(Lovely version of my favorite, “Chimes of Freedom”.}
House Republicans passed their bill that’d rip health insurance from millions and take food assistance away from millions including households with kids as young as 7 in the largest Medicaid and SNAP cuts in history – while giving giant tax cuts to the rich.
Thread on the next steps of the process.
— Bobby Kogan (@bbkogan.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 8:06 AM
The bill now goes to the Senate. Bcuz this is a reconciliation bill, it can’t be filibustered. This means that, even w/ all Ds opposed, Rs can pass it through the Senate on their own – as long as they follow the rules of reconciliation. This is the same process they used to try to repeal the ACA.
Rs will be allowed to skip the committee process and go straight to the floor. But before any voting can happen, they’ll need text, and Ds and Rs will comb through it & spend weeks debating every single part of it in front of the Senate Parliamentarian, arguing about whether they violate the rules.
This is adjudicated line by line, clause by clause, and sometimes word by word. Entire sections will fall out because they do not comply with the rules of reconciliation (like the AI section, for instance). Sometimes specific clauses or words will drop.
Eventually, Republicans will move to proceed, there will be 20 hours of debate split evenly (and Republicans can yield their 10 hours, so there really could be only 10 hours of debate), and then we go into vote-o-rama and then to final passage of the bill.
If Republicans know exactly what they’re doing and have pre-baked the politics and the language, the entire Senate process, from start to finish, could be less than a month.
This means we do not have much time to convince them to vote no.
Importantly, there is a 0.00% chance the Senate version is identical to the House version, so the House will have to vote again (and they might even go to conference).
A lot of Republicans voted yes, assuaging worries by telling themselves it would change in the Senate. If the Senate can pass something, that will no longer be true. And so when it comes back through the House, it’ll be for real, and we’ll have another chance to defeat it there.
The most important thing you can do, by a parsec, is attend a town hall with your Republican Senator and with your Republican member of Congress. There is nothing more useful than spending even a minute talking face-to-face with them and telling them you do not want them to vote for this.
Calling your Republican Senate and your Republican member of Congress is also very useful. They need to hear from you. They need to know why you don’t want this to become law.
It is also useful to talk to your Republican governor because they talk to the Senators and House members and they have feelings about how this would negatively affect their citizens and how many costs it would push onto them.
This bill would cause so much additional suffering. It would be by far the largest Medicaid cuts in history, kicking millions off their health insurance and condemning thousands of those people each year to die due to lack of coverage.
(note the House-passed version is actually worse than this)
— Bobby Kogan (@bbkogan.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 8:25 AM
It would also be by far the largest SNAP cuts in history, ripping food assistance away from millions, including households with children as young as seven years old.
— Bobby Kogan (@bbkogan.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 8:26 AM
It will be a very hard fight to win, but it's worth it to try, because people matter.
We owe it to our family members who rely on Medicaid and SNAP. We owe it to our friends. We owe it to our neighbors. We owe it to the people we'll never meet.
— Bobby Kogan (@bbkogan.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 8:28 AM
On The Road – Mike in Oly – Procession of the Species Parade, Olympia, WA 1/3
Baud
There you are.
People who attend town halls are heroes. But I have to wonder what happened to local organizations. Everything seems like a pop up, ad hoc endeavor.
RevRick
@Baud: Attending a townhall with one’s Senator depends on whether they hold one and when and where it’s held. As for local organizations, they suffer from the same problem that have afflicted bowling leagues. Fewer people. And the reason for that is simple. With so many families being dual income or single parent, squeezing in time to do a meeting on top of everything else is near impossible.
I’m organizing a group focused on climate change, in part because I want to combat not only the awful effects but also the hopelessness many feel.
Baud
@RevRick:
That reminds me, I want a four day work week to become standard.
ETA:
That’s by design. The oligarchs sell hopelessness so that people don’t support incremental progress, then things get worse and people feel more hopeless.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: It might be that existing political organizations are built for an extinct “normal politics” situation and that we need to construct new ones based on these ad-hoc initiatives. The 50501 movement feels like that. When it first appeared, I recall the Democratic Party posts saying “who are these people? feels sketchy”.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Republicans supporting a regressive budget seems like normal politics to me.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Too much money at the top is a problem in so many different ways. Whenever Dems get back in the driver’s seat, we need to pass legislation that spreads the wealth more equitably. Senator Professor Warren’s wealth tax would be a good starting point.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
I had hoped Manchinema leaving the Senate would have been a source of inspiration. It wasn’t.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The President using every available lever to materially punish all organizations who personally cross him or disagree with him is not normal politics. Our existing organizations are built for a world in which there are strong First Amendment protections and some rich people and corporations might feel safe to support you just for the positive vibes, and that isn’t the case any more, so the new ones are going to have to deal with that somehow. The groups that popped up to fight segregationist regimes in the mid-20th-century South might be a model.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Fair enough. I don’t even know who these organizations are anymore. It feels like a lot of them have withered away from public consciousness, even before Trump.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin: I think you’re right, and the fact that people showed up (and are still showing up) without waiting for an official to herd them along is a hopeful sign.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
People should never wait upon officials to lead them IMHO. That should never have become the expectation.
Civic leadership separate from political leadership is important.
RevRick
“We owe it.” Bobby Kogan makes a strong moral argument here. The questions arise from this claim. First, do we owe it? And second, if we do, why do we owe it?
Now, I wholeheartedly agree with Bobby, but that agreement is anchored in my faith. But it is incumbent for all of us to be able to answer those questions?
Republicans do not believe that we owe it. They have and do argue that government programs create a dependency that leads to a moral hazard. People, they would argue, need to stand on their own two feet. Better we should experience deprivation of the body than that of the spirit, they would say. Yes, we are being outwardly harsh and cruel, they would acknowledge, but it is in service of the purpose of building character and molding morally fit citizens.
I, myself, would counter argue that being in want, far from building character, more often shatters it. I have seen it firsthand by reading to a classroom of first graders in the most poverty-ridden school in the district. The hunger and stress of poverty lead to a lack of impulse control, short tempers and an inability to focus. Children, in this environment, struggle to learn.
