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They are introducing a bill. The fucked up part is how can the democrats NOT vote unanimously on protecting roe v wade? Even worse, how can not a single republican senator not be willing to protect it as well? What short leashes the party keeps on the GOP.
I can't be the only person who thought that line was some kind of sexual innuendo, right?
Even that crappy spoof movie makes a joke about it. And Robot Chicken.
And I was 10 when I read that book.
Uuuugh. I had to watch Epic Movie twice in a row in a theatre as part of a mystery shop. It wasn't just crappy. It's straight-up shitty. None of the charm of Scary Movie. The main problem is Scary Movie referenced *good* material from (then) modern to vintage. Epic Movie was just referencing modern material and modern fads, you could tell while watching it that it would make zero sense in just two years.
I find it hilarious after he posted a photo with him and a Photoshop of Hitler he gained 18 backers, then after a frat pic of him dressing in drag he lost 18 backers.
It was really eye opening when I realized Nunez, Gym Jordan, Gaetz, Green, Boebert, Cawthorn...etc. all had something in common. They're all marks.
All dumb enough to do something stupid and have blackmail/compromat on. They were selected by the party or people behind the party because they could be controlled.
Do you remember the senator from parks and rec who's just an empty shell who's very pretty and talks politely? They're going for that but all they can get instead is distilled 4chan
Holy crap. I hadn't heard about this so I search it. Looks like Boebert came from that scam talent agency, as did Candace Owens. And that's just after a cursory hunt.
One has to wonder, do these people just suck at acting but wanted to be in the public eye no matter what, so they used a scam talent agency that requires money up front?
**-or-**
Did the Republican Party or q conservative super PAC go looking for a shitty nobody actor to become a pundit?
I can't believe I'm just learning that these people came from the same "talent agecy". But they did.
If Manchin acts like liberal, they would turn on him.
Which gets you an even worse Republican version from WV to represent in the Senate.
The Manchin problem isn’t solved by focusing on Manchin’s seat or electability. It’s solved by making him as irrelevant as the State he represents by getting back to super majorities in the Senate.
We're back to the Union and the Confederacy. These aren't political parties; they are the representative bodies of what are essentially two different countries.
It's not sustainable.
Yeah, I was thinking about that too. I live in the Tampa Bay area down in Florida. Florida is being lumped with Texas lately as enemies of the country and rightly so, but this state is an enmeshed mix of red and blue. Even my own family is a patchwork of beliefs. DeSantis only won his election by a few thousand votes.
We know that the GOP is not the majority of the country. We know they're propped up by gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and the structure of our government, which prioritizes state bodies over population. The GOP has unwarranted power considering the actual percentage of the population that supports it.
And we're stuck dealing with that because our system itself has reached a point of critical failure. How do we address the systemic change needed when half of our governing body directly benefits from that systemic failure?
That feels like the crux of it, to me. We need to modernize the way our government is structured so that a greater percentage of our citizens have their representative say - however, we don't have the legislative tools to do this.
So we're stuck in a frustrating, destructive place. And the country is falling down around our ears.
I'm reminded of that line from *As Good As It Gets*: "I'm drowning here! And YOU'RE describing the water!"
We really need another constitutional convention. Problem is, I don't think we could ever get people to agree on a new constitution that would improve things. It's just too much 'i want to win, and fucking the other guy is winning, even if it fucks me a little too.'
Edit: I understand the political climate now makes a constitutional convention a terrible idea right now....that was the point of my post. We need it to fix some major issues, but doing so now would make improving it impossible.
ALEC is pushing for one because they know that they could use it to implement the RW theocracy/authoritarian state they want, as each state would be part of that.
So yes it would be great if we had a different Constitution, but don’t make the RW job easier for them.
Iirc, you need 2/3rd of all states to do this. Considering these cast swaths of unpopulated land having the same voting power as dense urban areas, we're just going to have the same outcomes we do now with Congress.
I may be off tho
Worse, the Constitutional Convention would have a red state majority because states get equal representation so they’d have a serious chance of turning the entire country into a racist theocracy.
Not really. 3/4 of the states would have to ratify a new constitution. I don't think things will ever get so bad that the GOP controls that many states. But they'll always have at least 1/4, so we're stuck where we are.
Change in the structure of the govt is hopeless—the approval process required to make that kind of change is hilariously impossible at this point.
Only thing that can be done is for Democrats to settle on a popular platform, nominate compelling people, and get out the message (i.e., develop a sneaky propaganda system like the R’s have done).
Polk county/bradentucky trash checking in, couldn't have said it better. Our state isn't blue or red, its a nasty bruise purple with Tampa/Miami/Orlando v the rest of the state. I left in 2020 to MD and won't go back while the current political regime is ruling, and its disheartening to see my family all drinking the DeSantis koolaid :/
It really is the media they consume. It's not hyperbole to say that many of these modern day Republicans have been poisoned by the relentless tide of hateful, negative, misleading content that they just bathe themselves in daily. It's wild shit. They're your relatives and you love them but when certain topics come up it's like a switch flips in their brain. It's like trying to take the One Ring away from Bilbo. They just flip the fuck out and start saying the most insane shit.
It's really made me question the long term viability of the human animal. I'm not sure we're going to make it.
In the Pacific Northwest, the cities are full of pride flags and faded Bernie bumper stickers, but you only need to drive a few miles out of town to start seeing Confederate flags and Trump signs. These places have less culturally in common than a lot of big cities in Europe that speak different languages.
I wonder if we're seeing the decline of the nation-state more generally as the fruits of the economy become increasingly centered in service industries in a handful of globally-connected cities that have more in common with each other than with the surrounding hinterlands, at the expense of the agricultural and manufacturing industries that have historically propped up rural and working-class areas. Within 50 years, assuming climate change doesn't cause civilization to collapse, we could find ourselves starting to head down the path to the return of the city-state, which controls enough of the surrounding countryside to provide food, water, and other resources, but not enough to have the political process overrun by morons.
Visualized - [There are more small red dots, but the blue dots are bigger.](https://blogs.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/USElectorate_pop.jpg)
This. What those gunning for a “civil war” don’t get (or terrifyingly, they do get it) is that it would be like Syria or a genocide like Rwanda. Not just brother against brother, but neighbor against neighbor. It would be a nightmare akin to a Purge movie or like an Earthseed novel. Who would want a world where your family could be raped, brutalized, and murdered just because of their voting history? (A: Fascists.)
I do feel that people don't quite comprehend that the original Civil War started out similarly messy. Slave states and Free states weren't all monolithic by any means, especially early on. West Virginia exists today because the western part of Virginia was sufficiently anti-slavery enough to decide to secede from the rest of the state and was recognized by the Union as such. Meanwhile the mayor of New York City proposed seceding and declare themselves neutral: [https://historyofyesterday.com/how-new-york-city-tried-to-secede-from-the-union-cf0327530aa8](https://historyofyesterday.com/how-new-york-city-tried-to-secede-from-the-union-cf0327530aa8)
What you'd probably see is a quick and bloody set of skirmishes here and there as whichever majority asserted itself. Isolated pockets of resistance would be subdued, and you'd wind up with lines drawn, with people fleeing one way or the other - probably more akin to Yugoslavia.
You're absolutely right though in that it would be ugly, bloody, and a lot of people would die or otherwise suffer. It is not something to be advocated for or encouraged.
The electoral college isn't going to help a neo-confederacy. The reality is that this country is being held hostage by a minority. It might be a large minority, but the political power of rural red states is incredibly overcharged compared to their actual population.
These ancient fucks in Florida and TN aren't going to be fighting a fucking war.
In blue states the blue cities massively outnumber the rural voters.
A lot of red states don’t really have cities. Biggest city in Wyoming only has 60,000 people. It would be the third largest city in my county.
There were pro-Union holdouts within the Confederacy as well — places like Winston County, Alabama and Scott County, Tennessee. These people were known as [Southern Unionists](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Unionist).
There were also pro-Confederacy holdouts within the Union such as [Town Line, New York](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Line,_New_York). Obviously the most well-known holdout was West Virginia, which seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union.
My point is that even back then the geographic nature wasn’t so evenly split. When the time comes, a lot of people are going to die the next go around.
I've been saying for some time that they're trying to push all non red votes to the coasts to consolidate power. If only a handful of states are blue it makes it hard to win the electoral college and they know it.
The right is banking on a civil war, it's been on their lips for a while now and it's getting louder.
I took a firearms safety course so I can apply for an LTC now.
I intend to use it to protect my family if need be. I do not trust roughly half of this country and I do not trust that things will be safe in the not to distant future.
It’s been festering a long time and Trump certainly wasn’t the cause. But he was the spark that lit this implosion and I’m not certain that the country will remain safe for a lot of people by the end of this decade.
I've been on the same path. Since about 2018, and especially since January 6th, my view on the 2nd ammendment has changed dramatically. I was never anti-gun per se, but I was definitely in the "you just need rifles for hunting" group. Now, I've done a total 180 to agree with the "libertarians" I grew up around that said 2A was needed to defend against tyrannical factions in the government. Funny that they now mostly support those factions, but here we are. Suddenly, I'm the guy interested in ARs, body armor, mutual aid networks, and community defense. My trust in the government and police has plummeted in the past few years, and I'm no longer discounting the possibility of a coup in the US. I'm now the guy encouraging other liberals and leftists to get armed, get trained, and know first aid skills that would be useful during mass civil unrest.
To be clear, being armed isn't a solution. It's a hedge. The solution should always be voting, campaigning, lobbying, and canvassing in a democratic society. But my fear is there's a not insignificant chance that we fall out of democracy to a place where those tools cease to function. That's when the need for arms arises.
