So, I guess as a middle range millennial, I now get to tell all you young queer kids that what you are feeling right now is exactly how it felt in 2004 when we re-elected George Bush, and not only that but many states put in bans against gay/same sex marriage at the time.

This is probably not comforting, but it is true, and it helps me when I feel hopeless: For every revolution there is a counter revolution, for every step forward there is a step back, that things may not be good forever but they will not be bad, either. That we clawed our way to get where we are and we can claw our way forward from here, too. Talk to your queer elders, the ones who have been here before and will be here again and who threw bricks at Stonewall.

When I was a child, if you got AIDS it was a death sentence. Now it isn't. Now you live on.

So I'll quote angels in america: You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.

We’re going to hear a lot of stupid bullshit over the next few days/months/years about how Harris/the Democrats failed to win over men, or young people, or uneducated voters, or those worried about the economy, or whatever….but the truth is this: this country hates women and minorities; its citizens understand fuck all about the economy; and the people are incredibly susceptible to outright lies, scams and fascist values

yo hey US people who sent in absentee ballots, they are tossing mail-in ballots for no reason. i just had to call my county board of elections and demand a cure for my ballot because north carolina didn't send out any notices of issues with ballots, and the issues are fake. if you voted by mail-in make sure your ballot was actually counted

Check your ballot!

Go figure, regressives undermining elections again, shocking.

Texans, check here:

Anyone in the US can check their voter registration, or register to vote, at vote.org which is a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to providing voting guidance.

I was today years old when i found out that i was allowed time off to vote. Something no boss has ever told me.

Reblogging now but I'm also scheduling this to post again at the end of October, when folks may need a reminder that they may have right to time off work to vote.

Make sure you schedule that time in advance- don’t wait til Election Day to be like oh i completely forgot i need to vote. Your coworkers will thank you.

ohio removed 160000 inactive voter registrations

Search for yourself here: https://registrationreadiness.ohiosos.gov Voter registration:

THIS IS URGENT!!! IF YOU HAVE BEEN REMOVED YOU ONLY HAVE 2 DAYS TO REMEDY THIS!!!

Please, no matter where you are, if you are a US citizen check your voter registration. If you live in Ohio, this blatant attempt at voter suppression will be final on 7/22/24. This number represents 1 in every 50 registered voters in the state. They are- allegedly- purging everyone who has been inactive for 4 years. Which in of itself is farcical, because plenty of people only vote every 4 years in the Presidential. But I have seen people say they’ve been incredibly active and voted in the most recent local elections and still been purged. Please, do not delay in checking. If you have been removed, register again right away or you will not have a vote in November.

America. America. Please. Register to vote and keep the fascist dictator out. Please. And if you’re already registered, check to make sure you were not removed.

We’re rooting for you. We’re depending on you. Every one of his followers are going to show up to those polls. You have to keep this man out of office.

We’re pleading with you to make the right choice.

-signed, the rest of the world.

For anyone in any US state, go here! Go now!!

the thing that strikes me about this latest wave of anti-trans hate and legislation in the U.S. is that it feels like it's *kind of* about trans people but really about a fear fundamental to all conservatives that a day will one day come when they will no longer be able to completely control their children

american conservatism is a death cult. trump made this incredibly obvious but it's been trending that way for a while. it is spiteful, bigoted, cruel, morally bankrupt, and all evidence in support of it has either been fabricated, forged, deceptively edited, or disproven. being conservative goes against a fundamental human desire to be kind to those around you and I think on some level conservatives know this, and thus, they know that the only reason children would subscribe to these values is if they are indoctrinated into them with cult-like single-mindedness

Conservatives have been pushing for homeschooling for decades, they've been raising concerns about teaching evolution in schools since the early 20th century, they've made wedge issues out of sex ed, history textbooks, and now gay and trans teachers. They want a world in which children are taught to be conservative from birth and any attempt to teach them anything else is a literal crime. They want this because they know, deep down inside, that most children would not agree with them unless they were literally brainwashed into it.

also worth pointing out that most child abuse (sexual or otherwise) takes place within a "traditional" family structure or a "traditional" religious institution and I have to wonder if people who want to abuse kids have a fundamental investment in preserving strict hierarchies in which adult men have unquestioned authority over children

Like I'm not saying *every* conservative is like this but perhpas their emphasis on "groomers" is a wee bit of projection

Anyway abolish the family trans rights are human rights institute fully automated luxury gay space communism now

This tweet sums it up pretty well:

This is another big reason why most conservatives bitch about higher education; a lot of younger people (myself included) undo their conservative upbringing brainwashing after being exposed to new ideas, meeting new and diverse people, and getting a higher-quality education when they attend college. 

This is also, of course, why conservative lawmakers constantly seek to undermine public education and make it shittier so the kids who go through it are more ignorant. An educated and well-informed populace is the GOP’s worst nightmare.

As someone who is went through that deconstruction at university- it really is their worst nightmare because a lot of the time kids go to school and suddenly the world doesn’t make sense anymore because you’re exposed to all these new ideas. A lot will try and bury themselves harder, but once those seeds are planted, nothing is the same again and it is terrifying.

But when you have all these ‘christian universities’ offering to keep their kids ‘safe’ after they were home schooled and cut off from the world, well. They can manage to keep the kids controlled for longer.

excuse me officer i would like to report a murder

Blogging this tweet because this explains SO MUCH about the mindset of pretty much all the folks I’ve known who’re against single-payer, it’s not even funny…

This….