Raven
Here we go again, Country Joe and the Fish.
https://youtu.be/WrRlmeOhV2U?si=4Yv724S8x_2HX9WF
chemiclord
@Baud: And a massive chunk of the American left helps them right along, deciding that if they can’t get everything they want in one fell swoop, they’re fine with nobody getting anything ever.
satby
As cruel and calamitous as these cuts are, it will hit rural red areas hardest, where the resources to try to reduce the damage will be fewer. And people forget SNAP is as much of an agricultural support program as it is a food program, so SNAP cuts hurt both the recipients and the farmer suppliers. Someone better make that case well to the people who refuse to listen because the FAFO will be brutal.
Raven
@RevRick: Savage Inequalities.
New Deal democrat
Just want to point out that SNAP benefits were always a quid pro quo for farm subsidies. If the GOP has severed that link, Democrats can loudly announce that when they get back in power, farm subsidies will be cut by the same %. It’s a point of leverage, and if morality doesn’t work, the threat of an easy method of revenge might.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Problem was, we lost the House at the same time.
Kosh III
“The most important thing you can do, by a parsec, is attend a town hall with your Republican Senator and with your Republican member of Congress.”
Fat chance. No R has town halls, too chicken shix to face the people. I have called(and will call) and told voice mail(that’s all you get) for all the good it will do.
satby
@New Deal democrat: it’s even more direct than that. In Indiana (so I assume other states too) SNAP recipients can get coupons for 2x the value of their dollars benefit amount to shop for fresh produce at farmers markets. That’s direct support to local farmers. And it’s a very popular program.
Kosh III
@satby: Also, SNAP helps support jobs at grocery stores.
JiveTurkin
The best time to convince them ended on November 5, 2024. This is what Americans voted to do on that day. There is zero chance that there will not be draconian cuts to Medicaid and SNAP. Hopefully a few Republicans can be convinced to reduce some of the cuts. After all, Susan Collins is probably furrowing her brow as we speak.
satby
@Kosh III: yep. Especially in rural areas again. And of course, it props up Walmart, because so many of their employees are eligible for SNAP in spite of working almost full time (Walmart is careful to keep a majority of their employees under the hours for FT classification).
Matt McIrvin
@RevRick: Making people behave like crabs in a bucket *is* what conservatives consider “building character”. They equate cruelty and hostility with “strength” and above all they want people to be strong. They see the world as a dog-eat-dog competition, the people who come out on top as deserving, and anything that softens that as just making soft people.
RevRick
@Baud: I don’t know if it’s by design. That’s ascribing a Machiavellian cunning to a skipping dipshit like Elon Musk that I don’t think he is capable of.
I do see it as an inevitable consequence of late stage capitalism, which in our individualistic culture, atomizes people. The hopelessness they feel comes from then confronting problems that feel too overwhelming. Most European nations have a long history of communal organizations that have high rates of participation. It was just such an organization in Germany that brought to light the precipitous decline in insect populations in the Black Forest.
But then Germany also has generous leisure time, because working hours are strictly limited.
Baud
@RevRick:
There are plenty of oligarchs and oligarch helpers behind the scenes. People you e never heard of.
I’m also skeptical of the late stage capitalism label. Just seems like a crutch that makes action seem worthless and tells people to wait for a collapse rather than do anything now.
YMMV
Matt McIrvin
@chemiclord: I’ve been reading a lot of people on the international left who are making all these sweeping pronouncements about how the United States is over, definitively fated for destruction with no possible recourse, and some of them are kind of gleeful about it, and it just gives me feelings that don’t help. Suppose they’re right, what am I supposed to do with this information? GTFO ahead of all the people who are in actual danger? Commit seppuku out of national shame?
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s mostly right. I would add that if the “wrong” people end up strong, conservatives assume the rules are unfair.
It’s the mirror image of liberal notions of social justice. It’s social justice with a goatee.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Late capitalism can stay late longer than you can stay solvent.
RevRick
@Matt McIrvin: Oh, I completely agree with your point.
What I was trying to convey was that we need to be able to give some foundational reasons for why we believe “we owe it.” And that requires we also try to understand GOP reasoning. And thus, why we think it’s flawed.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
If they get enough people to give up. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Pithy. I like it.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: Capitalism in Europe wasn’t built on Enslavement.
That gives capitalism in America a very specific flavour.
A bitter one.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I think the destructive chunk of the *US* left are people who are mostly trying to stay in the good graces of anti-US leftists internationally, so they’re mostly concerned with the need to take down American Empire and if it involves actually destroying the US, they’re OK with it because they think it will advance wider moral concerns. And some of them have always seen Trump as the agent of destruction they need–in 2016, they preferred for Trump to win not in spite of his being a malevolent dumbass, but because of it.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: It was though, wasn’t it? And colonial exploitation more generally. The slaves just weren’t *there* in Europe, they were somewhere else.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
For once, they’re correct!
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: “Stewart v Somerset,” in which the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench declared there could be no slaves in England.
Of course, the King’s Bench said nothing about slaves in the colonies “far beyond the seas,” but the North American colonists saw handwriting on the wall…
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Kind of like how we outsource bad labor conditions and environmental damage today.
lee
Early on I saw reports that BBB also had significant cuts to Medicare.
Were those reports in error? I don’t seem many folks talking about that any more.
Matt McIrvin
@lee: My understanding was that there weren’t direct cuts, but that it’d balloon the deficit to the point that Medicare cuts would be a knock-on effect.
RevRick
@Baud: @Matt McIrvin:
You guys are venturing perilously close to my bailiwick. Deviltry, perhaps?
Seriously, arguing whether it’s an outcome of late stage capitalism or of shadowy figures behind the scenes becomes a matter of belief.
I personally ascribe it to the shaping forces of culture, which of course operate through human beings, but I am not about to just throw up my hands.
My own “we owe it” is filled with a large dose of hope.