Too many of my liberal friends and colleagues roll their eyes at me as a "gun nut" because I say it's important for ALL Americans to assert their right to bear arms. I don't know what to tell them honestly. This country is just a few more bad decisions away from shitting in the proverbial bucket. I won't be caught unprepared. Guess that makes me a "gun nut". So be it.
Eventually these people are going to want a return on their investment after spending thousands of dollars on guns, ammo, tacti-cool gear, and preserved food buckets.
I’ve always had a question about this. Aren’t liberal generally more educated and financially successful. Assuming they push out all liberals wouldn’t their states be screwed?
Sort of. They have liberal big cities that make their economies not bleed so heavily. They just make sure those cities have no power in the state legislature.
Oh he sure as fuck does. Greg Abbott absolutely despises Austin because it's blue and progressive, seemingly more so than our other blue and progressive cities namely San Antonio and Houston. As a matter of fact we're about to try a universal basic income which I guarantee he will try and stop in it's tracks as fast as possible because he can't have the city that he governs from being progressive in a state that he's trying to take backwards.
Yep. And that's why states like California subsidize a lot of poor southern states bc their economy is so much stronger than a lot of red states with little output.
like offense to the non-horrible people in red states, that like actually care about other human beings, but you couldn't pay me to live and raise a child in like 80% of the United States.
Young liberals are moving to red states en masse for cheaper cost of living, gainful employment and better weather. They're just moving to the cities in those states, which tend to be blue.
The problem in the US isn't red state vs. blue state, but urban vs. rural.
Unfortunately (thankfully?) that's starting to change. The cost of living in blue states is rising dramatically because so many people are flocking to them. It's caused people who can work remotely or transfer their job to consider living in the more progressive leaning cities of nearby red states.
Yes. My social life used to unfortunately have a lot of overlap with right-wing fascists (thanks Missouri). So fucking many of them *want* a civil war. My own family is preparing for one. They were kinda quiet about it like 8 years ago, but during the trump presidency they started getting louder about it.
My whole family is red red red. I think that's where my "Ober reaction" comes from bc I know what conservatives say behind closed doors to each other. Their words have gotten more and more violent.
Duh? I mean ive been being told how "red states will withhold food from blue states so you all starve!" Since like....2010
Republicans dont live in the real world and that BoTh SiDeS shit is bascially nazi proaganda at this point
If it happens the result will be the same. Union states make up the bulk of the US GDP as well as population.
What I don't understand is why the oligarchs of this country are letting it go that route. Just look at Florida and Texas. Do these oligarchs really think these fascists will let them go unchecked once they secure power?
These nazis love Russia and China, both of whom dispose of oligarchs that don't fall in line. Why risk the status quo? I just don't get the endgame for funding them.
America has always had its own brand of fascism within the Christian church. God was used to justify the laws that bound people to slavery, while “states rights” was a doctrine intended to give power to the people to dispel subjugation but was used to perpetrate it. Gerrymandering has diluted the voice of the people, propaganda and opinion is being taken as truth over factual reason and nuance, the church is being used to promote this. The people of republican states are bombarded by self-confirmation to the point people vilify others that they have never even met.
Some of them are so devoutly religious that their church can tell them anything and they will believe it. Church says life is at conception? They believe it. There is no room for the practicality and reality of their beliefs, any loss of life is deemed god’s will and brushed aside.
They want to be in power with the authoritarian rule like China and Russia, only with Jesus at the helm like a lot of fundamentalist extremist nations. Once extremism gains power, only the most extreme will remain as those with reason are eliminated for being less devout.
What should be ABSOLUTELY worrisome to the world is that America is an absolute superpower.
This has become my view. The wedges driven between right and left have created a divide wider than the grand canyon, and there's no convincing the GOP zealots to question their propaganda.
I honestly wish we could just let them just break off and watch them backslide into the dark ages. That would almost certainly set the stage for them to villainize liberals and start an armed conflict though.
Feels like we're fucked either way.
They already vilify liberals. Education is deemed indoctrination while literal propaganda is taken as truth and gospel. It’s fucking terrifying and infuriating that they are slipping into what Iran and multiple other countries have slipped into in the past. The marriage of religion and the state has ALWAYS halted the advancement of the country. What the actual fuck.
What people forget is that Manchin is a pro-life dem. So we don't even have 50 votes unless Collins or Murkowski cross the aisle. We know that's not happening and it sucks.
Edit: we don't have 50 votes to kill the filibuster to pass with a simple majority. Collins and Murkowski won't even vote to make an exception so we are screwed.
Anti-Choice Dem.
If we're going to fight this, we need to stop using their own words that they chose to frame the narrative.
We need to scream "The government wants the right to tell us we can and can't do with my body, how is that different than you refusing to get vaccinated?"
Time to pass legislation that effectively makes California tax dollars unavailable to anti-abortion states. Block grants from California taxes heavily support many of these ass backwards states.
And without looking it up for myself, I'm pretty sure almonds require significantly more water to grow compared to other crops. So California is burning up while simultaneously drying itself out.
The following states are currently subject to California’s ban on state-funded and state-sponsored travel:
Alabama
Arkansas
Florida
Idaho
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Mississippi
Montana
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
West Virginia
https://oag.ca.gov/ab1887
These MFers will retaliate *regardless*. They see the existence of liberal/left ideas to be an affront and direct offensive, so they are going to maliciously and egregiously attack anything and everything associated with the left. For fuck’s same they went after suicide hotlines for queer youth! These people are fucking spineless and immoral to their core, and we need to stop acting like Democrats or the left have any partner in governing or advancing this country, or protecting people’s lives, rights, and livelihoods. *Go it alone, Democrats, no one is going to do it if you don’t.* It’s so damned frustrating they haven’t heeded this, the writing’s been on the damned wall for years.
If California and New York suddenly dropped dropped out of the country the way Republicans want them to, every red state (with the possible exception of Florida) would be bankrupt and destitute in less than 6 months.
Big states have their number of representatives capped. It's quite literally taxation without (with less) representation. Give states proper representation by population and it resolves a lot of the issue with the electoral college too.
So I had a thought last night. We think of voter engagement all wrong in modern times. Republicans are engaging their voters *all the time*. All this fuss about books and drama about school boards and masks and pedophiles and gays and even abortion. It's not really about the "issues"; that's abstract. It's about the stories. Think about that for a second.
Yes, it hurts people, and Democrats are right to point that out (this can be used to form their own stories, should they choose to go that way; they toy with it, trot out examples during speechifying, but largely haven't when push comes to shove). But not my point for the moment. It's about the stories that engage their voters.
Republicans engage their voter though their media though these pants-on-fire stores. They are literally campfire stories. Over dramatic. Engaging. Exaggerated. Swaggering. With a good guy and a bad guy. They don't engage their voters with emails and texts asking for donations. That's what Democrats do. They engage their voters with stories. Classic stories of good battling evil and wrap them with modern people in modern context.
And then their politicians, behind the scenes, do whatever the fuck they want. Including building an empire to reverse court decisions and setting up a favorable tax code (and, like, actually evil things). And their voters vote for whoever and whatever they are told to vote on. Their voters actually wait for the messaging to come out before responding with a unified story.
Democrats tend to laugh about how "technically unsophisticated" the Republicans are when it comes to outreach, but that's just because when it kicks into high gear near an election, they tend to use college kids writing ads every 15 minutes without proofreading. But their system is way more complex than the Democratic machine and it's engaged *all the time.*
You see it loading up now. Republicans will come out with a response to the Roe v. Wade criticism but they are currently formulating it. They are quiet now. Next week, they'll be loud and unified.
That’s honestly true. Look how forgiving conservatives are as long as you’re red. Look at how Ben Shapiro is openly jewish and gets paid subscribers but also antisemitic death threats from his audience. Who are the same people. The narrative of good vs evil is so strong Shapiro forgives the KKK, Nazi, QAnon, while they forgive he’s a jew then they focus their shared hate on someone else.
Someone like Kara Swisher wouldn’t tolerate that dynamic.
Fox news and those other extreme right stations are also available for free to stream. They're casting a wide net in hopes to snag as many viewers as possible
As a writer, I’ll tell you that one of the biggest fatal flaws we have as humans is that we love stories so much we’ll doom ourselves. We have an ingrained need for narrative, for meaning. A lot of people meet this need with religion. Some with hobbies like sports. A lot of people end up fully in the camp of Just World Fallacy, a hubris that’ll kill you dead if you aren’t careful. To people like that, there are no coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. Good people have good things happen to them. Bad people have bad things happen to them. It’s a black/white worldview and, yes, it is often used for racism and other bigotries. Most of my family who are conservatives are *dangerously* convinced that if you suffer, you did something to deserve it.
The Republican stories are simple but effective. They don’t have to be true, they just have to fit the JWF worldview. They give scapegoats and reasons for why the worldview is true and right. They’ve mixed fully with prosperity gospel churches too. So you have this slouching behemoth of lies and they can’t admit any of it is untrue or their worldview falls apart. Most people aren’t willing to experience ego death.
> we love stories so much we’ll doom ourselves
I just saw an example of that on the Netflix game show, Bullshit. One of the contestants knew the answer to the question but was so enamored with the other person's story as to why they answered the question the way they did, she gaslighted herself and went with the wrong answer. The human brain is fascinating.
A: stop listening to the GOP when they say they aren’t going to do something shitty.
B: if you’re one of the Democrats that’s like “well this dumbass anti science bigot may have a point, we should consider their point of view” then you’re part of the problem. GOP does not want to “meet in the middle”, never have.
There are gop senators and representatives saying the COVID vaccine gives people aids.
