Here's a different take. People are still recovering from shock, and that's a good thing, because ..".fascism thrives when we are dead inside". It's right and necessary that we take time to...
It's right and necessary that we take time to bandage our wounds and evaluate what went wrong, then figure out how we can build durable opposition, shore up our communities, how we can best protect the vulnerable, how we can re-muster our resources for the fights to come.
It's not like we can count on any of the usual punditry suspects (The New York Times, Washington Post, and especially, Politico) to cover this process. Further, old media aren't reaching out to talk with the people most likely to engage in resistance, in the same way they weren't able to influence many voters.
IMHO, part of being politically effective this time round is stepping back and not interfering when Trump policies are going to cause pain to people who supported him. People who were susceptible...
IMHO, part of being politically effective this time round is stepping back and not interfering when Trump policies are going to cause pain to people who supported him. People who were susceptible to 'burn it down' rhetoric might need to experience what that feels like for them and their families.
Protecting the vulnerable to the extent possible is important, but a certain amount of judo strategy is needed. Also, dems are playing defense. Trump has not committed to much yet. You need action before you can react.
If I was sanguine that only the people who caused the mess would get hurt by it, I'd be inclined to agree. I'm ashamed to say that I'd love to see some faces nibbled by leopards. But that's not...
Exemplary
If I was sanguine that only the people who caused the mess would get hurt by it, I'd be inclined to agree. I'm ashamed to say that I'd love to see some faces nibbled by leopards.
But that's not how the authoritarian playbook works.
We do need to be organizing now:
to shelter undocumented people from deportation or worse;
getting journalists safe platforms away from censorship and persecution;
funding bail and legal defense;
organizing labor strikes;
running healthcare, escape, and shelter undergrounds for trans people and women;
promoting surveillance defense;
making sure that communities have supplies and aid when they're cut off because they're the wrong ethnicity or they pissed off the wrong apparatchik;
setting up alternate communication networks;
arranging mass protests where they'll be most effective...
Lots of ideas here. No single thing will get us through what's likely to come, but no need to wait for the other shoe to drop, either.
You need to organize labor before you can organize labor strikes. I just don’t see this as a viable avenue anymore. The old trades, like the Teamsters, are Trumpists because they’re basically a...
You need to organize labor before you can organize labor strikes. I just don’t see this as a viable avenue anymore. The old trades, like the Teamsters, are Trumpists because they’re basically a labor aristocracy that already negotiated their benefits and are riding out to retirement. They haven’t grown their membership meaningfully in decades. The new and growing unions are service sector, and they don’t really have the size to do more than shut down specific fields.
There’s going to need to be some other axis to organize people around that’s not their shop floor. I don’t know what that would be, but I suspect it’d end up looking more like the mafia than a union.
The Teamsters aren't a large fraction of unionized workers. SIEU, AFSCME, teachers, CWA, UAW, and others constitute significant numbers. But I get your point. In terms of a Mafia, I'm more worried...
The Teamsters aren't a large fraction of unionized workers. SIEU, AFSCME, teachers, CWA, UAW, and others constitute significant numbers. But I get your point. In terms of a Mafia, I'm more worried about police unions. But general strikes and work stoppages, street protests, road blockages, and other forms of direct action don't require formal unions, just enough people feeling angry and helpless.
I don't know if it will take the decades of India- or Mexico-scale corruption, obvious and drastic human rights violations, or heinous killings, but don't discount spontaneous uprisings and the (current) ease of making a flash crowd happen.
The problem I see is that these don’t actually do anything but be disruptive. If they were tightly linked to an actual political program, with attainable demands and the ability to work through...
But general strikes and work stoppages, street protests, road blockages, and other forms of direct action don't require formal unions, just enough people feeling angry and helpless.
The problem I see is that these don’t actually do anything but be disruptive. If they were tightly linked to an actual political program, with attainable demands and the ability to work through formal systems then it’d be different but if it’s just an inchoate expression of rage then it’s little more than a bad storm. It passes and things move on.
My impression of the modern left in general is that there is a romantic attachment to the aesthetic of protest and activism and awareness raising but no seriousness about doing anything systemic. The deep resentment against existing systems or doing what’s needed to work within them makes the whole thing ineffectual.
There’s an obnoxious kind of online leftist who loves protests that block traffic because “protests are supposed to be disruptive.” I need to use your post as a template for diplomatically dunking...
There’s an obnoxious kind of online leftist who loves protests that block traffic because “protests are supposed to be disruptive.” I need to use your post as a template for diplomatically dunking on them. Their top goal is catharsis, not policy change.
Protests need to disrupt the right people. Merely forcing your way into public consciousness is no guarantee the general public won’t choose to be more reactionary out of spite.
I always point to the MLK/Marshall way of protesting, which were to target and break specific laws and challenge those laws in Court. That got results. It seems a lot of the protests now are more...
I always point to the MLK/Marshall way of protesting, which were to target and break specific laws and challenge those laws in Court. That got results.
It seems a lot of the protests now are more inspired by the Iraq war protests (I would say Vietnam but those were more effective imo). Occupy Wall Street, many of the BLM protests, and now many of the Israel-Palestine protests are good at generating noise but not much else.
It’s difficult to have those conversations when the people protesting are solely interested in the noise they’re making.
The Iraq War protests were my first experience protesting and I was super annoyed by the presence of groups showing up to coattail ride for their own cause. As soon as got there it would be lousy...
The Iraq War protests were my first experience protesting and I was super annoyed by the presence of groups showing up to coattail ride for their own cause. As soon as got there it would be lousy with a whole bunch of random stuff like legalize cannabis, free Mumia, organic food, go vegan. What does any of this have to do with Iraq? Well it’s all part of the kkkapitalist elite’s plan for. . .
It’s really hard to do serious street action when everything is just people competing with each other to get the most attention for their specific thing. It becomes more like an activism “career fair” with a bunch of groups trying to recruit others from the protest rather than the protest being a tool to make an impression on the public at large.
A contrast, from around the same time, would be the Immigrant March, which I didn’t get to go to but a bunch of my friends did and they said the organizers did a good job of not letting the “Leftist Omnicause” randoms suck up all the attention. The Women’s March was organized well as well. There were a lot of various groups there as well, but it was organized so they all got specific speaking time. In contrast, there was the Science March right after which was a disorganized fustercluck because it seemed more like they were just trying to herd everyone into place to get impressive photos without really communicating anything.
Generally, I'd agree with you about recent history of leftist demonstrations. They've been too inchoate and performative, more street party than strategic and instrumental. Part of the problem was...
Generally, I'd agree with you about recent history of leftist demonstrations. They've been too inchoate and performative, more street party than strategic and instrumental. Part of the problem was that power wasn't strictly unipolar and centralized. The protests disrupted everyone's lives and created general hostility without significant effect to help the people being hurt or hinder the powers responsible.
There's a now a purpose to public protests beyond whether they're directly effective in achieving desired ends. In authoritarian regimes, widespread protest prevents isolation of opposition figures and scapegoats, and serves as an information operation signaling to the rest of the world that the entire country isn't acquiescent or compliant.
We still have an attachment (however romanticized and politicized) to the images of the Tianmen Square protests, women rejecting the hijab in Iran, Alexei Navalny's imprisonment and martydom, and other acts of meaningful civil disobedience against violent dictatorships.
Visible mass protests can help prevent the entire world from equating "American" to "fascist" permanently. We have the current examples of Russia and Israel, where the suppression and silencing of mass protest has resulted in the complete isolation of any internal opposition.
I know we're not there yet, but as far as I'm concerned, it's 1933 and I'm not interested in letting a Reichstag Fire shut everything down.
Yeah I agree with all of this. One thing I observed at the women’s march was that a lot of friends I had made throughout my life and a few of my family members were all staying with me and ended...
Yeah I agree with all of this. One thing I observed at the women’s march was that a lot of friends I had made throughout my life and a few of my family members were all staying with me and ended up meeting, and they’ve all become friends since and organize stuff together. I think a well organized event like this creates opportunities for people to network who wouldn’t otherwise have met each other. It creates “thicker” bonds of affinity to coalesce activities and support networks around. It’s functionally like a professional convention, but since it draws in a lot more types of people from many different walks of life it enables much better coordination.
I think a LOT of this was lost during the pandemic though, and for the generation that came up during it they will have to develop the social skills to do this sort of organization in ways that aren’t intermediated by tech platforms which will be hard.
Center and Right, in the modern era, have managed to paint Left as solely the home of people pushing for extreme social change. Those non-Leftists are often taken aback by some of the social...
Center and Right, in the modern era, have managed to paint Left as solely the home of people pushing for extreme social change. Those non-Leftists are often taken aback by some of the social issues, because many of those issues are decidedly not status quo by any definition a Centrist or Rightie would use. It's no stretch for most of those non-Leftists to hesitate, even disagree, when such issues are brought to their attention.
The distrust and shock those non-Leftists possess is used, deliberately, by the Economic Right to paint the entire Left as shocking and extreme, and thus not to be trusted. Which has worked.
It'd be almost funny, because most Right Wing Capitalists (such as the wealthy) don't really care at all what the general unwashed masses get up to. It'd be amusing, how obvious what they do is, except for how evil and debilitating to most of us the result is. Fuck whoever, become whatever, abort or not, be green, save the animals, whatever. They don't care. Unless you want to alter the rules of the game they've created, unless you want to restructure the game so they get less and those "shocking, extreme masses" get more.