I guess I find the best cultural expression of that in the Star Wars universe, especially in the recent series Andor. The Empire seemed formidable. And it was. But the flame of freedom and the hope of its rebirth impelled countless people to take the risk of rebellion.
narya
The RW domination of the media is going to screw us even if we win the midterms: IIUC, a lot of the worst cuts don’t start until after the midterms, meaning people will think that the dems made it happen. I hope I’m wrong.
satby
@lee: here you go: Republican Budget Reconciliation Bill Would Cut Medicare.
snoey
@lee: There is a law called Paygo that is supposed to make automatic budget cuts if the deficit is too large, which it will be. Those cuts would hit Medicare if they are allowed to happen. I think that this has been finessed in the past.
eta what Satby said is also true.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: Thank you for repeating this over and over.
I learned about that case in college fifty years ago, but nobody ever pointed out to me its connection to the American Revolution. It should have been obvious to me, but it wasn’t.
New Deal democrat
Since this is an Open Thread, let me point out that if you want to find out on a daily basis what is going on with economic “policy” by the Lunatic in Washington, you should follow Carl Quintanilla:
https://bsky.app/profile/carlquintanilla.bsky.social
For example, this morning I found out that the EU’s President is pushing for ways that the Euro can supplant the US$ as the world’s reserve currency, that T—-p targeted Apple with tariffs because he was piqued that Tim Cook didn’t accompany him on his Middle East grift-palooza, that the petrosheikhdoms’s decision to flood the world with cheap oil may end the US’s shale oil boom, and that European airlines are cutting back on flights to/from the US because of increasing demand for flights to/from Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
A day by day update on the consequences of the US is becoming a pariah state.
RevRick
@Professor Bigfoot: Oh, I wouldn’t cleanse European capitalism of slavery. It was built on the enslavement of Africans and the exploitation of indigenous peoples. The Industrial Revolution in England = the cotton picked by Africans enslaved in the southern US.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: And since race is a social construct, white people better not assume they have lifetime membership in the club: Trump is withdrawing whiteness from white immigrants.
sab
@Matt McIrvin: They are running ads right now against Democratic congresspeople: “He/she voted against a bill that didn’t cut Medicare. Therefore he/she voted to not protect Medicare. Why does he/she hate Medicare.”
zhena gogolia
@Professor Bigfoot: Now there I differ with you. It was based on enslavement.
WTFGhost
@lee: Due to budget rules, the bill spends so much, it would trigger automatic reductions in medicare spending – 500 billion. Those aren’t part of the budget calculus, though; it’s another process that forces cuts if spending is too out of whack.
So: you’re right, MediCARE cuts, but, not in the bill itself, and, if the bill is reduced appropriately, the Medicare cuts won’t happen.
Torrey
Baud at #3: “The oligarchs sell hopelessness so that people don’t support incremental progress, then things get worse and people feel more hopeless.”
@RevRick:
Eh, I don’t think it supports an argument to seize upon one example and say, “Ah, but this one is probably not doing what you said oligarchs in general do, and therefore your claim of intentionality is questionable.” There seems evidence for a goodly amount of intention among people whose main goal is making sure they get increasing amounts of money and who are competent at managing to do just that. Now, whether Baud’s analysis is right, I don’t know. I do know that I’d like to see support for the claim that intention isn’t involved, since the system in question seems to be so good at creating the sense that it’s not worth trying.
Ohio Mom
@Kosh III: That’s been my experience too. A very few times an intern has answered the phone but it’s mostly voice mails and worse, full mailboxes.
My two Republican Senators are elusive. One of them promises he won’t cut the big three, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, but only a chump would believe that.
Professor Bigfoot
@zhena gogolia: Fair MF point.
The richest men in America in 1860 lived on plantations…
UncleEbeneezer
@Matt McIrvin: I’m really getting to the point where the America-hating Leftists are just as toxic and bad as the MAGA/Evangelical assholes. And in some ways, far worse, because unlike the MAGAs they are often inside my coalition setting fires in my tent. Same goes for much of the social justice movements/spaces. It’s hard not to become cynical when all I see is assholes to the right, assholes to the left and a media/society that acts like the rest of us are the crazy ones.
Professor Bigfoot
@RevRick: Oh, indeed; but the Europeans didn’t have to LOOK at it directly; and more importantly, the individual “European in the street” had no hand in enforcing Enslavement.
Remember the roots of American policing: antebellum runaway slave patrols. Europeans had their armies do that shit far, far out of sight. They didn’t get to enjoy torturing people ‘til the Germans went off in the mid 20th.
Americans had lynching postcards.
Jeffro
from Jamelle Bouie’s newsletter (will probably be in his column tomorrow): it’s the same old gruel from the GOP
…
…
Ohio Mom
@satby: Oh, as a Jew, I’ve always assumed my whiteness is conditional. Whenever I have to check those ethnicity boxes on a form, I have a moment when I think, I’m really “other” but check the “white, not Hispanic” box instead.
suzanne
@RevRick:
Yes this. Same thing with “public meetings”. Designed for the benefit of wealthy people.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: Most Americans aren’t aware that neither the Italians nor the Irish, in their respective immigration waves, were not considered “white.”
“Whiteness is infinitely malleable and can be revoked at any time.”
Too many believe they have no need for Pastor Niemöller’s advice.
ED to insert a crucial “not”
Matt McIrvin
@RevRick: But since Star Wars isn’t Star Wars without endless Wars, the resulting New Republic was a flash in the pan as well, and they had to do it all over again.
UncleEbeneezer
@RevRick: I was gonna say: the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish (just to take 3 obvious examples) profited immensely from the Slave Trade.
That said, I think I get what Prof Bigfoot was getting at and agree that America’s economy is still uniquely tied to Enslavement in a way that is much harder to undue, than many other countries and regions.
WTFGhost
@Torrey: One way to think about it, is, rich folks are glad to espouse values that keep them rich, and, therefore, likely to press for causes that keep them rich, and the net effect appears intentional, but it’s not that they are evil, scheming overlords, hoping to reshape society into Something Different. They’re just pushing for their own interests, generally in the same direction, so it appears intentional.
That’s my view of how it could be a perfectly natural process, that nevertheless feels intentional. It’s like evolution, which can also seem intentional, with evolutionary niches seeming to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: I’m seeing them now talking about how voting Democratic was just “gateway fascism” and talking up “armed struggle”.
