My son is trans. Please vote for Joe Biden so he can have the protections he needs and I don’t have to stay up at night worrying about him.
I am very good friends with a trans women who I worked with for a number of years. She is seriously considering leaving the US because of this bullshit. So yes, please vote for Biden.
Also, I hope you son is doing well! It’s a hell of a process.
My best friend is trans and he’s considering doing the same. It’s so bullshit that he has to leave an entire life behind because the conservatwats are so hateful.
It’s slightly comforting to think that after they’ve forced every group out of the country with their hatred and vitriol, they’ll eventually start eating themselves.
But not before they had their feast on everyone who cant/wont leave
Most people are unable to flee the U.S. Most countries will not simply accept someone without meeting specific criteria.
I wouldn’t be shocked, though, if at least one or two countries would accept trans asylum seekers.
I just hope it’d be more like trans krakoa and less like trans genosha
I want to leave the US but I honestly don’t know how. I have no idea if I have any skills that’d let me get hired by a non-us company, which is kinda what’s necessary to immigrate to another country, right?
Level of strictness and skill depends on the country. Start researching so you know what’s needed.
there’s also the idea that you go to a college, possibly a community college, and then transfer to an out of country college for the degree, which I have heard is a great way to be able to live in a country, acclimate, and work from there
You can leave the US, open entrepreneurship in the other country, and have a remote contract between this legal entity and a US company.
Friendly reminder that everyone who believes in accelerationist BS is privileged af.
Looking at you, Hexbear… and Lemmy.ml people who deleted my comments yesterday calling out Hexbear as tankies
Sadly, the behavior isn’t limited to certain instances though
“accelerationist”? Pardon my ignorance, but what’s that?
The idea that we cannot have real change without some for of revolution, so we should make things go to their extreme, and cause some kind of cultural revolution.
I see. I understand that as a path, but that seems like the “option of last resort” to me, and these guys want to make it the proposed one?
Fake communists. Hexbears. It’s just Anarchy, but the “fuck everything” type of anarchy.
I understand the frustration and desire to burn everything down, but I just think that’s lazy and won’t end up working at all.
Those are just nihilist. Actual anarchist generally aren’t the fuck shit up kind. Those are generally angsty young teens with very little understanding.
You are however 100% right about lemmy.ml. hexbear and Lemmygrad. They are all Marxist leninist. Which was an ill-conceived transitory authoritarian style anti communist government that was supposed to facilitate the build up to and transition to communism. But not communist itself. Which has failed everywhere it’s ever been tried. Much like capitalism if you go by it’s stated goals and ideals.
They love to blather on and on and on about communism and how great and wonderful it would be. And it would be. But everything they do is actually in opposition to it so they are very much fake/ performatory communists.
To be politely pedantic, while I agree generally, in the defense of nihilists, not all of them want to actively burn it down. They just don’t care and nothing matters. It’s the unique combination of anger and anti-establishment that makes the type of person we are talking about. And if they care enough to burn it down, I’d argue they can’t be a nihilist by definition.
I hate that “Marxism-Leninism” refers to the brand of communism and socialism that Stalin practiced. It should be called “Stalinism”. From the little I know about Marx and Lenin is that Marx had some good ideas and while Lenin had some bad policies, he also had a genuine interest in trying to do what was best for Russia. Meanwhile Stalin let millions starve.
Also Marxist-Leninism is doomed to fail imo. I believe that in order for socialism to truly succeed, you must ensure that the world’s leading countries practice socialism; or at least ensure that your country is capable of fulfilling every step in the supply chain for any given good for now and the future, either by itself or via allies. Attempting to do it on your own like Marxist-Leninism suggests, is a road to failure because capitalism will attempt to starve you (and likely succeed at doing so).
Capitalism is inherently opposed to socialism because the true end game of capitalism is for an individual, or group of individuals, to own everything. However, they can’t own everything if a country’s culture is opposed to that form of selfishness. Additionally, the capitalist’s peasants might get funny ideas if they see a country based on mutual goodwill succeeding. Stalin played right into the hands of capitalists. He deserves to have the inherently flawed and doomed-to-fail ideology named after him.