Then they care. Then they work to stop it. Then they part with some of their money, use some of that power, to keep the game from becoming unrigged.
Fortunately, it's much cheaper to target any "key figures" who might be angling for a fairer shake. Basic human greed is almost universally reliable. Selfishness. That innate desire to ensure you're safe, you're okay. When key union 'leaders' are brought into the fold, offered bribes in any form, when those figures who have a platform they might use to unite and rally groups are instead induced to just not do that and personally benefit as compensation ... that's way cheaper than seeing those groups build broadening and growing support for economic change.
Dealing with a revolution would be expensive. They know that. Dealing with a groundswell of political energy demanding economic restructuring would be expensive. They know that. So anyone who might threaten to kick that off is handled. And basic human greed, selfishness, ensures they just ... stop being so vocal.
If that potential leader kept on, if they led and rallied and unified, they'd lose the nice house. Their friends and family wouldn't have the cushy jobs anymore. Government officials that don't bother them would suddenly get very interested, run through their lives with microscopes and ram any perception of an issue straight through a court friendly to the government rather than any concept of justice.
Meanwhile, on the Left, a lot of Lefties have drunk the social Kool-aid. They ignore the shattering economic realities that crush most of us into poverty, maybe a basic and meager and fragile middle class life at best, and latch onto those social issues. Which, because so many of them are very not status quo, can be divisive even among the Left.
The politically active Left spend most of their time arguing which social issue is more important than the other social issues. They scream and point fingers, declare each other "heartless" and "evil" for not caring about (one issue) over (the others) as the single most important and thus critical to avoid allowing Evil To Reign.
Except everyone on the Left thinks their issue is the most important, and everyone else is Evil for not agreeing. Especially a fellow 'Leftist', who should know better and desire to help, and thus agree that your particular issue is definitely the most important and all others pale in comparison on the scale of What Do We Make Our First Priority.
All while so many of us are poor without prospects. Most of the social issues are considerably less critical if more people weren't forced to balance on the edge of a financial knife each and every day. If you have the means to address the issues you feel are important, either for yourself or for others because you desire to feel like an agent of Good and Just Change, and you're not alone in that financial ability to effect change, the criticality of most life problems would be less often so critical.
But we're all poor, and people have been allowed to convince themselves the economic rules are inviolate. Without question, able to withstand any possible challenge. So people grab onto social issues simply to feel like they might have some ability to change something, to feel like they're that Good and Just agent.
Basically they crave validation. They want to be patted on the back. Maybe they might have once thought "gee, it does suck we're all so poor without fair wages and affordable housing and so on", if they ever thought it at all, but they let it go and grab some other issue they perceive as possible. So they can juice themselves with the reward of validation when others who also pick that issue say "yeah, right on!"
Which is the plan. The powerful don't want to give up power. Money is power. Who gives up power? We write stories about people who give up power because it's such a strange and wondrous thing, to think someone might have Power with a capital P and just give it back. In reality, people don't give up Power. They use it. They use it to ensure they never become less Powerful, first and foremost. And after that, they use it for other things that please them.
While those without power, even without the capital P, are left without any Capital that could capitalize that P. That could allow them to raise us all up together, rather than just a chosen few who got there first and continue to say "nah ah, look over there, social injustice, do something" and then laugh contentedly as the masses scrabble and scream about that instead of capitalizing the P.
I don’t want to lose my woke card here, but if done humanely it seems completely fair to deport someone that has overstayed a visa or never had one. Of course, if done en masse there’s no way to...
to shelter undocumented people from deportation or worse
I don’t want to lose my woke card here, but if done humanely it seems completely fair to deport someone that has overstayed a visa or never had one.
Of course, if done en masse there’s no way to do that humanely. And a citizen shouldn’t have to prove their citizenship. So it gets difficult in practice. “or worse”, which I suppose involves violence, is not okay.
If you love someone that is undocumented then please care for your friend or family member and help them stay in their home. But as a blanket statement I am confused.
So, genuine question, how familiar are you with the US immigration system, it's history around undocumented and asylum seeking migrants and Trump's campaign rhetoric on the topic? Because how long...
So, genuine question, how familiar are you with the US immigration system, it's history around undocumented and asylum seeking migrants and Trump's campaign rhetoric on the topic?
Because how long the answer is can depend on all of that
I’m lightly familiar with the immigration system for highly educated workers. I know there’s a humanitarian crisis at the border that has wavered in intensity between administrations, sometimes...
I’m lightly familiar with the immigration system for highly educated workers. I know there’s a humanitarian crisis at the border that has wavered in intensity between administrations, sometimes being unnecessarily cruel in separation of families. I know at the border people can be effectively imprisoned as they wait for bureaucratic machinations to work them through the system. However I don’t know anything about what deportation looks like for someone that has made it to the interior of the nation.
Undocumented folks are often here on asylum claims that can be pending for very long times. There's not really a path to citizenship. Someone who has overstayed their visa is generally not...
Undocumented folks are often here on asylum claims that can be pending for very long times. There's not really a path to citizenship.
Someone who has overstayed their visa is generally not considered undocumented nor is someone who worked despite not having permission to do so on their visa. Elon Musk is not at risk of deportation for example.
Trump has promised mass deportations and said it will be a "bloody story." He's spread white supremacist lies about legal migrants from Haiti and Venezuela. His deportations would not be just people that "deserve" it. They would not just be of people here illegally as well. Any mass deportation will catch citizens, legal residents, etc. because that's just inevitable. Folks here from Muslim countries on work visas are very scared too. They're fully legal, but Trump passed a Muslim ban multiple times.
Some folks oppose this because of Trump and a surety of cruel behavior from whatever "red state army" he thinks will come here and take our people. But some of us also believe that the tired, poor huddled masses that included our ancestors should include the immigrants of today.
Regardless the blanket statement is made in the full context of the current moment.
True, but on the ground organizing probably shouldn't be done online. I was talking mostly about formal actions by elected representatives. And I intended to say that the vulnerable and innocent...
True, but on the ground organizing probably shouldn't be done online.
I was talking mostly about formal actions by elected representatives.
And I intended to say that the vulnerable and innocent should be helped and protected. Certainly trans people and women who need health care.
I admit I'm kind of looking forward to the "find out" stage, when people realize that corruption and kakistocracy aren't a viable form of government. I've already seen online, and expect to see...
I admit I'm kind of looking forward to the "find out" stage, when people realize that corruption and kakistocracy aren't a viable form of government. I've already seen online, and expect to see for years to come, tearful posts from trump supporters about how they didn't know they were going to be screwed over by what they voted for. Unfortunately, these posts are either made up to get clicks, or reflect a tiny minority. I think the supporters largely won't admit to anything and will just blame some other marginalized group when things get bad. That's the example set by their leader.
Unfortunately “finding out” doesn’t usually result in people learning anything. It just breeds more cynicism and scapegoating. The people responsible will never see a consequence unless it’s...
Unfortunately “finding out” doesn’t usually result in people learning anything. It just breeds more cynicism and scapegoating. The people responsible will never see a consequence unless it’s forced on them by external forces.
I know. And still, I'm getting some catharsis from it. The folks exhausted and sitting back are mostly doing so because they'll be hurt either way at this point, might as well get rest in the...
I know. And still, I'm getting some catharsis from it.
The folks exhausted and sitting back are mostly doing so because they'll be hurt either way at this point, might as well get rest in the meantime, because their "allies" talk a big game but did little in the end. (Highlighted further by people wanting to abandon trans issues, and thus people, post election, )
It’s wild to me that anyone would drop LGBT support as it’s the cheapest political belief to hold. At this point just letting trans people exist in peace would be a major upgrade and doesn’t cost...
It’s wild to me that anyone would drop LGBT support as it’s the cheapest political belief to hold. At this point just letting trans people exist in peace would be a major upgrade and doesn’t cost anything.
no offense, but how educated on this are you? trans healthcare is not free or even very cheap. Hormones are relatively affordable but most other gender affirming care is not. Surgeries cost...
no offense, but how educated on this are you? trans healthcare is not free or even very cheap. Hormones are relatively affordable but most other gender affirming care is not. Surgeries cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.
My opinion on the entire situation is that the empire is running out of money and the insurance companies are looking at which groups are using the most money per person for healthcare, and then manufacturing consent to dump them. I bet semaglutide drugs are soon, and likely disabled people more broadly as they are also, bluntly, expensive to keep alive. Nobody with a chronic condition is safe.
I'm aware that trans care can be expensive. I'm thinking about "bathroom bills" and general transphobia. Not being a dick to trans people is free. The Republican party wants to make trans people...
I'm aware that trans care can be expensive. I'm thinking about "bathroom bills" and general transphobia. Not being a dick to trans people is free. The Republican party wants to make trans people miserable. The Democratic party probably doesn't want to actually allocate money to help trans people, but they are in favor of treating them as humans when it comes to free stuff.
I didn't know that gender affirming care was covered by health insurance in the US.
I actually got a conservative woman friend (wants to be a tradwife...) to think twice about Trump by saying outright, "Punishing trans people isn't going to put money in your pocket. It's just a...
I actually got a conservative woman friend (wants to be a tradwife...) to think twice about Trump by saying outright, "Punishing trans people isn't going to put money in your pocket. It's just a distraction so you can keep getting paid and treated like dirt". She went completely silent and came back with, "You're right, I never thought of it that way."
