13 hasn’t been on my list since long before TFG’s first term. Eff that. It’s “Thanksgiving,” not “National Masochism Day.”
“I think women are pushed to look on the bright side much of our lives. Having not ever had a female president in the history of America deserves some righteous anger and rage,” she said.
Now, in the wake of Harris’ loss, Shrader said she feels like “there’s no glass ceiling; it’s more like a concrete block.”
There’s this mindset that’s been widespread among progressives (I’ve occasionally been guilty of it myself) that if we can get our adversaries to actually listen to someone passionally advocate a position with the right arguments and the right data to back them up then our adversaries will eventually come around to see why Policy A is better all around than Policy B.
In practice this doesn’t work because you can’t use data or reason or compassion to persuade someone to abandon a position they didn’t come to embrace based on data or reason or compassion.
It is possible to do everything right and still lose.
“Justice delayed is justice denied” is a very literal truth.
The ACLU has a new ad campaign that says
“He has to get through us.”
That’s refreshing.
All I’m seeing on TV and in the media is “blame Kamala”/“blame the DNC”/“blame Biden for running again”/“blame the messaging”/“blame Democrats for not pandering to the lowest common denominator” and so on. From Democrats especially. Van Jones (D, but no stranger to shitty takes) even kind of sorta blamed trans rights when he lumped that in with a comment about D’s getting behind “weird stuff” which pissed me off. I’m fucking sick of it.
Put your blame behind the majority of gullible voters who already knew exactly who Trump was and what he’d do but voting for him anyway to punish Democrats for high prices on the misguided belief Trump would make prices go back down (newsflash: they never come back down). Blame corporate media for doing everything they could to amplify Trump, minimize Biden/Harris, and sanewash him and other republicans at every opportunity. Blame the Republicans and right wingers that sabotaged Biden and Harris at every point they could because they would rather seek personal power than actually help people. Blame Trump fucking up COVID so massively that somehow went full circle from kicking him out of office in 2020 to bringing him right back in after Democrats had to fix the mess he left behind.
On the issue of Democratic party/victim blaming, i heard an allegory on my local NPR station today which i’ll badly paraphrase:
Suppose 51% of your population has been irretrievably bamboozled (thanks fox"news") that evil lizard people who want to steal your paycheck live among us and only one of two candidates has a proven policy (or the concepts thereof) to rid us of this horrible situation. That candidate therefore wins and immediately the pundits blame the opposing candidate for not sympathizing with or discussing at length how they would confront the evil lizard problem.
Or said another way, trump’s “superpower” is that he isn’t remotely constrained by reality as far as winning votes, and that’s the Democrats’ fault.
-sigh-
Media needs to point the finger at someone besides themselves.
Ana Kasparian turned on trans people earlier this year, preemptively scapegoating us as the reason Biden wasn’t polling well against Trump. When progressives inevitably gave her shit for it, she began her heel turn. She also all but blamed our immigration policies for an assault she experienced, and then accused Democrats and other leftists of mocking her for it. Finally, a few weeks ago, she posted her inevitable “Why I left the left” story. She is well on her way to becoming just another right wing grifter. She is not worth arguing with.
We make a convenient scape goat because there aren’t enough of us to really matter (in their minds).
I saw some BBC vox pop news nonsense (I hate vox pop pieces in BBC news programmes) a couple of days ago, asking people why they voted for Trump. Some MAGA fuckwit said he agreed with America First and if stuff was going on overseas, unless it affected America or its interests, the US should stay away from it.
I guess these people’s definition of ‘its interests’ is (ok, I’m going to be polite) … uninformed.
I bet they think Ukraine and Taiwan have nothing to do with/no impact on America’s interests. As if Russia’s invasion had absolutely nothing to do with the inflation of the past few years. If China invades Taiwan (hugely more likely in the next 4 years now) then all the silicon chips coming from there that will end up under CCCP control is going to have a huge impact.
(And I knew Trump would win when I heard him asking one of his rallies “does anyone here feel better off than they were four years ago?”)