They never said they voted for him. They pointed out that the living conditions in the red state are worse, and the chose to vote for Trump. Presumably under some kind of belief that he will ameliorate those conditions.

Before you tell me he won’t, I know that he won’t. They don’t know that though. And they have gigantic right wing echo chambers telling them all about how he will.

This article isn’t about an escalation. They have been actively committing acts of genocidal mass murder for over a year.

Thank you. I’m glad to be here, too. Affirmative care allowed me to become the woman I am today, and for that I am very thankful.

By politically isolated I’m going to assume you just mean conversion therapists who will try to convince children they are not gay or trans. Because if you’re not giving them affirmative care and listening to them the alternative is denying them.

Conversion therapy kills people. That’s what it does. That’s all it does. It is NOT possible to stop someone from being gay or trans. It has never been shown to be possible in any fucking way. Conversion therapy does not work, has never worked, and is equivalent in mental distress to severe psychological torture. It frequently involves physical and sexual assault. It involves emotional abuse and manipulation. All in service of forcing us to conform. This is the alternative. If you’re against affirmative care this is what you’re for. Think about telling these people that what happened to them was right. Think about going to the lived ones of people who took their lives while undergoing conversion therapy. Think about telling them that what happened is right and should be legal. This is what you’re advocating for. This is the side that you’re on.

I was a transgender child. Going through forced puberty led me to attempt suicide at 14 15 and 18. Parts of my body are covered in self-harm scars due in large part to the utter repulsion I felt at the effects of testosterone on my body. I became an alcoholic at 16, and an oxycontin addict by the time I was 20. The day my voice cracked was one of the worst days of my entire life. For reference I started counseling when I was 13. I was receiving therapy throughout all of this.

I am extremely lucky to be alive. I have had to spend tens of thousands of dollars undoing the harm testosterone did to me and some things I can never fully undo. I could have avoided all of this if I had had access to puberty blockers. If I had been offered puberty blockers, I would have taken them without a thought, and I categorically would not have regretted them. I knew I wanted to be a girl when I was 4. I knew that I didn’t want to go through testosterone puberty when I was in grade 4, and they taught us what that was.

Is forcing us to go through what I went through humane? When a real treatment exists right there? When studies show a less than 1% rate of regret for gender affirmative care for minors? Do you realize you are forcing children to go through what I went through? Do you realize not every child will survive? Do you realize you’re supporting causes that kill children? For no fucking reason? Because you don’t fucking understand what we go through and have no fucking interest in listening to us? How about asking trans kids what they fucking need? How about asking trans adults what being a trans child was like for them? No you have no fucking interest in any of that.

One of the many reasons Tokyo does have those train carriages is because women are systematically discouraged from speaking up about being assaulted, even as it is happening. Even in a public place surrounded by other people. The offense was and, to an extent, still is often treated as a nuisance rather than a violent sexual crime. Empowering women who speak up about being assaulted and prosecuting sexual assault offenses is how you reduce assault rates. Make it easier for victims to speak up, and show that what happened to them will be taken seriously.

Creating women’s only carriages isn’t a solution but an affirmation that men are on some inherent level sexually abusive (therefore decreasing the seriousness with which assault is treated, and decreasing the likelihood women who speak up will receive support as “that’s just how men are”). It also, you know, only does something about one very specific kind of sexual assault. It does nothing to address sexual harassment and assault committed in any other public or private space.

I can understand feeling safety in environments free from men when men are essentially given free reign to do whatever they want to with minute amounts of offenders ever facing any kind of punishment. I also feel that simply creating women only cars doesn’t go far enough and actually in some ways enables alternative lines of justification for sexual assault if a woman isn’t in a women’s car. People can and will ask why she didn’t take the women’s car, as though it is the personal initiative of women to prevent themselves from being assaulted.

Memes and other image content are allowed here!

Your ability to ignore arguments presented to you and lack of initiative to learn what terms mean is astounding.

By all means, go after the non voters. I’m sure that will defeat fascism. Do you even know fascism means?

I’m all for overthrowing the political status quo entirely. Problem is organizing it, getting enough people on board.

Dems were supposed to be what saved us from fascism. They didn’t. They campaigned on doing that and then failed. They deserve criticism for that. Fascists do not care what we think. They will continue their projects with or without our approval. Anti-fascism needs to adequately counter their methods. But properly countering fascism is impossible if you’re a neoliberal conservative. And so thusly we are here. Waiting patiently for the powers that be to give a tyrannical fascist all the power he wants. They go back to their upper class lives, while the rest of us prepare for a new world order.

Yeah, we’re just going in circles here. The assumption being made is that everyone who didn’t vote actually had an opinion and was just “too stupid, too lazy, or too disinterested”. I don’t think that’s the case at all and it’s kind of offensive to even suggest it.