I was stunned that message worked, but we'd trusted each other in some pretty hairy situations at work. I don't know if it was the shared experience that opened her to rethinking her stance, or if it was just that no one had ever put it in those terms.
you're not alone, a lot of people don't know this but even Medicaid covers a lot of stuff. Some people I know have gotten laser hair removal covered, many have gotten other surgeries covered. The...
I didn't know that gender affirming care was covered by health insurance in the US.
you're not alone, a lot of people don't know this but even Medicaid covers a lot of stuff. Some people I know have gotten laser hair removal covered, many have gotten other surgeries covered. The reason the Republican party wants to make trans people miserable is to eradicate them from public life and ideally get them to kill themselves. this solves both the problem of there being trans people in public AND decreases costs. this is why they are such assholes - they want to make it miserable to be trans. they want people to die. I expect the same kind of soft eugenics to be applied to other groups as soon as it becomes expedient
Sorry, but I see no reason to believe that there's even this much rational thought behind it. The big advantage of the trans issue is that the Republican base eats it up, and their motivation...
this solves both the problem of there being trans people in public AND decreases costs
Sorry, but I see no reason to believe that there's even this much rational thought behind it. The big advantage of the trans issue is that the Republican base eats it up, and their motivation certainly has nothing to do with healthcare costs.
the Republicans are not the ones doing this. Insurance companies are, or more accurately their ultra rich owners, using the Republican party as a vehicle for it. Make no mistake here I'm not...
the Republicans are not the ones doing this. Insurance companies are, or more accurately their ultra rich owners, using the Republican party as a vehicle for it. Make no mistake here I'm not saying anti trans bigotry is something they invented or is something new, I am saying that insurance companies are "making hard choices" about who gets to live and die, and like so many times through history, this part of cis society has decided to mulch trans people. To do that they have been trying to turn public opinion against us for years (look at the medias reporting on us, it's gotten increasingly detached from reality) and now have decided the time is right to go all in on it with politics.
Even the Democrats hate us. No trans person who is plugged into politics seriously believes otherwise. Did you notice how the dems conveniently stopped saying trans rights are human rights over the summer? They're shifting the overton window too, and they would only do this if their donors told them to. This is a society eating itself, and trans people are the canary in the coalmine.
Republicans don't want to eliminate trans people because they think they'll cost too much money. They rarely even use that as an excuse in the media when they implement anti-trans legislation....
Republicans don't want to eliminate trans people because they think they'll cost too much money. They rarely even use that as an excuse in the media when they implement anti-trans legislation. They want to eliminate trans people because they're ideology opposed to our existence -- they think we're freaks who shouldn't exist to begin with. I think citing the costs of trans healthcare (which, given the way healthcare works in the US, would not actually be that significant a burden on the government to begin with) is giving them FAR too much credit. If it cost way more money to enact their transphobic agenda than to do nothing, they'd be just as on-board.
I know I already commented, but to add some more info re: the actual money being spent -- fwiw, what is covered under Medicaid varies SIGNIFICANTLY on a state-by-state basis. For instance, while...
I know I already commented, but to add some more info re: the actual money being spent -- fwiw, what is covered under Medicaid varies SIGNIFICANTLY on a state-by-state basis. For instance, while Medicaid is supposed to cover all drugs, gender-affirming HRT is made an explicit exception in Alabama, Texas, and Hawaii. HRT is by far the widest-covered piece of gender-affirming care covered under Medicaid, with surgery and even just mental health care covered by much smaller subsets of states.
Republicans do definitely want to limit access to gender-affirming care for transgender people, but this is almost certainly due to their anti-trans positions more generally -- as evidenced by the fact that they put things with no budgetary impact, like public bathroom use, front and center, rather than focusing on the tiny number of trans people getting gender-affirming care covered on Medicaid. It's about making trans people a boogeyman, not cutting costs.
wha? nobody in power gives a fuck about trans people. it is a convenient rhetorical target. more prominence is if anything good for them; you need a problem to be (seen as) solving
The reason the Republican party wants to make trans people miserable is to eradicate them from public life and ideally get them to kill themselves
wha? nobody in power gives a fuck about trans people. it is a convenient rhetorical target. more prominence is if anything good for them; you need a problem to be (seen as) solving
While trans people are a convenient rhetorical target and many conservative politicians target them solely for that reason, I think it's pretty absurd to claim that there aren't any politicians...
While trans people are a convenient rhetorical target and many conservative politicians target them solely for that reason, I think it's pretty absurd to claim that there aren't any politicians who authentically hold abominable anti-trans (and most often generally anti-queer) positions. Especially in a country where Mike Pence is a former vice president.
also, "nobody in power gives a fuck about trans people" is exactly what I'm saying. we are a convenient scapegoat for the status quo in a bunch of different ways. Transmisogyny is one of the most...
also, "nobody in power gives a fuck about trans people" is exactly what I'm saying. we are a convenient scapegoat for the status quo in a bunch of different ways. Transmisogyny is one of the most fundamental bigotries. Man-in-a-dress narratives work well even today. The same way that Reagan engineered the AIDS genocide of gay men and trans women in the 80s, society is doing the same again. AIDS research took off only after it started affecting straight people. Much the same way, restricting gender affirming care is only going to be a problem when it starts affecting cis people. Until then it's just a convenient way to say "look, we're doing things! we're totally saving money on these annoying mental patients that want $20,000 surgeries!" while effectively doing nothing at all.
I think you're right in a number of ways, but I just don't assign as much of their reasoning to economic factors. Neither the AIDS crisis nor the current anti-trans hysteria is motivated by money,...
I think you're right in a number of ways, but I just don't assign as much of their reasoning to economic factors. Neither the AIDS crisis nor the current anti-trans hysteria is motivated by money, but rather a desire to see the disgusting, sinful freaks punished for their behavior. It's hard to clearly categorise to what degree each individual Republican politician is doing so out of their own personally held disgust and hatred vs. a cynical desire to appeal to the disgust and hatred of their base. But that disgust and hatred in their base is what they're targeting either way, not their base's financial woes.
I think we are talking about different bases. The actual power in politics flows from who has the money, and that's investment banks and insurance companies. The soft power, the voter base,...
I think we are talking about different bases. The actual power in politics flows from who has the money, and that's investment banks and insurance companies. The soft power, the voter base, latently hates trans people, but not so much that they would actually really do much. I basically take issue with the idea that power in the Republican party is bottom up - it's clearly not, at least not a majority. Propaganda works, and is an incredibly convenient way to bring out that latent hate as a distraction from the real problems of modern life.
We are a convenient scapegoat that also has the added benefit of getting to say you saved money through the scapegoating process. Obviously it won't actually save money in the long run, but conservatives are, broadly, transphobic enough to overlook that, and by the time it becomes obvious to all the clueless rubes it will be too late and thousands, maybe tens of thousands of trans people will be dead. Trans children will be dead. And that's enough to be considered a win.
I think the only place we disagree is that I broadly think that this is also true of most of the higher-ups and party leadership. While there may be some subset who are only in it as a cynical...
Obviously it won't actually save money in the long run, but conservatives are, broadly, transphobic enough to overlook that
I think the only place we disagree is that I broadly think that this is also true of most of the higher-ups and party leadership. While there may be some subset who are only in it as a cynical ploy, I think genuine transphobia is a bigger part of the motivation not just for the populace, but also for the politicians themselves.
Ultimately I don't think there's a ton of money in transphobia, at least not compared to most other comparably large political issues. Insurance companies are spending their money lobbying for plenty of awful things, but I'm not convinced they're seeing trans healthcare as a threat worth lobbying against.
That depends on the politician. However the religious conservative voters whether Catholic, protestant or non Christian, see actions furthering transgender identity as willfully disobeying God....
That depends on the politician. However the religious conservative voters whether Catholic, protestant or non Christian, see actions furthering transgender identity as willfully disobeying God. For them, anatomy is destiny.
Why can’t insurance companies manufacture consent to nullify the concept of intellectual property, then make semaglutide drugs cheap? That would be the one useful thing that industry ever did.
Why can’t insurance companies manufacture consent to nullify the concept of intellectual property, then make semaglutide drugs cheap? That would be the one useful thing that industry ever did.
FWIW I don’t think anyone new is really interested in abandoning trans issues, the loss is just being used as an excuse to grind old axes that would have been ground anyway. The same thing...
FWIW I don’t think anyone new is really interested in abandoning trans issues, the loss is just being used as an excuse to grind old axes that would have been ground anyway. The same thing happened in 2004 when gay marriage ballot initiatives powered George W. Bush to the win. Every said to abandon it, but actually it just sort of lowered the salience of the topic until it built up enough momentum in the background that it was barely controversial when it finally happened.
A lot of things are obscured right now by the fact that a reactionary faction is in power that is propelled by people who are deeply deranged and actually unpopular. Something about Trump seems to convince a lot of people that the horrible things he says aren’t really about them, or he’s just kidding. But once the rubber hits the road they’ll find out. They’ll never learn, but I think maybe we should just try to turn these sorts of people off politics altogether instead of changing their minds because they don’t listen or take it seriously enough.
I mean I think that the post-mortems are pretty much all premature and are, like you said, just being used to argue the points they already thought were true. But I'm just going to find one thing...