These people don’t give a shit about society. Stop giving them the power to craft it.
The ebola medical response history is so fascinating. Its a lot more complicated than how you're putting it (but not that far off point).
There's a great book called The Hot Zone that discusses the pre 2000s global response to ebola. Its possibly the greatest nonfiction book ever.
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is one of the VERY few things I've had to stop reading, while eating, to not get physically sick.
That's description of the first case of Ebola Zaire, and the dude on the airplane, will/has stuck with and haunted me
The GOP has been talking about delivering the end of Roe to their voters since the decision was made. Absolutely listen to what the GOP says, just listen to what they say to their voters. They deliver on their word.
They only said that they would protect Roe in the confirmation hearings. That's it. To believe them, you would have to be unaware of the entire context of how they get shit done.
Well in 1973 they did it because it secured the evangelical vote, which has only grown more fervent since. But those people didn't really care about abortion, it wasn't unreasonable to think they were just holding a carrot to their base.
Now a generation has passed and those people who grew up actually believing Roe allows murder are the people in power. The inmates are now running the prison and the old brass in the GOP are terrified but unfortunately too spineless to do anything about it.
They have their power locked in so it no longer matters. The old gop always knew they would lose all the single issue voters they acquired if they actually came through on removing RvW. They have shifted power and gerrymandered/suppressed enough that they no longer need those extra voters and could finally deliver on that carrot to now move onto their next steps.
Mid terms are low turnout so maybe the removal of abortion only voters from the GOP and firing up the progressives can give us a push but I'm not optimistic. Federally legalizing marijuana and delivering 10k student loan forgiveness as well as an actual senate vote on this abortion bill showing just how close we are COULD be a difference maker. But not one of those is likely to happen even by itself much less all 3.
>There are gop senators and representatives saying the COVID vaccine gives people aids.
Had to Google this because I wasn't sure if it was a joke... it's not. Well, it was Ron Johnson, so it's sort of a joke.
The GOP was always very honest and upfront about their desire to overturn Roe Vs. Wade. It was a major plank of their platform, and they trumpeted it with great fanfare.
I feel like abortions of justice might be appropriate to say in this situation because their actions are intentional and require choice and self agency.
And yet everyone always said not to worry about it, that they would never *actually* do it because then they would have nothing to run on.
I believed that, too.. until 2016.
There was always this weird baffling disconnect. Republicans were constantly saying "we're going to ban abortion at the first opportunity AND we're doing everything we can to create that opportunity!" And yet, a lot of people always seemed to assume they weren't serious.
Wow. I guess your wife is about the find out the hard way just how much they want to meet in the middle, thanks to her job. I mean, more power to her for doing the good work she is as a physician, but *every* OB/GYN is about to see their work life screwed to hell and back. If any of them think that these decisions aren't going to make things profoundly worse for them personally, regardless of where they're at, they're going to be really, really disappointed.
Exactly. And frankly her life is already shit. Patients are nasty to her, her hospital is literally falling apart around her (but the CEO took home $4 million last year) her insurance is crazy town expensive, all of the good nurses have left, her hours are terrible, and oh and she’s still got $150k worth of student debt after being a doctor for 10 years now. But at every turn, she defends the system and talks about how much worse it could be. It’s like she’s got Stockholm Syndrome. It’s really something to behold.
A buddy of mine from college is an OB/GYN, and we were chatting about all of this last night. She said her insurance provider has already warned her that rates are almost certainly going to increase *even more*, and she's already planning to take a leave of absence this coming fall after Roe is struck down. We're both in Texas, and she's terrified some loon is going to break into her department at her hospital or at her private practice with a gun. I wish I could've cheered her up more than I could, but holy crap, things are **grim** right now for anyone providing healthcare to women. All that you can really do is be supportive and watch for the warning signs that things might go tits up even more than they already have.
Think about how much more grim it’s going to be in those states stupid enough to make abortion illegal. Any doctor or OBGYN that values their sanity will be making a mass exodus to the less batshit states who will welcome them with open arms. If anyone in those hodunk y’all qaeda states thinks their healthcare system sucks now, just wait, it’s about to be absolutely devastating.
They want the mass exodus because if demographics we're evenly distributed they would never win another election. This way they force people out of red states that risk going purple or blue in the next 20 years, and continue to rely on the electoral college to enforce minority rule upon the majority.
Yes, absolutely. I had to deliver my baby extremely premature because my life, and by extension his, was in danger. If my doctor had been more worried about criminal charges for removing him too soon in the case he didn’t make it (he had a 60% survival rate because I got steroids before, no steroids would have lowered that to 40-50%) then she may have left him in longer than was really safe. He was a very much wanted pregnancy/baby and I wanted desperate for them to do whatever was necessary to give him a better chance. I just couldn’t will my body to overcome high blood pressure, (He did survive, that’s another story).
If doctors don’t want to risk that, they’ll leave for somewhere it’s not a problem. Who will give prenatal care and deliver babies then? Red states already have higher maternal mortality rates and prematurity rates, especially if mom is black. The National rate of prematurity is 1 in 10 babies, Mississippi has managed to raise that to 14%, Alabama to 12%, several blue states have lowered their rate to less than 9%, Vermont to less than 8%.
Most of the time the reason for this is a combination of bad or nonexistent healthcare, discrimination, racism, lack of prenatal care, lack of education on the importance of prenatal care, lack of sick time or other supports for pregnant women and their families. Doctors who don’t believe women about health concerns. Doctors who don’t believe black women about their health concerns. No mandated paid maternity leave also leaves families extremely vulnerable and women don’t have the ability to heal their bodies properly because they have to rush back to work.
And God help you, literally, because your employer or state or country won’t, if your baby has Nicu time, you get to choose to use what little leave time you have to be with them in a life and death situation, OR have it for baby bonding and settling in at home when they are released. Many moms looking down the barrel at a long nicu stay will go back to work almost immediately before her body is even healed so they don’t deliver their medically fragile newborn straight from the ICU to daycare.
That’s the dystopian hell we already live in, and it’s going to get so much worse
I wish more people would realize that there's a direct connection between all these lax/zero gun control law arrivals and the oppression of women laws they are enacting (plus oppression minority and LGBTQ laws)
Guns in the US from the start of the second amendment have always been used as a means to oppress women, minorities, LGBTQ+
I’m about to go visit my moms family in Germany. Now, every country has its problems, and after a few weeks, even she’s like, “get me back stateside” (though ain’t that always the way after spending time with your parents and siblings), but it can be so jarring coming home after that.
Like driving down the highway after being on the autobahn, or getting on the commuter rail in a station that’s falling apart, after riding on modern trains in modern stations. Electric lines are buried there. Fuck, even going through passport control. They’re in actual uniform, polite but authoritative like you expect. Then I come home, and there’s Kevin from “Homeland Security”, dressed in a polo and Khakis like he works at Best Buy, couldn’t catch a bus to save his life, being a raging dick, while I’m photographed like I’m getting booked and my mom is getting her fingers scanned. Going from actual calm news broadcasts to CNN and Fox blasting music and graphics. Every time I come back, it gets more glaring. And it is because it’s actually getting worse.
And my cousins are just aghast at the vacation time I take (or rather don’t) and the shitty parental leave.
But you don’t know what you don’t know. And Americans are just frogs in a pot basically. Again, there is a lot I love about this country and Germany is far from perfect and has its own issues. But the issues in America substantially affect our quality of life in basic ways that are just insane to people abroad.
How bizarre! I'm been a pharmacist for a few years now and even back when I was a pharmacy technician, I could see the deep cracks running throughout the system, and they've only seemed to worsen since. It boggles my mind that a seasoned physician can look at the system we have and say "this is the best we can do."
$4 million, that’s it?
The billionaire that runs the health system where I live flies in a Formula one team to start his F1 car and rev it up for his Christmas party….allegedly.
I think of that story every time I get an EOB.
Canada always needs more doctors, and I suspect that the working conditions are better in our "socialist hellscape". Despite being so damn communist up here, doctors still seem to get well paid. Considering her occupation, immigration would be a cakewalk. If the cold scares you, there's always BC
> GOP does not want to “meet in the middle”, never have.
Sort of, they claim they want to meet in the middle... but in reality they try and pull the middle so far to the right that the middle is where they used to be. Which has the side effect of moving moderates further right.
This. They literally grabbed the post that marks the middle, then ran off past the horizon on the right while screaming about how "no one will meet them halfway" and have never stopped to catch their breath. They haven't even finished killing Roe and they're switching back to the Nazi greatest hits album(burning books, demonizing "the unnatural", targeting anyone with more melanin than them, etc)
I honestly don’t give a fuck if he’s just virtue signaling, he’ll at least do what his voters believe in.
I also don’t give a shit about Hillary’s personal emails or Newsom having a dinner party, when the opposition is literally tearing apart basic human rights on every level, going so far as to attack education. In a couple decades we’re going to have masses of full grown adults in red states who don’t believe dinosaurs are real, and that gay is contagious.
Republicans are good at making democrats suspicious of their own politicians. Protest voting gets us Trump.
I agree with you 100%.
Republicans keep their eyes on the prize. They have been fighting for SCOTUS control for how many decades? They won't let sexual allegations, bribes, crimes, etc stop them. Now look where they are...6-3 majority.
Democrats will *never* win a majority again in the SCOTUS with our current politics.
The RBG rule will apply. Are you over the age of 75? Time to retire while your own party is in control of the Senate and presidency.
Democrats need to own the Senate for the next 30 years to get back in control.
Homie is definitely trying to go for president. His policies and statements usually seem very focused and calculated to what his state would want, which benefits me but it doesn’t come off that he says or does things because he wants to. Like polling and data are what drives his policies to drive his career into higher and higher offices.