Fuck, I barely got any sleep last night and I can’t tell if I’m being coherent or not. Additionally, now I have a conspiracy theory that this was all intentional. Tying a form of socialism that was oppressive and doomed to fail to Marx and Lenin was an intentional move by capitalists to conflate Stalin’s garbage with a legitimate desire and attempt to create a better world. By doing so, you create the belief that even Lenin and Marx supported oppression and that oppression is therefore inherently a part of socialism and communism. As such, by calling themselves Marxist-Leninists, they are falling into a trap created by capitalists to defame such ideologies like communism and socialism.
Also I wanted to make a comment about how capitalism is like economic heroin or something: extremely enticing and addictive; but I’ve got no clue where to put it.
No, it’s people who think accelerating the country into a hyper capitalist fascist hellhole will lead to the accelerated collapse of the capitalist system. Then revolution will bring the promised land to them. Of course they don’t realize that collapse isn’t necessarily guaranteed.
Someone who thinks we should have the worst right now and get it over with.
Hey not everyone from ml is a dipshit. Some of us just stumbled into ml because it was a stable and popular instance when we joined.
Hexbear on the other hand? I don’t think you would just accidentally join that place, at least not without getting banned the first time you say something against their pro fascist hive mind.
I just had another comment on ml deleted today for saying some people on ml are bootlickers. Becoming less and less of a fan lately
I’ve been a trans woman for 10 years and an immigrant for much longer. This is one of the worst existential threats I’ve faced. I have had to sit down and discuss serious contingency plans with my partner if he wins because there is no chance I’m sticking around.
I just want to exist dammit. I’m tired of being persecuted for simply existing.
People don’t realize (and some people just outright refuse to admit) that we are in the middle of a genocide of trans people. Trump will make that so much worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_genocide#United_States
I wish your son, my daughter’s best friend who is trans, and all the other trans people in this country the best life. That won’t happen if Trump gets in.
But they are both the same
- some asshole
I have few good things to say about the man, but I appreciate that Trump is using his campaign to highlight this administrations accomplishments.
I just had a disagreement with someone on Lemmy a couple days ago who said Biden did nothing for the LGBTQ+ community. Maybe we just need more Trump headlines to educate people? Y’know, since they don’t read headlines about Biden
Biden did a lot of good shit. People saying he’s the same or even worse than Trump have completely lost the plot or are just RuZZian bots / useful idiots parroting RuZZian propaganda.
He certainly has passed a lot of pork and convinced low information voters that it’s something to celebrate, yeah.
Low information voters
Oh, the irony
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Americans and their stupid word salads…
I can translate you you need: the legislation that he passed has nice names but in reality each bill is filled with spending for corporations and special interests (colloquially known as ‘pork barrel spending’).
For example his climate change bill has subsidies and payouts for the coal industry, his CHIPs Act had no oversight or specification about how the money should be spent etc. Biden has approved more oil and drilling contracts than even Trump.
Many Democratic voters get their information from big corporate media outlets, who have a vested interest in protecting corporate interests themselves. These voters end up recieving very little factual information to base their decisions on, and instead end up thinking Biden has “Done a lot of good” because they were given a vague feeling that he has by the corporate media.
You are clearly not well informed. Are you not American?
Presidents don’t make legislation. They don’t introduce bills and except in unusual circumstances are expected to sign them. They can’t modify them.
Secondly, your claims that there is a bill that subsidizes the coal industry is without a source. Please provide a reference to this bill as “climate change bill” is to vague for me to know which you mean.
Thirdly, your claim that the CHIPs Act has no oversight is incorrect. Here’s a helpful quote from a helpful FAQ provided by the Congressional Research Service:
Congress may wish to exercise its oversight authority with respect to implementation of the programs and policies in the act and their effectiveness in addressing U.S. economic and national security concerns. Among other potential oversight issues: the allocation of incentive funding among various types of chip manufacturing (e.g., logic chips and memory chips, mature chips and leading-edge chips); the adequacy of funding to meet the act’s objectives; and the effectiveness of guardrails established in the act to prevent the use of incentive funding from enabling further investments in countries of concern or from being used for stock buybacks or dividends.
My suggestion, for future reference, is that if you are going to make claims you source them. They will be much more forceful and factual and you won’t sound like you have vague feelings about something.
The president does have the ability to block legislation, it’s why you often hear it referred to the president signing various items into law.
My suggestion, for future reference, is that if you are going to make claims you source them. They will be much more forceful and factual and you won’t sound like you have vague feelings about something.
