Tag: us politics

larkandkatydid:

And I promise I’ll stop after this because bitterness is
unattractive and only productive bitterness is worth putting on one’s blog,
HOWEVER, there are some new variables to our political calculus that we have to
take seriously:

I stumped for a guy running on a single payer platform:

  • In a state that Bernie Sanders won
  • Who is one of the leading international experts on single
    payer healthcare
  • And is young and handsome and talks like Obama if Obama was
    a burly Midwestern lacrosse bro
  • And who Bernie Sanders campaigned hard for

 And we lost by 14 points.

And no election is every the same and there are always,
always dozens of variables but AT LEAST TWO are that Bernie Sanders put together
a winning coalition that included a lot of rural white guys who were profoundly
motivated by dislike of Hilary Clinton and/or wouldn’t vote for a brown guy who
was ten times as qualified as Bernie Sanders…which SUCKS. 

I’m not just saying this because it makes me angry and validates my on-going beef with Bernie Sanders.  I was really hoping and working hard to prove myself wrong on this shit!   I’m not even being bitter and cynical about this.  I think it means we just need to work harder and more and keep bringing these conversations into the public consciousness and build winning coalitions….but I don’t think we do anyone any favors by just ignoring the shitty aspects of our society and assuming anyone who notices them is a paid shill trying to crush your momentum. 

This is how I feel about the Chris G governor campaign. She’s a charismatic progressive that had been a teacher for 30 years and made education her key issue. She still lost to a warm bowl of tapioca that happened to have a penis by ten points. Sometimes gender matters as does race.

Democrats’ Drama On Fossil Fuel Money Shows A Radical Green Jobs Plan Could Be A Win-Win

flowersandfutures:

Sean McElwee, the co-founder of Data for Progress, said preliminary analysis of as-yet-unreleased polling his group plans to publish in the coming weeks “suggests a green jobs guarantee may be more popular than a jobs guarantee in general.”

“Look, we know guaranteed jobs are popular, and we know that green issues are popular,” he said by phone Friday. “It makes sense that putting them together would also be popular.”

A proposal marrying those two policies is emerging. Dubbed the “Green New Deal,” a reference to the 1930s spending programs that helped pull the United States out of the Great Depression, the policy made its way onto the platforms of a handful of progressive candidates this election cycle. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the likely next representative for New York’s 14th Congressional District, called for “the investment of trillions of dollars and the creation of millions of high-wage jobs.” Kaniela Ing, the state lawmaker running in Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District election on Saturday, echoed that call in June, promising to fight for the “massive investment to the tune of anywhere from $1 to $1 trillion.”

YES YES this is what we need to get to a solarpunk future.

Democrats’ Drama On Fossil Fuel Money Shows A Radical Green Jobs Plan Could Be A Win-Win

Next sentence is “For all their differences, Miller and Ocasio-Cortez both demonstrate the central lesson from the last decade of crisis: There is always another option. The question is whether we will choose a better one.”

I think the author is wrong about Mr. Miller. He was radicalized into an open racist before 2008 and he has the exact background of someone who would be a fascist ideologue no matter what generation or economic system he was born into. If he came to power in the Reagan administration he’d just be expressing it in a Southern Strategy “lock up the drug offenders” way instead of his current bent. If he came into power in the Eisenhower administration he’d push for Operation W*tback and be a staunch segregationist.

opuntialiberacion:

rush-keating:

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I hate that on the surface, I agree with fascist traditionalists on tumblr on their critiques of modern Liberal society (shrinking family units, “secularism”, porn & sex culture) but they’ve got the wrong idea on why they’re so discontent with them. They love “Family” because they think Blood Relations and “Traditional” Catholic morals are what keeps us strong and happy and fulfilled, they think the lack of that is why these suburban American fascists feel so empty. 

They worship the concept of “Strong Families”, because family can feel good–because community feels good and inherently hits this deeply human sense of satisfaction when we feel like we belong and are valued and can truly have unshakable trust in others. Some “blood” family members are toxic and cause trauma, so they don’t have to be in your life. These fascists growing up in Individualistic Neoliberal society never had a chance to feel that, so they’re convinced it’s all about FAMILY and BLOOD. (and making as many white babies as possible to combat the brown hordes, but that’s just a rationalization)

They hate porn because it’s “degenerate and immoral” and usually have a background of deep internet porn addiction. When they ween off porn to have “stronger morals”, they feel better and attribute it to their “moral fortitude that makes them feel better”. And not like the Porn Industry doesn’t specifically formulate their porn to hit the most addictive, primal centers of your brain to get you hooked to this media that completely warps your brain and the way you view women & sex that makes you feel like shit after the thirty second dopamine high crashes and you see that you’ve been feverishly sweatingly masturbated to some disgusting degrading video for the last half hour.

They hate secularism because they think Rigid Traditional Catholic Law is the only way to fulfillment, and start seeing themselves feel better about life after they convert to Catholicism from Reddit atheism after growing up in shitty American protestant families, and they think Catholic Moralism itself is what causes their happiness. And not the fact that religion and spirituality in general is a great way to break free of miserable fast-paced consumerist culture. That it’s very meditative and therapeutic to pray, that worshiping something larger than yourself gives you a sense of perspective from this extremely individualistic society that teaches you that life is all about YOU and YOUR personal interests, it helps kill the ego. And being a member of an ancient organized religion with heavy structure and tradition like the Catholic Church truly does give you a place to belong and feeling like you’re truly a part of something–which is a feeling that Neoliberalism is completely destroying.