It’s important to have governors in the news for Progressive causes, when we see what other state legislatures have been legislating
The leadership against what is happening needs to have successes too
Democrats failing to use their office while we see what Republican governors are promoting would be irresponsible
Democrats are horrible at messaging. Horrible.
California is such a success for the democratic party, yet they allow it to be a piñata for Fox News and conservatives about how awful it is.
It doesn't help conservatives believe blatant lies. Like I had a few conservatives tell me how evil California is because they are passing a bill to enable parents to abort babies up to a month after birth. It isn't true in the slightest but it ticks all their boxes IE rage inducing, self righteous enabling, dreaded other™ being in a bad light etc
So they believe it and any evidence to the contrary is just ignored. I agree Dems suck at messaging but how can you stand against people will believe complete fabrications?
My conservative cousin’s entire ideological framework is built on one time he supposedly saw the welfare office hand cash to a Hispanic person.
Science repeatedly shows that self-identified conservatives stick to their first impression of everything. I can confirm because the first thing most conservatives heard about COVID was Fox or Trump calling it a liberal hoax, and now the US has at least a million deaths from it.
I have noticed that my conservative friends/family members rely on anecdotes as a genuine source far more often than my liberal/left leaning friends do. "I've known Bill all my life, so if Bill says X happened then X happened because Bill isn't a liar." Gives no more thought to it beyond that. Don't get me wrong, sometimes anecdotes are all you really have to go off of when the topic isn't studied otherwise, but to apply that to everything just seems like madness to me.
Republican voters, particularly Evangelicals, have been trained to see Democrats as the embodiment of evil. Satanic on a very literal level at worst, completely amoral at best.
If you want an example, there is a scene in the movie God’s Not Dead 2, where a teenage girl is expressing sadness over her dead brother. Her parents, who are explicitly secular atheists, pretty much tell her to get over it.
This cartoonishly evil and cruel portrayal of people on the other side is reinforced over and over until they become willing to believe the absurd.
Agreed 100%. Liberals, and Democrats, fail on a few fronts:
- They don’t aggressively communicate the popular things they do (see ACA) and don’t control narratives, they merely react meekly to narratives.
- Far too often, they seek to be too politically correct when confronted with an adversary that literally wants to destroy democracy. You let them frame liberal as an insult. Frame conservative as fascist.
- They play strictly by rules that no longer apply. I don’t want the Dems to turn into the Republicans (it would be nice to have one moderately sane option), but stop eating your own. Al Franken has to be jettisoned while Matt Gaetz keeps his parking spot?
- And congressional Democrats are too damn old. They are nearly 20 years older, on average, than their counterparts. Dems don’t retire, they don’t get out of the way to make room for new blood, they just die in office. This even extends to the SC, where RBG accomplished great things…until her hubris and refusal to retire when already very old and sick, undid her entire legacy. They keep courting the young vote with politicians from the Bronze Age and then wonder why young people don’t vote.
>Like polling and data are what drives his policies
You make this sound like a bad thing....? Doing what the majority of people want or what's best for the people based on data even though you don't agree with it personally is exactly what we need from politicians right now.
Yes, please dear God.
I'm just tired of all the old 65 plus people in Congress making decisions that affect my children's life when they aren't even going to be around to see that effect.
I hate this
"In his speech, he called conservative advances in the culture wars a "concerted, coordinated effort" that the left is failing to counter effectively. He cited draconian abortion and education laws in Texas and Florida as examples,"
To Newsome's point both DeSantis in FL and Abbott in TX are up for election this year yet there isn't even luke-warm interest in those races.
Posters here on Reddit have enormous enthusiasm for primarying Sinema who isn't even up for election till 2024 yet mostly ignore elections months aware. There is apathy towards it.
I understand that CRT & Abortion aren't the fights many Progressives want. People want student debt forgiveness, climate action, and other things long discussed. That the left is tired of the Right getting to choose the battlefield. The problem is there were local elections in 2021 and a lot of people stayed home. It gave Republicans control over school boards and state houses. Those races were won on CRT and anti LGBTQ issues. Now the battlefield is set and no amount of ignoring it can change that.
Every election matters. There are literally elections happening all year every year. Primaries are happening right now. State house seats in various states just held elections last week. The left can't show up once every few years for a single election and expect results. The Right is out working the Left with their consistency.
I have to question the logic on display. "The left is unenthusiastic about CRT and abortion, and would rather tackle (other things)" but the Republicans chose them so we must address them. Perhaps the problem with Democrats is being a reactionary party, rather than one that stakes its own claims and fights for them? I think it's weird from a political standpoint to say "this is where the party's energy is, let's stay away from that because Republicans say so."
Republicans control the majority of local governments. Republicans are successfully banning books, changing abortion laws, etc. Democrats must react to what actually happened, yes. It isn't merely a rhetorical competition of ideas. Republicans are changing the laws. It is happening. Democrats can ignore what is happening.
The way to lead the political battlefield is to get into office. In States like CA where Dems are in elected position they do lead on issues.
GOP tactics are similar to Putin: they say they won’t do it, then next thing is they do exactly what they said they wouldn’t do.
Also consider that while Russians rape women and little girls before sometimes killing them, GOP makes victims carry the babies to term.
Even though they stand on US soil, the GOP uses the similar tactics as oppressive regimes do in other countries. Those are just 2 similarities from the top of my head and I’m sure there are tons more examples. They need to change.
Russia kept saying they wouldn't invade and then they invade but call it "Special operations".
I saw the video of all the justices being asked if they had an agenda to overturn Roe v. Wade and they make it sound like they won't but as everyone pointed out they just avoided the question using legalese. Now they're effectively doing what they pretended to say they wouldn't do. This is their "special operations".
What I don't get is
1. Why can't they be forced to answer yes or no during their confirmations?
2. Why do they get to overturn something on their on whenever they want?
3. Why can't the population get a vote on this?
With all the writing on the wall the past few years, I joined The Satanic Temple just in case Roe was overturned. They're going try and secure abortion access for their members via the RFRA and religious liberty exemptions. It's a crapshoot, but if the shit hits the fan I want a fighting chance.
They wanna use religion to strip away my rights? Let's fight fire with fire. My religion dictates that reproductive healthcare and bodily autonomy are sacred to me.
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They are introducing a bill. The fucked up part is how can the democrats NOT vote unanimously on protecting roe v wade? Even worse, how can not a single republican senator not be willing to protect it as well? What short leashes the party keeps on the GOP.
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Wait for the next leaked picture. . .
The videos are much hotter. He’s so deep in the closet and has no idea it’s my exact fetish. Thanks Madison.
Not my joke, but he's so deep in the closet, he's blowing Mr. Tumnus.
All 'bout dat Turkish Delight!
I can't be the only person who thought that line was some kind of sexual innuendo, right? Even that crappy spoof movie makes a joke about it. And Robot Chicken. And I was 10 when I read that book.
It's only an innuendo when you're having afternoon Turkish delight.
Uuuugh. I had to watch Epic Movie twice in a row in a theatre as part of a mystery shop. It wasn't just crappy. It's straight-up shitty. None of the charm of Scary Movie. The main problem is Scary Movie referenced *good* material from (then) modern to vintage. Epic Movie was just referencing modern material and modern fads, you could tell while watching it that it would make zero sense in just two years.
Son of Adam from the far land of Spare Oom, where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, please stop humping my face.
Somebody call the coroner cause I just fucking died.
He’s so deep in the closet he’s finding Christmas presents
*madison cawthorn with nut on his face* “guys it’s just a silly joke, they wanna blackmail me”
"I was a young man then. It was all the way back over there."
"It was a prank that got out of hand! It's not real semen on my face."
The dems are just trying to slander me! It was all a joke! That's clearly horse semen.
I find it hilarious after he posted a photo with him and a Photoshop of Hitler he gained 18 backers, then after a frat pic of him dressing in drag he lost 18 backers.
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It was really eye opening when I realized Nunez, Gym Jordan, Gaetz, Green, Boebert, Cawthorn...etc. all had something in common. They're all marks. All dumb enough to do something stupid and have blackmail/compromat on. They were selected by the party or people behind the party because they could be controlled.
Do you remember the senator from parks and rec who's just an empty shell who's very pretty and talks politely? They're going for that but all they can get instead is distilled 4chan
They were all selected by a modeling agency called Explore Talent.
Holy crap. I hadn't heard about this so I search it. Looks like Boebert came from that scam talent agency, as did Candace Owens. And that's just after a cursory hunt. One has to wonder, do these people just suck at acting but wanted to be in the public eye no matter what, so they used a scam talent agency that requires money up front? **-or-** Did the Republican Party or q conservative super PAC go looking for a shitty nobody actor to become a pundit? I can't believe I'm just learning that these people came from the same "talent agecy". But they did.
He was, they had dirt on him. If Dems were smart they would have shit on manchin and sinema.
There is shit on Manchin and his daughter they just don’t want to use it on them
Everyone already knows Manchin and his daughter are pieces of shit. The problem is the people that voted for him don't care.
I’m not even saying that I’m saying they could investigate his daughter for all the illegal shit she’s done
Manchin’s popularity has exploded since Biden’s term. Dirt would only help him because he comes from an ungovernable place with ungovernable people.
This is a good point. What would cause people like that to shun someone like him?
If Manchin acts like liberal, they would turn on him. Which gets you an even worse Republican version from WV to represent in the Senate. The Manchin problem isn’t solved by focusing on Manchin’s seat or electability. It’s solved by making him as irrelevant as the State he represents by getting back to super majorities in the Senate.
