginalized groups. Using “gay” as an insult has been problematic since at least the early 2000’s. Same for “retarded” and “Oriental” etc. There have been loads of articles and think-pieces explaining precisely why we shouldn’t use them. Anyone still using them in 2025 knows damn well that they shouldn’t. The problem is they WANT to use them.
Deputinize America
@suzanne:
We’re not allowed to do that. Overbilling for support services is how elder lawyers increase their take.
Citizen Alan
@Deputinize America: i would be disappointed if the series finale did not reveal that Gilligan was, In fact, the devil.
NeenerNeener
@WaterGirl: He’s got three sons, actually. None of them are named George.
Omnes Omnibus
@NeenerNeener: George Foreman trademarked that.
WereBear
Essentially, they want obedient servants, any way they can get them. When the whole culture tells women their only destiny is Doormat lest they burn in hell, it’s an easy shot to take.
But the thing can’t run without women doing all the children raising, hospitality, doctor appointments, and all the little things of HIS life, like clean laundry and paying the bills.
Anything he doesn’t want to do it becomes women’s work. The whole point of rigid gender roles. Why gender issues enrage them so.
suzanne
@Deputinize America: Oh, that’s interesting. We usually don’t bill out support staff separately, hence the multiplier.
I remember the first time that I saw that my billed rate per hour was over $200 and I thought about how little of that I got. LOL.
Anyway
Yes, as an example the amount of hectoring and lecturing about LatinX on this very blog- turns off a lot of people that should be on our side. That is NOT the same as throwing trans folk under the bus – but the insistence on labels and whose label is right ….gack
apocalipstick
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
The Fairness Act does not/did not apply to the internet or cable. Young men aren’t listening to AM radio.
Professor Bigfoot
You said something right there.
ETA- ‘cause that wasn’t clear— you clearly identify a pattern, one I definitely hadn’t twigged to yet.
Deputinize America
@Steve in the ATL:
That song’s a total ripoff of Dylan’s “Hurricane”. Same exact meter, same tones, even similar melody lines.
frosty
@suzanne: I was lucky. When I left a County DPW job for an engineering consultant I ended up in a company with an ESOP: Employee Stock Ownership Plan. No partners keeping the profits. No Wall Street shareholders to be beholden to. Even though it wasn’t perfect I think it was the best of those three ownership alternatives.
dc
@Suzanne: If I were a White man, I’d be so embarrassed.
Geminid
@Anyway: My impression is that people have stopped talking so much about “Latinx” over the last couple of years, both generally and on this forum. The term never seemed to gain wide acceptance, just plenty of pushback.
suzanne
@frosty: I worked for an ESOP for a bit, it’s great!
Mike E
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: to a white bigot, being called out for racism homophobia misogyny is a way worse offense (and is right now being punished by our fascist overlords) than for whatever typical behavior these assholes do on the daily. Someone here (I think) rightfully pointed out how white people demand respect for their grandad’s WW2 service while never taking responsibility for their great great uncle’s participation in lynchings.
DougL
@UncleEbeneezer:
Your comment at #58 hits a very important nail squarely on its head. IMHO.
WaterGirl
@Mike E:
Yes! I took note of that, too, when I saw it yesterday.
JiveTurkin
Contrarian here. The only thing that will stop Trump and his cronies is a recession that actually affects corporate America, with middle America along for the ride. I think Schumer folding signaled the end of the Democrats as a party having any real effect on Trump’s action and/or behavior. Most people don’t care how he acts. His hard-core supporters love it, the hard-core hater hate it, but that is a small percentage of the people. White women might not like him, but it didn’t bother them enough to not vote for him. Corporate America overall is fine with him, they know they can do almost anything they want without having to answer to anyone. The stock market was overbought and so far it is a normal correction, and it won’t be a surpprise if in a month the market is back to where it was before the correction. I think people who see Trump’s actions greatly overestimate how many people really a give a shit about whether he obeys the law. they knew he doesn’t respect the rule of law and he won the popular vote this time. And I saw today that they believe he would have won by even a higher percentage if turnout had been higher. People have to feel real pain before the needle moves.
prostratedragon
Hmmm —
zhena gogolia
@UncleEbeneezer: Excellent comment.