There’s nothing wrong with “tradition” in itself. There is something deeply satisfying about forming and belonging to a culture that holds value to certain traditions and holidays. Its important to recognize when traditions can possibly become harmful and toxic, but being a part of them and growing up with them does make you feel good. There’s something beautiful about always looking forward to “that time of the year” for a specific holiday and the preparations that come with it, because its all about enjoying these activities that are larger and older than yourself and celebrating your loved ones or paying homage to events of history, or the Harvest. It’s a shame “Traditionalist” Fascists don’t see the value of it comes with the community and sense of belonging, but with inventing some fictional nonspecific “traditional time period” of “back in the day…when everything was better”. Of course they can’t say what time they want to go back TO, just some time when everyone was happier and there weren’t black or brown people around.

They’re talking in coded language when they say those things though. They’re fine with White patriarchs cheating on their wives and being bad fathers, they just dont like gay/trans people and single, childless women.

You definitely have a point. But I think part of “traditionalism” is also advocating for an explicit return to Patriarchy which will even include arranged marriages (they do love their state-sponsored GFs) and special allowances for Men to spread their seed. They probably do think that “morals” and “Family values” are what makes you happy on the surface but they’re just shallow rationalizations

Traditional Catholic morals = rationalization to hating women & disenfranchised people and never for helping the poor or seeing any “moral” problem with advocating for ethnic genocide. I remember plenty of “traditionalists” were going out of their way to defend Roy Moore when the election happened.

BTW, what do you mean by “Social Liberalism”?

I mean stuff like being pro-gay rights, pro-reproductive rights for women, pro-gender equality. I say social liberalism specifically to contrast with economic liberalism, which has not been great for families due to capitalist healthcare and the lack of paid maternity leave among other things.

Based on your last reblog, it doesn’t seem to me like you agree with traditionalist critique on modern liberal society at all, rather that you dislike some aspects of liberal society that they also happen to dislike but for very different reasons. I see that as different than “agreeing with their critiques.” To use an analogy, that’s kind of like saying that you agree with conservatives who dont like Obamacare because they hate it because they dislike healthcare regulations while you dislike it because you see it as too market oriented and that a socialized approach would be better. I dont think disliking something means you have to agree with the reasoning of everyone else who doesnt like it.

opuntialiberacion:

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I hate that on the surface, I agree with fascist traditionalists on tumblr on their critiques of modern Liberal society (shrinking family units, “secularism”, porn & sex culture) but they’ve got the wrong idea on why they’re so discontent with them. They love “Family” because they think Blood Relations and “Traditional” Catholic morals are what keeps us strong and happy and fulfilled, they think the lack of that is why these suburban American fascists feel so empty. 

They worship the concept of “Strong Families”, because family can feel good–because community feels good and inherently hits this deeply human sense of satisfaction when we feel like we belong and are valued and can truly have unshakable trust in others. Some “blood” family members are toxic and cause trauma, so they don’t have to be in your life. These fascists growing up in Individualistic Neoliberal society never had a chance to feel that, so they’re convinced it’s all about FAMILY and BLOOD. (and making as many white babies as possible to combat the brown hordes, but that’s just a rationalization)

They hate porn because it’s “degenerate and immoral” and usually have a background of deep internet porn addiction. When they ween off porn to have “stronger morals”, they feel better and attribute it to their “moral fortitude that makes them feel better”. And not like the Porn Industry doesn’t specifically formulate their porn to hit the most addictive, primal centers of your brain to get you hooked to this media that completely warps your brain and the way you view women & sex that makes you feel like shit after the thirty second dopamine high crashes and you see that you’ve been feverishly sweatingly masturbated to some disgusting degrading video for the last half hour.

They hate secularism because they think Rigid Traditional Catholic Law is the only way to fulfillment, and start seeing themselves feel better about life after they convert to Catholicism from Reddit atheism after growing up in shitty American protestant families, and they think Catholic Moralism itself is what causes their happiness. And not the fact that religion and spirituality in general is a great way to break free of miserable fast-paced consumerist culture. That it’s very meditative and therapeutic to pray, that worshiping something larger than yourself gives you a sense of perspective from this extremely individualistic society that teaches you that life is all about YOU and YOUR personal interests, it helps kill the ego. And being a member of an ancient organized religion with heavy structure and tradition like the Catholic Church truly does give you a place to belong and feeling like you’re truly a part of something–which is a feeling that Neoliberalism is completely destroying.

There’s nothing wrong with “tradition” in itself. There is something deeply satisfying about forming and belonging to a culture that holds value to certain traditions and holidays. Its important to recognize when traditions can possibly become harmful and toxic, but being a part of them and growing up with them does make you feel good. There’s something beautiful about always looking forward to “that time of the year” for a specific holiday and the preparations that come with it, because its all about enjoying these activities that are larger and older than yourself and celebrating your loved ones or paying homage to events of history, or the Harvest. It’s a shame “Traditionalist” Fascists don’t see the value of it comes with the community and sense of belonging, but with inventing some fictional nonspecific “traditional time period” of “back in the day…when everything was better”. Of course they can’t say what time they want to go back TO, just some time when everyone was happier and there weren’t black or brown people around.

They’re talking in coded language when they say those things though. They’re fine with White patriarchs cheating on their wives and being bad fathers, they just dont like gay/trans people and single, childless women.