That has very little to do with my statement. I’m very much aware of Biden’s shortcomings, I’m just not as delusional to think that Trump would be the better, let alone a good option here. And if we look at it historically he’s still, for what it’s worth, one of the better US presidents too.
The climate topic is just a mess anyway, because ultimately neither politicians, CEO’s, nor voters actually want actual climate action being taken, because of how it would affect them. It’s simply too late at this point to have sufficient climate action without major repercussions, so people rather live out their remaining comfy life and blend out what it means for younger people (who are, small minority aside, just as deluded on that topic) and future generations.
Lemmy is infested with right wing trolls pretending to be leftists.
They’re using the classic Republican move of encouraging abstaining from voting by highlighting Biden’s poor decisions. Trump’s supporters will vote him in if enough abstain. Inaction is action.
It’s like half of the general population supports him, and the other half supports Biden. Who would have thought different opinions on the topic would arise in a public forum.
It’s like half of the general population supports him, and the other half supports Biden.
Less than a quarter support Trump.
The bigger problem is that almost thalf of the population doesn’t vote at all.
How can the polls show trump ahead and only a quarter support Trump? Are you saying most democrats don’t vote and only Republicans do?
Yes, also polls call landlines. What demographic of people have landlines and will sit in the phone answering questions.
Okay fine. I’ll accept that. How do you know that he has 25% of the vote? Is there some other method other than polls to determine support? Genuinely curious what your logic behind the numbers are and where 25% comes from. I just feel like both sides are so entrenched in their opinions on their party that they can’t possibly think there are people who would support the other.
I think this is something I’ve come to realize about every candidate, even trump, when we get to the polls.Through 4 years - unless something specific stands out(like how Bush got to ride 9-11 sympathy 3 years later for reelection) most of their accomplishments and failures (especially the ones in the first 2 years) are hard to remember and require a primer before November.
“What did turnip do that was so bad in his first 2 years? Shit can’t remember, but he fucked up covid real bad and that’s enough to vote biden”
So yes its nice that he is refreshing us all on what actually had been accomplished to ensure we are all informed voting. Even if he is trying to be an ass about it.
Yes it’s kind of mind-boggling. People pushed for decades and decades and decades for marriage equality. The Obama administration had no intention of tackling it at all. Until Joe Biden spoke. He’s literally one of the reasons we already have marriage equality. For however long we might keep it. Not to mention the nlrb union busting decision. Or the recent FTC abolishment of non-compete contracts for most people. There is no question that Biden is an outdated crusty old dumbass. Who may be far less Progressive or left-leaning than most of us would like. But he’s also ironically one of the most positively consequential presidents of the last 50 to 70 years since FDR.
The reason most people have no idea about all this. Is because they were all victories against the ownership / capital class. The ones who own all the major media. They may make a low-key passing mention of these victories. Then never bring it up again ever. But they will harp for days months and years about how some policy hurts businesses or “wealthy” americans. Manufacturing consent for their owners. It’s all by design. No one should get their information from publicly traded companies.
It doesn’t matter. Cognitive dissonance is a lifestyle for these people. Which is why they’re the perfect tools for fascists
You need to reelect Trump in order to stop electing people like him in the future
Nah, I think Republicans are so deranged that they would be convinced any shortcomings are some deep state, woke, FBI, Democrat sabotage.
my enemies are my enemies because they are dumb
Stop that narrative. It will lead you nowhere
I mean, I speak from experience. I personally know a lot of Republicans (all boomers) and they would genuinely believe that. At every opportunity they are talking about the deep state, some woke shit and how corrupt the FBI is, and how there’s this massive conspiracy to assassinate trump. They all have a nearly religious view of him saying that if he dies, he’d be a “martyr” for Republicans, so that the “silent majority” will finally take a stand.
When it comes to Trump it’s literally only naive, stupid or evil that are possible explanations. All are bad.
…because there won’t be elections after him
Why would you need one if you already have the genius as a present?
Edit: obviously /s, should’ve set it earlier
It’s not obvious when you are encouraging people to vote for trump like a huge moron.
Yep, my bad
No, I just need to post a shit ton of article about him on Lemmy lol
You need to keep posting it before every election, effectively elevating the other candidate.
lmao what accomplishments? the rule that transphobic states are going to ignore anyway? 🙄
If Joe Biden hasn’t done anything, then why does Trump have so many things to revoke and reverse?
