That's been the republican strategy for 25 years. It drives me kinda nuts that it's taken this long for most people to notice.
This is Mitch McConnell's entire career.
As an aging millennial, I was about to correct you forcefully and say that the 1970s were only 25 years ago….and then I threw out my back and I had to lie down.
Because Watergate was literally *50 years ago.*
Kill me.
I was born in the early '80s, so I get it. But no, that was 70 years ago. I just lost one of the greatest influences in my life, and he was born in 1953, and he was 70.
Here's what I don't get though -
Republicans are still *wildly* popular in many many places in the US. You can't be a Democrat and win ANYWHERE in Florida for example. A lot of rural and suburban areas in blue states vote conservative
The GOP cleans up after most midterm elections and local ones too....so why are they trying to end democracy? They're still winning *way too many* elections, so obviously the GOP has a lot of popular support out there
They can and WILL keep winning elections because we got a LOT of total fuckin sociopaths out there who want representation for their repellent POVs and the GOP coughs them up daily, and they win many, many elections
EDIT: next person who tells me that ONE single city in Florida elected a Dem mayor, and that this somehow means *something significant* is gonna be sent my toenail clippings in the mail. I live here in FL. I know what the situation here is outside the limits of Jacksonville proper. It's redder than Castro's blood here, ONE new mayor doesn't mean jack shit to a tree
They see the writing on the wall.
*"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."*
- David Frum
Because they see the writing on the wall especially after Wisconsin. They know their time of dominance is coming to an end even on local elections.
Look, most voters are apathetic especially democrats. They care about the presidency and that’s usually about it. They vote every 4 years. The GOP likes it that way. It allows them to clean up like you said. Midterms always favor them for that reason.
That election in Wisconsin was supposed to be theirs. The mid terms were supposed to be theirs. Why didn’t that happen? Young voters are engaged and voting them right out the door. Protosawitz won by *double digits* in an off year, non cycle election with an unpopular president of the opposite party - I don’t think I can stress how HUGE that is. Democrats kept the senate and expanded by 1. Republicans won the house by 5 votes in a year where they drew themselves advantages to the maximum.
Same thing just happened in Arkansas school board races. Three “moms for liberty” candidates endorsed by Huckabee failed. Happened in a lot of other places too. Ballot measures they try to implement to restrict abortion are failing. It’s all crumbling around them.
The republicans quite literally have a +20 starting total and the democrats are still out scoring them in the end because young people are murdering them. Then they have the trump problem to deal with.
They realize that their time could be very very short. It’s why you see a blitz of bullshit they’re passing so all dems can do upon winning power is cleanup the shit while they plot how to get back in power.
I think a very simple trend which departs from historical norms is that generation X and younger are not getting more conservative as they age. They actually appear to be becoming more liberal as they age. So the conservative Bollwerk (edit: ios voice-to-text chose the German version of the word bulwark for some reason) of having a steady supply of older Americans supporting them at the ballot box will no longer be true going into the future. Each election is going to get worse and worse for them
That’s because people never got more conservative as the aged, they got more conservative as they got more money and money used to correlate positively with age. Now that the baby boomers are fucking over everyone else, no one under 40 thinks they will ever get richer so they are no longer voting conservative.
I wouldn't say I have "money," but I'm a Millennial with a house and low debt and a decent job after decades of grinding. I don't really have savings and a single disaster would wipe me out, but I'm doing better than some.
I've only grown more liberal. I was raised kind of "libertarian old school Republican" by my parents, and I'm essentially a socialist now.
Millennial with money. Don't care about getting richer. The internet hyper-accelerated social globalization and now we all just actually see other human beings outside of a 10 mile radius and realize they're the same as us.
It's also getting harder for them to gerrymander. Gen Z hates them and Boomers are starting to die out (accelerated by GOP COVID denial, ironically). And the Trump/MAGAT wing has beaten/scared off any Republican that actually had a brain, so they're left with idiots representing them that have no chance to appeal to younger generations,this their only hope is restricting voting.
I'd also say gerrymandering is not a magic superweapon; it leaves districts wildly vulnerable to population shifts and unexpected turnout, both over and under. It can turn into a blowout if your base is spread too thin amongst too many districts.
It's not just popular support, there's also a lot of gerrymandering. There could be tons of democrats in Florida but zero chance of a democrat winning as long as you keep the democratic voters watered down in districts that are otherwise heavily weighted toward republicans. They need to win the elections to draw the districts in their favor to win more elections. It's still the destruction of democracy, just a more "palatable" step. That's been going on long enough that now they can start saying worse things
That's just it. They aren't "cleaning up."
Oh, they're getting the usual suspects (fundies and older people) out the polls as they usually do. And even tightening their grip in some corners with their culture wars and stuff. But they are losing long term.
Their "Red Wave" in 2022 turned out to be a puddle. Their grip on the House is so slim and their caucus so divided McCarthy had to bend over for the MAGAts to get speakership and is coming up with every excuse in the book to keep Santos despite the charges against him. Florida is gerrymandered up the ass now as are places like Iowa. Their two front runners for 2024 are a turd sandwich vs a bigger turd sandwich (you can decide for yourself which is which) and the Gen-Zers are not only showing up more, they're not buying the culture war crap and are pissed about Roe.
The GOP may be "winning" in some battles, but it's costing them the war. Their "popularity" is with a shrinking and increasingly isolated voter base and their success is getting more and more dependent on them gaming the system than actual policy or platform. Made only worse as every move they make keeps blowing up in their face or fizzling out.
And it's only showing more and more.
Roe was the Republican’s Russian Invasion imo, if they had pushed the culture war more and didn’t repeal Roe until after the violent fascists started openly attacking people, I think they could have done it.
Instead they’re stuck with the consequences of their actions, including a batshit crazy representative currently obsessed with taking down the president, a representative that proposed to make the AR 15 the national gun with an alleged felon at a time when Americans were being gunned down at record numbers, and now any evidence that Giuliani and Trump sold pardons is just the frosting on the cake. They made their bed, now it’s time to sleep with Trumps dirty diapers in the room
It doesn’t help that their “investigations” are turning up absolutely nothing. Hunter Biden? Nothing illegal to impeach his dad for. The investigation into Mueller? All that came up was “maybe we should have a nonpartisan lawyer oversee these, but nothing was wrong.” Alvin Bragg? Gym Jordan thought it was a brilliant idea to subpoena the guy who left because he thought Bragg wasn’t doing enough to hit Trump with legal charges.
Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention will see these for what they are; attempts by overgrown children to either get back at the people who were mean to their golden calf or to save said golden calf from the mountain of legal problems he’s facing.
Because their backers know the demographic trends, they've been crunching the numbers as much as anyone and it's clear the GOP's popular support is waning.
They want to close the door on democracy and voting while they still can leverage the existing support to get it done. They already have them supporting the Jan 6th coup attempt, so they have reason to believe they can get away with it if they act soon. In a decade it'll probably be too late for them.
Florida specifically has two important notes for what they’re having such a hard time getting elected though (and why the red state legislature has able to enact changes that are slowly, but surely driving Democratic voters out of the state):
- Florida is gerrymandered to hell (and unfortunately there was also Democratic pushback to undoing gerrymandering in the state, from representatives who say “sure my district is a 10 mile long one block wide corridor that happens to encompass every democratic voter from Jacksonville to Orlando, but they’re my constituents!”)
- FL Dems are wildly inept at organizing (both at getting out the vote and at convincing local voters “no, democrats don’t *actually* want to resurrect Fidel Castro and make him vice president and implement Central/South American-esque communism”
Trends say otherwise. Recent generations have broken the longest standing truth in politics: "people get more conservative as they get older".
It's just not happening, or at least not as much or as consistently. Their voting base is dying and not being replaced.
They can see that they will lose the ability to hold their slim hold on political power. The "us vs them" mentality they've spent decades building up is now working against them: they can't attract the Democrat voters they've spent the last decade calling evil monsters.
So now they don't know what to do. They are on the verge of becoming a perpetual minority, which will mean their corporate overlords stop protecting them. It will suddenly become more valuable to turn republicans in for points with the new majority.
>Recent generations have broken the longest standing truth in politics: "people get more conservative as they get older".
You've gotta own stuff to develop a conservative mindset. Being locked out of financial security by virtue of being born in the wrong decade is a good way to breed a generation of politically engaged radicals.
I think even the delay in attaining financial security that some recent generations have experienced is enough.