I’m old enough to remember the admonition that the guy in your movement who goes on about that is probably the undercover cop.
the pollyanna from hell
I realized this morning that I am glad to be a target of this bill. I can protest on that basis without wanting to throw up, which is what happens when I think of all the other victims.
sab
@Matt McIrvin: I had forgotten about that, but you are right.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Armed struggle against whom?
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: not only am I deeply aware, but I educated my kids about it. INNA and the Know-Nothings were when my family (mostly) came to America.
And in Ireland, where the increased immigration makes some uncomfortable, I took the opportunity to tell them that our people were hated and despised immigrants in America once too. I may even shared a Thomas Nast cartoon or two. Those who don’t remember history…
BellyCat
Enslavement, today, has an expanded definition in the GOP: Dependency by as many as possible on employers.
The higher the dependency, the lesser the ability to lobby for or create improvements. Meanwhile, wages can be held steady if not reduced due to increased supply of (increasingly desperate) workers.
Health insurance and food security independent of employment are BIG threats to a fully effective system of employment dependency/enslavement.
sab
@satby: My Irish family did the opposite. They married non-Irish, converted to Episcopalian, and forgot they ever were Irish. My grandmother, whose own grandparents came from Ireland, used to sneer at the Irish with the best of them.
NotMax
Invest in curtain rod futures.
//
satby
@Baud: Democrats, of course; for instance, like this delightful comment on one site that shall remain nameless:
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I HIGHLY recommend Nicholas Johnson’s “Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms.” We have long eschewed political violence but embraced armed individual self defense.”
Summary from the Smithsonian
edited to add: I am unconcerned about trying to fight the US military. They are not my enemies.
The Klansmen, the night riders, the hard-core MAGAts, the Proud Boys and the III% and the like are the ones I worry about. THEY are why I have guns and why I practice.
satby
@sab: In the community, those were called “lace curtain Irish” because they had aspirations that included shedding their identity and history as quickly as possible. Their loss, any human history of any people denied, is a loss to us all.
lee
@satby: thanks for that!
Belafon
@Kosh III: Republicans don’t know how to multiply unless it involves forcing it on a woman.
RevRick
@Matt McIrvin: And the reason for that is that the ideology of imperialism, which has a remarkable shape-shifting power, infects every single brain on the planet. It leads us to assume that hierarchy of race, class, and gender is natural. It leads us to assume that violence solves the problem. It leads us to assume that masculinity and femininity are fixed identities.
It takes tremendous, ongoing efforts to free ourselves of this belief system and that means replacing it with a better belief system.
Melancholy Jaques
@Ohio Mom:
And after he votes to cut all three, he will claim he didn’t. It doesn’t really matter what they do, it’s only what people believe.
satby
Paul Krugman “A Letter to Europe:
You’re stronger than you think. Act like it.
RevRick
@satby: Wow! They know of our existence!
satby
@RevRick: ex-commenters here.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: I’ve long believed that the Irish and the Italians became “white” when they adopted anti-Blackness.
That this is why we have the stereotypes of the “beefy Irish beat cop” and the “wily Italian detective,” because, as mentioned before, American policing is the direct descendant of antebellum slave patrols and anti-Blackness is inherent in its culture.
I seem to remember a speech by an Irishwoman taking Irish Americans to task for racism— Lor’ help me, I think the lady’s name started with a “B” but curse me if I can remember!— that they had “forgotten where they came from.”
It’s also long seemed to me that Irish and Italian Americans are generally the white ethnicities most hostile to Black people (obviously—OBVIOUSLY it ain’t everybody!). Mind, that’s only my own perception but I’ve not really seen anything to make me question it.
Baud
@satby:
Who here fucking NARC’d?
Baud
@satby:
A regular commenter? There’s a troll who sometimes shows up here with that message. Definitely not a regular.
Professor Bigfoot
@satby: Same initials as the candies, right?
I seem to remember having seen that skeet- I finally had to just unsubscribe from his mailing list.
He’s a solid example of that last third and how THEY hate Democrats, too.
UncleEbeneezer
@Ohio Mom: This is one of the reasons it drives me nuts when people say “Jews are white.” It’s popped up a lot recently with Gaza protestors and it’s a popular trope among some Black Academics/social-justice activists (thanks Angela Davis and TNC for taking the bait and popularizing this shit on the Left). It’s overly simplistic and I can’t help notice it’s almost always invoked to downplay antisemitism. It’s easy to look at America’s unique history of White Supremacy and come to the conclusion that it is all or mostly anti-Blackness. But having read extensively about that history and having known virulent bigots in college and even in my family, Jewish People are always right there at the center of what these assholes see as the greatest threats to Whiteness. We just watched the excellent film The Order (about a White Nationalist movement in the Pacific Northwest in the 70’s that was trying to start a civil war and overthrow the Federal government). They were inspired by the Turner Diaries and while they had no love for Black People, Immigrants etc., most of their main vitriol was aimed at Jews. Even when I’ve read about the Massive Resistance (to civil rights/integration) where the main focus of these assholes is on Black People or Immigrants, there are ALWAYS mentions of Jews as well. I think our stories/narratives of White Supremacy in the US often undersell just how big and constantly present antisemitism is. People (even in social justice spaces on the Left) come to the mistaken notion that that (antisemitism) isn’t so much of a problem here (compared to Europe). When I hear people declare that “Jews are White” all I can think of is the virulently racist white assholes I knew in college who would just laugh at that and respond “They ain’t White, they’re Jews.” I think a lot of people underestimate how strong that sentiment is among our fellow Americans.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
And northern whites didn’t have to look directly at slavery or Jim Crow, and until the age of cell phone cameras, we didn’t have to look directly at the violence that the police have directed at Black people. That shouldn’t get us northern whites off the hook, and I don’t think the ocean gets Europeans off the hook either.
RevRick
@Torrey: Yes, Musk is but one example, but I would bet that the vast majority of the wealthy are skipping dipshits.
I would, moreover, dispute that the oligarchy is selling hopelessness. If you have ever watched Mad Men , you will understand that they are selling a particular kind of hope based in the acquisition of stuff.