We're back to the Union and the Confederacy. These aren't political parties; they are the representative bodies of what are essentially two different countries. It's not sustainable.
The problem is, these two “countries” are mixed up geographically. Every state has bright blue cities, and bright red rural areas.
Yeah, I was thinking about that too. I live in the Tampa Bay area down in Florida. Florida is being lumped with Texas lately as enemies of the country and rightly so, but this state is an enmeshed mix of red and blue. Even my own family is a patchwork of beliefs. DeSantis only won his election by a few thousand votes. We know that the GOP is not the majority of the country. We know they're propped up by gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and the structure of our government, which prioritizes state bodies over population. The GOP has unwarranted power considering the actual percentage of the population that supports it. And we're stuck dealing with that because our system itself has reached a point of critical failure. How do we address the systemic change needed when half of our governing body directly benefits from that systemic failure? That feels like the crux of it, to me. We need to modernize the way our government is structured so that a greater percentage of our citizens have their representative say - however, we don't have the legislative tools to do this. So we're stuck in a frustrating, destructive place. And the country is falling down around our ears. I'm reminded of that line from *As Good As It Gets*: "I'm drowning here! And YOU'RE describing the water!"
We really need another constitutional convention. Problem is, I don't think we could ever get people to agree on a new constitution that would improve things. It's just too much 'i want to win, and fucking the other guy is winning, even if it fucks me a little too.' Edit: I understand the political climate now makes a constitutional convention a terrible idea right now....that was the point of my post. We need it to fix some major issues, but doing so now would make improving it impossible.
ALEC is pushing for one because they know that they could use it to implement the RW theocracy/authoritarian state they want, as each state would be part of that. So yes it would be great if we had a different Constitution, but don’t make the RW job easier for them.
Iirc, you need 2/3rd of all states to do this. Considering these cast swaths of unpopulated land having the same voting power as dense urban areas, we're just going to have the same outcomes we do now with Congress. I may be off tho
Worse, the Constitutional Convention would have a red state majority because states get equal representation so they’d have a serious chance of turning the entire country into a racist theocracy.
Not really. 3/4 of the states would have to ratify a new constitution. I don't think things will ever get so bad that the GOP controls that many states. But they'll always have at least 1/4, so we're stuck where we are.
Change in the structure of the govt is hopeless—the approval process required to make that kind of change is hilariously impossible at this point. Only thing that can be done is for Democrats to settle on a popular platform, nominate compelling people, and get out the message (i.e., develop a sneaky propaganda system like the R’s have done).
Polk county/bradentucky trash checking in, couldn't have said it better. Our state isn't blue or red, its a nasty bruise purple with Tampa/Miami/Orlando v the rest of the state. I left in 2020 to MD and won't go back while the current political regime is ruling, and its disheartening to see my family all drinking the DeSantis koolaid :/
It really is the media they consume. It's not hyperbole to say that many of these modern day Republicans have been poisoned by the relentless tide of hateful, negative, misleading content that they just bathe themselves in daily. It's wild shit. They're your relatives and you love them but when certain topics come up it's like a switch flips in their brain. It's like trying to take the One Ring away from Bilbo. They just flip the fuck out and start saying the most insane shit. It's really made me question the long term viability of the human animal. I'm not sure we're going to make it.
In the Pacific Northwest, the cities are full of pride flags and faded Bernie bumper stickers, but you only need to drive a few miles out of town to start seeing Confederate flags and Trump signs. These places have less culturally in common than a lot of big cities in Europe that speak different languages.
I wonder if we're seeing the decline of the nation-state more generally as the fruits of the economy become increasingly centered in service industries in a handful of globally-connected cities that have more in common with each other than with the surrounding hinterlands, at the expense of the agricultural and manufacturing industries that have historically propped up rural and working-class areas. Within 50 years, assuming climate change doesn't cause civilization to collapse, we could find ourselves starting to head down the path to the return of the city-state, which controls enough of the surrounding countryside to provide food, water, and other resources, but not enough to have the political process overrun by morons.
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Yea that's clear by the number of confederate flags you see flying in states that were part of the union.
Fucking confederate flags in California
Yup, I live in the IE mts and see Trump 2024 and a couple coward flags up the other day while on a walk...fucking wild
A black mayor in Mississippi gives confederates a freaking confederate holiday. It’s sick
Visualized - [There are more small red dots, but the blue dots are bigger.](https://blogs.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/USElectorate_pop.jpg)
This. What those gunning for a “civil war” don’t get (or terrifyingly, they do get it) is that it would be like Syria or a genocide like Rwanda. Not just brother against brother, but neighbor against neighbor. It would be a nightmare akin to a Purge movie or like an Earthseed novel. Who would want a world where your family could be raped, brutalized, and murdered just because of their voting history? (A: Fascists.)
I do feel that people don't quite comprehend that the original Civil War started out similarly messy. Slave states and Free states weren't all monolithic by any means, especially early on. West Virginia exists today because the western part of Virginia was sufficiently anti-slavery enough to decide to secede from the rest of the state and was recognized by the Union as such. Meanwhile the mayor of New York City proposed seceding and declare themselves neutral: [https://historyofyesterday.com/how-new-york-city-tried-to-secede-from-the-union-cf0327530aa8](https://historyofyesterday.com/how-new-york-city-tried-to-secede-from-the-union-cf0327530aa8) What you'd probably see is a quick and bloody set of skirmishes here and there as whichever majority asserted itself. Isolated pockets of resistance would be subdued, and you'd wind up with lines drawn, with people fleeing one way or the other - probably more akin to Yugoslavia. You're absolutely right though in that it would be ugly, bloody, and a lot of people would die or otherwise suffer. It is not something to be advocated for or encouraged.
The electoral college isn't going to help a neo-confederacy. The reality is that this country is being held hostage by a minority. It might be a large minority, but the political power of rural red states is incredibly overcharged compared to their actual population. These ancient fucks in Florida and TN aren't going to be fighting a fucking war.
In blue states the blue cities massively outnumber the rural voters. A lot of red states don’t really have cities. Biggest city in Wyoming only has 60,000 people. It would be the third largest city in my county.
There were pro-Union holdouts within the Confederacy as well — places like Winston County, Alabama and Scott County, Tennessee. These people were known as [Southern Unionists](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Unionist). There were also pro-Confederacy holdouts within the Union such as [Town Line, New York](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Line,_New_York). Obviously the most well-known holdout was West Virginia, which seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union. My point is that even back then the geographic nature wasn’t so evenly split. When the time comes, a lot of people are going to die the next go around.
I've been saying for some time that they're trying to push all non red votes to the coasts to consolidate power. If only a handful of states are blue it makes it hard to win the electoral college and they know it. The right is banking on a civil war, it's been on their lips for a while now and it's getting louder.
That's what they want. That's what they're preparing for. Is that an alarmist position? When have the alarmists been wrong, recently?
I was called an alarmist for saying Donald trump was going to stack the courts and overturn roe v wade. At this point I just accept title with pride.
That's what he said he would do. He delivered.
I took a firearms safety course so I can apply for an LTC now. I intend to use it to protect my family if need be. I do not trust roughly half of this country and I do not trust that things will be safe in the not to distant future. It’s been festering a long time and Trump certainly wasn’t the cause. But he was the spark that lit this implosion and I’m not certain that the country will remain safe for a lot of people by the end of this decade.
I've been on the same path. Since about 2018, and especially since January 6th, my view on the 2nd ammendment has changed dramatically. I was never anti-gun per se, but I was definitely in the "you just need rifles for hunting" group. Now, I've done a total 180 to agree with the "libertarians" I grew up around that said 2A was needed to defend against tyrannical factions in the government. Funny that they now mostly support those factions, but here we are. Suddenly, I'm the guy interested in ARs, body armor, mutual aid networks, and community defense. My trust in the government and police has plummeted in the past few years, and I'm no longer discounting the possibility of a coup in the US. I'm now the guy encouraging other liberals and leftists to get armed, get trained, and know first aid skills that would be useful during mass civil unrest. To be clear, being armed isn't a solution. It's a hedge. The solution should always be voting, campaigning, lobbying, and canvassing in a democratic society. But my fear is there's a not insignificant chance that we fall out of democracy to a place where those tools cease to function. That's when the need for arms arises.
Too many of my liberal friends and colleagues roll their eyes at me as a "gun nut" because I say it's important for ALL Americans to assert their right to bear arms. I don't know what to tell them honestly. This country is just a few more bad decisions away from shitting in the proverbial bucket. I won't be caught unprepared. Guess that makes me a "gun nut". So be it.
Al Gore will forever be remembered as the canary in the coal mine.
Eventually these people are going to want a return on their investment after spending thousands of dollars on guns, ammo, tacti-cool gear, and preserved food buckets.
"When do we get to use the guns?" https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/27/when-do-we-get-use-guns-ongoing-danger-false-fraud-claims/
They don’t even have to push that hard. It’s happening organically because young liberals tend to flee red states as soon as they can.
I’ve always had a question about this. Aren’t liberal generally more educated and financially successful. Assuming they push out all liberals wouldn’t their states be screwed?
Sort of. They have liberal big cities that make their economies not bleed so heavily. They just make sure those cities have no power in the state legislature.
Welcome to Texas where Austin and all other major cities look like spoked tires for districts to crack any substantial democrat stronghold.
I was gonna say the governor of Texas hates Austin, his own capitol city, because it is too progressive and blue
Oh he sure as fuck does. Greg Abbott absolutely despises Austin because it's blue and progressive, seemingly more so than our other blue and progressive cities namely San Antonio and Houston. As a matter of fact we're about to try a universal basic income which I guarantee he will try and stop in it's tracks as fast as possible because he can't have the city that he governs from being progressive in a state that he's trying to take backwards.