Feel like almost every day there’s a headline about something new that Trump promised to reverse (for the worse).
Not saying Biden has done nothing, but if you haven’t noticed yet, the GOP standard play is to take the most lukewarm democrat positions, pretend it’s the end of western civilization, and then promise things will be fixed once he’s elected.
Ie, CRT, Wokeness, DEI, whatever “monster of the week” they pick as an enemy. They always swap it around.
whatever “monster of the week” they pick as an enemy
Right wing outrage farmers have been doing exactly that for my enture life.
D&D was the biggest evil ever, back in my teenage years.
And before that it was the Satanic Panic.
There’s always something they want us to be scared of.
For a while gay marriage was going to be the end of civilization!
Because getting people riled up in culture wars gets their mind off of real issues. It’s the ol street magician trick of getting people to look at their right hand while the left hand is stealing your watch.
CRT
The liberals think they can push cathode ray tubes on the rest of us?? I’m fine with them using sinful processing components in their own homes, but this would be violating my rights as an american!
Well said, thank you.
To be fair, nothing Trump says reflects reality.
Well there’s that minor detail . . .
If Joe Biden hasn’t done anything, then why does Trump have so many things to revoke and reverse?
A lot of it is posturing.
Trump claims that Joe Biden made the military Woke and bimbofied all the generals. All the universities teach are the Perverted Arts. And the TikToks are turning your kids Chinese.
But when he’s President, he promises to fix all of that on Day One.
This week they were even against energy efficient applicances.
They’re against anything that the Democrats want. If the Democrats decided to fix the pothole out front, Republicans would rally in favor of potholes’ right to damage your car.
Biden hasn’t done well addressing the core issues driving the voters he needs–ie young voters and POC voters.
Trump is doing his best to mobilize his supporters, as turnout is going to determine who wins in November. I’m not sure this was a wise move for him as it could energize his opposition as well. We shall see.
For such an incredibly lazy person, he sure is planning to do a lot “on day one.”
This is starting to have “lock her up” vibes.
Yes but with the architects of project 2025, i feel like this one will actually happen.
Oh this one has a good chance of happening. I’m just talking about in general. He promises to do every single thing on day one.
Ah yes, very true, well the one promise he made, to be a dictator for a day, I think he will do that one day one.
“I’ll only be a dictator on day one.”
Here we go again and again on this repeat episode of Hold Your Nose And Vote For Joe Where as Joe is enacting and upholding protections for the LGBTQ community, Trump is only too happy to repeal that shit so fast. Not only that, but big boi Trump also has alluded to glassing Iran, which is way further than Biden has escalated towards. Biden is sadly, our current cold comfort here. We’re stuck between a rock and a slightly more malleable corrupt WW3 causing dipshit rock
The more people vote for the left, the further left their position will become. It’s a well established component of political theory called the Overton window.
It works better with more parties.
You can only get more parties by ditching first past the post voting, and pushing for something better like ranked choice voting.
And don’t you know that voting third party for president solves that problem? /s
Ranked choice would actually let people pick both an independent as first choice together with the safe choice as second (and the bad choice dead last)
I agree. Voting third party for president does not solve this problem.
Yeah only it doesn’t at all stop saying this in jrst Republicans are stupid
I can’t make any sense of what you just typed out.
Yes, but if that’s not possible…
Thank you for the reference! Learnt something new. As far as I’ve read, the Overton window is not just that, but describes a general window of acceptable ideas or propositions. Of course, influenced by possible (public) majorities.
It does describe a window, yes.
But the implication is that if you think of the political spectrum between left and right, then the largest 2 parties will always align themselves immediately to the left and the right of the median - the centre point of contemporary politics.
Move that point (through voting) and you move the policies.
This sounds like a fantasy.
I’ve voted Democrat my whole life, yet the dems keep moving to the right, and the overton window keeps moving to the right along with them.
Sure mate. You understand that your one vote doesn’t mean much right ?
Yes of course, but that’s not really relevant to the broader point here.
Democrats have won more elections than Republicans, yet they have moved to the right. So what will it take to move them left?
The person I replied to suggested that voting can move the Dems left, but I disagree. At a national level, the Dems have been captured by corporate money.
They understand the best way to get votes is through advertising dollars, and the best way to get dollars is corporate fundraising. Other countries call this corruption, but here we call it free speech.