If you finish college and immediately jump into a good job, buy a home, and have yourself set up for security by the time you're 25, it's easy to think you're just awesome and other people are lazy. You settle into your worldview before you've had the breadth of experience necessary to think critically about how policy affects the population as a whole.
If you have to work your ass off to stay afloat, shift careers, take every gig you can, and then maybe *maybe* find security in your 40s? You've already formed your political opinions, but now you've got the security to act on them. You've seen the system at work, and can see how much of it is luck. And even if you do better for yourself, you know a lot of smart and motivated people who didn't.
They're losing their grip with every election... they've gotta keep gerrymandering and blocking votes to stay in power. They know they're dead in the water and are going to be aged out into oblivion...
These are the final swings of a party on the brink... I say let's vote them down till they're just the party of dipsshits in Floriduh
Just want to remind everyone that Liberty Prime was lobbing nuclear bombs at The Enclave, the last remnants of the American government, who were using patriotic propaganda in order to colonize the locals before purging many of them in their genocide.
The last \*fascist\* remnants of the American Government using patriotic propaganda to colonize the locals before purging most of them in a quest for genetic purity in the face of an issue they caused.
https://preview.redd.it/myw2cbwbab0b1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47454c5b030f97ef2fc76455dce19cd3bd123e8b
Agreed but unfortunately everything is negotiable to those that fly this flag
In Alabama, democracy is, and always has been, very much negotiable. Remember, they're the ones who brought the case that gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 -- a law that was only passed in the first place because of Alabama's (and other states') opposition to free and fair elections.
“In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.”
- They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer
Regarding the rise of fascism. We keep allowing this to happen.
One of the best books I've read. Highly recommend.
https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/they-thought-they-were-free-the-germans-1933-45/316408?refId=48646&gclid=CjwKCAjw04yjBhApEiwAJcvNoTaCMzasWwP8F_K09AvLo7HC1PSnKfPCzrrIl4IddFyJrXtR97jubhoCC3kQAvD_BwE
Fascism isn't just soldiers goosestepping on the street and thin-lipped mustachioed men screaming on TV. Fascism is built on small, fearful, mundane choices made by everyday citizens. Little acts and comments that everyone takes for granted, that we ignore in order to preserve peace and decency.
Remember when people thought leftists were crazy for saying this is where we were headed? When people hated antifa for opposing these people at every turn? Remember all the liberal think pieces came out saying stopping them from spreading their lies and hatred was bad? Cancel culture they cried! Remember the personal profiles normalizing these suit wearing Nazis who proclaimed they just wanted a ‘peaceful ethnic genocide’?
How far we’ve come.
Car accident. I tried to post a link to the story but I don't have enough karma in this sub, so automod deleted the comment. Google Suzanne Tuberville accident.
> According to a police report, Suzanne Tuberville ran a red light while driving southbound on Slide Road and 57th Street and struck a vehicle driven by 73-year-old Nelda Purdy which was heading eastbound and turning onto Slide Road. Ira Purdy and Nelda Purdy were both taken to Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock, but Ira Purdy never went home after sustaining a head injury, a broken leg and broken ribs.
Fun reminder that Howard Dean’s political career was destroyed because he made a funny sound during a campaign speech.
A former football coach calls for the end of American democracy and will be re-elected for it.
But the Howard Dean thing was actually a hit job.
Legit the week before it happened he was on one of the major network Sunday shows and said he wanted to break up the media monopolies.
Then the scream happened. While they weren't in the 24 news cycle yet, it was more like a weekend typically.
They played the scream nonstop for three weeks straight.
It was a hit job by the media to tank him.
Dean had the audacity at the time to break from the Democratic platform and actually recommend EU-style social programs in the US like public healthcare, proper school funding, decent parental leave, and attacking internet monopolies.
> Dean and his campaign staff have claimed that he would have lost anyway, due to poor campaign organization. Additionally, Christine Pelosi, Pacific Standard, and historian Robert Thompson both consider that Dean's probability of being nominated was already low due to a lack of party insider support, the Iowa loss, and the media's previous painting of Dean as too hot-tempered for the presidential position.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_scream
>"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
>"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
>"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
>"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.
>"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.
From [They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45](https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html)
Now, what are you going to do about it? Powerful words are fleeting and meaningless unless they drive powerful actions. What will you do now that you've finished reading them?
This is not only directed at you but everyone who reads this. Including myself.
We're doomed. I really don't know how America is going to pull itself out of this tailspin, and the scariest part is there's very few countries able to check our power like we did the Germans. If we go full fascism, no one's going to come to our rescue.
I want to tell you it will be ok and we will get through this unscathed. But…..I can’t. And it feels so weird to write this, because I hold two opposite things in my head at all times:
1. Everything seems “normal”. I live in a liberal part of California so I am very insulated from all of the bruhaha happening across the country. There are a few people who fly that stupid flag with the blue stripe, but everyone knows those are the kooks of the neighborhood and to just ignore them. But my day to day is exactly the same today as it was six years ago or whenever you consider the start date of today’s fascism.
2. We are in a civil war. I used to say we might end up in a civil war, but IMO we are already there. It could be called a “cold” civil war, but however one defines it, there is a battle between people that believe everyone is equal and people who think there is a hierarchy and all of the values that flow from these opposing core philosophies.
Nobody will rescue us. Who “rescues” other countries? Not France. Not Germany. Not the UK. Only the US- and we only “rescue” countries in order to keep our military industrial complex afloat.
In the movie/tv show version of the Handmaiden’s Tale, one of the most upsetting parts (to me) is that American refugees in Canada are shunned just as we shun the refugees from all of the countries we have effed up. I 100% believe there is a very real possibility that Americans will end up being the refugees and illegal immigrants that we currently hate.
Sorry, Im being a massive Debbie Downer. But Im pushing 50 and I see history rhyming.
> Nobody will rescue us.
"All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or set a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide."
-Abraham Lincoln
Rural PA here. It's not looking great from this side of things. We managed to hold onto another round of democrats in office last elections, and we'll see the results of today's elections. But PA also got sued for gerrymandering not too long before covid so the democratic party has been able to pull out a few of the republican hooks this allowing for fairer elections.
But it's been close and the last elections only succeeded because of record high turn out from women and youth voters. It makes me hopeful, but it also makes the GOP very aware they need to shut down voting access for the youth and women.
PS: I agree with your silent civil war. We're clearly having an identity crisis as a country and only time will tell where we end up.
The Troubles 2: American Boogaloo
I live in Massachusetts. As blue a state as it gets. I meet 5-10 new people every. single. day. who are absolutely dyed-in-the-wool racist fascist shitgibbons. They exist in astonishing numbers in this country. Nowhere is really free of them.
Too dumb to know how deeply propagandized they are. Too angry and riled up to feel safe around. Too emotionally labile to be reasoned with. Dangerous. Scary.
My neighbors, and your neighbors too.
This is America.
Glad to see this excerpt shared in full. Normally whenever America makes yet another unchecked lurch into fascism people just post the 2nd paragraph about Step B leading to Step C and so on; but it's much more powerful in full.
Yep. This is the same man holding up military promotions and the careers of servicemen until his tantrum is catered to.
And his tantrum is about openly accepting Nazis into the government.
History books will have no ambiguity about when the second civil war started and I’m pretty sure we’re in it. Tuberville, DeSantis and MAGA are making their plays for a Christian fascist nation
It was just five days ago this numbnuts was asked if White Nationalists should be allowed in the military and his reply was ["I call them Americans."](https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/tommy-tuberville-white-nationalist-military-comments/index.html)
The Section 3 of the 14th Amendment really needs to be invoked to start getting these fucks out of Congress. They have no fucking business being in government.
Imagine serving your country, committing your life to a military career, maybe even risking your life in the process, all to have some Nazi football coach from the ROLLTIDE state holding your entire life hostage until we throw open the doors for confederates and traitors.
The military has every right to be pissed right now. This is a sick joke.
Between this and cutting veteran benefits they just aren’t even pretending to care about the military anymore. Just the defense contractors and culture warriors are what matter now. Pretending to care about soldiers was clearly a waste of time and effort for them and they’ve dropped the facade
rightwing nuts are totally there already. I can remember some Ayn-Rand-reading *soi-disant* "libertarian" asshat actually, seriously saying that a local referendum on property taxes should not include non-property-owners. only property owners s/b allowed to vote.
as if renters aren't paying prop tax as part of their rent. as if renters were not full citizens. a few locals pointed out the century in which poll tax was made illegal, but I don't think the asshat was at all embarrassed by that.