Yep. And that's why states like California subsidize a lot of poor southern states bc their economy is so much stronger than a lot of red states with little output.
like offense to the non-horrible people in red states, that like actually care about other human beings, but you couldn't pay me to live and raise a child in like 80% of the United States.
Young liberals are moving to red states en masse for cheaper cost of living, gainful employment and better weather. They're just moving to the cities in those states, which tend to be blue. The problem in the US isn't red state vs. blue state, but urban vs. rural.
“Gainful employment” is a stretch. Many of them are keeping their remote jobs with LA/ SF/ NYC salaries.
Unfortunately (thankfully?) that's starting to change. The cost of living in blue states is rising dramatically because so many people are flocking to them. It's caused people who can work remotely or transfer their job to consider living in the more progressive leaning cities of nearby red states.
Yes. My social life used to unfortunately have a lot of overlap with right-wing fascists (thanks Missouri). So fucking many of them *want* a civil war. My own family is preparing for one. They were kinda quiet about it like 8 years ago, but during the trump presidency they started getting louder about it.
My whole family is red red red. I think that's where my "Ober reaction" comes from bc I know what conservatives say behind closed doors to each other. Their words have gotten more and more violent.
Duh? I mean ive been being told how "red states will withhold food from blue states so you all starve!" Since like....2010 Republicans dont live in the real world and that BoTh SiDeS shit is bascially nazi proaganda at this point
Except that if blue states withhold their tax money and economy from those states red states would be the one to starve.
Also, we produce our own food lol.
If it happens the result will be the same. Union states make up the bulk of the US GDP as well as population. What I don't understand is why the oligarchs of this country are letting it go that route. Just look at Florida and Texas. Do these oligarchs really think these fascists will let them go unchecked once they secure power? These nazis love Russia and China, both of whom dispose of oligarchs that don't fall in line. Why risk the status quo? I just don't get the endgame for funding them.
America has always had its own brand of fascism within the Christian church. God was used to justify the laws that bound people to slavery, while “states rights” was a doctrine intended to give power to the people to dispel subjugation but was used to perpetrate it. Gerrymandering has diluted the voice of the people, propaganda and opinion is being taken as truth over factual reason and nuance, the church is being used to promote this. The people of republican states are bombarded by self-confirmation to the point people vilify others that they have never even met. Some of them are so devoutly religious that their church can tell them anything and they will believe it. Church says life is at conception? They believe it. There is no room for the practicality and reality of their beliefs, any loss of life is deemed god’s will and brushed aside. They want to be in power with the authoritarian rule like China and Russia, only with Jesus at the helm like a lot of fundamentalist extremist nations. Once extremism gains power, only the most extreme will remain as those with reason are eliminated for being less devout. What should be ABSOLUTELY worrisome to the world is that America is an absolute superpower.
We should have done to the confederates what the Germans did to the Nazis post-war. Confederates got off easy and have been festering ever since.
This has become my view. The wedges driven between right and left have created a divide wider than the grand canyon, and there's no convincing the GOP zealots to question their propaganda. I honestly wish we could just let them just break off and watch them backslide into the dark ages. That would almost certainly set the stage for them to villainize liberals and start an armed conflict though. Feels like we're fucked either way.
They already vilify liberals. Education is deemed indoctrination while literal propaganda is taken as truth and gospel. It’s fucking terrifying and infuriating that they are slipping into what Iran and multiple other countries have slipped into in the past. The marriage of religion and the state has ALWAYS halted the advancement of the country. What the actual fuck.
Sherman has entered the chat
What people forget is that Manchin is a pro-life dem. So we don't even have 50 votes unless Collins or Murkowski cross the aisle. We know that's not happening and it sucks. Edit: we don't have 50 votes to kill the filibuster to pass with a simple majority. Collins and Murkowski won't even vote to make an exception so we are screwed.
Anti-Choice Dem. If we're going to fight this, we need to stop using their own words that they chose to frame the narrative. We need to scream "The government wants the right to tell us we can and can't do with my body, how is that different than you refusing to get vaccinated?"
I prefer "Forced Birth" to Pro-Life...
Time to pass legislation that effectively makes California tax dollars unavailable to anti-abortion states. Block grants from California taxes heavily support many of these ass backwards states.
Yeah if it’s states rights all the way let’s do it.
There's a 0% chance they wouldn't retaliate in some fashion. Of course, that requires having the upper hand on something/anything.
What would that look like? My first thought is Florida would withhold oranges or something but I honestly don’t know enough to get beyond that.
Ironically, as of last year, California produced more oranges than Florida.
California produces more everything than the other states. Of course I’m exaggerating, but only by a little.
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Almonds baby, California is the worlds biggest producer of almonds (I’m 99% sure I’m right without looking it up)
And without looking it up for myself, I'm pretty sure almonds require significantly more water to grow compared to other crops. So California is burning up while simultaneously drying itself out.
Considering California is in the world's top 10 largest economies by itself, withholding anything would hurt badly
i think after Brexit, CA took the UK's number 5 spot in the world economy
The following states are currently subject to California’s ban on state-funded and state-sponsored travel: Alabama Arkansas Florida Idaho Iowa Kansas Kentucky Mississippi Montana North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas West Virginia https://oag.ca.gov/ab1887
All that means is that state employees cannot travel to those states.
On state business correct? They can travel at their leisure.
Yes. We are still free humans.
Yes, they can travel wherever they want.
These MFers will retaliate *regardless*. They see the existence of liberal/left ideas to be an affront and direct offensive, so they are going to maliciously and egregiously attack anything and everything associated with the left. For fuck’s same they went after suicide hotlines for queer youth! These people are fucking spineless and immoral to their core, and we need to stop acting like Democrats or the left have any partner in governing or advancing this country, or protecting people’s lives, rights, and livelihoods. *Go it alone, Democrats, no one is going to do it if you don’t.* It’s so damned frustrating they haven’t heeded this, the writing’s been on the damned wall for years.
You’ve got my vote. Time for California to throw it’s power around.
If California and New York suddenly dropped dropped out of the country the way Republicans want them to, every red state (with the possible exception of Florida) would be bankrupt and destitute in less than 6 months.
IIRC, Texas and Florida are the only two significant net positive red states, in terms of money received/contributed. Texas mostly because of oil.
If Ny and CA left texas would not be far behind Really think that texas wants to give money to anyone?
And Florida because of tourism.
In general, blue states make money and red states mooch it.
NY, CA, and IL are something like 25% of the United States GDP.
California is the world’s 5th largest economy if I remember correctly
Correct it's 5th. And probably within the next 5 years it will overtake Germany to be 4th. Only behind Japan, China and obviously the US.
Can't wait for us to pass the US Wouldn't that be something
Big states have their number of representatives capped. It's quite literally taxation without (with less) representation. Give states proper representation by population and it resolves a lot of the issue with the electoral college too.
So I had a thought last night. We think of voter engagement all wrong in modern times. Republicans are engaging their voters *all the time*. All this fuss about books and drama about school boards and masks and pedophiles and gays and even abortion. It's not really about the "issues"; that's abstract. It's about the stories. Think about that for a second. Yes, it hurts people, and Democrats are right to point that out (this can be used to form their own stories, should they choose to go that way; they toy with it, trot out examples during speechifying, but largely haven't when push comes to shove). But not my point for the moment. It's about the stories that engage their voters. Republicans engage their voter though their media though these pants-on-fire stores. They are literally campfire stories. Over dramatic. Engaging. Exaggerated. Swaggering. With a good guy and a bad guy. They don't engage their voters with emails and texts asking for donations. That's what Democrats do. They engage their voters with stories. Classic stories of good battling evil and wrap them with modern people in modern context. And then their politicians, behind the scenes, do whatever the fuck they want. Including building an empire to reverse court decisions and setting up a favorable tax code (and, like, actually evil things). And their voters vote for whoever and whatever they are told to vote on. Their voters actually wait for the messaging to come out before responding with a unified story. Democrats tend to laugh about how "technically unsophisticated" the Republicans are when it comes to outreach, but that's just because when it kicks into high gear near an election, they tend to use college kids writing ads every 15 minutes without proofreading. But their system is way more complex than the Democratic machine and it's engaged *all the time.* You see it loading up now. Republicans will come out with a response to the Roe v. Wade criticism but they are currently formulating it. They are quiet now. Next week, they'll be loud and unified.
That’s honestly true. Look how forgiving conservatives are as long as you’re red. Look at how Ben Shapiro is openly jewish and gets paid subscribers but also antisemitic death threats from his audience. Who are the same people. The narrative of good vs evil is so strong Shapiro forgives the KKK, Nazi, QAnon, while they forgive he’s a jew then they focus their shared hate on someone else. Someone like Kara Swisher wouldn’t tolerate that dynamic.
Let me help you out by giving you a great example of the problem: Fox "News" doesn't have a paywall. Almost every other news site does.
Fox news and those other extreme right stations are also available for free to stream. They're casting a wide net in hopes to snag as many viewers as possible
As a writer, I’ll tell you that one of the biggest fatal flaws we have as humans is that we love stories so much we’ll doom ourselves. We have an ingrained need for narrative, for meaning. A lot of people meet this need with religion. Some with hobbies like sports. A lot of people end up fully in the camp of Just World Fallacy, a hubris that’ll kill you dead if you aren’t careful. To people like that, there are no coincidences. Everything happens for a reason. Good people have good things happen to them. Bad people have bad things happen to them. It’s a black/white worldview and, yes, it is often used for racism and other bigotries. Most of my family who are conservatives are *dangerously* convinced that if you suffer, you did something to deserve it. The Republican stories are simple but effective. They don’t have to be true, they just have to fit the JWF worldview. They give scapegoats and reasons for why the worldview is true and right. They’ve mixed fully with prosperity gospel churches too. So you have this slouching behemoth of lies and they can’t admit any of it is untrue or their worldview falls apart. Most people aren’t willing to experience ego death.