I mean I think that the post-mortems are pretty much all premature and are, like you said, just being used to argue the points they already thought were true.
But I'm just going to find one thing and focus on doing advocacy/activism/etc for that thing and not try to save the whole world right now. If all of us did that, we probably would be able to save the world. But most people just yell online about how everyone else sucks.
“Act of self preservation” is right. We made noise, we protested, we voted and none of it worked. The populist won anyway cause thats how populism works. So now we just need to buckle in and...
“Act of self preservation” is right.
We made noise, we protested, we voted and none of it worked. The populist won anyway cause thats how populism works.
So now we just need to buckle in and prepare for the goods and services we depend on to no longer be available.
The activists I've seen are still acting, primarily in smaller targeted ways, because why try to save the "majority" that wanted this. (Tbh I'm enjoying the FAFO vibes.) Activism I've seen has...
The activists I've seen are still acting, primarily in smaller targeted ways, because why try to save the "majority" that wanted this. (Tbh I'm enjoying the FAFO vibes.) Activism I've seen has been focusing mostly on abortion access, safety for trans folks and immigrants and Black peer support. Black women in particular are feeling burnt out and fully unsupported by basically everyone.
But the media wasn't the resistance, and this time, federal employees will absolutely be targeted and fired for following regulations and status quo over directions from the president. People are not posting their plans on Twitter. Serious people are not posting their plans on Bluesky either. Organizations are still organizing. So people who want the "resistance" to save us should join it.
And yeah, some folks are still in shock and waiting to see what things happen before the end of the current presidency, some are not.
We’re not coming to save us. We’re tuning out. Because we’ve done such a stellar job of saving ourselves so far. Clearly, there needs to be a bit of self-assessment on the left, and now is as good...
We’re not coming to save us. We’re tuning out.
Because we’ve done such a stellar job of saving ourselves so far. Clearly, there needs to be a bit of self-assessment on the left, and now is as good a time for it as any. And taking a breather after getting the knees kicked out from under oneself seems like a sensible idea to me.
Trump made himself available as a vehicle of revenge, and it wasn’t just one side which found that destructive power useful and took him up on the offer. So why are we actively working towards such bad outcomes for ourselves and each other? Where is this animosity growing from? What is feeding it?
And what exactly is this so-called resistance supposed to be resisting this time around, anyway?
I’d much prefer anyone who opposes the direction in which this administration seems to be heading to take a moment to get their thoughts in order before they start firing off with a bunch of overly reactionary tweets and op-eds. And if the drop off of viewers, subscribers, and followers of left-wing media is anything to go by, then perhaps this is a more common opinion than not.
Also, the left is a fractured, squabbling mess at the best of times, so this little lull in in-fighting is probably not such a terrible thing.
Honestly I think an issue is the hysteria we had the first time around made people feel burnt out. There’s still some of that around, but I remember people thinking really horrific things that...
Honestly I think an issue is the hysteria we had the first time around made people feel burnt out. There’s still some of that around, but I remember people thinking really horrific things that didn’t ultimately come true. So because of that, the people that are able to remember the 2016 election, are kind of just numb to all of that.
Why waste the energy on hysterics again?
I do wonder how this is gonna affect mounting an opposition. Because that post-2016 fear and rage got Dems kicked into high gear and led to figures like Gretchen Whitmer. I wonder how the Dem landscape will look like without all that this time around.
I’m not sure if this is off topic or not, but I don’t think we’re going to see any real change until both sides stop seeing each other as subhuman, evil, stupid, elitist, or whatever othering is...
I’m not sure if this is off topic or not, but I don’t think we’re going to see any real change until both sides stop seeing each other as subhuman, evil, stupid, elitist, or whatever othering is in vogue at the time.
Trump’s power move has always been to fight an enemy. That enemy might be the bad people taking all the jobs, the scary trans people stealing your money, and those people with college degrees who think they’re better than you. To a sizable portion of the populace, these are not people they’re likely to encounter often. That makes them easy to vilify and turn into whatever the adult equivalent of a high school rivalry is.
The only way I see to fight this is with conversation. Not social media, or the news, one on one conversation with someone you might otherwise ignore. The way that conversation happens is really important. Vocabulary has changed a lot in the last decade or two. There’s no way to have a constructive conversation with someone if you’re more concerned with word policing than with what they’re trying to communicate or ask. The goal should be to turn whoever they are taking issue with into a human being.
De-escalation is not a skill we tend to think about often. I think it’s something we would all do well to practice.
While I broadly agree I do think polarization has reached the point that we can't talk our way out of a lot of it. Like, how am I, a transsexual, supposed to find common ground with someone who...
While I broadly agree I do think polarization has reached the point that we can't talk our way out of a lot of it. Like, how am I, a transsexual, supposed to find common ground with someone who actually just wants to put all trans people in camps and is actually part of a hate group that has done material harm?
I'm not talking about the merely ignorant, or the lightly propagandized. Those can be worked with. But we have reached a point where a significant portion of our society is simply not interested in reality whatsoever, that truly believe the sky is green. How do we reach those that have so stubbornly stuck their head in the sand? I hope there are enough others to outweigh them.
I don't know what you can do. But I try to do my part educating the people I know that are ignorant. It's something. Making the ignorant into the informed is one way we can improve the situation....
I don't know what you can do. But I try to do my part educating the people I know that are ignorant. It's something. Making the ignorant into the informed is one way we can improve the situation. I have a friend who would probably be an old-school conservative. Would like less taxes, is cautious on social progression, etc. He is however a sane and intelligent person and voted for Harris, Biden and Hillary the last 3 elections.
Occasionally he says something ignorant regarding trans people. I could decide he's beyond fixing, or get angry or call him names. Instead I walk through his thought processes with him. I make it clear I'm willing to adopt his thoughts should I deem them logical. Then I show him how his ignorance has given him some logical fallacies. For example, he wonders if trans bathroom bills might be a good idea. I asked him this:
What should a passing trans person do when using a bathroom in public? In Florida it is illegal for them to use the bathroom of their gender. Anyone who knows they are trans can out them for breaking the law. However, if they use the bathroom of the gender they were assigned at birth they will appear to be breaking the law. This will put themselves at risk of physical harm from bigots and legal harm from idiots. They just can not use a bathroom in public now.
This did in fact give him pause. I genuinely think with a little time he will soften on this topic. I can understand that a trans person might not be comfortable engaging with someone like him. But I am personally happy to walk people away from ignorance.
As for an example of how I show I am arguing in good faith - he brought up a news story about a trans teacher from Canada. They were given permission to wear gender-affirming prosthetic breasts when teaching. However, they are ludicrously large - like Z cup. It's a story I had not heard of, but conservatives seem to latch onto it. I stated that had this person been cis and gotten similarly ludicrous breast implants the school may well have pushed back on having them as a teacher. My understanding is the school was uncomfortable navigating the situation. They would be setting precedence. Had the teacher had prosthetic breasts that were of a natural size I could not see any excuse to deny them that.
Now, most people aren't as easily convinced by logic. And if they are they need to be convinced by someone they trust. The difficulty for someone that is trans is that to argue this logically you need to be able to hold the possibility of transphobic policies in your mind. And I can understand if that is just not possible to do. In these moments of engagement with ignorance trans people get rights only if their rights can be logically proven. Of course outside of these engagements I already believe these are fundamental human rights. Trans people deserve to live their best lives and a modern society should absolutely be able to afford to help them do that. But to convince someone not yet on board you can't begin with "fundamental human rights". Then they know you would never move an inch right from the start. In truth I can't see myself moving more conservative on this topic, but I am good at appearing as though I could.
I've said it before, but I am an educator at heart and I do a lot of education, discussion, etc. But it is exhausting to be told, as one side laughs at liberal tears and triggering the libs; as...
I've said it before, but
I am an educator at heart and I do a lot of education, discussion, etc.
But it is exhausting to be told, as one side laughs at liberal tears and triggering the libs; as one side dehumanizes trans people during every ad break of every sporting event for three months; as one side spreads Stormfront lies about immigrants; that it's incumbent on us to be nicer.
I've been nice. And I'm not going to dehumanize "them", but this is why people are burnt out. No amount of nice stops the slurs, or keeps people from voting for a rapist. Why would it be different this time? And who is telling "them" to be nice?
It's incredibly frustrating that any time someone gets just a little bit of catharsis from people who just realize Trump lies all the time after voting for him again we're told to be nicer to the people that don't care about us.
I am particularly prickly because a woman rammed my friend with her cart this week, because he's gay in Target with his husband, and yelled about Trump winning. She also did it to a younger black girl. It sounds so literally insane that I don't blame anyone for thinking it's made up.
It's just such a "this woman goes off about Trump loudly and for no reason other than she saw something she doesn't like and then assaulted them" like.... Trope? It feels so fake. It has to be...
It's just such a "this woman goes off about Trump loudly and for no reason other than she saw something she doesn't like and then assaulted them" like.... Trope? It feels so fake. It has to be fake. And I want to hurt that woman so badly for hurting the peace of my friend, his husband and that girl.
And I won't. And wouldn't. But "we" have to stop treating "them" as the enemy? Sigh
Who says we have to stop treating them as the enemy? By their fruits you shall know them. They are the enemy. Ghandhi was clear that the British rulers were not his friends. He chose his tactics...