A more sophisticated analysis is found in Dr. James Twitchell’s Lead Us into Temptation. The whole advertising industry is premised on selling us an earthly salvation.
Professor Bigfoot
@UncleEbeneezer: All of this.
American Jews generally present as white— absent a kippah or a Star of David necklass, they’ll be perceived and treated like they are white by other whites.
But, from the discussions I’ve had with Jews, they know, KNOW that sooner or later, the supremacists (of whatever stripe) WILL get to them; they’ve literally got a thousand years of experience at it.
Which, I believe is one reason why there’s long been a Black-Jewish alliance: larger numbers of Jews immigrated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to escape violence and oppression and pogroms in Europe.
Only to get here and discover Black folks dealing with the exact same shit here under Jim Crow.
We seem to share this belief: “nobody is free until everybody is free,” period full stop.
And we mean EVERY GODDAMN BODY.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: No, but it does go to explaining the difference between capitalism in America and capitalism in Europe.
(for that matter, we could go into the differences between it in the North and in the South)
Belafon
@NotMax: Start a curtain rod company now and sell it to Walmart in a couple of years so you can join the ranks of the rich.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: You’re not wrong, but they also hated each other. Cities with ethnic neighborhoods tended to reinforce prejudice against other ethnicities in the same city, and that was pretty universal. if I had a nickel for every time I heard the Maxwell Street Market referred to as Jew, kike, or Hymie town (even as recently as two years ago by a black guy, though all races did it) I’d be, well better off. People are tribal, our life work should be to push beyond that. And progress, incrementally, has been made. Ongoing work for life.
satby
@Baud: different name, pretty sure same troll. But he has company.
lowtechcyclist
@UncleEbeneezer:
I just finished reading Tom Levenson’s Money for Nothing (couldn’t get hold of his latest, so I read that instead), and can add the French to that list.
Professor Bigfoot
Straight facts right there. It’s a job o’work and well, there it is.
I’d like to think it’s all about expanding the tribe. Expand it until it incorporates all the humans, and that starts with seeing the humanity in each of us and all of us.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: You must have met my grandmother. She was jaw-droppingly racist.
frosty
@JiveTurkin: Oh, please, enough doom. I knocked on doors and wrote postcards last fall and it wasn’t enough. That ship sailed.
You’re wrong: there is a nonzero chance that we can stop the cuts in Medicaid and SNAP and we need to work on that now. I’ll make some calls.
satby
@Professor Bigfoot: Exactly!
UncleEbeneezer
@sab: My Italian and Eastern-European mutt relatives did the same. Aside from a couple recipes passed down, I have basically no knowledge, understanding or connection to my roots. To me this is one of the way White Supremacy also hurts White People (though it’s obviously minuscule compared to the way it harms PoC).
Baud
@satby:
Happy he’s found a home.
@lowtechcyclist:
Probably a distinction to be drawn from countries that benefited from slavery through profit alone versus the socioeconomic effect of having slaves in country as a source of forced labor.
Belafon
@satby:
Which people do we want gone?
Harrison Wesley
@Matt McIrvin: I think by “armed struggle” they mean “standing in front of a mirror and striking heroic poses.”
tobie
@satby: Is it really true that rural areas will be hit hardest by the cuts? I’m not being contentious. But I’ve been wondering how inner city hospitals will survive when the communities they serve no longer have Medicaid. These hospitals tend to be academic hospitals and nothing would give this admin more pleasure than bankrupting them. In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins and the U of Maryland will have a hard time serving the uninsured while staying afloat financially.
Baud
@Belafon:
All of them, Katie.
schrodingers_cat
@satby: Name them and shame them or at least link them.
Meanwhile, working class hero with at least 2 houses, Bernie Sanders is going around the country spreading the message of how Dems are the real problem.
Josie
@satby:
Interesting. i never thought of myself as a detriment to the Democratic party (or even upper middle class).
satby
@schrodingers_cat: they are undeserving. I wouldn’t link to them anymore than I would link to OAN.
satby
@Josie: right? And I don’t have a college degree, so maybe I can escape the pogrom too.
Belafon
@Josie: It’s all about you, huh? /sarc
You’ve got it backwards. To be a good Democratic Party member you have to think about how other people are hurting the party.
tobie
@UncleEbeneezer: i don’t know if this helps but yesterday I was speaking to an elderly relative who reads newspapers and listens to some radio but is not online. She kept on repeating that she couldn’t believe one Republican Senator would not say that the corruption and the lawlessness of this admin was unacceptable. I’m not saying her position is typical but it tells me that the communities that form on social media are not necessarily representative of the public at large.
Belafon
@satby: I totally screwed things up by being the first in my family to get a college degree, and, even worse, encouraging my son to get the first PhD in the family.
satby
@tobie: Johns Hopkins is also a center for advanced medical care and has fully insured patients getting those treatments. Enough? Dunno. But cities in blue states have more resources to support or supplement lost fed money than rural areas in red states do.
satby
@Belafon: anything rather than call out the party actually working to enact evil policies even as we snark on the internet.
schrodingers_cat
@satby: I found it!
BellyCat
@tobie: This would really screw up the MAGA narrative that rural hospitals are closing due to liberals sending all the money to urban hospitals!
WTFGhost
@Harrison Wesley: The “boogaloo boys” (which I always want to spell “bois,” except “boi” and “boy” are not always synonyms) are probably like that. They think they’ll win a war, because the rest of us are soft and don’t dream of murdering others.
What they don’t understand, is, there is nothing more grimly determined than a bunch of people who never wanted this effing war, but since the boogaloos started it, these non-heroic-pose-strikers are by-golly going to finish it, in a way that only people who say shit like “by-golly” can, with a bulldog tenacity.
I never dream of murdering others. But I’m also aware that there are times when you need to make the bad guys know they’re on the wrong side of your rifle, and where one needs to see them only as barriers to peace. “I wouldn’t give you a hangnail if we were having beers together, but, since we’re at war, and I want this effing war to end, I’ll do my best to make it a kill shot, to be merciful.”