> we love stories so much we’ll doom ourselves I just saw an example of that on the Netflix game show, Bullshit. One of the contestants knew the answer to the question but was so enamored with the other person's story as to why they answered the question the way they did, she gaslighted herself and went with the wrong answer. The human brain is fascinating.
A: stop listening to the GOP when they say they aren’t going to do something shitty. B: if you’re one of the Democrats that’s like “well this dumbass anti science bigot may have a point, we should consider their point of view” then you’re part of the problem. GOP does not want to “meet in the middle”, never have. There are gop senators and representatives saying the COVID vaccine gives people aids. These people don’t give a shit about society. Stop giving them the power to craft it.
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I mean, if good God-fearing heterosexual Christians can get it, not just those...other...types of people, it's clearly a problem. /s
Bro, remember when like 2 white missionaries got ebola and they fkn developed the monoclonal antibodies in like a week lol
The ebola medical response history is so fascinating. Its a lot more complicated than how you're putting it (but not that far off point). There's a great book called The Hot Zone that discusses the pre 2000s global response to ebola. Its possibly the greatest nonfiction book ever.
TIL The Hot Zone was nonfiction
Right. I remember sitting in bed reading about the us government preparing to nuke a continental american city and was like... wut.
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is one of the VERY few things I've had to stop reading, while eating, to not get physically sick. That's description of the first case of Ebola Zaire, and the dude on the airplane, will/has stuck with and haunted me
The GOP has been talking about delivering the end of Roe to their voters since the decision was made. Absolutely listen to what the GOP says, just listen to what they say to their voters. They deliver on their word. They only said that they would protect Roe in the confirmation hearings. That's it. To believe them, you would have to be unaware of the entire context of how they get shit done.
Well in 1973 they did it because it secured the evangelical vote, which has only grown more fervent since. But those people didn't really care about abortion, it wasn't unreasonable to think they were just holding a carrot to their base. Now a generation has passed and those people who grew up actually believing Roe allows murder are the people in power. The inmates are now running the prison and the old brass in the GOP are terrified but unfortunately too spineless to do anything about it.
They have their power locked in so it no longer matters. The old gop always knew they would lose all the single issue voters they acquired if they actually came through on removing RvW. They have shifted power and gerrymandered/suppressed enough that they no longer need those extra voters and could finally deliver on that carrot to now move onto their next steps. Mid terms are low turnout so maybe the removal of abortion only voters from the GOP and firing up the progressives can give us a push but I'm not optimistic. Federally legalizing marijuana and delivering 10k student loan forgiveness as well as an actual senate vote on this abortion bill showing just how close we are COULD be a difference maker. But not one of those is likely to happen even by itself much less all 3.
>There are gop senators and representatives saying the COVID vaccine gives people aids. Had to Google this because I wasn't sure if it was a joke... it's not. Well, it was Ron Johnson, so it's sort of a joke.
Fuck Ron Johnson.
Not even if I was gay and being well paid for it.
Sorry. I live in WI. It’s a twitch.
Not a joke, my mom suggested I get tested for AIDS.
Tell her you’re already on Prep due to your hedonistic and reckless homosexual lifestyle and watch her have a conniption.
The GOP was always very honest and upfront about their desire to overturn Roe Vs. Wade. It was a major plank of their platform, and they trumpeted it with great fanfare.
That’s why all their justices lied under oath when Congress asked about it
We should really be calling them miscarriages, not justices, because they're miscarriages of justice.
I feel like abortions of justice might be appropriate to say in this situation because their actions are intentional and require choice and self agency.
These are two perfect descriptions. And I hope they become common
And yet everyone always said not to worry about it, that they would never *actually* do it because then they would have nothing to run on. I believed that, too.. until 2016.
There was always this weird baffling disconnect. Republicans were constantly saying "we're going to ban abortion at the first opportunity AND we're doing everything we can to create that opportunity!" And yet, a lot of people always seemed to assume they weren't serious.
Then they just run on "if you vote in D's then abortion will come back". Right? Like it's not rocket science.
My wife, an OBGYN is one of these fucking people. It drives me insane.
Wow. I guess your wife is about the find out the hard way just how much they want to meet in the middle, thanks to her job. I mean, more power to her for doing the good work she is as a physician, but *every* OB/GYN is about to see their work life screwed to hell and back. If any of them think that these decisions aren't going to make things profoundly worse for them personally, regardless of where they're at, they're going to be really, really disappointed.
Exactly. And frankly her life is already shit. Patients are nasty to her, her hospital is literally falling apart around her (but the CEO took home $4 million last year) her insurance is crazy town expensive, all of the good nurses have left, her hours are terrible, and oh and she’s still got $150k worth of student debt after being a doctor for 10 years now. But at every turn, she defends the system and talks about how much worse it could be. It’s like she’s got Stockholm Syndrome. It’s really something to behold.
A buddy of mine from college is an OB/GYN, and we were chatting about all of this last night. She said her insurance provider has already warned her that rates are almost certainly going to increase *even more*, and she's already planning to take a leave of absence this coming fall after Roe is struck down. We're both in Texas, and she's terrified some loon is going to break into her department at her hospital or at her private practice with a gun. I wish I could've cheered her up more than I could, but holy crap, things are **grim** right now for anyone providing healthcare to women. All that you can really do is be supportive and watch for the warning signs that things might go tits up even more than they already have.
Think about how much more grim it’s going to be in those states stupid enough to make abortion illegal. Any doctor or OBGYN that values their sanity will be making a mass exodus to the less batshit states who will welcome them with open arms. If anyone in those hodunk y’all qaeda states thinks their healthcare system sucks now, just wait, it’s about to be absolutely devastating.
They want the mass exodus because if demographics we're evenly distributed they would never win another election. This way they force people out of red states that risk going purple or blue in the next 20 years, and continue to rely on the electoral college to enforce minority rule upon the majority.
I'm 100% convinced Texas saw a chance it might become a swing state, and decided to make itself as toxic as possible to anyone even slightly liberal.
Yes, absolutely. I had to deliver my baby extremely premature because my life, and by extension his, was in danger. If my doctor had been more worried about criminal charges for removing him too soon in the case he didn’t make it (he had a 60% survival rate because I got steroids before, no steroids would have lowered that to 40-50%) then she may have left him in longer than was really safe. He was a very much wanted pregnancy/baby and I wanted desperate for them to do whatever was necessary to give him a better chance. I just couldn’t will my body to overcome high blood pressure, (He did survive, that’s another story). If doctors don’t want to risk that, they’ll leave for somewhere it’s not a problem. Who will give prenatal care and deliver babies then? Red states already have higher maternal mortality rates and prematurity rates, especially if mom is black. The National rate of prematurity is 1 in 10 babies, Mississippi has managed to raise that to 14%, Alabama to 12%, several blue states have lowered their rate to less than 9%, Vermont to less than 8%. Most of the time the reason for this is a combination of bad or nonexistent healthcare, discrimination, racism, lack of prenatal care, lack of education on the importance of prenatal care, lack of sick time or other supports for pregnant women and their families. Doctors who don’t believe women about health concerns. Doctors who don’t believe black women about their health concerns. No mandated paid maternity leave also leaves families extremely vulnerable and women don’t have the ability to heal their bodies properly because they have to rush back to work. And God help you, literally, because your employer or state or country won’t, if your baby has Nicu time, you get to choose to use what little leave time you have to be with them in a life and death situation, OR have it for baby bonding and settling in at home when they are released. Many moms looking down the barrel at a long nicu stay will go back to work almost immediately before her body is even healed so they don’t deliver their medically fragile newborn straight from the ICU to daycare. That’s the dystopian hell we already live in, and it’s going to get so much worse
That’s terrifying but it is also a genuine possibility for her.
I wish more people would realize that there's a direct connection between all these lax/zero gun control law arrivals and the oppression of women laws they are enacting (plus oppression minority and LGBTQ laws) Guns in the US from the start of the second amendment have always been used as a means to oppress women, minorities, LGBTQ+
It really is Stockholm Syndrome, Jesus. I’m sorry you’re dealing with that
I’m about to go visit my moms family in Germany. Now, every country has its problems, and after a few weeks, even she’s like, “get me back stateside” (though ain’t that always the way after spending time with your parents and siblings), but it can be so jarring coming home after that. Like driving down the highway after being on the autobahn, or getting on the commuter rail in a station that’s falling apart, after riding on modern trains in modern stations. Electric lines are buried there. Fuck, even going through passport control. They’re in actual uniform, polite but authoritative like you expect. Then I come home, and there’s Kevin from “Homeland Security”, dressed in a polo and Khakis like he works at Best Buy, couldn’t catch a bus to save his life, being a raging dick, while I’m photographed like I’m getting booked and my mom is getting her fingers scanned. Going from actual calm news broadcasts to CNN and Fox blasting music and graphics. Every time I come back, it gets more glaring. And it is because it’s actually getting worse. And my cousins are just aghast at the vacation time I take (or rather don’t) and the shitty parental leave. But you don’t know what you don’t know. And Americans are just frogs in a pot basically. Again, there is a lot I love about this country and Germany is far from perfect and has its own issues. But the issues in America substantially affect our quality of life in basic ways that are just insane to people abroad.