Democrats have won more elections than Republicans, yet they have moved to the right. So what will it take to move them left?
They haven’t won enough. If people like Bernie are still losing primaries because “commies won’t win general elections” and Dems still have to go for the “middle-of-the-road” candidate while Republicans can prop up the literal antichrist, that means they still haven’t won enough to cause a shift.
Once they get enough wins (possibly in a row) that Republicans are the ones forced to go for a “middle-of-the-road” candidate, that’s when Dems will actually have to act as a left wing party to get votes.
EDIT: also, unless I miscounted, Dems actually have less wins than Republicans post-FDR.
The problem is that there isn’t a left to vote for, you either vote for right or far-right. That’s why the ratchet effect exists, both parties are right wing, just separated in how extreme they are, with the Reps being overt fascists.
Actual leftist change is not going to come from voting for liberals. Absolutely vote for Biden if you wish, this isn’t an argument against voting for him. However, if you think voting for a right winger will shift the overton window to the left, you don’t understand the nuances of the overton window.
Actual leftist change comes from direct action and organizing. Strikes, mutual aid, canvassing, raising class awareness, spreading leftist theory, protesting, actual outside pressure is what changes the overton window.
The problem is that there isn’t a left to vote for
In the current American political spectrum, there isn’t really anything that most other countries would recognize as “left”.
But given the current binary reality, whatever the Democrats are is viewed as left of the GOP rightwingnuts.
Please reread my comment. The Democrats are less right wing than the Republicans, yes, but voting for them signals more liberalism, not more leftism.
If there’s a spectrum between left and right, then there’s a point on that spectrum in the center of how the populace feels. If you have two major parties they will naturally arrange themselves immediately to the left and the right of that point. They have to in order to gather up as many undecideds as possible - they will naturally win everyone further left or further right who is not an idiot.
Voting moves this center point along the spectrum. The ratchet effect pulls to the right only because that’s the trajectory over the last few decades. If the trajectory was to the left in recent decades the inverse would be true.
Direct action and organising might also move the center point along the spectrum, but not as much as voting, and only if voting reflects the results of direct action.
None of that is actual analysis, it’s all vibes-based. The parties will serve those that fund them.
Actually it’s well established and well understood political science, ironically you’re just rejecting it as “vibes-based” because you don’t like the vibe.
Yes political donations are a problem, but the inescapable fact is, the more people that vote for the dems, the more they will move to the left.
Sadly, your position is precisely that which conservative proponents would have you adopt. Well done.
No, the Dems will never become Socialist, as they would lose funding and thus power. It takes a lot to run a party, after all.
Leftist change has always happened thanks to outside pressure.
I’m not telling you not to vote, I’m telling you voting will never be enough.
Well… it’s true that the dems “will never become socialist” due to voting but it’s also true that America will never become socialist due to activism.
Socialism to any meaningful extent is not achievable in the foreseeable.
Voting is the most efficacious method by which to effect meaningful change.
The more people vote for the left,
LOL!
What left?
Where is this “left” that you assume exists within the US’s formal political establishment?
You seem to have missed my point entirely.
The left I’m referring to is obviously the democrats. They may not seem very “left”, but they are left compared to the GOP.
My point is, the more people vote for them, the further left the entire spectrum will shift.
You seem to have missed my point entirely.
No liberal - I haven’t. Your attempt to pretend that there’s anything that can be called “left” in the US political establishment is just that… a pretension. Trump is “left” of Hitler - you want to pretend that Trump is (somehow) “left” now, too?
If you are going to talk about the Dems, do so without attempts at misleading people over what the Dems really are - the “good cop” in the little anti-democratic gaslighting game that US formal politics has always been. There is nothing “left” about them and never has been.
You’ve either misunderstood me, are willfully ignorant, or not very bright.
The term left is by it’s very nature, relative. Any person with two hands will have a left-most and a right-most hand. We omit “most” from left-most because it’s superfluous. Just because a person is standing to your right, does not mean that one of their two hands is not their left-most hand. If that person moves to your left, the inverse is also true.
If the “center” of the political spectrum is too far to the right for your liking, then you can drag it back closer to what you would like by voting for the left-most major party.