This never occurred to me. Not once. That Americans are against Health Care because they think it actually costs tens of thousands of dollars for a broken arm, hundreds of thousands for a complicated birth, millions for cancer treatment.

Because they’ve never known anything different. The idea that a broken arm is only a couple hundred bucks; a complicated birth a couple thousand; cancer treatment only tens of thousands; all easily covered by existing tax structures.

This explains a lot.  And it’s a good example of what I was talking about in my post on scarcity being used to prop up ableism – always question the idea that a resource is genuinely scarce.  Even if it seems obvious that it is, quite often that’s the result of careful manipulation and misconceptions that you’re not even aware of.  

And never think you’re too smart to be fooled by that kind of thing, it doesn’t work like that.  Similarly, don’t think people who are fooled by something are stupid.  Nobody can have all the information about everything, and nobody has the time and energy to investigate and put together conscious conclusions about every piece of information they’re given.  It doesn’t take being stupid, or even just gullible, to believe something like this.

A while back I made a political post that began: “If the right wing had set out to neuter the left in the US, they hardly could have done it better than by spreading impossible-standard purity-test bullshit among young progressives.” and ended “I’m not saying that conservative infiltrators spread purity-test standards and encourage progressives to turn on each other. I’m just saying that the outcome is the same as if they did: eternal self-sabotage for the left, permanent minority rule for the right.” It’s had a few hundred reblogs, so here’s an update.

Since I wrote the original post on December 3rd of 2017, it’s increasingly come out that not just Trump, but the NRA and likely other right-wing forces have been receiving illegal money and propaganda support from Russia. This includes Russian trolls and bots posing as progressives on Tumblr in order to sow division and chaos on the left, using social media to erode support for Democrats. So I should have said conservative infiltrators spread those purity-test standards and encourage progressives to turn on each other: I would have been right.

Quick test to find out whether you understand the Russian propaganda issue well enough. Do you understand why “Russian adoption” is a (barely concealed) code for lifting sanctions that have kept wealthy Russian criminals from accessing billions of money they squirreled away in the US? Are you aware that Congress voted overwhelmingly to toughen those sanctions, and Trump has simply refused to enforce that veto-proof law? If you live in the States, you need to know who Sergei Magnitsky was, because this is affecting your life every single day. Cheat sheet: Sergei Magnitsky was murdered by Russian oligarchs for investigating their corruption. The US responded with the Magnitsky Act, which has frozen billions of dollars in Russian assets that they’d stolen from their own people and hidden in US financial institutions. Since then, those oligarchs have spent millions trying to influence US politics to get their frozen stolen assets back.

And look how well it’s worked! Progressives online have picked up those corrupt billionaires’ propaganda talking points and continue to perpetuate them. They’re always talking shit about the Democrats, claiming that it’s their own fault they don’t win elections because they’re not left enough. But bizarrely, the answer to this problem is never “Support a primary challenge from a more progressive candidate,” which is the tactic that the GOP has been using successfully to push their party rightward. Instead, the online progressive’s answer is almost always: just complain, just keep spreading negativity, just stay home. That’s how you can tell it’s bullshit.

Progressives, pushing left means putting your shoulder to the wheel and pushing. You have to vote in every election and pick the most progressive candidate every time, even if “most progressive” doesn’t meet your perfect standards. You have to prove the votes are there to support the positions you want. You can’t say “Hey Democrats, I won’t support your baby step left with my vote, but if you jump leftward off this cliff, I’ll totally catch you!” If you support progress, you have to support even small progress. It’s fine to loudly remind people that you expect more! But ffs, take what you can get.

If the only party that comes close to your beliefs keeps losing, that’s your loss. The Green Party isn’t going to suddenly get their shit together and save you. You have to keep voting, even when that means choosing the lesser of two evils, because if you don’t, the worst evil wins. And right now, the worst evil is trying to make sure that even if a truly ideal progressive candidate did run, it wouldn’t matter how many votes they got, they’d still somehow lose the “election.”

So I was notified via email that in order to vote in the 2018 primaries, I had to register my party affiliation, in my home state….by OCY 13TH

Holy shit guys. Please find out ur state’s voting rules and OH MY GOD PLEASE DO IT BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT. WE HAVE TO BEAT THE CONSERVATIVES IF WE WANT TO HAVE ANY MEANS OF OPPOSING TRUMP.

Voting abroad should still be similar to ur state’s rules, please….google is ur friend.

Holy shit please take ten min to google what to do and register.

To vote in the 2017 Virginia elections, you have to register and have your info up-to-date by October 16, 2017.

You want to make a difference? You vote in off years. Non-presidential elections. And you vote on all of the elections. It will take you a few minutes on your state board of elections website to figure out the issues, candidates, and where to get the info.

VOTE. Please.

And this year in Virginia, it’s a big election. Our governor cannot run again for reelection, and we’re up against a scary ‘I was Trump before Trump was Trump’ republican and a more insidious, Pence-style republican. You want people to stand up to Trump and create laws that support the local population? This is it. This is when it matters.

Vote.

Here’s how to check which district you’re in and who your rep is.

Here’s how to find out if you’re registered.

Here are the deadlines for when to register.

Here’s how to register, if it turns out you’re not.

Here’s how to find local polling places.

Tag it with “voting reference” and you’ll always be able to find it again.