Steve LaBonne
@JiveTurkin: I’m afraid I am in pretty much the same place, though I am “optimistic” (ugh) that there will indeed be a lot of pain because this regime is so remarkably incompetent and reckless. A big chunk of our people are authoritarian followers who passively tolerated democracy when it didn’t appear that anything else was on the menu, but are now quite happy with strongman rule. And of course the astonishing continued intensity of white supremacy in this country, which has taken even cynical me somewhat by surprise (people of color are fully entitled to snicker at me for that), feeds directly into that.
laura
@suzanne: I worked for Safeway for 20 years and a few years in the company initiated an esop and really did a hard sell on it. While it was sold as we’re all in this together, one big family, you have a stake, profits for sure, it turned out to be a big old pump and dump, because we got B shares and the A shares holders cashed out leaving a bare cupboard. And that’s how I learned all I needed to about Kolbert, Kravis Roberts. In conclusion, fuck those guys.
Soprano2
@UncleEbeneezer: Never thought about it like that before, but it is a good description of what happens. People don’t want to hear “the truth”, they want to hear what they believe is “the truth”, which is what many Republicans tell voters (you can have huge tax cuts and all the government services you need, for example). It’s similar to how the deadbeat kid is often the parent’s favorite kid (because their love for you is uncertain and you want to save them), while the steadfast kid who is always there for the parents is taken for granted and seen as secondary. My sister wasn’t a deadbeat, but she and my mother fought a lot because my sister obviously favored my father, so there was a similar dynamic to this one in our family. (My mother thought we should take her side in their divorce and cut off my father.) My mother yearned to be sure that my sister loved her, so she treated her as the favorite. My husband said it was obvious to him. I was the daughter who was dependable and always there, so my love was taken for granted. It made me a little bitter towards her sometimes.
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: I think the Bible has a little story about this!
WereBear
@Professor Bigfoot: Have fun. it’s a fractal.
Like getting those glasses from They Live.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
There’s a prodigal daughter in the Bible?
WereBear
@frosty: My second career was in non-profits, and it suited me better than corporate.
Jive talkin
@Steve LaBonne: Unless there is serious pain nothing changes. Most of the country thinks the economy was bad under Biden so ot would have to get substantially worse than it is for Trump to take any blame.
NeenerNeener
@Soprano2: As a corollary: my mother used to accuse me and give me grief about things that my younger sister was doing. A friend of mine explained it to me as: Your mother is pushing the rock that will actually move.
The public knows that Democrats are the rock that will actually move.
WereBear
@NeenerNeener: And it’s akin to “here’s a handy scapegoat for the crime” who is framed while the real culprit is still running around.
How can anyone LIKE that? Yet, they don’t get fussy if that is what it looks like.
Jive talkin
One thing to consider is that aside from the fact that Trump and his people are corrupt, lawless pieces of dht, they also don’t even pretend to care about this country in a long-term way, since they can’t make any money off that. So stopping medical research and banning even the mention of climate change fits on with their plans. Unfortunately most people are either incapable of thinking longterm or don’t care so they don’t care until it affects them directly.
prostratedragon
@Steve in the ATL:
Nice song and vid. Reminds me of this bit of Fosse.
Baud
Trump > Wife
Steve LaBonne
@Jive talkin: I continue to ask- if Trump were consciously and intentionally following instructions from Putin to make this country too weak and helpless to pose any threat to Russia, would any of this look different from what we’re actually seeing?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: No amount of messaging is going to reach people like this.
suzanne
@laura: That sucks.
I worked for one place that was an ESOP and they did it really simply; whatever your salary percentage of overall payroll was, that was how many shares you got. Good in theory, burned the people living in lower cost of living places….. which was, of course, most of the workforce.
rikyrah
Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) posted at 6:21 AM on Wed, Mar 19, 2025:
“[Putin] was waiting to see if there would be a major change. He thought the Europeans would probably fold, or Ukraine would collapse. And instead, it’s been the US suddenly and rather dramatically switching sides,” said Fiona Hill. t.co/4bGG7ng5vS
(https://x.com/ChristopherJM/status/1902319591482679776?t=_DOUxGH5aewCkbgj6zZmYA&s=03)
rikyrah
Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) posted at 10:47 PM on Tue, Mar 18, 2025:
This used to be the URL for a story on the @DeptofDefense website about Jackie Robinson’s time in the Army. The story has been removed. The ghouls who did this should be ashamed. Jackie Robinson was the embodiment of an American hero. Fix this now. t.co/rEpZFUbJ8h
(x.com/JeffPassan/status/1902205262221439452?s=02)
tam1MI
@Deputinize America: That song’s a total ripoff of Dylan’s “Hurricane”. Same exact meter, same tones, even similar melody lines.
Another One-Hot Wonder song that completely ripped off a song by one of the greatest was WILD WILD WEST by Escape Club. Practically a note-by-note rendition of PUMP IT UP by Elvis Costello.