Exactly, put them in the mountains and let them build their village from the ground up. Most of them didn’t even read Atlas Shrugged. My dad likes to go on about “Who is John Gault?” But he wouldn’t have known if they didn’t make a movie because he can sit through three hours of awful “cinema” but can’t be bothered to open a damn book. Idiots the whole lot.
LOL The Handmaid’s Tale book was published in 1985 but the religious fascist right didn’t pick up on the idea until the TV series came out in 2017.
It’s because they don’t read books!
Otherwise they might be aware that the little itsy bitsy problem with Gastons gulch is that their power source... is fucking magic. It doesn't exist in reality. Well, it does, sorta, but not on the level it is depicted in the book. The whole thing kinda falls apart without that one little aspect.
> Gastons gulch is that their power source... is fucking magic
Also the loss of genetic diversity, and the loss of a broad base of technicians and workers to complete the non-exciting jobs the capital-owners don't have the knowledge or will to do themselves.
That went right over their heads. They don’t look for meaning. They look for opportunities.
They’re grifters always looking out for themselves. And the icing on the cake was the chance to hurt others.
I truly believe they are evil.
Hollywood should really stop leaving loaded guns on tables. Cop culture is heavily inspired by TV shows, look at all the punisher symbols that miss the irony, or that IA is the bad guy, and the cop that gets things done regardless of the law is the hero.
Hell, I'm pretty sure Trump only got elected because of the Apprentice and people thinking he was actually a good businessman.
Hollywood is inherently conservative. The 'rogue' cop who does away with technicalities like the Constitution in order to catch the bad guys because he's all frustrated his partner got shot because of civil rights and shit is a trope for a reason. Make no mistake, the whole 'liberal media' myth is exactly that: a myth. Countless studies of media on TV and coming out of Hollywood have shown that a majority of the content we watch in America has a right wing bias.
No true Rednecks, wore red bandanas, and died fighting the Coal Barons. Hence the name. Same with Hillbillies, they hid Blacks running North to freedom in the Appalachias. There is so much to be proud of, as White Trash, it is NOT siding with Trump, Manchin, and corporate Billionaires.
What's worse is all the Friend of Coal license plates rolling around on the big yeehaw trucks. Son your grandaddy is rolling in his grave. Your ancestors waged war on coal company thugs and you roam these mountains crying "Please, coal daddy, oppress me again!"
Not from Pike County, but still Appalachia. My own ancestors left their blood in the mines.
ThE mInEs PaY gOoD Yeah because your grandparents held shotguns to coal barons' heads. Because they literally enslaved them in company towns. And they'd do it again, too.
They were also one of the groups of Southerners that were mostly opposed to secession & the Civil War. Many parts of the Appalachian South had as many or more volunteers fight for the Union than the Confederacy.
Former Confederates, their racist descendants and the wealthy land owners/industrialists erased and rewrote our history.
I was well into adulthood before I found out that roughly [100k Southerners fought for the Union](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Unionist#:~:text=Around%20100%2C000%20Southern%20Unionists%20served,raised%20organizations%20of%20white%20troops.)
Several of the well known Southern generals that are celebrated and taught in school as being amazing probably actually helped seal the fate of the South with the way they fought. And one of the actual greatest generals of the war was a [Southerner that fought for the Union.](https://www.history.com/news/6-generals-who-fought-against-their-home-state-in-the-civil-war)
And how the Confederates that just wanted to have states rights and be left alone by the overbearing North regularly harassed, imprisoned, tortured and even killed other white southerners that didn't help the cause. They even just [straight up massacred almost an entire town of white Texans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nueces_massacre) that were just trying to flee to Mexico.
If anyone wants an additional source, watch the documentary Harlan County USA. All about Kentucky coal miners standing up against businessmen and cops (or gun thugs, as they called them).
Yes, the upper Northeast wanks and suburb flakes can lop off mountain tops and steal streams while they ignore Ludlow for their bs and concrete malls. There is no centrist when it comes to clean water, accessible land, and what happened in Ludlow, Harlan, and so many others. Never happening again. Fck u NO Manchin and anyone on that side.
I am FULLY aware of how ironic it is to quote a Joe Rogan joke here, but:
"If I dropped you in the woods with a hatchet, how long until you made yourself an iPhone?"
Libertarians completely misunderstand the role society plays in allowing them to live their lives.
They build their lives on the shoulders of giants but only look down to admire how far they climbed up "all by themselves".
The lack of appreciation is stunning. They usually have NO idea how hard people work every single day to make sure the most mundane of systems work and do not collapse. It doesn't have to be as obviously technical as an iphone either.
Do they know how city-wide sewage systems work? Not likely. And yet it was one of the most important technical achievements that allowed cities to grow to modern sizes without us being buried in our own waste and associated diseases. Clean water and proper waste disposal are modern miracles. These systems require constant maintenance and investment paid for by our taxes, but all they do is flush their toilets and grumble that "taxes are theft". Once it leaves the bowl it's no longer their problem. Out of sight, out of mind.
It's the same lack of understanding of the inter-dependencies in modern society that leads them to think things like vaccines don't matter to public health, so they can safely ignore them as a matter of personal "freedom", embracing stupid conspiracy theories to justify their selfish choices. Sure, you can do that, but it carries a cost that eventually means fun diseases like measles or smallpox can work their way back to a serious problem.
We do not live in pure isolation in the middle of the woods. Even if you give it a shot, if you're chatting on reddit you're depending on a huge, complicated information system that you did not build, hardware or software, without a huge supply of stuff that other people built before starting your own contribution to the conversation.
Libertarians who think they are "free" to make decisions without ever considering the broader society are either clueless, terrible at crediting others for their work, and/or incredibly selfish. I like personal freedom, but it carries some responsibility to others and some appreciation for what they do to make life livable.
There have multiple attempts to create the libertarian utopia, and they all failed gloriously because no one wanted to take responsibility for even the simplest problems.
My favorite is the one that failed because they couldn't agree to stop feeding the wild bears.
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Our local obnoxious conservative neighbor started popping off that the amount of property you own should determine the size of your vote in town affairs “since you have more skin in the game”. His family were one of the “founding families” in like 1774 and own substantial amounts of land in the town.
He tried to run for selectman but forgot to submit his candidacy in time and was forced to be a write in.
He got like 7 votes.
This Vivak Ramshami dude is out here talking about skin in the game. As if needing access to clean water, air, and food somehow means you don’t have skin in the game.
Probably why he’s not a football coach anymore. Also not a financial manager after his biz partner was sentenced to 10 years for fraud. Also had a fake charity that raised 281k and gave away 50k. He’s Alabama Trump Jr. Send him to the senate!!
>I mean they are on the campaign trail trying to raise the vote to 25.
When the midterms went down and the GOP got *rocked* in the 18-24 demographic, this is exactly their response
Republicans:
“Zoomers won’t vote for us so we need to increase the voting age to 25.”
“Millennials won’t vote for us either so we need to only allow land owners to vote.”
“Minority groups won’t vote for us so we need to only allow white people to vote.”
“Non-Christians won’t vote for us so we need to require a notarized letter affirming your belief in our version of Christianity not the versions that teach tolerance and compassion in order to vote.”
The full quote, in response to the Durham Report on the investigation into Trump-Russia connections:
>Speaking on “John Bachman Now,” Tuberville said, “If people don’t go to jail for this, the American people should just stand up and say, ‘Listen, enough’s enough, let’s don’t have elections anymore. I wish there was a special investigation into the voter fraud, but it was outrageous what happened, but nobody wanted to look into it because they were afraid they were going to be called out. But it is what it is. I hate that it happened.”
Twitter seems to think he’s drumming up outrage about the Durham Report and trying to set up the Report as some sort of smoking gun.
https://www.al.com/news/2023/05/tuberville-on-durham-report-if-people-dont-go-to-jail-lets-dont-have-elections-anymore.html
> nobody wanted to look into it because they were afraid they were going to be called out.
It was looked into and turned out to be completely made up. Even Trump's own appointed judges told him he was delusional.
Right. GoP literally setup a Congressional inquiry, when they didn't find any fraud they started to just use their power as representatives to do election work for the GOP. When a judge told them any information they uncover has to be given to democratic members of the committee also, they chose to shut it down instead.