Who says we have to stop treating them as the enemy? By their fruits you shall know them. They are the enemy.
Ghandhi was clear that the British rulers were not his friends. He chose his tactics based on various criteria for effectiveness, including improving the chance of winning bystanders or passive british supporters to his side.
(And I am not making Ghandhi a saint, or saying that his methods necesarily fit this context now, just reaching for an easily recognized example)
The top comment in this thread, other posts, etc. I'm just tired and cranky this morning and would love the child responsible get chided by the parents rather than the ones being harassed.
Who says we have to stop treating them as the enemy? By their fruits you shall know them. They are the enemy.
The top comment in this thread, other posts, etc.
I'm just tired and cranky this morning and would love the child responsible get chided by the parents rather than the ones being harassed.
Don't be nice to those people. Be nice to the people that are just a few steps away from voting to protect trans people. Then they can talk to the people that are just a few steps away from where...
Don't be nice to those people. Be nice to the people that are just a few steps away from voting to protect trans people. Then they can talk to the people that are just a few steps away from where they were.
The fact that someone can say this when we lost yet another important ruling this year (something nearly on the level of Roe v. Wade) really shows how good the billionaires were at distracting...
archaic Constitutional provision to bemoan
The fact that someone can say this when we lost yet another important ruling this year (something nearly on the level of Roe v. Wade) really shows how good the billionaires were at distracting from the real issues. The courts have spent years prepping for the Red wave and will keep stacking it so the President becomes basically a monarch.
I don’t think Republican unity is a given. How it turns out looks pretty unpredictable to me. For example, it looks like the Senate might push back? ‘Reckless pick': Lawmakers express doubts that...
I don’t think Republican unity is a given. How it turns out looks pretty unpredictable to me. For example, it looks like the Senate might push back?
I sure hope there's some integrity left. From what I heard in 2016 there were quite a number of cabinet members that would at least keep Trump in some sense of reality. And apparently those...
I sure hope there's some integrity left. From what I heard in 2016 there were quite a number of cabinet members that would at least keep Trump in some sense of reality. And apparently those members are not in the 2024 administration. The absurd board picks certainly seem to lend to that theory.
There's definitely some push back from the FBI. But with Chevron overturned, the courts apparently might be able to more easily overturn their opinion and re-interpret these long held traditions and courtesies as just that, instead of important checks and balances for the branches to prevent this faux monarchy. I might be grossly misinterpreting the reaches this has, but we're definitely going to see a lot more of that for the next few years.
it doesn't matter. I don't understand why people keep talking about the president or Congress like they matter. they exist for a show, for content. Chevron is a coup via the judiciary. Congress...
it doesn't matter. I don't understand why people keep talking about the president or Congress like they matter. they exist for a show, for content. Chevron is a coup via the judiciary. Congress might as well not exist. who actually give a rat's ass about who is gonna be the Senate majority whip or whatever when the judicial system can just force any part of the government to do anything a corporation that's paid it off wants?
Seriously, this doesn't seem like cynicism to me. Why would they not do this? They already stole an election in 2000, why not dispense with the pretense of democracy? And do so while leaving this nonsense as a show for the ineffectual do nothing loser Democratic party loyalists to jerk off over? This seems like the ideal outcome for the corporate feudalists.
I don’t think you have a realistic view of the judiciary. Sometimes they make a ruling we disagree with, but that doesn’t mean anything goes. That matters because Trump can’t do anything by...
I don’t think you have a realistic view of the judiciary. Sometimes they make a ruling we disagree with, but that doesn’t mean anything goes.
That matters because Trump can’t do anything by himself and there are two million US government employees who don’t have to do what he says if it’s ruled illegal.
What they might do in a chaotic situation isn’t predetermined.
Bribes are legal now. Why would these corporations not pay the judiciary for whatever they want? I don't see how this is unrealistic. It's not a new thing, it's just a further eroding of the...
Bribes are legal now. Why would these corporations not pay the judiciary for whatever they want? I don't see how this is unrealistic. It's not a new thing, it's just a further eroding of the delineation between state and capital
"some workarounds" is an incredible way of framing "it's fine if you just give them money afterwards" but yeah sure believe what you want. I'm sure this time the judiciary will do the right thing...
"some workarounds" is an incredible way of framing "it's fine if you just give them money afterwards" but yeah sure believe what you want. I'm sure this time the judiciary will do the right thing out of the kindness of their heart.
That ruling is a whole lot narrower than how you’re misrepresenting it. It’s a ruling about what one particular federal law means....
That ruling is a whole lot narrower than how you’re misrepresenting it. It’s a ruling about what one particular federal law means.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a federal anti-bribery law does not make it a crime for state and local officials to accept a gratuity for acts that they have already taken. Writing for a six-justice majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh explained that state and local governments already regulate gifts to officials, and so the federal law “does not supplement those state and local rules by subjecting 19 million state and local officials to up to 10 years in federal prison for accepting even commonplace gratuities.”
Here's a different take. People are still recovering from shock, and that's a good thing, because ..".fascism thrives when we are dead inside".
It's right and necessary that we take time to bandage our wounds and evaluate what went wrong, then figure out how we can build durable opposition, shore up our communities, how we can best protect the vulnerable, how we can re-muster our resources for the fights to come.
It's not like we can count on any of the usual punditry suspects (The New York Times, Washington Post, and especially, Politico) to cover this process. Further, old media aren't reaching out to talk with the people most likely to engage in resistance, in the same way they weren't able to influence many voters.
IMHO, part of being politically effective this time round is stepping back and not interfering when Trump policies are going to cause pain to people who supported him. People who were susceptible to 'burn it down' rhetoric might need to experience what that feels like for them and their families.
Protecting the vulnerable to the extent possible is important, but a certain amount of judo strategy is needed. Also, dems are playing defense. Trump has not committed to much yet. You need action before you can react.
If I was sanguine that only the people who caused the mess would get hurt by it, I'd be inclined to agree. I'm ashamed to say that I'd love to see some faces nibbled by leopards.
But that's not how the authoritarian playbook works.
We do need to be organizing now:
Lots of ideas here. No single thing will get us through what's likely to come, but no need to wait for the other shoe to drop, either.
You need to organize labor before you can organize labor strikes. I just don’t see this as a viable avenue anymore. The old trades, like the Teamsters, are Trumpists because they’re basically a labor aristocracy that already negotiated their benefits and are riding out to retirement. They haven’t grown their membership meaningfully in decades. The new and growing unions are service sector, and they don’t really have the size to do more than shut down specific fields.
There’s going to need to be some other axis to organize people around that’s not their shop floor. I don’t know what that would be, but I suspect it’d end up looking more like the mafia than a union.
The Teamsters aren't a large fraction of unionized workers. SIEU, AFSCME, teachers, CWA, UAW, and others constitute significant numbers. But I get your point. In terms of a Mafia, I'm more worried about police unions. But general strikes and work stoppages, street protests, road blockages, and other forms of direct action don't require formal unions, just enough people feeling angry and helpless.
I don't know if it will take the decades of India- or Mexico-scale corruption, obvious and drastic human rights violations, or heinous killings, but don't discount spontaneous uprisings and the (current) ease of making a flash crowd happen.
The problem I see is that these don’t actually do anything but be disruptive. If they were tightly linked to an actual political program, with attainable demands and the ability to work through formal systems then it’d be different but if it’s just an inchoate expression of rage then it’s little more than a bad storm. It passes and things move on.
My impression of the modern left in general is that there is a romantic attachment to the aesthetic of protest and activism and awareness raising but no seriousness about doing anything systemic. The deep resentment against existing systems or doing what’s needed to work within them makes the whole thing ineffectual.
There’s an obnoxious kind of online leftist who loves protests that block traffic because “protests are supposed to be disruptive.” I need to use your post as a template for diplomatically dunking on them. Their top goal is catharsis, not policy change.
Protests need to disrupt the right people. Merely forcing your way into public consciousness is no guarantee the general public won’t choose to be more reactionary out of spite.
I always point to the MLK/Marshall way of protesting, which were to target and break specific laws and challenge those laws in Court. That got results.
It seems a lot of the protests now are more inspired by the Iraq war protests (I would say Vietnam but those were more effective imo). Occupy Wall Street, many of the BLM protests, and now many of the Israel-Palestine protests are good at generating noise but not much else.
It’s difficult to have those conversations when the people protesting are solely interested in the noise they’re making.
The Iraq War protests were my first experience protesting and I was super annoyed by the presence of groups showing up to coattail ride for their own cause. As soon as got there it would be lousy with a whole bunch of random stuff like legalize cannabis, free Mumia, organic food, go vegan. What does any of this have to do with Iraq? Well it’s all part of the kkkapitalist elite’s plan for. . .
It’s really hard to do serious street action when everything is just people competing with each other to get the most attention for their specific thing. It becomes more like an activism “career fair” with a bunch of groups trying to recruit others from the protest rather than the protest being a tool to make an impression on the public at large.
A contrast, from around the same time, would be the Immigrant March, which I didn’t get to go to but a bunch of my friends did and they said the organizers did a good job of not letting the “Leftist Omnicause” randoms suck up all the attention. The Women’s March was organized well as well. There were a lot of various groups there as well, but it was organized so they all got specific speaking time. In contrast, there was the Science March right after which was a disorganized fustercluck because it seemed more like they were just trying to herd everyone into place to get impressive photos without really communicating anything.