And that’s before we even get to Led Zeppelin… ;)
rikyrah
Acyn
@Acyn
Musk: I always thought that Democrats were supposed to be the party of empathy.. I’ve never done anything harmful, I’ve only done productive things: this doesn’t make any sense. I think there are larger forces at work.
x.com/Acyn/status/1902172877698560287
John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz) posted at 11:01 PM on Tue, Mar 18, 2025:
Hey, you delusional, unelected dingbat, cars don’t merit empathy.
The empathy we have is for human f*ckin’ beings—the tens of millions you are terrorizing, displacing, and driving into poverty.
The “larger forces” are the citizens of this country who have had it with your Nazi
(x.com/johnpavlovitz/status/1902208879359836176?t=0X0t4qeznyz0LAfvLuejDA&s=03)
Steve LaBonne
@rikyrah: Nothing that’s come out about the DOGE boys suggests that they are capable of feeling shame.
JMG
Assume Trump’s policies actually do put the economy in the dumper (i think he’d reverse course if rich people started bitching to him on the regular, but that’s just a guess). Whole millennia of human history tells us who MAGA would blame. For bigots, the Jews are always the source of economic misery.
Ksmiami
@kwAwk: maybe it’s just simpler to let their anti-vax/anti science stance kill them all.
kindness
Yea….I find these discussions casting blame, especially with large generalizations thrown about not helpful at all. There is no solution in them, only one’s washing their own hands on the towel of all the ‘others’. We get it. Most of us here are good and don’t want to be blamed categorically for the misfits in our midst.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Nobody ever pushed the term on anyone. Groups that care about representing women and transgender people when they speak adopted it because using the gendered “LatinO” is inaccurate unless you are referring to ONLY the men. When you are referring to men AND women collectively, it’s misleading and erases the women. When you are not sure of the gender of the people you are referring to, it’s misleading because it assumes one gender using men as the default. So groups like Planned Parenthood and various LGBTQ rights orgs started using it. So did some people who care about women/lgbtq people. But nobody started demanding everyone else use it too. That never happened. But people who are set in their ways and/or really invested in men always being the default PRETENDED that it did. They created this myth where Liberals, Progressives and most importantly, DEMOCRATS, went around policing everyone’s language, screaming at anyone who used “Latino/a” and pushing them out of our coalition. In reality some people got really defensive about OTHER PEOPLE using the term “Latinx” and probably felt guilty about the fact that they wanted to keep using “Latino/a” so they had to invent a justification for their stance by inventing a Political Correctness fantasy that is just as much bullshit as the ones that Republicans whine about (that ALSO never happen). In reality almost nobody actually used “Latinx” outside of very narrow social justice groups and orgs. Much like Critical Race Theory and the threat of Trans Athletes, it’s a complete fiction that only gets brought up constantly because it allows for Dem-bashing.
Ksmiami
@Baud: that voter=garbage
chemiclord
@New Deal democrat: Congress has been ceding authority to the executive for DECADES for the same of political expediency.
No one should have any hope they’ll be the tip of the spear.
Geminid
@NeenerNeener: George Soros has backed a number of NGOs, msny through his Tides Foundation. They include one that funded a number of reformist district attorneys earlier this decade. That’s one reason why conservatives have bjilt him into a Leftist Boogyman.
The Tides Foundaton funds The Crisis Group which provides solid reporting on vsrious conflicts such as the long war between Abdullah Ocalan’s Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and tbe Turkish state. This Q&A-formatted explainer of current negotiations to end that war is an example of their work;
https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/western-europemediterrenean/turkiye/promising-route-peace-turkiyes-pkk-conflict?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
stacib
@UncleEbeneezer: Uncle Ebeneezer, I truly mean no harm, but it’s “conversations” like your comment that will keep me from ever calling myself a progressive as this seems to have become the script for acceptance into the cool kid crowd. OMFG. When I say to my two daughters and two granddaughters, come on, guys, lets get going, do you thing any single one of them thinks I’m confused about whether they are girls or boys?
Geminid
@Geminid: This link does not work. It leads to The Crisis Group’s home page, that has the notation:
prostratedragon
@suzanne:
Ain’t really about a shirt.
Ruckus
@Baud:
You actually have to do both to affect enough people.
This is a democracy, it has at least 2 sides to most issues, sometimes many more sides. To lead one has to have a consensus or be forceful enough that enough people follow unquestionably. Forceful enough isn’t democracy. To have a consensus one has to lead, show the way, get shit done. This is not a skill a lot of people have when working with humans. Waltz has it. Remember this is a country that has one party that wants power. Not to lead successfully but to have power over others. And that in no way is a democracy. It’s messy. It sometimes doesn’t work as many desire. Because some are not looking for a democracy, they are looking for power. They want a world that fits into the disaster in their minds. That is not a democracy. One has to be a speaker, rational, open to opinions (which are exactly that, opinions) and explain what and why. Tim is pretty good at that.
shitforbrains is not good at anything and yet looks at everything as it is HIS world. Which might be fitting as his world is a fucked up mess.