I really hope it doesn’t come to that; I hope a few more missteps, and the Trump admin really will tarnish the Republican brand, without Republicans starting a war (“Not all Republicans!!!”), that has to be put down fast, and hard, which would make them both traitors and losers, and finally, the US might become sane again.
Baud
Melancholy Jaques
@satby:
Poe’s Law.
Why not say where you found this? It’s almost funny.
UncleEbeneezer
@Professor Bigfoot: And even the “present as white” is still sketchy. If my racist Grandpa were still alive, you better believe he would take one look at any Jewish person and see something about them that wasn’t right/white. Curly hair, shape of the nose etc. All the classic ways that Jews have had their identities policed for centuries without anyone asking their religion or where there ancestors came from. It’s one of the reasons I also hate the “Jews aren’t a race” bullshit (especially when I hear it on the Left) because while Jewishness is complicated (combining race, religion, ethnicity etc.) the policing of Jewish identity is almost always done using the exact same racial/ethnic cues that are used to do the same to (potentially passing) Black People, Latinos etc. I see so many people (especially on the Left) try to talk about Racism OR antisemitism as if there is no overlap and they are two different and discreet things, but I don’t know how anyone can do that with a straight face when there’s all these statements from the David Duke’s and Adolf Hitler’s etc., of the world centering Jews as the greatest threat to the “White Race” out there. Antisemitism isn’t ALWAYS/ONLY racial, but a lot of the time it is.
Totally agree with you on the Black/Jewish alliance. And I would argue that one of the reasons the trope that “Zionism = Racism” (crafted by the Soviets and sadly adopted/embraced as dogma among many on the Left) has popped up again and trended so frequently is because it helps try to sow division in that crucial alliance.
tobie
@satby: Insured patients won’t cover the cost of running the hospital. A lot of the local patients are insured by Medicaid. As for research, well, that’s over. The NIH supported open-ended research. Industry only funds product-oriented research because they want a fast return on investment.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: I felt like that comment wasn’t 100% wrong but was describing a situation 15 years out of date. The socially liberal educated professionals who favor supply-side economics don’t identify as Democrats– they’re “independents” who yearn for a Center Party. The New Democrat Coalition is old news.
tobie
@BellyCat: so true. It’s like Trump’s first tax bill tailored to punish blue state, salaried residents. My taxes rose with that first bill. My rural neighbors all had a windfall b/c the bill was quite generous to small biz in the home trades.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
This is pretty wrong.
This guy reminds me of the anti-christianity commenter who graced us for a while.
schrodingers_cat
@UncleEbeneezer: Its not just MAGAs that eat Russian propaganda with a spoon. Tankies have a history of doing the same and they haven’t changed after the Soviet Union died to make way for Putin.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I found the original comment. I didn’t recognize the nym. We live rent free in the heads of the dramatic exiters who left BJ with GBCW posts.
Melancholy Jaques
@sab:
My ancestors came from four different parts of Europe and I don’t really identify with any of them other than national team rugby jerseys of Scotland & Wales.
My ethnicity is generic white guy from the suburbs of Cleveland Ohio.
I think the various European ethnicities got whitened by the tremendous mixing during & after World War II. WASPs still dominate though. Old money has a cultural power.
schrodingers_cat
@Melancholy Jaques: There are enough breadcrumbs in this thread to figure out the link.
Professor Bigfoot
@UncleEbeneezer: “Those who hate Jews seldom hate only Jews.”
As for me and my House, we remember Andy Goodman and Mickey Schwerner and Jim Chaney, peace be upon them.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: I will never, ever understand the pro-Putin Marxists. It’s like they think the USSR never ended.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
From what I read, that Freedom Caucus in the House who were opposed to the Bill were quite serious about it blowing the debt up for nothing, so Trump and Johnson gave them what ever they wanted on the bill just to have a victory. So the Freedom Caucus loaded it up with stupid shit ether because, what the F, we’re doom anyway? Or to make it so disgusting the Senate would trash it. So the question is will the Senate Republicans join in the Trump suicide pact.
As for what we are going to do, well explain how we can make a statement louder that Moody’s drooping the US’s credit ratting so Musk doesn’t have to pay $3,000 less in taxes a year?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I didn’t care to look. There’s enough hate in the world that I don’t feel the need to search for it.
@Matt McIrvin:
Same with the interest in Trump, I suspect. The USSR is gone, and Putin and Trump oligarchs provide the best chance of hurting the US.
Professor Bigfoot
@Melancholy Jaques: Bro, that’s opportunity!
Claim all four of ‘em! Get some of their local dishes/recipes/cuisines!
“One of my great great grandparents came from” ___ “and I found this delightful recipe for” ____ “on” ____” made with” _____ “and…” 😁
I say that only slightly tongue in cheek, as one who can only trace is line back to 1860s Tennessee.
I envy you.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Or the guy who suddenly flipped to killing every thread with claims that we should believe Putin’s assertions about Crimea because Bush lied about Iraq.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: God’s teeth, but I’m glad I missed that one.
Yeesh.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: You know what they say about cats and curiousity. I had a guess as to who it might be. So I had to go look.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Was that Bob in Portland?
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: They hate the US, Putin gives them the framework to do it.
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: seriously, that was the whole argument. “The government lied to you about Iraq, therefore they’re lying to you now and Ukraine shot down that Malaysian airliner.”
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: yep
chemiclord
@Professor Bigfoot: Eh… yeah, it kinda was, really. Europe absolutely benefited from the slave trade in the Americas. Hell, that was the Confederacy’s gamble from the start, that Europe would want cheap cotton enough that they’d support the Confederacy, or at least not actively act against the South.
And there was a pretty decent reason to think it would work. Britain especially had the sentiment of, “We have abolished slavery anywhere in the Empire, but if we benefit from trade with other slave states, well… not much we can do about that, is there?”