Generally, I'd agree with you about recent history of leftist demonstrations. They've been too inchoate and performative, more street party than strategic and instrumental. Part of the problem was that power wasn't strictly unipolar and centralized. The protests disrupted everyone's lives and created general hostility without significant effect to help the people being hurt or hinder the powers responsible.
There's a now a purpose to public protests beyond whether they're directly effective in achieving desired ends. In authoritarian regimes, widespread protest prevents isolation of opposition figures and scapegoats, and serves as an information operation signaling to the rest of the world that the entire country isn't acquiescent or compliant.
We still have an attachment (however romanticized and politicized) to the images of the Tianmen Square protests, women rejecting the hijab in Iran, Alexei Navalny's imprisonment and martydom, and other acts of meaningful civil disobedience against violent dictatorships.
Visible mass protests can help prevent the entire world from equating "American" to "fascist" permanently. We have the current examples of Russia and Israel, where the suppression and silencing of mass protest has resulted in the complete isolation of any internal opposition.
I know we're not there yet, but as far as I'm concerned, it's 1933 and I'm not interested in letting a Reichstag Fire shut everything down.
Yeah I agree with all of this. One thing I observed at the women’s march was that a lot of friends I had made throughout my life and a few of my family members were all staying with me and ended up meeting, and they’ve all become friends since and organize stuff together. I think a well organized event like this creates opportunities for people to network who wouldn’t otherwise have met each other. It creates “thicker” bonds of affinity to coalesce activities and support networks around. It’s functionally like a professional convention, but since it draws in a lot more types of people from many different walks of life it enables much better coordination.
I think a LOT of this was lost during the pandemic though, and for the generation that came up during it they will have to develop the social skills to do this sort of organization in ways that aren’t intermediated by tech platforms which will be hard.
Center and Right, in the modern era, have managed to paint Left as solely the home of people pushing for extreme social change. Those non-Leftists are often taken aback by some of the social issues, because many of those issues are decidedly not status quo by any definition a Centrist or Rightie would use. It's no stretch for most of those non-Leftists to hesitate, even disagree, when such issues are brought to their attention.
The distrust and shock those non-Leftists possess is used, deliberately, by the Economic Right to paint the entire Left as shocking and extreme, and thus not to be trusted. Which has worked.
It'd be almost funny, because most Right Wing Capitalists (such as the wealthy) don't really care at all what the general unwashed masses get up to. It'd be amusing, how obvious what they do is, except for how evil and debilitating to most of us the result is. Fuck whoever, become whatever, abort or not, be green, save the animals, whatever. They don't care. Unless you want to alter the rules of the game they've created, unless you want to restructure the game so they get less and those "shocking, extreme masses" get more.
Then they care. Then they work to stop it. Then they part with some of their money, use some of that power, to keep the game from becoming unrigged.
Fortunately, it's much cheaper to target any "key figures" who might be angling for a fairer shake. Basic human greed is almost universally reliable. Selfishness. That innate desire to ensure you're safe, you're okay. When key union 'leaders' are brought into the fold, offered bribes in any form, when those figures who have a platform they might use to unite and rally groups are instead induced to just not do that and personally benefit as compensation ... that's way cheaper than seeing those groups build broadening and growing support for economic change.
Dealing with a revolution would be expensive. They know that. Dealing with a groundswell of political energy demanding economic restructuring would be expensive. They know that. So anyone who might threaten to kick that off is handled. And basic human greed, selfishness, ensures they just ... stop being so vocal.
If that potential leader kept on, if they led and rallied and unified, they'd lose the nice house. Their friends and family wouldn't have the cushy jobs anymore. Government officials that don't bother them would suddenly get very interested, run through their lives with microscopes and ram any perception of an issue straight through a court friendly to the government rather than any concept of justice.
Meanwhile, on the Left, a lot of Lefties have drunk the social Kool-aid. They ignore the shattering economic realities that crush most of us into poverty, maybe a basic and meager and fragile middle class life at best, and latch onto those social issues. Which, because so many of them are very not status quo, can be divisive even among the Left.
The politically active Left spend most of their time arguing which social issue is more important than the other social issues. They scream and point fingers, declare each other "heartless" and "evil" for not caring about (one issue) over (the others) as the single most important and thus critical to avoid allowing Evil To Reign.
Except everyone on the Left thinks their issue is the most important, and everyone else is Evil for not agreeing. Especially a fellow 'Leftist', who should know better and desire to help, and thus agree that your particular issue is definitely the most important and all others pale in comparison on the scale of What Do We Make Our First Priority.
All while so many of us are poor without prospects. Most of the social issues are considerably less critical if more people weren't forced to balance on the edge of a financial knife each and every day. If you have the means to address the issues you feel are important, either for yourself or for others because you desire to feel like an agent of Good and Just Change, and you're not alone in that financial ability to effect change, the criticality of most life problems would be less often so critical.
But we're all poor, and people have been allowed to convince themselves the economic rules are inviolate. Without question, able to withstand any possible challenge. So people grab onto social issues simply to feel like they might have some ability to change something, to feel like they're that Good and Just agent.
Basically they crave validation. They want to be patted on the back. Maybe they might have once thought "gee, it does suck we're all so poor without fair wages and affordable housing and so on", if they ever thought it at all, but they let it go and grab some other issue they perceive as possible. So they can juice themselves with the reward of validation when others who also pick that issue say "yeah, right on!"
Which is the plan. The powerful don't want to give up power. Money is power. Who gives up power? We write stories about people who give up power because it's such a strange and wondrous thing, to think someone might have Power with a capital P and just give it back. In reality, people don't give up Power. They use it. They use it to ensure they never become less Powerful, first and foremost. And after that, they use it for other things that please them.
While those without power, even without the capital P, are left without any Capital that could capitalize that P. That could allow them to raise us all up together, rather than just a chosen few who got there first and continue to say "nah ah, look over there, social injustice, do something" and then laugh contentedly as the masses scrabble and scream about that instead of capitalizing the P.
I don’t want to lose my woke card here, but if done humanely it seems completely fair to deport someone that has overstayed a visa or never had one.
Of course, if done en masse there’s no way to do that humanely. And a citizen shouldn’t have to prove their citizenship. So it gets difficult in practice. “or worse”, which I suppose involves violence, is not okay.
If you love someone that is undocumented then please care for your friend or family member and help them stay in their home. But as a blanket statement I am confused.
So, genuine question, how familiar are you with the US immigration system, it's history around undocumented and asylum seeking migrants and Trump's campaign rhetoric on the topic?
Because how long the answer is can depend on all of that
I’m lightly familiar with the immigration system for highly educated workers. I know there’s a humanitarian crisis at the border that has wavered in intensity between administrations, sometimes being unnecessarily cruel in separation of families. I know at the border people can be effectively imprisoned as they wait for bureaucratic machinations to work them through the system. However I don’t know anything about what deportation looks like for someone that has made it to the interior of the nation.
Undocumented folks are often here on asylum claims that can be pending for very long times. There's not really a path to citizenship.
Someone who has overstayed their visa is generally not considered undocumented nor is someone who worked despite not having permission to do so on their visa. Elon Musk is not at risk of deportation for example.
Trump has promised mass deportations and said it will be a "bloody story." He's spread white supremacist lies about legal migrants from Haiti and Venezuela. His deportations would not be just people that "deserve" it. They would not just be of people here illegally as well. Any mass deportation will catch citizens, legal residents, etc. because that's just inevitable. Folks here from Muslim countries on work visas are very scared too. They're fully legal, but Trump passed a Muslim ban multiple times.
Some folks oppose this because of Trump and a surety of cruel behavior from whatever "red state army" he thinks will come here and take our people. But some of us also believe that the tired, poor huddled masses that included our ancestors should include the immigrants of today.
Regardless the blanket statement is made in the full context of the current moment.
Thank you, that’s more information for me. I am sure mass deportation will be a disgrace upon our nation if implemented.
True, but on the ground organizing probably shouldn't be done online.
I was talking mostly about formal actions by elected representatives.
And I intended to say that the vulnerable and innocent should be helped and protected. Certainly trans people and women who need health care.
I admit I'm kind of looking forward to the "find out" stage, when people realize that corruption and kakistocracy aren't a viable form of government. I've already seen online, and expect to see for years to come, tearful posts from trump supporters about how they didn't know they were going to be screwed over by what they voted for. Unfortunately, these posts are either made up to get clicks, or reflect a tiny minority. I think the supporters largely won't admit to anything and will just blame some other marginalized group when things get bad. That's the example set by their leader.
Unfortunately “finding out” doesn’t usually result in people learning anything. It just breeds more cynicism and scapegoating. The people responsible will never see a consequence unless it’s forced on them by external forces.
I know. And still, I'm getting some catharsis from it.
The folks exhausted and sitting back are mostly doing so because they'll be hurt either way at this point, might as well get rest in the meantime, because their "allies" talk a big game but did little in the end. (Highlighted further by people wanting to abandon trans issues, and thus people, post election, )
It’s wild to me that anyone would drop LGBT support as it’s the cheapest political belief to hold. At this point just letting trans people exist in peace would be a major upgrade and doesn’t cost anything.
no offense, but how educated on this are you? trans healthcare is not free or even very cheap. Hormones are relatively affordable but most other gender affirming care is not. Surgeries cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.