This country does not have a king, nor a monarch, nor is leadership based upon money/wealth. This is a country of all of its citizens, and all of its citizens are NEVER going to agree on everything. And because it is not a monarchy or a dictatorship there at least needs to be a consensus of the majority. Which becomes more and more difficult as the population grows. A good, decent leader will understand that. A person with shit for brains can’t see that in any way, shape or form. Their word is perfect, just ask them.
tam1MI
@UncleEbeneezer: See also, “Believe All Women”.
lowtechcyclist
@Steve in the ATL:
Love that song! Thanks for the earworm.
TEL
@UncleEbeneezer: Excellent (if depressing) comment. I see this attitude among all kinds of white folks I know. They are mostly poorer and older white folks and many of them say ridiculous things to justify their proud ignorance and tantrum throwing.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: My recollection is the controversy over the term “Latinx” peaked in the fall of 2021. That’s when pollster Sergio Bendixen and partner published a poll showing that ~60% of Americans with Spanish-speaking backgrounds prefered “Hispanic,” a little under 38% preferred Latino and 2% preferred “Latinx;” also, a majority felt negatively about the use of “Latinx” to describe their community and 40% said they would be less apt to vote for a politician who used the word.
Of course Bendixen may have had an ax to grind, but I think he was trying to warn off unwitting Anglo political candidates from using the word. By then some folks like Rep. Ocasio-Cortez had switched to “Latine” but I don’t think that one caught on either.
Anyway, a predictable war of words broke out. Spanish teachers debated the ramifications of a gendered language, while then-Rep. Ruben Gallego let it be known that his office had banned the use of Latinx in communications.
I wondered why Hispanic was not used since it was not gender-specific. When I found that some academics and activists frowned on “Hispanic” because it was identified with Colonialism, I said screw it and have generally used Hispanic since then.
chemiclord
@Glory b: Yeah, the great “socialist paradises” of the dirt bag left started showing some problematic cracks the instant a few too many people with skin colors darker than artisanal mayonnaise showed up at their port of entries…
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@UncleEbeneezer: They do not want to change, and frankly, they tend to think the reasons for it are overstated. Basically, you can lecture them on why the language is problematic and they won’t believe you. To me, that’s the biggest barrier. They don’t believe gender identity is separate from biological sex, and you can’t convince them otherwise. They don’t think my marriage to my wife is a real marriage because I’m a woman. They think today’s terminology for the developmentally disabled is tomorrow’s insult and unPC terminology. I’m not sure they are wrong on the later point.
Captain C
@Baud: Perhaps he just wanted to get rid of her, and this was a convenient way.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@apocalipstick: The repeal of the Fairness act built the media echo chamber we seem to be failing to effectively counter. It’s online presence is just an extension.
gvg
@Baud: Wanted a divorce. It’s what I have thought about quite a few of these stories, since the first term. Things were not really happy in the background of these people.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: These days, I only *ever* hear that term in the context of people complaining about other people using it.
brantl
@sab: let him into the computer systems. What the hell are you talking about? George Soros doesn’t control our computer systems.
Ruckus
@Professor Bigfoot:
Not all white men. There is at least one here, on this blog.
My point is that among the millions of humans in the US population, not all white men/women are the same, any more than all people of color are the same. (and I wish we could figure out a better way to differentiate because we all have some level of the chemical that gives skin color. Some of us have less, some have more.) But that is the difference. We aren’t robots built in a factory. Most of us have minds and the ability to think. Now some, often way, way too many, will not be able to think rationally, it is after all humanity. But we are all human beings, manufactured in the same way, breathing the same air, catching the same diseases (well capable of catching the same diseases) all doing the same things, even if we sometimes do them in differing ways. We have the option of being reasonable, decent human beings, or being complete and utter assholes. Or any of the stops along that trail. We all are better off if would actually figure out that how we look, the amount of melatonin we each have, is beyond our control and that if we continue to argue that some are higher up the food chain based upon the amount of melatonin we have, it is only going to get a hell of a lot worse. We are all human beings. Some of us are criminals, some of us (far, far fewer) are saints, and most of us are somewhere in the immense middle of the road.