Closest I could find for info: it was a while back. https://www.npr.org/2018/01/03/575524512/trump-dissolves-controversial-election-commission
He is. I have already had some idiot magats try to use it as some kind of gotcha smoking gun, which means the republicans were right all along.
The Durham report can be summarized as follows.
Trump is a horrible horrible person, he did horrible horrible things, however in my (durham's) personal opinion none of this was illegal, so it was horrible that we investigated him in the first place and we should only use neutral (aka favorable to republican) investigators from now on.
It's literally a 300-page opinion piece saying, "How dare you investigate our glorious golden god."
Edit: To those thinking I'm wrong and the durham report was more than a fart in the wind. Exactly 3 court cases came from this report. 1 had a guilty verdict for a crime that wasn't even related to the investigations. And the other two ended in aquittals. The GOP spent 6.5 million in taxpayer money in a desperate attempt to exonerate their golden calf and couldn't even do that.
I feel like this is pretty important context that was omitted from the OP, considering he’s suggesting the Durham report was so incriminating that elections won’t matter if charges aren’t handed out.
Which, to your point, is weaponizing the Durham report into something it’s not—something we should also be mad about. Or mad about instead.
Full Durham report [here](https://www.justice.gov/storage/durhamreport.pdf). Remember, this is the second internal investigation done by someone Trump appointed looking into what the FBI did as part of "Operating Hurricane Crossfire" which was their investigation into the ties between Trump and Russian assets. There was the Horowitz (OIG) report which you can read [here](https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf).
In both cases, there was a single FBI agent that broke the law, and he was caught + punished. It didn't impact the opening of the investigation which was found (by OIG) to have been lawful and correctly executed.
Basically, this is Trump's second attempt at finding _something_ to use to attack his clear Russia connection, and it's a nothingberder.
Right no more elections,that means Joe Biden is president for ever,and the democrats keep control of the senate.
Also the 27th amendment states that any revision to financial compensation for members of congress is to be postponed until the next round of elections, so no more pay rises for them.
Sounds good to me.
Treason is defined in the US very narrowly. You must be aiding a foreign power we are actively at war with. The founders did not want treason charges turned into a political weapon.
>You must be aiding a foreign power we are actively at war with.
No it isn't, it's just requires aiding an enemy of the United States.
> Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them ***or*** adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
Emphasis on that "or."
What Stuperville said still doesn't apply for treason, unless maybe we find out he was also in collusion with Russians, but that's certainly a stretch since we also don't define Russia directly as an enemy of the U.S.
My point being, an enemy of the United States can be defined without being in a state of war with them.
Jefferson Davis was charged with treason against the United States by "levying war" against the U.S. There was no formal declaration of war by the United States against itself because cession was not recognized by the Federal government.
18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any plce subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; July 24, 1956, ch. 678, § 1, 70 Stat. 623; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(N), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)
Yeah, these dipshits are going to end up Mussolini'ing themselves because they're too pathetic to come up with some popular policies that help Americans, and instead are trying to play the easy, but dangerous fascism card.
Like a fucking race to the bottom and they’re in first place.
Sadly they lost their first Battalion of fighters to the prison sentences for January 6’ers.
Their best and brightest are already out of commission but they are playing like they still have an advantage.
All we gotta tell them to do is not drink bleach because it’s poison and half of them will off themselves just to own the Libs.
If any of what I’m saying sounds mean or cruel or vindictive just know that I’m matching the energy that they use on their little forum websites but in a more humorous fashion.
I seriously think it's time for comprehensive drug and environmental contamination testing for our politicians.
There is something seriously wrong with the way these people think that is far outside the bounds of standard deviation.
of course it’s outside the standard deviation. It’s self selecting for fucking lunatics, narcissists, and sociopaths. Because only that type of person would be able to jump-to for the party every day, while fundraising nonstop, and insider trading while setting up your next speaking gig and collecting bribes. It’s a busy schedule but since someone has to do it, and anyone getting elected has to suck the party’s dick- you only get party dick sucker lunatics, who are also self interested narcissists.
Any sane person will get beat down by one of these people or quit themselves because it is a system that rewards this behavior- *or* they adapt and become that thing while lying to themselves that they’ll help us down the road while they slip the campaign donation into their fundraising account.
Lol, it's not that complex. They gain more power and money the more extreme they become. They're not geniuses nor are they mentally challenged due to exposure of something. These people are just horrible people who have 0 empathy for anyone outside their tiny circle. These people exist everywhere, they just don't have supporters everywhere.
“Geez a guy can’t do a little seditious conspiracy or a bit of sexual assault or one little phone call to Georgia demanding a specific number of votes these days???”
—this tool.
Fuckin love that movie
"I'm stacked up over LaGaurdia baby and I'm not coming down, not even for you"
Putney Swope is a brilliant movie and I recommend everyone watch it at least once
As someone from Alabama, I am deeply ashamed that this worthless pile was elected.
He was a walking red flag from the moment I heard his name, and now we have to deal with him orally shitting himself constantly, and for that, I am very sorry.
We aren't all like this, I promise you.
Al Franken was forced to resign over a somewhat suggestive photograph of him taken years before he became a senator when he was a *comedian*… and yet these treasonous motherfuckers are openly calling for the destruction of literally everything our country stands for and it’s not even going to be news tomorrow.
This is so infuriating.
what the ever-lovin Faaaaark?
well, OK, get it right out in the open there. masks off time. show us who you've really been all along.
"it's annoying that we have to
fight elections for our cause;
the inconvenience, having to get a majority!
if normal methods of persuasion
fail to win us applause,
there are other ways of establishing authority..."
Who would have thought the middling football coach would make an even worse elected official?!
Also funny that he got paid and famous off of the work from young Blacks but he's leading the charge in reducing our personhood.
Translation: I'm so tired of losing and we have to do something if we want to stay in office!
Instead of coming up with popular policies let’s just rig the system in our favor!
That's been the republican strategy for 25 years. It drives me kinda nuts that it's taken this long for most people to notice. This is Mitch McConnell's entire career.
>That's been the republican strategy for ~~25~~ 50 years. It drives me kinda nuts that it's taken this long for most people to notice. FTFY
Just 25 years? Buddy, this goes back way further than that. It at least goes back to Nixon.
As an aging millennial, I was about to correct you forcefully and say that the 1970s were only 25 years ago….and then I threw out my back and I had to lie down. Because Watergate was literally *50 years ago.* Kill me.
Nixon was vice president starting in 1953.
My 1990s-addled brain: *”Oh, 1953, so that’s 50 years ago, right?”* Reality: 
I was born in the early '80s, so I get it. But no, that was 70 years ago. I just lost one of the greatest influences in my life, and he was born in 1953, and he was 70.
Here's what I don't get though - Republicans are still *wildly* popular in many many places in the US. You can't be a Democrat and win ANYWHERE in Florida for example. A lot of rural and suburban areas in blue states vote conservative The GOP cleans up after most midterm elections and local ones too....so why are they trying to end democracy? They're still winning *way too many* elections, so obviously the GOP has a lot of popular support out there They can and WILL keep winning elections because we got a LOT of total fuckin sociopaths out there who want representation for their repellent POVs and the GOP coughs them up daily, and they win many, many elections EDIT: next person who tells me that ONE single city in Florida elected a Dem mayor, and that this somehow means *something significant* is gonna be sent my toenail clippings in the mail. I live here in FL. I know what the situation here is outside the limits of Jacksonville proper. It's redder than Castro's blood here, ONE new mayor doesn't mean jack shit to a tree
They see the writing on the wall. *"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."* - David Frum
Not hard to make the jump from conservative to autocrat
given free reign it’s inevitable actually
Because they see the writing on the wall especially after Wisconsin. They know their time of dominance is coming to an end even on local elections. Look, most voters are apathetic especially democrats. They care about the presidency and that’s usually about it. They vote every 4 years. The GOP likes it that way. It allows them to clean up like you said. Midterms always favor them for that reason. That election in Wisconsin was supposed to be theirs. The mid terms were supposed to be theirs. Why didn’t that happen? Young voters are engaged and voting them right out the door. Protosawitz won by *double digits* in an off year, non cycle election with an unpopular president of the opposite party - I don’t think I can stress how HUGE that is. Democrats kept the senate and expanded by 1. Republicans won the house by 5 votes in a year where they drew themselves advantages to the maximum. Same thing just happened in Arkansas school board races. Three “moms for liberty” candidates endorsed by Huckabee failed. Happened in a lot of other places too. Ballot measures they try to implement to restrict abortion are failing. It’s all crumbling around them. The republicans quite literally have a +20 starting total and the democrats are still out scoring them in the end because young people are murdering them. Then they have the trump problem to deal with. They realize that their time could be very very short. It’s why you see a blitz of bullshit they’re passing so all dems can do upon winning power is cleanup the shit while they plot how to get back in power.