My opinion on the entire situation is that the empire is running out of money and the insurance companies are looking at which groups are using the most money per person for healthcare, and then manufacturing consent to dump them. I bet semaglutide drugs are soon, and likely disabled people more broadly as they are also, bluntly, expensive to keep alive. Nobody with a chronic condition is safe.
I'm aware that trans care can be expensive. I'm thinking about "bathroom bills" and general transphobia. Not being a dick to trans people is free. The Republican party wants to make trans people miserable. The Democratic party probably doesn't want to actually allocate money to help trans people, but they are in favor of treating them as humans when it comes to free stuff.
I didn't know that gender affirming care was covered by health insurance in the US.
I actually got a conservative woman friend (wants to be a tradwife...) to think twice about Trump by saying outright, "Punishing trans people isn't going to put money in your pocket. It's just a distraction so you can keep getting paid and treated like dirt". She went completely silent and came back with, "You're right, I never thought of it that way."
I was stunned that message worked, but we'd trusted each other in some pretty hairy situations at work. I don't know if it was the shared experience that opened her to rethinking her stance, or if it was just that no one had ever put it in those terms.
you're not alone, a lot of people don't know this but even Medicaid covers a lot of stuff. Some people I know have gotten laser hair removal covered, many have gotten other surgeries covered. The reason the Republican party wants to make trans people miserable is to eradicate them from public life and ideally get them to kill themselves. this solves both the problem of there being trans people in public AND decreases costs. this is why they are such assholes - they want to make it miserable to be trans. they want people to die. I expect the same kind of soft eugenics to be applied to other groups as soon as it becomes expedient
Sorry, but I see no reason to believe that there's even this much rational thought behind it. The big advantage of the trans issue is that the Republican base eats it up, and their motivation certainly has nothing to do with healthcare costs.
the Republicans are not the ones doing this. Insurance companies are, or more accurately their ultra rich owners, using the Republican party as a vehicle for it. Make no mistake here I'm not saying anti trans bigotry is something they invented or is something new, I am saying that insurance companies are "making hard choices" about who gets to live and die, and like so many times through history, this part of cis society has decided to mulch trans people. To do that they have been trying to turn public opinion against us for years (look at the medias reporting on us, it's gotten increasingly detached from reality) and now have decided the time is right to go all in on it with politics.
Even the Democrats hate us. No trans person who is plugged into politics seriously believes otherwise. Did you notice how the dems conveniently stopped saying trans rights are human rights over the summer? They're shifting the overton window too, and they would only do this if their donors told them to. This is a society eating itself, and trans people are the canary in the coalmine.
Republicans don't want to eliminate trans people because they think they'll cost too much money. They rarely even use that as an excuse in the media when they implement anti-trans legislation. They want to eliminate trans people because they're ideology opposed to our existence -- they think we're freaks who shouldn't exist to begin with. I think citing the costs of trans healthcare (which, given the way healthcare works in the US, would not actually be that significant a burden on the government to begin with) is giving them FAR too much credit. If it cost way more money to enact their transphobic agenda than to do nothing, they'd be just as on-board.
I know I already commented, but to add some more info re: the actual money being spent -- fwiw, what is covered under Medicaid varies SIGNIFICANTLY on a state-by-state basis. For instance, while Medicaid is supposed to cover all drugs, gender-affirming HRT is made an explicit exception in Alabama, Texas, and Hawaii. HRT is by far the widest-covered piece of gender-affirming care covered under Medicaid, with surgery and even just mental health care covered by much smaller subsets of states.
Republicans do definitely want to limit access to gender-affirming care for transgender people, but this is almost certainly due to their anti-trans positions more generally -- as evidenced by the fact that they put things with no budgetary impact, like public bathroom use, front and center, rather than focusing on the tiny number of trans people getting gender-affirming care covered on Medicaid. It's about making trans people a boogeyman, not cutting costs.
wha? nobody in power gives a fuck about trans people. it is a convenient rhetorical target. more prominence is if anything good for them; you need a problem to be (seen as) solving
While trans people are a convenient rhetorical target and many conservative politicians target them solely for that reason, I think it's pretty absurd to claim that there aren't any politicians who authentically hold abominable anti-trans (and most often generally anti-queer) positions. Especially in a country where Mike Pence is a former vice president.
also, "nobody in power gives a fuck about trans people" is exactly what I'm saying. we are a convenient scapegoat for the status quo in a bunch of different ways. Transmisogyny is one of the most fundamental bigotries. Man-in-a-dress narratives work well even today. The same way that Reagan engineered the AIDS genocide of gay men and trans women in the 80s, society is doing the same again. AIDS research took off only after it started affecting straight people. Much the same way, restricting gender affirming care is only going to be a problem when it starts affecting cis people. Until then it's just a convenient way to say "look, we're doing things! we're totally saving money on these annoying mental patients that want $20,000 surgeries!" while effectively doing nothing at all.
I think you're right in a number of ways, but I just don't assign as much of their reasoning to economic factors. Neither the AIDS crisis nor the current anti-trans hysteria is motivated by money, but rather a desire to see the disgusting, sinful freaks punished for their behavior. It's hard to clearly categorise to what degree each individual Republican politician is doing so out of their own personally held disgust and hatred vs. a cynical desire to appeal to the disgust and hatred of their base. But that disgust and hatred in their base is what they're targeting either way, not their base's financial woes.
I think we are talking about different bases. The actual power in politics flows from who has the money, and that's investment banks and insurance companies. The soft power, the voter base, latently hates trans people, but not so much that they would actually really do much. I basically take issue with the idea that power in the Republican party is bottom up - it's clearly not, at least not a majority. Propaganda works, and is an incredibly convenient way to bring out that latent hate as a distraction from the real problems of modern life.
We are a convenient scapegoat that also has the added benefit of getting to say you saved money through the scapegoating process. Obviously it won't actually save money in the long run, but conservatives are, broadly, transphobic enough to overlook that, and by the time it becomes obvious to all the clueless rubes it will be too late and thousands, maybe tens of thousands of trans people will be dead. Trans children will be dead. And that's enough to be considered a win.
I think the only place we disagree is that I broadly think that this is also true of most of the higher-ups and party leadership. While there may be some subset who are only in it as a cynical ploy, I think genuine transphobia is a bigger part of the motivation not just for the populace, but also for the politicians themselves.
Ultimately I don't think there's a ton of money in transphobia, at least not compared to most other comparably large political issues. Insurance companies are spending their money lobbying for plenty of awful things, but I'm not convinced they're seeing trans healthcare as a threat worth lobbying against.
That depends on the politician. However the religious conservative voters whether Catholic, protestant or non Christian, see actions furthering transgender identity as willfully disobeying God. For them, anatomy is destiny.
Why can’t insurance companies manufacture consent to nullify the concept of intellectual property, then make semaglutide drugs cheap? That would be the one useful thing that industry ever did.
I wish I shared your optimism. I hope this happens I am just pessimistic about it when the status quo makes them so much money.
I assume they're buddies with the pharma CEOs.
FWIW I don’t think anyone new is really interested in abandoning trans issues, the loss is just being used as an excuse to grind old axes that would have been ground anyway. The same thing happened in 2004 when gay marriage ballot initiatives powered George W. Bush to the win. Every said to abandon it, but actually it just sort of lowered the salience of the topic until it built up enough momentum in the background that it was barely controversial when it finally happened.
A lot of things are obscured right now by the fact that a reactionary faction is in power that is propelled by people who are deeply deranged and actually unpopular. Something about Trump seems to convince a lot of people that the horrible things he says aren’t really about them, or he’s just kidding. But once the rubber hits the road they’ll find out. They’ll never learn, but I think maybe we should just try to turn these sorts of people off politics altogether instead of changing their minds because they don’t listen or take it seriously enough.
I mean I think that the post-mortems are pretty much all premature and are, like you said, just being used to argue the points they already thought were true.
But I'm just going to find one thing and focus on doing advocacy/activism/etc for that thing and not try to save the whole world right now. If all of us did that, we probably would be able to save the world. But most people just yell online about how everyone else sucks.
“Act of self preservation” is right.
We made noise, we protested, we voted and none of it worked. The populist won anyway cause thats how populism works.
So now we just need to buckle in and prepare for the goods and services we depend on to no longer be available.
The activists I've seen are still acting, primarily in smaller targeted ways, because why try to save the "majority" that wanted this. (Tbh I'm enjoying the FAFO vibes.) Activism I've seen has been focusing mostly on abortion access, safety for trans folks and immigrants and Black peer support. Black women in particular are feeling burnt out and fully unsupported by basically everyone.
But the media wasn't the resistance, and this time, federal employees will absolutely be targeted and fired for following regulations and status quo over directions from the president. People are not posting their plans on Twitter. Serious people are not posting their plans on Bluesky either. Organizations are still organizing. So people who want the "resistance" to save us should join it.
And yeah, some folks are still in shock and waiting to see what things happen before the end of the current presidency, some are not.
We’re not coming to save us. We’re tuning out.
Because we’ve done such a stellar job of saving ourselves so far. Clearly, there needs to be a bit of self-assessment on the left, and now is as good a time for it as any. And taking a breather after getting the knees kicked out from under oneself seems like a sensible idea to me.
