the elite aren’t powerful politicians or billionaires. common misconception. the elite is anyone i think is cooler than me, funnier than me, more artistic than me, or generally anyone i resent for daring to be happier than i am despite my immense wealth and political clout

It's pretty much a matter of record that Brown v Board of Education was the organizing moment of the entire 20th century conservative movement, right?

If you are not currently using your position as a Congressperson to call for Donald Trump's impeachment, you are violating your oath of office, period.

If part of the reason public officials are immune from personal suit is because they would be kept from their official duties, then they shouldn't have time to file personal suits either.

Lol "headache" is a word that applies to things like "didn't buy enough mailers for the campaign," not this.

Ah. I see my mistake was assuming there was some sort of coherent rationale for their behavior. That's on me!

I don't want to incur any further brain injuries by reading about their thought processes, but was the idea there that they'd make Europe etc. to punish them for not helping us?

I agree, but I'll also say that at the national level, I think anti-incumbent sentiment was the biggest factor, and she was his VP and didn't really do anything to distance herself from him. Personally I wanted her to move on Israel etc., but the median voter was mad at Bidenomics (fair or not).

Say it out loud to yourself and have it make sense:

"If she moved left, she would lose 2 undecided dipsticks in Lions jerseys who can't find the West Bank on the map for every 1 she picks up in Dearborn"

I'm being glib, but that's basically the argument, right?

Fwiw, my personal belief is that it would've cost her nothing (except maybe a personally held conviction) to move left on a lot of stuff, because those things matter to people who pay attention to politics (the left) and not at all to idiots who actually decide elections who wouldn't've noticed.

I think, rather than get bogged down in left vs moderate Dem discourse again about whether she should've moved left, I think what actually cost Harris the election was not throwing Biden under the bus. People were mad at him (fairly or unfairly), and she was his proxy.

I could say a lot more about this, but to take it out of the abstract here, the argument he's making is that if Harris had shifted left on Israel, for ex, she would've lost more votes from undecideds in swing states than she'd've gained from the left. I have seen zero evidence to back that claim.

"There are no such things as tradeoffs. Failure to give me only good options with good outcomes is someone's fault" is a hugely unexamined attitude in the US, even outside this group of reprobates. I saw it every day, in every political faction during COVID.

These things stand out to me because when you like hardcore or metal, people will tell you you like sad/angry music, and similarly it's like... Sure, often, but sometimes you're hearing a song about triumph or vindication or even joy as "angry" because it's in a minor key/mode.

A generated playlist of "happy" songs from Spotify that includes among other things, Billy Joel's "The Longest Time," Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" and Heart's "Crazy on You."

I put this playlist on, and it's stacked with bangers, but sometimes I just don't understand how people confuse a song with being happy just because it's in a major key. Several of these songs are about some of the most intense emotional distress or longing you can feel.

lib intellectuals are trying to find language that's both inclusive and specific to enhance popular understanding of issues while conservative intellectuals are chatGPT-ing obscure glandular conditions they can cite to explain why women shouldn't be allowed to vote

Say what you will about the tenets of pre-Trump conservatism, at least it was an ethos.

a map from 1918 showing the interurban network sprawling across Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio

One side obsession from my research into the 1920s is the extensive network of ELECTRIC trains that used to connect cities and towns across the central Midwest called the Interurban. We had this more than a hundred years ago. The things we had and the things we lost.

Bummer that I don't know if you can still get Congress to do something good out of spite.

I really don't know why, other than deference to rich people, we aren't seeing clear, explicit warnings that a lot of these people are rationalists who think they are building a literal god. Like, it's not reminiscent of a religious movement, it IS one.

Any of the ancient generals these fascists worship would've handed Hegseth a short sword and an order so save his family's honor if he said out loud that he'd thrown away unbroken, thousand mile supply lines because he thinks they are unmanly.

It's really, really frustrating to be a scientist not particularly educated in philosophy who sees these tech weirdos try all this stuff and think to myself, "You're experiencing angst. You killed God and you have angst. You don't need to badly reinvent city buses OR existentialism. STOP."

I'd say there is also at least one more thing happening here - just straight up jealousy.

The public university system is an S-tier civilizational achievement, and it should be protected and heralded as such at every possible opportunity.

“The University of California system, the California State system, the City University of New York — these are the institutions actually educating America’s workforce, actually moving first-generation students into the middle class, actually delivering on higher education’s democratic promise.”

When I was a grad student in 2012, a friend's Republican dad asked me my politics, and I said, "My name is Garcia. I'm a scientist." He groaned. Literally every person knows *why* that means I'm unreachable to the GOP, but for a certain set we have to do this theater. It's tiresome.

You know what offends me about all this? The deal was explained very clearly to me as a child: We don't tolerate cafeteria Catholics. Take it or leave it. So I took my moral criticisms and left! But the dish these people object to the cafeteria serving is "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Block @theconfusedkitty.bsky.social youll just get called a fucking muppet even as they lie about what they posted.

I wasted a bunch of time this morning arguing with a cat AVI (why is it always a person with a pet AVI?). Don't make my mistake. Just block and move on, as I should've done.