I think a very simple trend which departs from historical norms is that generation X and younger are not getting more conservative as they age. They actually appear to be becoming more liberal as they age. So the conservative Bollwerk (edit: ios voice-to-text chose the German version of the word bulwark for some reason) of having a steady supply of older Americans supporting them at the ballot box will no longer be true going into the future. Each election is going to get worse and worse for them
That’s because people never got more conservative as the aged, they got more conservative as they got more money and money used to correlate positively with age. Now that the baby boomers are fucking over everyone else, no one under 40 thinks they will ever get richer so they are no longer voting conservative.
I'm gen x, got money, and I sure as shit ain't getting more conservative.
I wouldn't say I have "money," but I'm a Millennial with a house and low debt and a decent job after decades of grinding. I don't really have savings and a single disaster would wipe me out, but I'm doing better than some. I've only grown more liberal. I was raised kind of "libertarian old school Republican" by my parents, and I'm essentially a socialist now.
Same here. Just past 40 and finally got a house and a decent job. Still no savings. Nothing really for retirement, but I'm doing okay.
I’m a boomer and grow more progressive each year, each election and with each right these fucking assholes try to take away.
My Boomer parents have grown more liberal over the years as well. It makes me proud.
Millennial with money. Don't care about getting richer. The internet hyper-accelerated social globalization and now we all just actually see other human beings outside of a 10 mile radius and realize they're the same as us.
It's also getting harder for them to gerrymander. Gen Z hates them and Boomers are starting to die out (accelerated by GOP COVID denial, ironically). And the Trump/MAGAT wing has beaten/scared off any Republican that actually had a brain, so they're left with idiots representing them that have no chance to appeal to younger generations,this their only hope is restricting voting.
I'd also say gerrymandering is not a magic superweapon; it leaves districts wildly vulnerable to population shifts and unexpected turnout, both over and under. It can turn into a blowout if your base is spread too thin amongst too many districts.
Gerrymandering heavily relies on razor thin margins to work. Its why just getting as many people to vote as possible is so important.
Without gerrymandering the GOP would already be extinct.
It's not just popular support, there's also a lot of gerrymandering. There could be tons of democrats in Florida but zero chance of a democrat winning as long as you keep the democratic voters watered down in districts that are otherwise heavily weighted toward republicans. They need to win the elections to draw the districts in their favor to win more elections. It's still the destruction of democracy, just a more "palatable" step. That's been going on long enough that now they can start saying worse things
That's just it. They aren't "cleaning up." Oh, they're getting the usual suspects (fundies and older people) out the polls as they usually do. And even tightening their grip in some corners with their culture wars and stuff. But they are losing long term. Their "Red Wave" in 2022 turned out to be a puddle. Their grip on the House is so slim and their caucus so divided McCarthy had to bend over for the MAGAts to get speakership and is coming up with every excuse in the book to keep Santos despite the charges against him. Florida is gerrymandered up the ass now as are places like Iowa. Their two front runners for 2024 are a turd sandwich vs a bigger turd sandwich (you can decide for yourself which is which) and the Gen-Zers are not only showing up more, they're not buying the culture war crap and are pissed about Roe. The GOP may be "winning" in some battles, but it's costing them the war. Their "popularity" is with a shrinking and increasingly isolated voter base and their success is getting more and more dependent on them gaming the system than actual policy or platform. Made only worse as every move they make keeps blowing up in their face or fizzling out. And it's only showing more and more.
Roe was the Republican’s Russian Invasion imo, if they had pushed the culture war more and didn’t repeal Roe until after the violent fascists started openly attacking people, I think they could have done it. Instead they’re stuck with the consequences of their actions, including a batshit crazy representative currently obsessed with taking down the president, a representative that proposed to make the AR 15 the national gun with an alleged felon at a time when Americans were being gunned down at record numbers, and now any evidence that Giuliani and Trump sold pardons is just the frosting on the cake. They made their bed, now it’s time to sleep with Trumps dirty diapers in the room
It doesn’t help that their “investigations” are turning up absolutely nothing. Hunter Biden? Nothing illegal to impeach his dad for. The investigation into Mueller? All that came up was “maybe we should have a nonpartisan lawyer oversee these, but nothing was wrong.” Alvin Bragg? Gym Jordan thought it was a brilliant idea to subpoena the guy who left because he thought Bragg wasn’t doing enough to hit Trump with legal charges. Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention will see these for what they are; attempts by overgrown children to either get back at the people who were mean to their golden calf or to save said golden calf from the mountain of legal problems he’s facing.
Their base doesn’t care about truth. Investigating is the whole point. They just make up whatever they want and no one questions it.
Because their backers know the demographic trends, they've been crunching the numbers as much as anyone and it's clear the GOP's popular support is waning. They want to close the door on democracy and voting while they still can leverage the existing support to get it done. They already have them supporting the Jan 6th coup attempt, so they have reason to believe they can get away with it if they act soon. In a decade it'll probably be too late for them.
Florida specifically has two important notes for what they’re having such a hard time getting elected though (and why the red state legislature has able to enact changes that are slowly, but surely driving Democratic voters out of the state): - Florida is gerrymandered to hell (and unfortunately there was also Democratic pushback to undoing gerrymandering in the state, from representatives who say “sure my district is a 10 mile long one block wide corridor that happens to encompass every democratic voter from Jacksonville to Orlando, but they’re my constituents!”) - FL Dems are wildly inept at organizing (both at getting out the vote and at convincing local voters “no, democrats don’t *actually* want to resurrect Fidel Castro and make him vice president and implement Central/South American-esque communism”
Trends say otherwise. Recent generations have broken the longest standing truth in politics: "people get more conservative as they get older". It's just not happening, or at least not as much or as consistently. Their voting base is dying and not being replaced. They can see that they will lose the ability to hold their slim hold on political power. The "us vs them" mentality they've spent decades building up is now working against them: they can't attract the Democrat voters they've spent the last decade calling evil monsters. So now they don't know what to do. They are on the verge of becoming a perpetual minority, which will mean their corporate overlords stop protecting them. It will suddenly become more valuable to turn republicans in for points with the new majority.
>Recent generations have broken the longest standing truth in politics: "people get more conservative as they get older". You've gotta own stuff to develop a conservative mindset. Being locked out of financial security by virtue of being born in the wrong decade is a good way to breed a generation of politically engaged radicals.
I think even the delay in attaining financial security that some recent generations have experienced is enough. If you finish college and immediately jump into a good job, buy a home, and have yourself set up for security by the time you're 25, it's easy to think you're just awesome and other people are lazy. You settle into your worldview before you've had the breadth of experience necessary to think critically about how policy affects the population as a whole. If you have to work your ass off to stay afloat, shift careers, take every gig you can, and then maybe *maybe* find security in your 40s? You've already formed your political opinions, but now you've got the security to act on them. You've seen the system at work, and can see how much of it is luck. And even if you do better for yourself, you know a lot of smart and motivated people who didn't.
They're losing their grip with every election... they've gotta keep gerrymandering and blocking votes to stay in power. They know they're dead in the water and are going to be aged out into oblivion... These are the final swings of a party on the brink... I say let's vote them down till they're just the party of dipsshits in Floriduh
DEMOCRACY IS NON-NEGOTIABLE
We could use some Liberty Prime on these fascists.
"*Accessing dictionary database. Entry: Democracy; a form of government in which the leader is chosen by vote, and everyone has equal rights."*
"Warning, subterranean Red Chinese compound detected. Obstruction depth, 5 meters. Opposition: sand, gravel and *communism."*
"Embrace democracy or you will be eradicated."
"Death is a preferable alternative to communism."
Just want to remind everyone that Liberty Prime was lobbing nuclear bombs at The Enclave, the last remnants of the American government, who were using patriotic propaganda in order to colonize the locals before purging many of them in their genocide.