And I wish that someone, anyone, would explain to me why the amount of melatonin is in any way important to humanity, because I see this as full on bullshit. We all are different in some ways, but those ways are insignificant when measured by racial stupidity. Racism is hate for hate’s sake. It has festered for centuries and is purely and insanely, stupidity, on full display.
brantl
@Almost Retired: they will be able to detect them in advance because of Axe body spray.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ruckus: Once again, loudly, everyone knows it’s not all white men.
EVERYONE.
The problem for us is that it’s so goddamn many of you, the 2/3 who voted for Trump, and the fraction of the remaining third who still cannot bring themselves to genuinely listen to Black people or anyone else and actually do the work of disabusing themselves of the white supremacist ideas and beliefs that this white supremacist culture has inculcated into them.
I understand why white men are frustrated by the suspicion, but you can’t fucking blame us.
brantl
@schrodingers_cat: you know when you argue with him when he’s right, you just piss him off.
Ruckus
@dc:
Why? One does not have to be on the hateful side, it’s a choice. Many humans are capable of learning, growing. Many humans do not want to do that – they may find out they are full of shit. But that’s humanity. Extremely few are saints, in any way, shape or form. But skin color is not what makes the brain incapable of rationality. The brain is. And it carries on because we learn from others. One of the things we learn is hate. We are almost all capable of not agreeing with hate, just as we are almost all capable of having hate run our lives. But if we are anything above swamp creatures we can change our minds. Unfortunately that change can go in either direction, better or worse, good or bad. It is on each of us to be, to make choices for the better or the worse. And the guide posts are our decisions to believe or not.
Ruckus
@Professor Bigfoot:
I wasn’t blaming anyone else. We are all animals, we are almost all capable of making decisions – good or completely shitty. We often make those decisions based on the wrong reasons. Because we are all human.
Not all of us see skin color as a negative, I don’t. It comes from a chemical we all have in our bodies, just in different quantities. Our genetics set that quantity, not our individuality. You and I have never met but I’d bet we are far, far more alike than different. Most of us are. We all have emotions but how we use those, how we listen to them is up to us. We are responsible for our emotions, our likes/dislikes. We aren’t born with constant hate or racism, that is acquired. We are all born with the ability to hate. It is what each of us does with that is important. One of those learned/acquired things is racism. I wasn’t taught that. I’ve seen it in way over abundance because in this country (and many others) hating human beings that look different is often part of the upbringing humans do. My upbringing didn’t have that. In the past I was a mental health counselor and have had clients that did get hate as part of their upbringing. If it is a constant part of the upbringing it can create a very negative human being, because many humans have a difficult time separating what they have been taught from what they see. An old saying from some is “Hate creates hate.” We all have the emotion/process to hate. It’s how we use it, believe it, allow it to control us that counts. I am capable of hate, but I don’t let that hate control me. A tough but absolutely necessary lesson in life, that many humans never get.
UncleEbeneezer
@stacib: You are proving my point. I didn’t say anyone HAS TO use Latinx. I explained why I (sometimes) do. Notice how I’m all on my own here. If it’s such a “script” where are all the other people urging you to use it, or else you are denied access to the cool kids club. Even the Feminist and Transgender members of this community (people who care most about representation of women and non-binary people) don’t do that. So this notion that there some kind of commonplace peer pressure on the Left, is just a myth. I’ve been in Progressive spaces for years and have even been an organizer myself and there has never been shaming of people who still say Latino/a. Even in spaces where I would’ve expected it. Some people use “Latinx” (like my Colombian-American friend who is an Executive Director at Planned Parenthood) and most others don’t but don’t mind that she does. That’s it. End of story. No crisis.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Misogyny is also a pretty major part of Latino/Hispanic culture. If we are going to admit that it plays a significant role in Latino/a/x voters not wanting to vote for Kamala, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that it also plays a significant role in their feelings about the use of the term “Latinx.” My personal belief is that Latinx became this big bugaboo word because it was viewed as a small tweak to our language to make life slightly better for Transgender People. We’ve all seen how people (from EVERY demographic) freak out over harmless stuff like using someone’s preferred pronouns. The rejection of Latinx is just another version of that. Given how Transphobic our society is, that seems like the most obvious explanation. I lived almost completely surrounded by Latino/Hispanic people for over a decade and heard all kinds of bastardizations of Spanish language. They aren’t opposed to modifications of their language, they are just opposed to THIS ONE.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: Patriarchy is a pretty big part of Anglo culture too because patriachy is a pervasive force in almost all human culture. I think that’s why some Hispanics resented the framing that proponents of “Latinx” used to justify it. It’s like the Spanish-speaking community was being being singled out as a group with special needs that required a special label. I would have resented it.