Idk what you mean by whipping boy lol… are you under the impression that criticizing them for things they do wrong is equal to abusing them in some way? They’re some of the most powerful people in society lol. They’re not poor, destitute, honest working Americans. They plan to literally shake a fascists hand as they give him nuclear launch codes and unrestricted federal power. They share the same system Trump does. They benefit from it in the same ways he does.

You seem to think getting angry at people motivates them to vote for you lol.

And yeah the word fascism means nothing to the average voter. They don’t even know what that word means. Calling Trump a fascist (which he is) is not a winning political strategy.

She didn’t lose because of non-voters. Nearly every single district in the country shift further red. Even deep blue districts had higher red turn outs. She lost the same way Hillary did. Yes sexism and racism had a role in it, for sure. But they also both lost because of absolutely abysmal campaigns.

Trump campaigned on change. It doesn’t matter what change he was talking about, most people don’t understand the nuances of politics. The whole thing vaguely confuses a lot of people. He was very much “I won’t be like the last guy” and that is a winning political strategy. People understand that their lives have sucked the past 4 years, they don’t understand the nuances of why, but they know Trump said he will change things. Conservative media tells them democrats just lie about Republicans. And they believe it.

We can yell at Republicans and their voters, sure. Just like the other German parties were free to yell at the nazis and the people who voted for them. But is that productive? Does that actually get them anywhere? Do you think the Republicans will change their strategies if we get mad them? Do you think their voters will vote differently if we tell them they’re fascists?

Unless you’re planning on overthrowing the current system of politics in America then you have to some kind of belief or notion that dems can win the next election. So the only people it even comes close to making sense to criticize are the Democrats. This election wasn’t stolen from them. The people voted. The people chose Trump. It was Harris’s one job to be more popular than Trump, to rally more support. She categorically failed at that. Bernie is right about why.

Youre still not getting it. Yelling at voters will get you literally nothing. If your goal is a future where Republicans don’t control America then you need people to vote Democrat. Yelling at them isn’t going to achieve that. Unless you’re going to go full doomer on me and say that you don’t care what happens anymore, in which case why are you even participating in this conversation?

Blame entirely rests on the democratic party. That is the reality of the broken American political system. No one else is responsible for their political campaign failing to gain votes. They were given warning after warning after warning, they didn’t listen. This is the outcome created by those politics.

Cool. We can’t control them, though, unless you’ve come up with a method of forcing people to vote. The democratic party campaign was supposed to get popular support. People were supposed to want to vote for them. That’s the whole point of political campaigning. The democratic campaign was wildly unpopular on every single point other than “isn’t Trump”. They cozied up to fascist talking points time and again, border military and ethnic cleansing. She barely even campaigned on any progressive points. It was a joke of a campaign.

The democratic party has lost touch with reality. They will welcome fascists in with open arms. Those images won’t ever be forgotten.

Atlantic Canada. Cheap cost of living compared to the rest of the country, beautiful environment, lots of nice small communities.

I had one. They are not made for winter driving lol. But they are absolute tanks. Idk if they actually are heavier than other cars I’ve driven or just feel that way lol

That’s so smart and insightful of you! You’re so right the democratic party should do everything exactly the same all over again. It’ll totally win them the election this time!

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You’re right that leaving is your best bet. That isn’t a reality for millions of queer people, however. Leaving isn’t always feasible, or many of the queer people still in deep red states would already be gone.

It’s time for us to make moves to prepare ourselves to contend with this administration and political agenda. Networks need to be made, connections between suppliers of DIY hormones and communities at risk of losing Healthcare need to be established.

As much as we need to help people get out, we also need to confront the fact that not everyone can, and this is the reality we live in now. I’m just saying, “Get out while you still can” isn’t enough. We need to ready ourselves for a much more long-term fight against this system. Everyone who can should be getting involved.

I appreciate the enthusiasm for social upheaval, but I wouldn’t call a civil war a good time.

I read that sweet potato line as implying that the commenter themselves had voted for him, my bad.

I do agree that every human being has a duty to not vote for Hitler. I mean, that was supposed to be the point of the post world War 2 Western education system. Didn’t work out for a lot of reasons.

But I also believe that many people don’t understand what “voting for Hitler” even means or that Trump poses a threat to them. They don’t understand politics. They don’t understand the way the capitalist economic system functions. They think of it as some ethereal force that gets worse when you control it and gets better when you don’t. They think rich people are brilliant geniuses who have divine knowledge of the economy that allowed them to become so rich. They don’t get it. The political strategy of progressives has to account for that. The democratic party isn’t a party of progressives. It’s a party with a minority of progressives in it, but beyond them, it is the party of the status quo. The status quo has gotten worse, that much people do understand. And they chose the guy who said he was going to change it. He said he’ll fix it and they believed him.