If you’re driving a car and it’s drifting into the ditch on the right side of the road you haul on the left side of the steering wheel. Imagine giving up saying “well I can turn left or right but that seems pointless because I really want to be over there. Instead I’ll just pout and roll into the ditch.”
You’ve either misunderstood me, are willfully ignorant, or not very bright.
Try “all of the above”.
I forgot “or a bot” but maybe that’s included in wilfully ignorant.
For fuck sake that was literally the point of their comment you fool. At least look up what the Overton Window is before coming in this hot because you look like an idiot.
Oh look… another liberal has shown up to loudly display their political incompetence and expecting to be rewarded for it.
Yawn.
I’m not a liberal. Learn what words mean. You’re confidently arguing about things you are clearly ignorant of
I’m not a liberal.
Good thing you told me - otherwise I might have been fooled by your liberal blathering, eh?
Read real careful-like, (supposed) “non-liberal” - you cannot - I repeat cannot - move the Overton window left by voting for right-wingers.
That shouldn’t be too hard for a “non-liberal” to understand, should it?
you cannot - I repeat cannot - move the Overton window left by voting for right-wingers.
Yes you can. You can lower the temperature of something by pouring over it something hot, but less hot than what you’re trying to cool down.
In the same way, voting for a right-winger over a far right-winger will shift the Overton window to the left. Because left and right are relative terms, like the other guy was trying to say.
You’re brain has been so broken by the bullshit “liberal/conservative” dichotomy fed to you by cable news that you don’t even know what words mean.
Liberals are center right conservatives. Calling a progressive a liberal is an insult.
I seriously implore you to try to inform yourself as to what these words mean. Calling someone who is borderline socialist a “liberal” immediately betrays your ignorance about politics.
If you instead compare then on a morality scale, right now we have slightly evil vs. very evil. But there is no good.
But there is no good.
Duh. That’s why the term “left” does not apply to anything in establishment politics - and any attempts to pretend that it does is pure propaganda.
SAY THE LINE BART
In the primaries
Trump is only too happy to repeal that shit so fast. Not only that, but big boi Trump also has alluded to glassing Iran
I’m convinced that he really doesn’t care one way or another. He only cares about telling his base whatever he thinks will get them worked up.
He wants power, and will tell people whatever he thinks will cause them to give it to them.
Tell me again how he’s just as bad as Biden
About 15,000 children could, but theyre dead because of American weapons.
Shut the actual fuck up.
Yeah who cares about genocide??? They’re mostly not white people so it doesn’t really matter … /s
And because of that we should throw our trans brothers and sisters under the bus?
How do we know Trump wouldn’t have handled that just like Biden or worse?
Oh it’s definitely worse. If it was Trump, Ukraine would be lost by now, and the Gaza war would be over (because there would be no survival left, population: 0).
no survival left, population: 0
The population of Gaza wouldn’t be 0, it would be quite populated with zionists trying to build tourist destinations upon the burning rubble and bodies in mass graves. Because aside from genocide, that’s the real goal here.
So those 15,000 children PLUS all the LGBTQ people in America is just as bad as just the 15,000 children?
And you think that would be different under Trump?
Trump and Bibi are besties. There wouldn’t even be the token resistance Biden puts up; he’d hand Israel enough weapons to turn Gaza into a glass parking lot, and probably would have done the same to Columbia by now.
The thing about it is, Biden can be pressured to, eventually, take steps towards the right thing. Trump cannot; he already sees everyone but himself and his bootlickers as subhuman anyway.
He even openly mocks his own supporters
What do you think “finish the job” means, coming from the person who did a Muslim ban? Must be armistice and cookies for all, let’s give it a try.
*they’re
🤡
I’m fairly certain no members of Biden’s party have suggested nuking Gaza, so, you know, there’s that.
Lmao
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Can he stay awake long enough to revoke everything he says he’ll do on day 1?
Don’t worry, the bigots who are backing him won’t let him forget.
It will be a cocaine-fueled frenzy.
He’ll just be blindly signing what’s in front of him.
Well it’s not like he can read it…
Next question… you think a sharpie has enough ink?
Yes because he only falls asleep when other people are talking. He LOVES listening to himself
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
This is a quote by Martin Niemöller, a German theologian who spent eight years in concentration camps towards the end of WW2 and who afterwards publicly spoke out a about the dangers of complacency in the face of fascism.
