Conservatives are fringe outliers - and leftists could learn from them

The Republican Party, a coalition between Big Business farmers and turkeys who’ll vote for Christmas (Red Scare obsessed cowards, apocalyptic white nationalists, religious fanatics, etc) has fallen to its bizarre, violent, noisy radical wing, who are obsessed with policies that are completely irrelevant to the majority of Americans.

As Oliver Willis writes, the views of the radical right — which are also the policies of the GOP — are wildly out of step with the US political view:

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/conservatives-arent-like-normal-americans

The press likes to frame American politics as “narrowly divided,” but the reality is that Republicans’ electoral victories are due to voter suppression and antimajoritarian institutions (the Senate and Electoral College, etc), not popularity. Democrats consistently outperform the GOP in national races. Dems won majorities in 1992/6, and beat the GOP in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. The only presidential race the GOP won on popular votes since 1988 was 2004, when GW Bush eked out a plurality (not a majority).

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The completely successful normalisation of left handedness in my native culture with zero negative consequences is inspiring to me. It is a deepseated neurological feature! Which correlates with lots of important facts about a person! And was the focus of a long history of violent brain-damaging child abuse! And now is so completely unremarkable as to hardly even be interesting

Today’s youth (at least here) don’t remember it but the times when left-handed people were forced to use his right hand are not that far. My grandpa is forcibly-taught right-hander (as we call them here) and he’s 84. My dad who’s 52 would be forced right-hander if he was like 5 years older.

Like, it’s not sone überdistant future. Dexterity is doom. Sinister people gained freedom mere 50 years ago. And I’m pretty sure there are places where they’re still oppressed and forced right.

This isn’t a joke. This is 100% the truth. My grandma was beaten by teachers as a child for being lefty. She rebelled and is still a lefty today as point of pride.

my gran was left handed and got so abused for it that she still hates writing at the age of 78. She still writes with her right hand too, and complains that she could never learn to draw. Cruelty inflicted in the past is still hurting in the present.

A teacher tried to “correct” my father’s left-handedness and my grandma nearly burned the school down, he’s a lefty with pride!

Reminder that in 1985 the British issued our entire military with a rifle that could not be fired left handed, because the refusal to accept left-handedness was still so deeply ingrained in our culture. And this was a serious problem for right-handed soldiers as well, because it is very normal to switch hands when aiming around a corner. Having to fire a weapon only right-handed actually exposes you to a lot more danger in combat.

This is a really good answer, but I think it glosses over one key point:

You don't have to explain everything, and in fact it's better if you don't. Magic is actually more interesting when we don't know all the rules. When it's clearly defined, it stops being magical.

BUT... Any time you do establish a rule, stick to it! This is true for everything you do in your fictional worlds, be it magic, science, cultural mores, character traits and motivations... Always. Be. Consistent.

When you break your own rules, that's when the reader gets upset. That's why it's better to not establish a rule in the first place, unless it matters to the story in some way. If you establish a rule and then break it, it breaks the illusion. It reminds us of the artifice of the story, and drags us out of the world you created.

These are some snippets from the article.

Highly suggest.

The Republican 'crisis of masculinity' has devoured the entire party.

McCarthy's infinite stupidity can only survive in Republican politics. #WillfulStooge

"I don't care if you think it's weird. I think it's weird you give a fuck about someone else's medical care so badly when you don't know the first thing about it!"

wow how come nobody wants to work??!!! 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 wow you haven't found a job yet??!!! 😵😵😵😵 stop begging on the internet it's sooooo easy to find a job these days ahahahah.... 😀😀😀😀 just keep sending in 400 applications a day 🫣🫣🫣🫣

this in the singularity

Someone is legit going to get deradicalized as a kink

whatever it takes, man

A quick reminder-- During the last WGA strike the studios refused to negotiate, walked away from the table, and basically forced the writers into a strike. Then they did everything they could to make sure the WGA took the blame for crew members being out of work, even when the studios refused to go back to the table. Meanwhile during the strike studios bragged at trade shows about how much money they were making with streaming and two studio CEOs took raises that were more than the WGA's wildest-dream-amount opening offers. Not their total salary, mind you. The amount of their raise was more than the WGA was asking for.

They're already gearing up to do all the same things again. So no matter what you read or see in the days to come, there's only one side to blame for this. And it's not the folks walking the picket line.

"No Child should get Gender Affirming Care" turns into "No one should get Gender Affirming Care". "No Trans Person should be in Children's Media" turns into "No Trans Person should be in Media". They use Children's "Safety" as a method to get a foot in the door. They then expand their previous statements to ensure the near complete erasure of Trans People and Queer People.

TERFs: Everyone agrees with us secretly and are just afraid of the TRA’s “cancelling” them.

Also TERFs:

There’s one lady in the middle who is cutting off a friend because that friend is correctly gendering the commenter’s trans son, and I really hope the kid runs away to stay with that friend.

This actually makes me feel a lot better. Not just in the schadenfreude sense that ‘well, if you’re going to behave in a vile way then you face the consequences’ but in a ‘wow, look! LOOK at all the people who support trans lives so hard they are willing to give up friendships and cut off family to protect them.’ Wow. Look at the people who care about strangers, who care about ME. That’s...comforting. That’s so nice.

To transphobes, trans people are either a powerless, insignificant minority that nobody REALLY likes, or they are powerful, universally accepted, and dangerous, depending on what part of the narrative they are in.

Like most forms of bigotry, the enemy is simultaneously pathetic and weak and all powerful and threatening, because those are both emotionally compelling ideas and bigotry is fundamentally about emotional gratification, not reality or logic.

Children will die.

The line “Are you real?” hit me like a freight train.  This whole scene is basically a ballistic nuclear missile of feels, but that line, that fucking line... That killed me.

I'm not the kind of guy who reblogs cool mugs, but this is the greatest mug I've ever seen.

It's cute :)

Something I found on Twitter that really puts things in perspective as a creator.

HI LET’S SHARE NICOLE’S WORDS ON THE SUBJECT! 

It has been literal years but every time I see Martin’s tweets posted somewhere and his word is shared as truth while her post is not shared it sort of reiterates the fact that we trust men to speak about feminism more than we believe women who experience it. 

Interesting, innit? https://medium.com/@nickyknacks/working-while-female-59a5de3ad266

Reading her account of how their boss treated her blows me away. Men are so emboldened that they will literally admit to illegal discrimination casually and face no consequences.

In all the years of seeing this post I’ve never seen a link to her side. Didn’t even know she’d written one.

Adding screenshots of her post. His whole post is there without needing a link. Hers should be, too.

Also, she posted this is 2017! It’s fucking 2020 and I’ve seen his side of this for years, but it took 3 years for her side to make its way to my dash…

I’ve reblogged his story at least twice; it’s time for Nicole’s.

It’s 2023 and i just now learned that Nicole’s response was also out there