On top of that, they happily took advantage of social constructs that were slavery in all but name, like the caste system of India, until the 20th century.
satby
@Melancholy Jaques: oh, honey; where did a number of ex-commenters decamp to?
artem1s
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile and have decided that I have no problem with anyone who calls a GOPer staffer and lies to them about pretty much anything. So IMO I think everyone should feel free to go full Tea Party pig ignorant and scream at those staffers and tell them that you voted for the Big Beautiful Bill Orangemandius promised and Our Orange Savior wants the government to keep it’s hands off my Medicaid. And also that you’re Xhitting and Faceplanting all your MAGAt friends to primary them in the midterms if one penny gets cut from my “XYZ favorite agency/program”.
schrodingers_cat
@chemiclord: Britain’s Empire was maintained through violence and the doctrine of divide and rule. The divisions they exploited were the religious divisions between the elite. The Muslim ruling elite and the emerging elites (they were Hindu, Muslim, Parsi and Sikh) who learned English and actually did the day to day work of running the Empire.
The Muslim League was the party of the Muslim elite and the Congress of the secular elite.
satby
@schrodingers_cat: it rhymes with the nym of the guy Baud mentioned who frequently was told to dial back on the eliminationist comments.
Lyrebird
We in my house aim to do the same.
I am thankful for your example of keeping on.
@satby: Yuck! But thank you for the alert! (and to everyone else)
I thought the “crushed” advocator was a wannabe Doug J trolling at first, but nah, I guess they mean it.
Sad and concerning imnsho. I wish they and anyone who is talking about what leaders we might deserve would at least watch Eyes On The Prize – pretty affordable to stream various places. The famous bus boycotts for instance, they worked because of a GROUP effort, with lots of older, pearl-wearing church ladies, many Black and some White (I don’t know caps standards), probably with very different views on lots of things… and they changed the world
ETA: by pearl-wearing I do not mean they were all upper middle class, but their Sunday go to meeting clothes probably ran more to “establishment” than “radical”
schrodingers_cat
@satby: Their old BJ nym?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
No worries and no judgement. I don’t pay attention to every vile thing Trump does, but I’m glad there are stalwart people who do.
Geminid
@Baud: Also from 2015 to 2016, that St. Petersburg troll farm set up an entire network in service of tearing down American Liberalism. It’s more or less self-sustaining now, and it has a really wide reach.
They didnt have to do this from scratch; there was plenty of root-stock to graft onto.
satby
@schrodingers_cat: yeah
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: That first bit, about not searching for hate: same here.
catclub
All of them, Katie.
satby
@Geminid: I really think it’s so under the radar that most people forget how much of our discourse online and with our modern day Know-Nothings IRL is still generated and nurtured through those sources, both here and in Europe.
Baud
@Geminid:
I can and have criticized any group of people, including the ones I belong to. No one is perfect.
But people are easily manipulated into fixating on the Others who they are told are the true evil that stands in the way of all their dreams and successes.
Easier than improving one’s self, I guess.
Professor Bigfoot
@chemiclord: As I said above, Europeans did not live with the day-to-day reality of living in a slave state. There’s no question that they profited from it, but they can console themselves that they, personally, did not have the whip hand.
When a large part of the “well organized militia” consists of the “runaway slave patrol…”
chemiclord
@Geminid: That’s been Russia’s MO for a while. They don’t create discord in target countries, they exploit cracks that already exist.
They’re like right wing media in that sense. Fox News didn’t “create” MAGA; those people have always existed and have always been that way. Fox News weaponized them in a way that no one else was able to do before.
satby
@Baud: Easier than looking at oneself honestly, much less considering improvement.
tam1MI
@satby: In all fairness, that dude is an outlier there and gets plenty of side-eye from other posters.
chemiclord
@Professor Bigfoot: Yeah, I noticed others had brought that up, but by the time I got back to my post, the edit function had already expired.
Professor Bigfoot
@chemiclord: THIS.
Further— they have studied the USA since why were the NKVD; and Vladimir Vladimirovich is former Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti.
They would know EXACTLY what levers to push; the internet and social media gave them the means to push them.
satby
@chemiclord: and it gives people who otherwise would be neutral or apathetic a cause that they can attach themselves to.
WaterGirl
On mistermix’s new site.
@Josie:
satby
@tam1MI: yeah. And I salute you for holding your own there.
Geminid
@chemiclord: The Russians really upped their disinformation and disruotion game in the years leading up to the 2016 Presidential election. I expect there was a similar effort on the Republican side that undermined Trump’s competition.
schrodingers_cat
@tam1MI: I would say that they fit right in with commenters and frontpagers who want to purge Biden supporters from the Democratic party
schrodingers_cat
@satby: That always gets howls of protest from some on this blog as well.
satby
@MagdaInBlack: wasn’t searching, but sometimes it just finds you and smacks you in the face.
And though that seems cherry picked, similar sentiments are found all over BS now, though maybe in less graphic terms. Eyes so NOT focused on the prize they might as well be blind.
schrodingers_cat
@MagdaInBlack: Being aware can mean the difference between life and death.
MagdaInBlack
@schrodingers_cat: I said nothing about lack of awareness. What commentors on other blogs say about this blog or us is irrelevant to me. I don’t go looking for things that will offend me. There’s plenty enough going on in real life.
Professor Bigfoot
@Geminid: Which fits neatly with the idea that Trump has been a Russian asset since he turned to them for money in the ‘90s(?).
When William of Ockham is saying, “yeah, smells like conspiracy to me, too,” well…
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat:
And we know just which Democratic demographic supported Joe the most and the hardest, don’t we?
I believe sincerely that it’s all of a piece, and the fact that it’s almost all white dudes behind it is not a coincidence.
schrodingers_cat
@MagdaInBlack: I am talking about myself, why I went and looked. I want to know who is saying what. You do you. I am not telling you what to do or not do.
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Its not just the dudes who are advocating the purge or in their words a reckoning. I speak specifically of the site in question.
Geminid
@Professor Bigfoot: Even if the Russians had not already cultivated Trump, they would have recognized him as the chaos agent he was. But yeah, they’d had their hooks in him for a while.
Harrison Wesley
Since it’s an open thread, I’d like to ask who’s going to June 14th events. I haven’t checked where the one in Sarasota is being held, but am looking forward to joining LOML there (certainly the most unusual date we’ve ever planned). Made me realize what an old fart I am – last protest I went to was against the Iraq War, back when I lived in Philly.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
I think people like that are incredibly callous. What about the innocents who will suffer?