First they helped fund a literal genocide, and I did not speak out—
Because it wasn’t my realtives being killed by US bombs and I was afraid that standing up and doing the right thing would have costs for me personally.
I don’t get it. Well I do. But I’ve yet to have a satisfactory conservative response to the following :
Intersex people exist. That is, at least 1 out of every 1,750 babies are born with both sexual organs. Therefore by their existence we know that there is a blurred line between genders and those people exist there. Even if I go along with them that transgender behavior is a mental illness (it’s not, this is just a thought experiment), what exactly do they propose we do about intersex individuals who are literally neither male nor female?
1 out of 1,750 would put the intersex population in the United States at approximately 194,000 individuals. For reference, that would be about 10% of the population of Nebraska or Idaho. That’s how many people I am discussing and who seem to always be left out of the conversation.
Oh, they include it in the bills that ban trans care: continue forcing “corrective” surgery on intersex people. That kind of surgery on the genitals of children is always exempted from the trans care bans.
That seems so cruel, I don’t get it at all. Sorry you triggered another rant, I’m not shouting at you I’m just shouting, lol.
Using conservative logic, should the babies, made by God, not be left as He made them?
It also seems cruel to mutilate a child born between genders before they have the opportunity to come of age and know who they are. I’ve heard multiple accounts of intersex people, who the doctor removed one of their sexual organs then become suicidal when they reach adulthood because they essentially feel like a castrated man, or the female equivalent.
Just imagine you were born and had your sexual organs removed as a baby, how would you feel? Pause and imagine living life castrated. If I invest 3 seconds of thought into that, I conclude, “Nah, best not risk doing that to someone, if I was born that way I’d certainly prefer a choice. Let’s let them grow up first.”
Does being conservative simply require a lack of imagination about these things? It seems so obvious.
Circumcisioning infants is pretty fucked up in my book too.
Saw myself naked on DMT in a mirror. The nerves remember that shit.
Imagine, first thing you coming to the world and your parents have part of you cut off. We treat infants this way everyday in the U.S.
Yet, zero moral panic from the Right. Because this is about stoking the fires of prejudice. And not saving children or whatever other bullshit the latest demogogue uses to target transpeople.
conservative logic
These two words do not go together. There is your problem.
They just want yet another group to stick their boots into. The reasons don’t matter at all.
Exactly. Being able to blame their problems on ‘other people’ is the basis of their identity.
To them once one of either sex has been chosen then the baby is a boy or a girl and that’s it.
Yeah, that is scary. Chosen by whom? I’d imagine if anyone reading this paused and thought, “If I was that baby, who would I want to make that choice?” I think everyone would pick themselves. Men reading this would wanna pick male and women reading this would wanna pick female.
Anyway it’s fun to think about. But I’m done thinking.
I’m really stoned and ranty. Bed time.
Thanks for the chat!
They don’t actually care about “the children” or people in general and the concept of nuance is non-existent in their worldview.
They literally don’t care how many folks are hurt by these laws. Ethics? They’ve never heard the word before. Its sad, scary and infuriating.
Well do I have exactly the brand new 1h37min queer video essay for you!
TL;DW: The modern concept of gender as separate from sex was not (originally) a progressive move. It was conservatives’ reaction to the medical discoveries of the nebulous nature of biological sex, to justify imposing the gender binary on trans people and especially intersex children.
Conservatives claim to care a lot about protecting trans kids from “radical decisions”, but the places that enact legislation to prevent teenagers from using puberty blockers are the same places that still allow and encourage mutilating surgeries on intersex babies.
It is not an accident. It is ideologically consistent with conservatives’ drive to impose their religious and cultural vision of the binary gender as a completely fixed universal truth, and they’ll use extreme violence to ensure it remains binary, fixed and universal.You’ll never get one, because it’s not a logical position. It’s just hateful.
They just think about intersex as disabled individuals.
Or at the rate they’re going, as subhuman filth to be sent to extermination camps.
Just one more example of why voting for Trump would be a big step backwards for the USA. Even if you think Biden is bad, Trump would be far worse.
And if you don’t like the notion of voting for either “Bad” or “Worse” then you should move because that’s how elections work here.
I moved here from reddit because I feel like every time you try to open your mouth there about how important it is to vote, you get absolutely mobbed by so-called leftists who “just can’t reconcile their values with voting for biden” as if they are helping the world and their brave stance is going to help people.