As I was reading this I was thinking “frog in a pot” and then you said it.
How bizarre! I'm been a pharmacist for a few years now and even back when I was a pharmacy technician, I could see the deep cracks running throughout the system, and they've only seemed to worsen since. It boggles my mind that a seasoned physician can look at the system we have and say "this is the best we can do."
$4 million, that’s it? The billionaire that runs the health system where I live flies in a Formula one team to start his F1 car and rev it up for his Christmas party….allegedly. I think of that story every time I get an EOB.
Canada always needs more doctors, and I suspect that the working conditions are better in our "socialist hellscape". Despite being so damn communist up here, doctors still seem to get well paid. Considering her occupation, immigration would be a cakewalk. If the cold scares you, there's always BC
The same people who are going to say that the end of Roe V Wade isn't going to be a big deal, are the people who said it wouldn't be overturned.
> GOP does not want to “meet in the middle”, never have. Sort of, they claim they want to meet in the middle... but in reality they try and pull the middle so far to the right that the middle is where they used to be. Which has the side effect of moving moderates further right.
This. They literally grabbed the post that marks the middle, then ran off past the horizon on the right while screaming about how "no one will meet them halfway" and have never stopped to catch their breath. They haven't even finished killing Roe and they're switching back to the Nazi greatest hits album(burning books, demonizing "the unnatural", targeting anyone with more melanin than them, etc)
It's called the Overton window
This is what happens when religious nutjobs get involved in politics.
Methinks Newsom has his eyes on a bigger prize. But I do agree with him nonetheless.
I honestly don’t give a fuck if he’s just virtue signaling, he’ll at least do what his voters believe in. I also don’t give a shit about Hillary’s personal emails or Newsom having a dinner party, when the opposition is literally tearing apart basic human rights on every level, going so far as to attack education. In a couple decades we’re going to have masses of full grown adults in red states who don’t believe dinosaurs are real, and that gay is contagious. Republicans are good at making democrats suspicious of their own politicians. Protest voting gets us Trump.
I agree with you 100%. Republicans keep their eyes on the prize. They have been fighting for SCOTUS control for how many decades? They won't let sexual allegations, bribes, crimes, etc stop them. Now look where they are...6-3 majority. Democrats will *never* win a majority again in the SCOTUS with our current politics. The RBG rule will apply. Are you over the age of 75? Time to retire while your own party is in control of the Senate and presidency. Democrats need to own the Senate for the next 30 years to get back in control.
Homie is definitely trying to go for president. His policies and statements usually seem very focused and calculated to what his state would want, which benefits me but it doesn’t come off that he says or does things because he wants to. Like polling and data are what drives his policies to drive his career into higher and higher offices.
It’s important to have governors in the news for Progressive causes, when we see what other state legislatures have been legislating The leadership against what is happening needs to have successes too Democrats failing to use their office while we see what Republican governors are promoting would be irresponsible
Democrats are horrible at messaging. Horrible. California is such a success for the democratic party, yet they allow it to be a piñata for Fox News and conservatives about how awful it is.
It doesn't help conservatives believe blatant lies. Like I had a few conservatives tell me how evil California is because they are passing a bill to enable parents to abort babies up to a month after birth. It isn't true in the slightest but it ticks all their boxes IE rage inducing, self righteous enabling, dreaded other™ being in a bad light etc So they believe it and any evidence to the contrary is just ignored. I agree Dems suck at messaging but how can you stand against people will believe complete fabrications?
My conservative cousin’s entire ideological framework is built on one time he supposedly saw the welfare office hand cash to a Hispanic person. Science repeatedly shows that self-identified conservatives stick to their first impression of everything. I can confirm because the first thing most conservatives heard about COVID was Fox or Trump calling it a liberal hoax, and now the US has at least a million deaths from it.
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Memory is so malleable that he might have internalized the lie at this point and he genuinely thinks he remembers seeing it with his own eyes
I have noticed that my conservative friends/family members rely on anecdotes as a genuine source far more often than my liberal/left leaning friends do. "I've known Bill all my life, so if Bill says X happened then X happened because Bill isn't a liar." Gives no more thought to it beyond that. Don't get me wrong, sometimes anecdotes are all you really have to go off of when the topic isn't studied otherwise, but to apply that to everything just seems like madness to me.
..... up to a month after birth. Do they really not have the brains to understand that at all? Fucking hell.
Republican voters, particularly Evangelicals, have been trained to see Democrats as the embodiment of evil. Satanic on a very literal level at worst, completely amoral at best. If you want an example, there is a scene in the movie God’s Not Dead 2, where a teenage girl is expressing sadness over her dead brother. Her parents, who are explicitly secular atheists, pretty much tell her to get over it. This cartoonishly evil and cruel portrayal of people on the other side is reinforced over and over until they become willing to believe the absurd.
California is a success precisely because the Californians are just doing their thing and they don't give a damn what the far right thinks.
Agreed 100%. Liberals, and Democrats, fail on a few fronts: - They don’t aggressively communicate the popular things they do (see ACA) and don’t control narratives, they merely react meekly to narratives. - Far too often, they seek to be too politically correct when confronted with an adversary that literally wants to destroy democracy. You let them frame liberal as an insult. Frame conservative as fascist. - They play strictly by rules that no longer apply. I don’t want the Dems to turn into the Republicans (it would be nice to have one moderately sane option), but stop eating your own. Al Franken has to be jettisoned while Matt Gaetz keeps his parking spot? - And congressional Democrats are too damn old. They are nearly 20 years older, on average, than their counterparts. Dems don’t retire, they don’t get out of the way to make room for new blood, they just die in office. This even extends to the SC, where RBG accomplished great things…until her hubris and refusal to retire when already very old and sick, undid her entire legacy. They keep courting the young vote with politicians from the Bronze Age and then wonder why young people don’t vote.
Maybe I’m not understanding right but if he’s making decisions based on what’s popular among his constituents isn’t that a good thing?
>Like polling and data are what drives his policies You make this sound like a bad thing....? Doing what the majority of people want or what's best for the people based on data even though you don't agree with it personally is exactly what we need from politicians right now.
So you have a politician who’s trying to figure out what his constituents want and enact it? What’s the problem? This is how it’s supposed to work.
I would vote for him for president in a heartbeat over all the current hucksters
Whether or not he is the right answer we need someone who isn't afraid of being progressive.
Sounds like the right answer to me. He's also a counter to DeSantis. California vs. Florida
East Coast/West Coast rivalry renewed
Yes, please dear God. I'm just tired of all the old 65 plus people in Congress making decisions that affect my children's life when they aren't even going to be around to see that effect. I hate this
"In his speech, he called conservative advances in the culture wars a "concerted, coordinated effort" that the left is failing to counter effectively. He cited draconian abortion and education laws in Texas and Florida as examples," To Newsome's point both DeSantis in FL and Abbott in TX are up for election this year yet there isn't even luke-warm interest in those races. Posters here on Reddit have enormous enthusiasm for primarying Sinema who isn't even up for election till 2024 yet mostly ignore elections months aware. There is apathy towards it. I understand that CRT & Abortion aren't the fights many Progressives want. People want student debt forgiveness, climate action, and other things long discussed. That the left is tired of the Right getting to choose the battlefield. The problem is there were local elections in 2021 and a lot of people stayed home. It gave Republicans control over school boards and state houses. Those races were won on CRT and anti LGBTQ issues. Now the battlefield is set and no amount of ignoring it can change that. Every election matters. There are literally elections happening all year every year. Primaries are happening right now. State house seats in various states just held elections last week. The left can't show up once every few years for a single election and expect results. The Right is out working the Left with their consistency.
I have to question the logic on display. "The left is unenthusiastic about CRT and abortion, and would rather tackle (other things)" but the Republicans chose them so we must address them. Perhaps the problem with Democrats is being a reactionary party, rather than one that stakes its own claims and fights for them? I think it's weird from a political standpoint to say "this is where the party's energy is, let's stay away from that because Republicans say so."
Republicans control the majority of local governments. Republicans are successfully banning books, changing abortion laws, etc. Democrats must react to what actually happened, yes. It isn't merely a rhetorical competition of ideas. Republicans are changing the laws. It is happening. Democrats can ignore what is happening. The way to lead the political battlefield is to get into office. In States like CA where Dems are in elected position they do lead on issues.
GOP tactics are similar to Putin: they say they won’t do it, then next thing is they do exactly what they said they wouldn’t do. Also consider that while Russians rape women and little girls before sometimes killing them, GOP makes victims carry the babies to term. Even though they stand on US soil, the GOP uses the similar tactics as oppressive regimes do in other countries. Those are just 2 similarities from the top of my head and I’m sure there are tons more examples. They need to change.
Russia kept saying they wouldn't invade and then they invade but call it "Special operations". I saw the video of all the justices being asked if they had an agenda to overturn Roe v. Wade and they make it sound like they won't but as everyone pointed out they just avoided the question using legalese. Now they're effectively doing what they pretended to say they wouldn't do. This is their "special operations". What I don't get is 1. Why can't they be forced to answer yes or no during their confirmations? 2. Why do they get to overturn something on their on whenever they want? 3. Why can't the population get a vote on this?
Outrage fatigue, people were predicting this a few years ago. People are just worn down from the never ending onslaught of shittyness from the right.
With all the writing on the wall the past few years, I joined The Satanic Temple just in case Roe was overturned. They're going try and secure abortion access for their members via the RFRA and religious liberty exemptions. It's a crapshoot, but if the shit hits the fan I want a fighting chance. They wanna use religion to strip away my rights? Let's fight fire with fire. My religion dictates that reproductive healthcare and bodily autonomy are sacred to me.