I’d be real curious to know what the international left’s position on taking in American refugees in this hypothetical collapse
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@schrodingers_cat:
Who here is saying this?
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: Yep but they will also insist that they don’t see race like the Stephen Colbert character of the Colbert Show.
schrodingers_cat
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Not BJ. Read the other comments for the site in question.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Civic leadership separate from political leadership is important.
It absolutely is.
Money seems to be the overwhelming factor in a lot of this and I don’t mean the cost of whatever is being legislated. We now have a not insignificant segment of our population with MONEY. And GREED. Because for some it’s not how much you have it’s how much more you can get for nothing. And that is very harmful to the majority of us who cannot in any way be considered wealthy. Sure we may be OK but WEALTHY? Not so much. Money has always been an extremely important thing to a segment of the population. And I’m not talking money, I’m talking MONEY, significant amounts of money. Forbes publishes (do they still do this?) the Forbes 400 or whatever the number is, of the wealthiest among us, because to some, monetary wealth is the end all be all of humanity. And it ain’t.
tam1MI
Western Europe, yes, but much of Eastern Europe lived under the heel of the slave-based Ottoman Empire until the early 20th century.
schrodingers_cat
@tam1MI: The slavery followed by Turkic states was very different than the southern variety.
Harrison Wesley
@schrodingers_cat: Yes. The story of Pushkin’s great-grandfather is an interesting example of cultural differences.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think the argument is “the US causes so much suffering now that it’ll be a net gain”.
schrodingers_cat
@Harrison Wesley: In India, there was a Slave dynasty. I think they were called Mamluks. The first Muslim Sultan of Delhi was a Mamluk or a non-Arab slave.
Matt McIrvin
@Harrison Wesley: some of us may not want to be too specific in a public forum.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Heh they have been saying this for over 100 years.
Harrison Wesley
@Matt McIrvin: Understood. I guess I didn’t consider the possibility that I might win a free trip to El Salvador.
Harrison Wesley
@schrodingers_cat: Mamluks in Egypt were pretty hard, too.
They beat both the Crusaders and the Mongols.
schrodingers_cat
@Harrison Wesley: Then are the Siddhis, who originally came to western India from Ethiopia. My great grandfather worked for the Siddhis of Janjira as a scribe/accountant.
India was a melting pot before the US even existed.
Harrison Wesley
@schrodingers_cat: Long, long before!
TB Hill
@Matt McIrvin: Exactly correct. No US cotton raised by enslaved Americans = no industrial revolution in Britain. No European imperialism = no development of industry anywhere.
ALL built on slavery and genocide.
tobie
@Harrison Wesley: I travel to the Sarasota area quite a lot to see my mother. I will be there all next week and may be back around June 14, depending on my mother’s health. I’ll try to post here if I’m in town to discuss where the protests will be. I was there for the Hands Off protest on April 5, and there were actually two demonstrations…one in downtown Sarasota and one on Univ in front of the UTC Mall. It was so inspiring to see that
ETA: No Kings Demo on June 14 will again be at the UTC Mall and JD Hamel Park.
Gvg
@JiveTurkin: Susan Collins furrowed brow should mainly be a joke for her state, we need to be naming ALL the furrowed brows, state by state, all the gleeful cut the budget voters who act differently in front of their voters who are hurt, ALL the different bad actors. Make people aware of their own Senators and Representatives specific transgressions so they can pay. The people usually like their own officials while calling all the others corrupt etc. We need to change that and not waste energy targeting a few already unpopular national figures that most people can’t vote against.
Gvg
@Professor Bigfoot: Ireland.
Also what I have read about the convoluted Aristocracy, landowners, serfs, town dwellers versus countryside, guilds and so on in Europe is pretty unpleasant. Russia pretty much was slavery. Germany was a mess. Poland was a different mess. France had a revolution for good reasons and they were a bit better off than many. It varied a lot by time and place, not at all uniformly, but feudalism was where it started and it was not really gone in a lot of places.
cain
@RevRick:
Encourage the Dems to hold one. Someone must be ready to run against a GOP senator. They might as well start now and start holding regular town halls.
Unfortunately, my read is that the most active political people are folks who are retired or near retired and so the rest don’t have as much time or energy. The reason I say that is that it is a lot of work to organize and get people together to set up these things. There needs to be a level of aggressiveness that needs to happen and it needs to come form Gen Zs and Gen Alpha.
cain
@Matt McIrvin:
Their problem is that they also want to go back to traditional values eg white men in charge and women back to raising kids. But nobody can afford raising kids, home ownership, or anything else. You cut people’s healthcare and it starts looking hard.
Never mind that states that have passed anti-abortion laws, now your pregnancy is a crapshoot where you’re life can be thrown away and/or can take on debt because the fetus must be saved at all costs, your bank account be damned.
dnfree
@Professor Bigfoot: In our previous town, we had two men who portrayed Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, because one of the 1858 debates happened there. We also had a man who portrayed Frederick Douglass. The third man also participated in local current discussions on race, and I remember him saying that the blacks and Italians lived together on the east side of town and the whites lived on the west side, and then “All of a sudden, the Italians were white!”
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat: Who wants to purge Biden supporters from the Democratic Party? And why?
Interesting Name Goes Here
@dnfree: David Hogg, for starters.
Citizen Alan
@satby: Fucking cosplay Marxists. There’s a writer I’ve followed for years by a trans female Doctor Who fan whose been doing literary criticism of the show from the first episode in 1963 to the present day. She’s a proud and out communist, and I think the mere fact that DW is now on Disney (“the Hegemon of Pop Culture”) has ruined it for her. The last two seasons have been the most aggressively “woke” in the show’s history, with a complete rejection of heteronormativity and constant allegories about the evils of capitalism. And she absolutely hates it because it’s not anti-capitalist enough!
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: I was trying to think which of the Marxist trans woman Doctor Who fans I follow this was, then realized it wasn’t any of them, it was yet another one..
(Most of them like the Ncuti Gatwa era, on balance)
schrodingers_cat
@dnfree: Read the thread. Some of the answers you seek are in the comments.