Seriously, between this issue and the “bear VS men” debate, I just can’t anymore, I can’t deal with people, I have no idea what super-villain has irradiated the population with a density-ray, but people right now seem almost surreally ignorant, like I always knew it was bad, but I’m beginning to finally see after four and a half decades how bad it really is out there. And it’s far, far worse than any of us ever imagined.
I had a terse argument with someone in RL the other day who didn’t know what lava was. Like, the molten rock that comes out of volcanos? They never in their lives questioned what a volcano was, and just assumed all the “red goo” that comes out just has to get cleaned up after it cools, and that the government should try to plug volcanoes. It turned into an argument because he didn’t believe my “mainstream science” explanation.
It’s okay to be dumb out there, dumb is actually good, dumb can be fixed. What’s terrifying me for our future is the doubling-down on ignorance, the weird pride in “choosing your own truths.”
Trump may get elected again and this fact alone should terrify all of us. Not just for what Trump will do in office, but what it means for our population that there are enough people who have chosen an entirely separate set of axioms and truths about the world, and just fukkin discard actual, verifiable facts. Now we have AI exploding into the world and distorting things worse. We’re in a lot of trouble.
You know what terrifies me? Even if I vote for “Bad” it just takes a few thousand people in some other state to completely negate me doing the right thing and we get “Worse.” And then we’re just supposed to accept the results. Because them’s the rules. Oh well…
It’s a stupid system of government and I don’t blame people for checking out. I wish I could just ignore it, too.
My point isn’t that people shouldn’t vote - because clearly Worse is worse than Bad - but that we don’t get to vote for Better. For that we need to protest and agitate and get our skulls cracked in by thugs and possibly killed. Our history proves that nothing improves in America without violence.
This feels like semantics. There is “bad”, and there is an option that is “better”. I don’t know why folks feel like they need to use “bad” and “worse”, other than to build pessimism. The things people are upset about can’t easily fixed by presidents anyway - we need a large base of like minded representatives to do things like housing policy and universal healthcare and education reform and climate change. It’s a lot easier to break things than to improve peoples lives, which is why it’s critical not to elect people intent on breaking things.
I don’t need to build pessimism. I’ve been aware of politics since the late 80s, and voting since 2000. I’m plenty pessimistic already.
You’ve hit the nail on the spot with the pride thing - it’s a weird trend! Maybe as humans evolve some part of brains are turning into “red goo”
Going on YouTube taught me that a huge chunk of Americans don’t just support Trump and people like him, they adore him sand encourage and cheer his awful behavior
He’s got a cult of personality to the tune of about 50 million. He just needs to convince another 20 or so to show up (or 20 of the opposition to sit home) to get the electors he needs for the presidency.
“I will attack these Americans on day one.”
Oh gee thanks asshole. How does anyone think that is okay at all.
god told them it was okay.
I remember that Bible verse:
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these… unless their LGBTQIA+”
If you are against a child taking a puberty suppressing drug they want to take at age 10, but are ok with tearing off the genitals (not circumcision, the whole thing) of a day old baby, you aren’t against transition, you are against children’s autonomy.
They’re also ok with child marriage.
Are you talking about intersex babies?
Yes
Probably circumcision
Y’know, the part where they say “not circumcision” leads me to believe you are wrong
Whoops. Should not use social media when tired, I glossed right over that.
But circumcision is also something Republicans are okay with and should not be.
Lol
Inb4 they reply and say “still probably circumcision”
What the hell makes him think he’ll be president again? If he loses the election he won’t be president. If he wins the election Biden can just refuse to leave office. It’s legal because everything a president does is legal. There is litterally a case before the SC where Trump is making that argument.
Supreme Court is dragging their feet on that decision. Probably not gonna decide til after the election. If Trump wins they’ll decide presidents get total immunity, but if Biden wins they shoot it down.
The big funny would be if they decided that Trump was legal before Biden left office. The lights would go out when they came back on a lot of people would be disappeared.
Biden wouldn’t do that. Granting total immunity would end US democracy, so I’d like to see Biden firing shots from the bow of the rapidly sinking ship. But I doubt it would turn out like that.
Not the craziest take I’ve read since losing harambee
Biden would have to do that, which seems doubtful.
It’s all just so dumb and people being drawn into this are just sad and not very bright. Just a boring recipe.