Trump made himself available as a vehicle of revenge, and it wasn’t just one side which found that destructive power useful and took him up on the offer. So why are we actively working towards such bad outcomes for ourselves and each other? Where is this animosity growing from? What is feeding it?
And what exactly is this so-called resistance supposed to be resisting this time around, anyway?
I’d much prefer anyone who opposes the direction in which this administration seems to be heading to take a moment to get their thoughts in order before they start firing off with a bunch of overly reactionary tweets and op-eds. And if the drop off of viewers, subscribers, and followers of left-wing media is anything to go by, then perhaps this is a more common opinion than not.
Also, the left is a fractured, squabbling mess at the best of times, so this little lull in in-fighting is probably not such a terrible thing.
Honestly I think an issue is the hysteria we had the first time around made people feel burnt out. There’s still some of that around, but I remember people thinking really horrific things that didn’t ultimately come true. So because of that, the people that are able to remember the 2016 election, are kind of just numb to all of that.
Why waste the energy on hysterics again?
I do wonder how this is gonna affect mounting an opposition. Because that post-2016 fear and rage got Dems kicked into high gear and led to figures like Gretchen Whitmer. I wonder how the Dem landscape will look like without all that this time around.
I’m not sure if this is off topic or not, but I don’t think we’re going to see any real change until both sides stop seeing each other as subhuman, evil, stupid, elitist, or whatever othering is in vogue at the time.
Trump’s power move has always been to fight an enemy. That enemy might be the bad people taking all the jobs, the scary trans people stealing your money, and those people with college degrees who think they’re better than you. To a sizable portion of the populace, these are not people they’re likely to encounter often. That makes them easy to vilify and turn into whatever the adult equivalent of a high school rivalry is.
The only way I see to fight this is with conversation. Not social media, or the news, one on one conversation with someone you might otherwise ignore. The way that conversation happens is really important. Vocabulary has changed a lot in the last decade or two. There’s no way to have a constructive conversation with someone if you’re more concerned with word policing than with what they’re trying to communicate or ask. The goal should be to turn whoever they are taking issue with into a human being.
De-escalation is not a skill we tend to think about often. I think it’s something we would all do well to practice.
While I broadly agree I do think polarization has reached the point that we can't talk our way out of a lot of it. Like, how am I, a transsexual, supposed to find common ground with someone who actually just wants to put all trans people in camps and is actually part of a hate group that has done material harm?
I'm not talking about the merely ignorant, or the lightly propagandized. Those can be worked with. But we have reached a point where a significant portion of our society is simply not interested in reality whatsoever, that truly believe the sky is green. How do we reach those that have so stubbornly stuck their head in the sand? I hope there are enough others to outweigh them.
I don't know what you can do. But I try to do my part educating the people I know that are ignorant. It's something. Making the ignorant into the informed is one way we can improve the situation. I have a friend who would probably be an old-school conservative. Would like less taxes, is cautious on social progression, etc. He is however a sane and intelligent person and voted for Harris, Biden and Hillary the last 3 elections.
Occasionally he says something ignorant regarding trans people. I could decide he's beyond fixing, or get angry or call him names. Instead I walk through his thought processes with him. I make it clear I'm willing to adopt his thoughts should I deem them logical. Then I show him how his ignorance has given him some logical fallacies. For example, he wonders if trans bathroom bills might be a good idea. I asked him this:
This did in fact give him pause. I genuinely think with a little time he will soften on this topic. I can understand that a trans person might not be comfortable engaging with someone like him. But I am personally happy to walk people away from ignorance.
As for an example of how I show I am arguing in good faith - he brought up a news story about a trans teacher from Canada. They were given permission to wear gender-affirming prosthetic breasts when teaching. However, they are ludicrously large - like Z cup. It's a story I had not heard of, but conservatives seem to latch onto it. I stated that had this person been cis and gotten similarly ludicrous breast implants the school may well have pushed back on having them as a teacher. My understanding is the school was uncomfortable navigating the situation. They would be setting precedence. Had the teacher had prosthetic breasts that were of a natural size I could not see any excuse to deny them that.
Now, most people aren't as easily convinced by logic. And if they are they need to be convinced by someone they trust. The difficulty for someone that is trans is that to argue this logically you need to be able to hold the possibility of transphobic policies in your mind. And I can understand if that is just not possible to do. In these moments of engagement with ignorance trans people get rights only if their rights can be logically proven. Of course outside of these engagements I already believe these are fundamental human rights. Trans people deserve to live their best lives and a modern society should absolutely be able to afford to help them do that. But to convince someone not yet on board you can't begin with "fundamental human rights". Then they know you would never move an inch right from the start. In truth I can't see myself moving more conservative on this topic, but I am good at appearing as though I could.
I've said it before, but
I am an educator at heart and I do a lot of education, discussion, etc.
But it is exhausting to be told, as one side laughs at liberal tears and triggering the libs; as one side dehumanizes trans people during every ad break of every sporting event for three months; as one side spreads Stormfront lies about immigrants; that it's incumbent on us to be nicer.
I've been nice. And I'm not going to dehumanize "them", but this is why people are burnt out. No amount of nice stops the slurs, or keeps people from voting for a rapist. Why would it be different this time? And who is telling "them" to be nice?
It's incredibly frustrating that any time someone gets just a little bit of catharsis from people who just realize Trump lies all the time after voting for him again we're told to be nicer to the people that don't care about us.
I am particularly prickly because a woman rammed my friend with her cart this week, because he's gay in Target with his husband, and yelled about Trump winning. She also did it to a younger black girl. It sounds so literally insane that I don't blame anyone for thinking it's made up.
Trump gave the haters permission to be loud and violent in public.
I believe you. Leadership has significant impact for good or bad.
It's just such a "this woman goes off about Trump loudly and for no reason other than she saw something she doesn't like and then assaulted them" like.... Trope? It feels so fake. It has to be fake. And I want to hurt that woman so badly for hurting the peace of my friend, his husband and that girl.
And I won't. And wouldn't. But "we" have to stop treating "them" as the enemy? Sigh
Who says we have to stop treating them as the enemy? By their fruits you shall know them. They are the enemy.
Ghandhi was clear that the British rulers were not his friends. He chose his tactics based on various criteria for effectiveness, including improving the chance of winning bystanders or passive british supporters to his side.
(And I am not making Ghandhi a saint, or saying that his methods necesarily fit this context now, just reaching for an easily recognized example)
The top comment in this thread, other posts, etc.
I'm just tired and cranky this morning and would love the child responsible get chided by the parents rather than the ones being harassed.
Don't be nice to those people. Be nice to the people that are just a few steps away from voting to protect trans people. Then they can talk to the people that are just a few steps away from where they were.
I am broadly nice to everyone.
I am tired of being told to be nice. Please go tell them to be nicer.
The fact that someone can say this when we lost yet another important ruling this year (something nearly on the level of Roe v. Wade) really shows how good the billionaires were at distracting from the real issues. The courts have spent years prepping for the Red wave and will keep stacking it so the President becomes basically a monarch.
I don’t think Republican unity is a given. How it turns out looks pretty unpredictable to me. For example, it looks like the Senate might push back?
‘Reckless pick': Lawmakers express doubts that Gaetz can get confirmed as attorney general
Also, overturning Chevron is technically taking power away from the executive branch.
I sure hope there's some integrity left. From what I heard in 2016 there were quite a number of cabinet members that would at least keep Trump in some sense of reality. And apparently those members are not in the 2024 administration. The absurd board picks certainly seem to lend to that theory.
There's definitely some push back from the FBI. But with Chevron overturned, the courts apparently might be able to more easily overturn their opinion and re-interpret these long held traditions and courtesies as just that, instead of important checks and balances for the branches to prevent this faux monarchy. I might be grossly misinterpreting the reaches this has, but we're definitely going to see a lot more of that for the next few years.
it doesn't matter. I don't understand why people keep talking about the president or Congress like they matter. they exist for a show, for content. Chevron is a coup via the judiciary. Congress might as well not exist. who actually give a rat's ass about who is gonna be the Senate majority whip or whatever when the judicial system can just force any part of the government to do anything a corporation that's paid it off wants?
Seriously, this doesn't seem like cynicism to me. Why would they not do this? They already stole an election in 2000, why not dispense with the pretense of democracy? And do so while leaving this nonsense as a show for the ineffectual do nothing loser Democratic party loyalists to jerk off over? This seems like the ideal outcome for the corporate feudalists.
I don’t think you have a realistic view of the judiciary. Sometimes they make a ruling we disagree with, but that doesn’t mean anything goes.
That matters because Trump can’t do anything by himself and there are two million US government employees who don’t have to do what he says if it’s ruled illegal.
What they might do in a chaotic situation isn’t predetermined.
Bribes are legal now. Why would these corporations not pay the judiciary for whatever they want? I don't see how this is unrealistic. It's not a new thing, it's just a further eroding of the delineation between state and capital
There are some workarounds, but no, bribes aren’t legal. Are you just making bizarre claims for the fun of it?
"some workarounds" is an incredible way of framing "it's fine if you just give them money afterwards" but yeah sure believe what you want. I'm sure this time the judiciary will do the right thing out of the kindness of their heart.
That ruling is a whole lot narrower than how you’re misrepresenting it. It’s a ruling about what one particular federal law means.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scope-of-anti-bribery-law/
Prosecutors have other laws they can use.
Congress allowed this power grab by willfully ceding its regulatory powers to the Executive.