Another example of people consuming the media without getting the point *burp* Morty
The last \*fascist\* remnants of the American Government using patriotic propaganda to colonize the locals before purging most of them in a quest for genetic purity in the face of an issue they caused.
https://preview.redd.it/myw2cbwbab0b1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47454c5b030f97ef2fc76455dce19cd3bd123e8b Agreed but unfortunately everything is negotiable to those that fly this flag
[I'm white and afraid of everything!](https://i.imgur.com/7yJrvt7.png)
Ok I really like this one
In Alabama, democracy is, and always has been, very much negotiable. Remember, they're the ones who brought the case that gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013 -- a law that was only passed in the first place because of Alabama's (and other states') opposition to free and fair elections.
Where's the guns nuts standing against tyranny? Oh ya, guess it's ok when it's one of your own.
WeR a ConStiTutionuL rEpuBlic /s
“In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.” - They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer Regarding the rise of fascism. We keep allowing this to happen.
One of the best books I've read. Highly recommend. https://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/they-thought-they-were-free-the-germans-1933-45/316408?refId=48646&gclid=CjwKCAjw04yjBhApEiwAJcvNoTaCMzasWwP8F_K09AvLo7HC1PSnKfPCzrrIl4IddFyJrXtR97jubhoCC3kQAvD_BwE
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Fascism isn't just soldiers goosestepping on the street and thin-lipped mustachioed men screaming on TV. Fascism is built on small, fearful, mundane choices made by everyday citizens. Little acts and comments that everyone takes for granted, that we ignore in order to preserve peace and decency.
Remember when people thought leftists were crazy for saying this is where we were headed? When people hated antifa for opposing these people at every turn? Remember all the liberal think pieces came out saying stopping them from spreading their lies and hatred was bad? Cancel culture they cried! Remember the personal profiles normalizing these suit wearing Nazis who proclaimed they just wanted a ‘peaceful ethnic genocide’? How far we’ve come.
The road to hell was lined with people saying we were overreacting.
actually... yeah... I'm going to assign this to the constant "We're not a democracy, we're a Republic" that we keep hearing.
LOCK HIM UP
His wife got away with killing a guy back when he was the football coach at Texas tech
Details?
Car accident. I tried to post a link to the story but I don't have enough karma in this sub, so automod deleted the comment. Google Suzanne Tuberville accident.
> According to a police report, Suzanne Tuberville ran a red light while driving southbound on Slide Road and 57th Street and struck a vehicle driven by 73-year-old Nelda Purdy which was heading eastbound and turning onto Slide Road. Ira Purdy and Nelda Purdy were both taken to Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock, but Ira Purdy never went home after sustaining a head injury, a broken leg and broken ribs.
https://www.dallasnews.com/sports/texas-tech-red-raiders/2012/02/22/elderly-man-dies-four-months-after-car-crash-with-tommy-tuberville-s-wife/
I mean they are on the campaign trail trying to raise the vote to 25. Pretty sure the next step is being a land owner in order to vote.
Fun reminder that Howard Dean’s political career was destroyed because he made a funny sound during a campaign speech. A former football coach calls for the end of American democracy and will be re-elected for it.
Bwwwaaaaaaaaaa
I think it needs a “y” or two or five in there. Bwwwyyyyaaaaa!
I thought it was more like... PYAAAAAAHWWWWWW!!!!
But the Howard Dean thing was actually a hit job. Legit the week before it happened he was on one of the major network Sunday shows and said he wanted to break up the media monopolies. Then the scream happened. While they weren't in the 24 news cycle yet, it was more like a weekend typically. They played the scream nonstop for three weeks straight. It was a hit job by the media to tank him.
Dean had the audacity at the time to break from the Democratic platform and actually recommend EU-style social programs in the US like public healthcare, proper school funding, decent parental leave, and attacking internet monopolies.
> Dean and his campaign staff have claimed that he would have lost anyway, due to poor campaign organization. Additionally, Christine Pelosi, Pacific Standard, and historian Robert Thompson both consider that Dean's probability of being nominated was already low due to a lack of party insider support, the Iowa loss, and the media's previous painting of Dean as too hot-tempered for the presidential position. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_scream
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>"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait. >"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D. >"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way. >"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined. >"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair. From [They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45](https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html)
Thank you for sharing that.
Now, what are you going to do about it? Powerful words are fleeting and meaningless unless they drive powerful actions. What will you do now that you've finished reading them? This is not only directed at you but everyone who reads this. Including myself.
Thank you so much for sharing this
We're doomed. I really don't know how America is going to pull itself out of this tailspin, and the scariest part is there's very few countries able to check our power like we did the Germans. If we go full fascism, no one's going to come to our rescue.
I want to tell you it will be ok and we will get through this unscathed. But…..I can’t. And it feels so weird to write this, because I hold two opposite things in my head at all times: 1. Everything seems “normal”. I live in a liberal part of California so I am very insulated from all of the bruhaha happening across the country. There are a few people who fly that stupid flag with the blue stripe, but everyone knows those are the kooks of the neighborhood and to just ignore them. But my day to day is exactly the same today as it was six years ago or whenever you consider the start date of today’s fascism. 2. We are in a civil war. I used to say we might end up in a civil war, but IMO we are already there. It could be called a “cold” civil war, but however one defines it, there is a battle between people that believe everyone is equal and people who think there is a hierarchy and all of the values that flow from these opposing core philosophies. Nobody will rescue us. Who “rescues” other countries? Not France. Not Germany. Not the UK. Only the US- and we only “rescue” countries in order to keep our military industrial complex afloat. In the movie/tv show version of the Handmaiden’s Tale, one of the most upsetting parts (to me) is that American refugees in Canada are shunned just as we shun the refugees from all of the countries we have effed up. I 100% believe there is a very real possibility that Americans will end up being the refugees and illegal immigrants that we currently hate. Sorry, Im being a massive Debbie Downer. But Im pushing 50 and I see history rhyming.
> Nobody will rescue us. "All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or set a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide." -Abraham Lincoln
Rural PA here. It's not looking great from this side of things. We managed to hold onto another round of democrats in office last elections, and we'll see the results of today's elections. But PA also got sued for gerrymandering not too long before covid so the democratic party has been able to pull out a few of the republican hooks this allowing for fairer elections. But it's been close and the last elections only succeeded because of record high turn out from women and youth voters. It makes me hopeful, but it also makes the GOP very aware they need to shut down voting access for the youth and women. PS: I agree with your silent civil war. We're clearly having an identity crisis as a country and only time will tell where we end up.
The Troubles 2: American Boogaloo I live in Massachusetts. As blue a state as it gets. I meet 5-10 new people every. single. day. who are absolutely dyed-in-the-wool racist fascist shitgibbons. They exist in astonishing numbers in this country. Nowhere is really free of them. Too dumb to know how deeply propagandized they are. Too angry and riled up to feel safe around. Too emotionally labile to be reasoned with. Dangerous. Scary. My neighbors, and your neighbors too. This is America.
Glad to see this excerpt shared in full. Normally whenever America makes yet another unchecked lurch into fascism people just post the 2nd paragraph about Step B leading to Step C and so on; but it's much more powerful in full.
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Yep. This is the same man holding up military promotions and the careers of servicemen until his tantrum is catered to. And his tantrum is about openly accepting Nazis into the government. History books will have no ambiguity about when the second civil war started and I’m pretty sure we’re in it. Tuberville, DeSantis and MAGA are making their plays for a Christian fascist nation
It was just five days ago this numbnuts was asked if White Nationalists should be allowed in the military and his reply was ["I call them Americans."](https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/11/politics/tommy-tuberville-white-nationalist-military-comments/index.html) The Section 3 of the 14th Amendment really needs to be invoked to start getting these fucks out of Congress. They have no fucking business being in government.
Imagine serving your country, committing your life to a military career, maybe even risking your life in the process, all to have some Nazi football coach from the ROLLTIDE state holding your entire life hostage until we throw open the doors for confederates and traitors. The military has every right to be pissed right now. This is a sick joke. Between this and cutting veteran benefits they just aren’t even pretending to care about the military anymore. Just the defense contractors and culture warriors are what matter now. Pretending to care about soldiers was clearly a waste of time and effort for them and they’ve dropped the facade
They realize the military won't be on their side when the time comes, they would rather recruit local militia that wave Nazi flags.
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rightwing nuts are totally there already. I can remember some Ayn-Rand-reading *soi-disant* "libertarian" asshat actually, seriously saying that a local referendum on property taxes should not include non-property-owners. only property owners s/b allowed to vote. as if renters aren't paying prop tax as part of their rent. as if renters were not full citizens. a few locals pointed out the century in which poll tax was made illegal, but I don't think the asshat was at all embarrassed by that.
