Donation Total: $2,325 one time + $25 recurring

Lambda Legal is an American non-profit organization focused on legal action in support of LGBTQ individuals.

They have already committed to challenge Trump’s anti-queer executive orders in court.

I am encouraging people here to donate to Lambda Legal if you are able to.

Incentive: The following people have committed to match donations:

• u/kfwyre - up to $250 (met!)
• u/smores - up to $1000 (met!)

If anyone else is willing to match donations as well, please let me know and I will edit this post to include you.

Also, check to see if your employer will match donations.

If you donate, simply comment here or PM me. You do NOT have to provide proof that you donated — just share your amount.

If you would rather donate to a different organization instead, please do so. Also please share it here in case others would like to join you.

To our trans users here, especially those in the US: please remember that there are still SO many people out there who love and support you and want you to be able to live your lives with the dignity that you deserve.

I recently heard something that I didn’t like. It was about the growth of fascism in the US, and it said something that I was uncomfortable hearing; ignoring it is the same as acceptance.

I am not subscribed to ~society. I was automatically added when it was created but I quickly noped out. I had already lowered my news consumption to a minimum before Trump won the election, but after I have actively avoided even those few programs that I thought were good. I didn’t have the will to hear about the terrible things on the horizon.

So now I am thinking about what I should do, and right now the thing that seems like the most concrete action is to buy a gun.

Honestly, though, I hate guns. I’ve done a shooting range a few times when I was a kid and I guess they were kind of fun but the idea of using it against people sickens me. On the other hand, we are living in an age where police forces are paramilitarized, the president can and will use CBP as a military force within the US border, and our civil rights are being pried apart.

But what would I actually do with a gun? What difference will it actually make? Bring part of deadly violence is the last thing that I want.

Like many people the results of the 2024 election felt like a punch in the gut. I've been a news fast since then. I'm ready to start looking at what happened.

I'm sure there are a lot of articles and videos.

Could anyone recommend a fact based analysis of why Trump won? Something in the style of The Economist versus hyperbole laden news videos. :-)

I don't know how appropriate this topic will be or how uncomfortable some users will be addressing it. But I noticed a switch online in the usage of previously determined slurs.

When I was a child in the '00s, it was pretty common for people to say the "r-word" as well as refer to things as "gay" whenever they meant stupid or bad. I remember ad campaigns to stop the latter from occurring (one commercial featuring Hillary Duff and another featuring Wanda Sykes). But both of those things went away as we got deeper into the 2010s.

The Obama and, especially, the Trump years were marked by increased progressive language. I do think the turn was in 2016 when using these terms became widely unacceptable. Even two years earlier the hit song Fancy by Iggy Azalea featuring Charli XCX contained the lyric: "That my flow r***** each beat dear, departed."

I think a lot of the hyper-political correctness of 2016 and onwards was a response to the Trump presidency. I think people on the progressive left felt the need to be hyper-vigilant about that. Once the Biden administration happened these rigid beliefs began to relax.

I'll use a few examples of this shift involving a network TV show, to take this conversation into a more concrete real world. Saturday Night Live.

Shane Gillis, a very non politically correct comedian was hired as part of the cast of SNL in 2019. Lorne Michaels hired him to appeal to a more conservative crowd or to at least not be so catering to its liberal demographic. Gillis, who is largely not a conservative, was caught in a scandal following his casting news. Clips from his podcast surfaced of him making fun of Asians and mocking their accents. Gillis was shortly fired.

Fast forward to this year: Shane Gillis hosts SNL. Not only that, in his opening monologue he says the r-word.

Another SNL adjacent example. Matt Healy, lead singer of the 1975, appeared on The Adam Friedland Show podcast. The podcast, originally called Cumtown, is known for its non-PC humor. Healy participated in jokes making fun of Ice Spice and laughed at the host's more racy humor. Scandal surrounded Healy, who was dating Swift at the time, and he was essentially "canceled." Except, he was immediately the musical guest on SNL not long after the scandal (they were the musical spot for Jenna Ortega's episode). If this was 2019, The 1975 likely would not have been invited to be the musical guests, and/or the host of the episode (in this case Ortega) would have been pressured by her PR team to make some sort of post disavowing their inclusion. This didn't happen. In fact this year Jenna Ortega criticized political correctness herself

The last SNL example I wanted to give was in Ariana Grande's recent episode a joke was included where Grande calls someone a pathetic little gay guy, followed by her saying "I meant gay as in stupid and bad" which was very well received on all corners of the internet.

So what happened here? My perception might be warped since in late 2022 I began using the subreddits r/redscarepod and r/theadamfriedlandshow where this type of humor and the usage of these terms was already normal. So it was a little odd to me when these began gaining steam in the outside world.

If it really was just a response to Biden's presidency I feel like we would now be returning to the hyper-political correctness of the 2010s during Trump's administration. But that doesn't seem to be happening.

Maybe political correctness fell out of style, and that will be the case for another five to ten years when it becomes fashionable again.