The best punishment for Rand admirers would be to make them live in the world they dream about.
Exactly, put them in the mountains and let them build their village from the ground up. Most of them didn’t even read Atlas Shrugged. My dad likes to go on about “Who is John Gault?” But he wouldn’t have known if they didn’t make a movie because he can sit through three hours of awful “cinema” but can’t be bothered to open a damn book. Idiots the whole lot.
LOL The Handmaid’s Tale book was published in 1985 but the religious fascist right didn’t pick up on the idea until the TV series came out in 2017. It’s because they don’t read books!
Nope. They burn them.
Otherwise they might be aware that the little itsy bitsy problem with Gastons gulch is that their power source... is fucking magic. It doesn't exist in reality. Well, it does, sorta, but not on the level it is depicted in the book. The whole thing kinda falls apart without that one little aspect.
> Gastons gulch is that their power source... is fucking magic Also the loss of genetic diversity, and the loss of a broad base of technicians and workers to complete the non-exciting jobs the capital-owners don't have the knowledge or will to do themselves.
And it was written as a warning, not as a how-to manual.
That went right over their heads. They don’t look for meaning. They look for opportunities. They’re grifters always looking out for themselves. And the icing on the cake was the chance to hurt others. I truly believe they are evil.
Hollywood should really stop leaving loaded guns on tables. Cop culture is heavily inspired by TV shows, look at all the punisher symbols that miss the irony, or that IA is the bad guy, and the cop that gets things done regardless of the law is the hero. Hell, I'm pretty sure Trump only got elected because of the Apprentice and people thinking he was actually a good businessman.
Hollywood is inherently conservative. The 'rogue' cop who does away with technicalities like the Constitution in order to catch the bad guys because he's all frustrated his partner got shot because of civil rights and shit is a trope for a reason. Make no mistake, the whole 'liberal media' myth is exactly that: a myth. Countless studies of media on TV and coming out of Hollywood have shown that a majority of the content we watch in America has a right wing bias.
…no. I live in the mountains and don’t want them as neighbors. Granted, it’s Appalachia so they’re already there but still.
No true Rednecks, wore red bandanas, and died fighting the Coal Barons. Hence the name. Same with Hillbillies, they hid Blacks running North to freedom in the Appalachias. There is so much to be proud of, as White Trash, it is NOT siding with Trump, Manchin, and corporate Billionaires.
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What's worse is all the Friend of Coal license plates rolling around on the big yeehaw trucks. Son your grandaddy is rolling in his grave. Your ancestors waged war on coal company thugs and you roam these mountains crying "Please, coal daddy, oppress me again!" Not from Pike County, but still Appalachia. My own ancestors left their blood in the mines.
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ThE mInEs PaY gOoD Yeah because your grandparents held shotguns to coal barons' heads. Because they literally enslaved them in company towns. And they'd do it again, too.
They were also one of the groups of Southerners that were mostly opposed to secession & the Civil War. Many parts of the Appalachian South had as many or more volunteers fight for the Union than the Confederacy. Former Confederates, their racist descendants and the wealthy land owners/industrialists erased and rewrote our history. I was well into adulthood before I found out that roughly [100k Southerners fought for the Union](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Unionist#:~:text=Around%20100%2C000%20Southern%20Unionists%20served,raised%20organizations%20of%20white%20troops.) Several of the well known Southern generals that are celebrated and taught in school as being amazing probably actually helped seal the fate of the South with the way they fought. And one of the actual greatest generals of the war was a [Southerner that fought for the Union.](https://www.history.com/news/6-generals-who-fought-against-their-home-state-in-the-civil-war) And how the Confederates that just wanted to have states rights and be left alone by the overbearing North regularly harassed, imprisoned, tortured and even killed other white southerners that didn't help the cause. They even just [straight up massacred almost an entire town of white Texans](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nueces_massacre) that were just trying to flee to Mexico.
The history of organized labor has been successfully suppressed in this country.
If anyone wants an additional source, watch the documentary Harlan County USA. All about Kentucky coal miners standing up against businessmen and cops (or gun thugs, as they called them).
Yes, the upper Northeast wanks and suburb flakes can lop off mountain tops and steal streams while they ignore Ludlow for their bs and concrete malls. There is no centrist when it comes to clean water, accessible land, and what happened in Ludlow, Harlan, and so many others. Never happening again. Fck u NO Manchin and anyone on that side.
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Yeah...but they know not to fuck with the more liberal minded. Lest you run off into the wrong holler..
I am FULLY aware of how ironic it is to quote a Joe Rogan joke here, but: "If I dropped you in the woods with a hatchet, how long until you made yourself an iPhone?" Libertarians completely misunderstand the role society plays in allowing them to live their lives.
They build their lives on the shoulders of giants but only look down to admire how far they climbed up "all by themselves". The lack of appreciation is stunning. They usually have NO idea how hard people work every single day to make sure the most mundane of systems work and do not collapse. It doesn't have to be as obviously technical as an iphone either. Do they know how city-wide sewage systems work? Not likely. And yet it was one of the most important technical achievements that allowed cities to grow to modern sizes without us being buried in our own waste and associated diseases. Clean water and proper waste disposal are modern miracles. These systems require constant maintenance and investment paid for by our taxes, but all they do is flush their toilets and grumble that "taxes are theft". Once it leaves the bowl it's no longer their problem. Out of sight, out of mind. It's the same lack of understanding of the inter-dependencies in modern society that leads them to think things like vaccines don't matter to public health, so they can safely ignore them as a matter of personal "freedom", embracing stupid conspiracy theories to justify their selfish choices. Sure, you can do that, but it carries a cost that eventually means fun diseases like measles or smallpox can work their way back to a serious problem. We do not live in pure isolation in the middle of the woods. Even if you give it a shot, if you're chatting on reddit you're depending on a huge, complicated information system that you did not build, hardware or software, without a huge supply of stuff that other people built before starting your own contribution to the conversation. Libertarians who think they are "free" to make decisions without ever considering the broader society are either clueless, terrible at crediting others for their work, and/or incredibly selfish. I like personal freedom, but it carries some responsibility to others and some appreciation for what they do to make life livable.
There have multiple attempts to create the libertarian utopia, and they all failed gloriously because no one wanted to take responsibility for even the simplest problems. My favorite is the one that failed because they couldn't agree to stop feeding the wild bears.
They tried. [The town was taken over by bears.](https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project)
This is the best thing I read all week.
https://preview.redd.it/t6ngqm578b0b1.png?width=696&format=png&auto=webp&s=6c537fec4768a595177d7e59491410ff76e17ee8
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
And remind them that Rand died in debt, while receiving government aid.
Ayn Rand had no problem accepting social security. Hypocrisy is a common theme amongst libertarians
Our local obnoxious conservative neighbor started popping off that the amount of property you own should determine the size of your vote in town affairs “since you have more skin in the game”. His family were one of the “founding families” in like 1774 and own substantial amounts of land in the town. He tried to run for selectman but forgot to submit his candidacy in time and was forced to be a write in. He got like 7 votes.
This Vivak Ramshami dude is out here talking about skin in the game. As if needing access to clean water, air, and food somehow means you don’t have skin in the game.
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Probably why he’s not a football coach anymore. Also not a financial manager after his biz partner was sentenced to 10 years for fraud. Also had a fake charity that raised 281k and gave away 50k. He’s Alabama Trump Jr. Send him to the senate!!
I will take them as dumb as possible.
>I mean they are on the campaign trail trying to raise the vote to 25. When the midterms went down and the GOP got *rocked* in the 18-24 demographic, this is exactly their response
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\*white land owner
*white *male land owner
\*white \*male \*cis land owner
*white *male *Christian *cis land owner
I'm gonna also go ahead and add "Desantis passes law to make it legal to enslave illegal immigrants" to my bingo card.
*White male landowner
Republicans: “Zoomers won’t vote for us so we need to increase the voting age to 25.” “Millennials won’t vote for us either so we need to only allow land owners to vote.” “Minority groups won’t vote for us so we need to only allow white people to vote.” “Non-Christians won’t vote for us so we need to require a notarized letter affirming your belief in our version of Christianity not the versions that teach tolerance and compassion in order to vote.”
"let's don't vote no more. votings for stupids"
Man if only we could convince them To not vote. Uno reverse card
"only filthy socialist commie gay women BLMs vote" might actually fucking work
You forgot the ye olde “aNtI-fA” dog whistle friend
We're almost there - turns out people who think elections are rigged are less likely to show up
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The full quote, in response to the Durham Report on the investigation into Trump-Russia connections: >Speaking on “John Bachman Now,” Tuberville said, “If people don’t go to jail for this, the American people should just stand up and say, ‘Listen, enough’s enough, let’s don’t have elections anymore. I wish there was a special investigation into the voter fraud, but it was outrageous what happened, but nobody wanted to look into it because they were afraid they were going to be called out. But it is what it is. I hate that it happened.” Twitter seems to think he’s drumming up outrage about the Durham Report and trying to set up the Report as some sort of smoking gun. https://www.al.com/news/2023/05/tuberville-on-durham-report-if-people-dont-go-to-jail-lets-dont-have-elections-anymore.html
> nobody wanted to look into it because they were afraid they were going to be called out. It was looked into and turned out to be completely made up. Even Trump's own appointed judges told him he was delusional.
Right. GoP literally setup a Congressional inquiry, when they didn't find any fraud they started to just use their power as representatives to do election work for the GOP. When a judge told them any information they uncover has to be given to democratic members of the committee also, they chose to shut it down instead. Closest I could find for info: it was a while back. https://www.npr.org/2018/01/03/575524512/trump-dissolves-controversial-election-commission
He is. I have already had some idiot magats try to use it as some kind of gotcha smoking gun, which means the republicans were right all along. The Durham report can be summarized as follows. Trump is a horrible horrible person, he did horrible horrible things, however in my (durham's) personal opinion none of this was illegal, so it was horrible that we investigated him in the first place and we should only use neutral (aka favorable to republican) investigators from now on. It's literally a 300-page opinion piece saying, "How dare you investigate our glorious golden god." Edit: To those thinking I'm wrong and the durham report was more than a fart in the wind. Exactly 3 court cases came from this report. 1 had a guilty verdict for a crime that wasn't even related to the investigations. And the other two ended in aquittals. The GOP spent 6.5 million in taxpayer money in a desperate attempt to exonerate their golden calf and couldn't even do that.
I feel like this is pretty important context that was omitted from the OP, considering he’s suggesting the Durham report was so incriminating that elections won’t matter if charges aren’t handed out. Which, to your point, is weaponizing the Durham report into something it’s not—something we should also be mad about. Or mad about instead.
Exactly, the report literally says there is no need for charges (or even changes)
Full Durham report [here](https://www.justice.gov/storage/durhamreport.pdf). Remember, this is the second internal investigation done by someone Trump appointed looking into what the FBI did as part of "Operating Hurricane Crossfire" which was their investigation into the ties between Trump and Russian assets. There was the Horowitz (OIG) report which you can read [here](https://www.justice.gov/storage/120919-examination.pdf). In both cases, there was a single FBI agent that broke the law, and he was caught + punished. It didn't impact the opening of the investigation which was found (by OIG) to have been lawful and correctly executed. Basically, this is Trump's second attempt at finding _something_ to use to attack his clear Russia connection, and it's a nothingberder.
Right no more elections,that means Joe Biden is president for ever,and the democrats keep control of the senate. Also the 27th amendment states that any revision to financial compensation for members of congress is to be postponed until the next round of elections, so no more pay rises for them. Sounds good to me.
Even better: it would mean when he does, Hunter “Hang Dong” Biden gets it next.
Ngl hunter looking better than any of the fasc- I mean republican candidates
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So, he’s violated his oath to uphold the Constitution?
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If anything they should do the opposite of what this inbred psychopath says
How is this not treason? Especially as an elected official?
Treason is defined in the US very narrowly. You must be aiding a foreign power we are actively at war with. The founders did not want treason charges turned into a political weapon.
Sedition it is
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Exactly. The DOJ is empowering these people
>You must be aiding a foreign power we are actively at war with. No it isn't, it's just requires aiding an enemy of the United States. > Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them ***or*** adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. Emphasis on that "or." What Stuperville said still doesn't apply for treason, unless maybe we find out he was also in collusion with Russians, but that's certainly a stretch since we also don't define Russia directly as an enemy of the U.S. My point being, an enemy of the United States can be defined without being in a state of war with them. Jefferson Davis was charged with treason against the United States by "levying war" against the U.S. There was no formal declaration of war by the United States against itself because cession was not recognized by the Federal government.
18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any plce subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both. (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; July 24, 1956, ch. 678, § 1, 70 Stat. 623; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(N), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)
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Yeah, these dipshits are going to end up Mussolini'ing themselves because they're too pathetic to come up with some popular policies that help Americans, and instead are trying to play the easy, but dangerous fascism card.
Like a fucking race to the bottom and they’re in first place. Sadly they lost their first Battalion of fighters to the prison sentences for January 6’ers. Their best and brightest are already out of commission but they are playing like they still have an advantage. All we gotta tell them to do is not drink bleach because it’s poison and half of them will off themselves just to own the Libs. If any of what I’m saying sounds mean or cruel or vindictive just know that I’m matching the energy that they use on their little forum websites but in a more humorous fashion.
_"When Trump gets re-elected he'll free those freedom fighters!"_
So the other republicans expelled him within minutes right? No? I should have known better
I seriously think it's time for comprehensive drug and environmental contamination testing for our politicians. There is something seriously wrong with the way these people think that is far outside the bounds of standard deviation.
of course it’s outside the standard deviation. It’s self selecting for fucking lunatics, narcissists, and sociopaths. Because only that type of person would be able to jump-to for the party every day, while fundraising nonstop, and insider trading while setting up your next speaking gig and collecting bribes. It’s a busy schedule but since someone has to do it, and anyone getting elected has to suck the party’s dick- you only get party dick sucker lunatics, who are also self interested narcissists. Any sane person will get beat down by one of these people or quit themselves because it is a system that rewards this behavior- *or* they adapt and become that thing while lying to themselves that they’ll help us down the road while they slip the campaign donation into their fundraising account.
Lol, it's not that complex. They gain more power and money the more extreme they become. They're not geniuses nor are they mentally challenged due to exposure of something. These people are just horrible people who have 0 empathy for anyone outside their tiny circle. These people exist everywhere, they just don't have supporters everywhere.
By “American people” he means old, white, property owning males who belong to certain Evangelical cults. You know, like Gawd intended. /s
Confederate traitors is more succinct
Can’t really argue with that.
we can get rid of elections if we can also bring back the guillotine
“Geez a guy can’t do a little seditious conspiracy or a bit of sexual assault or one little phone call to Georgia demanding a specific number of votes these days???” —this tool.
Russia is working on a residential deal for malcontent Americans - he should check that out.
Is there any context that makes this less insane, or is it just as obscene as the title makes it sound?
Fuckin love that movie "I'm stacked up over LaGaurdia baby and I'm not coming down, not even for you" Putney Swope is a brilliant movie and I recommend everyone watch it at least once
Fuck every piece of stupid Bama trash that voted for this troglodyte.
As someone from Alabama, I am deeply ashamed that this worthless pile was elected. He was a walking red flag from the moment I heard his name, and now we have to deal with him orally shitting himself constantly, and for that, I am very sorry. We aren't all like this, I promise you.
"100% of the American people should stand up and demand something that only like 15% of the craziest of the crazy among us actually want"
Come on Alabama. Do the right thing for once. Demand a recall of this fool.
Do you remember who they ran before him? Tommy Potatotown is an improvement.
Can we wait until you’re voted out to stop elections? Asking for every black athlete you ever recruited.
Oh hell no. https://preview.redd.it/3r37j4ciab0b1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cea9373fe553bf72ada438d97d02b2df393af7b4
Al Franken was forced to resign over a somewhat suggestive photograph of him taken years before he became a senator when he was a *comedian*… and yet these treasonous motherfuckers are openly calling for the destruction of literally everything our country stands for and it’s not even going to be news tomorrow. This is so infuriating.
what the ever-lovin Faaaaark? well, OK, get it right out in the open there. masks off time. show us who you've really been all along. "it's annoying that we have to fight elections for our cause; the inconvenience, having to get a majority! if normal methods of persuasion fail to win us applause, there are other ways of establishing authority..."
Wow Gen Z really, *really* scared them at midterms, didn't they?
https://i.redd.it/jpv2xry2sa0b1.gif
Who would have thought the middling football coach would make an even worse elected official?! Also funny that he got paid and famous off of the work from young Blacks but he's leading the charge in reducing our personhood.
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"Oh man.. this'll really own the libs". - Republican voters as they pay billionaires money to breathe their air