I wasn’t aware that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are the only people capable of standing up to Trump and that all is lost without them.
All may not be lost, but they are making it a shitload harder.
No, they’re the just the two people that can stop the people that actually want to stand up to Trump.
Reporter: Senator Schumer what are you doing about ICE murdering citizens in cold blood on our streets?
Chuckie: I have a bill before the Senate that reduces the number of bullets an ICE agent can carry by 50%.
Smapti Elsewhere: The clear inability and/or unwillingness of our elected politicians to do what needs to be done to oppose Trump means we’re doomed!
Smapti Here: Stop saying that the clear inability and/or unwillingness of our elected politicians to do what needs to be done to oppose Trump means we’re doomed! Vote D!
I never said we were doomed. I’m pointing out that they refuse to stand for us because it means we need to fight them too.
Fighting Trump also means fighting the people who should be fighting but aren’t. Too many establishment Democrats think their constituents are their donors and not their voters. They think they can fall back on focus-tested talking points like it’s the ‘90s and that they can tell us that we don’t care about ICE, we care about crime and “affordability”. They feign powerlessness and tell us that if only we gave them more money they might actually be able to do something.
There’s a younger generation of Democrats, people like Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson, who are showing that Democrats can get things done as long as the Democrats we elect actually want to do them instead of just enriching themselves off insider trading and palling around with “my friends across the aisle”. I’m working to help primary the incumbent Democrat in my district for that very reason.
If the establishment refuses to fight for us, it just means we have to fight harder.
Right, you used dozens of words to say . . . we are doomed.
I realize this board is not, “real life,” as mentioned above. However, I see a microcosim of how the US has gotten to this crisis. If people are arguing about how to effectively fight this fascist rigime in real life like they are here, it’s difficult to see a way out. If sides count here, I side against nemo’s smug preaching and support of the worst of humanity as long as they’re against trump. What disturbs me is this thread makes me feel like giving up. I won’t, but this bickering is so non-productive and demonstrates the problems with the Democrats or perhaps the left in general. We can’t seem to come up with comprehensive agreement on almost anything. What needs to be done? Who can/should do it? How should they do it? Who should we partner with? Who should really be our allies, and what priorities should we have? I could go on, but I have to take care of Hubster. Just food for thought for at least me.
That’s you saying that. Not me.
We are not doomed. We are going to fight and we are going to win, because we have no choice.
There’ll be plenty of time to acknowledge defeat when we’re dead.
Self-awareness is clearly not your thing.
So you and Smapti drag out disingenuous strawman after disingenuous strawman and then fake high dudgeon when you get called out on them. Is that what you consider a “polite, well-reasoned argument”?
Don’t want to be called names? Don’t earn them.
“Why do people keep getting mad at me for repeatedly misrepresenting their views and accusing them of the things I am openly doing? They’re so hysterical!”
Thank you providing an example of one of the aforementioned strawmen.
There it is.
”I don’t actually argue against* transphobia, because it’s not as important to me nor do I believe that inviting these bigots into my spaces is harmful. I won’t argue or disagree with transphobia because I find it’s more important that they agree with me on other issues, whereas trans issues are not as important to me. Their safety isn’t worth the risk of me not getting what I want. If I have to invite TRANSPHOBES into my political spaces or allow them to vote in transphobic politicians I will. Because it’s just not as important to me as other issues. I won’t even try to disagree with or persuade them on their transphobia.”
You aren’t an ally. You never were, and you are an active threat to my trans community. People like you are half the reason we are where we are now. You’re the kind of guy who votes in democrats that do nothing just because it’s “better than republicans”.
You have admitted, in such a point blank way, that you do not care for trans people’s safety. You might claim to care for our rights but that is not the same as caring for our safety, nor is it true. Anyone who cares about trans rights makes an attempt to argue against transphobia when they see it.
PS say Transphobe. It’s not a “trans hating asshole” it’s TRANSPHOBE. This is another example of how your preservation of your own comfort and the comfort of non-marginalized groups allows you the ability to easily deny or fuel bigoted rhetoric. They are not “trans hating” the word is Transphobe. Like the word is genocide. Your attempt at peace keeping is only going to come back to the removal of my communities rights, you’ll be right back where you started because you wanted to be comfortable instead of arguing for people with no voice.
I apparently care more about trans lives than you do.
I think the top priority is ending transphobia, even if it means working with terrible people to do it.
You’re not willing to work with these people. You’re saying your personal self-image is more important than the cause.
Do not speak to me like that. Plain and simple do not speak to me like that after ignoring me for this entire thread, and ignoring a fully valid citation as well.
You do not think the top priority is ending transphobia if you do not argue against transphobia, how does that compute? If you let TRANSPHOBES have room to speak on policy they will circle right back around to taking our rights. It’s shaking hands with bigots that got us here.
I’m willing to work with a lot of people, i’m willing to work with people I have some pretty deep disagreements with and I DO in my local spaces and aid networks. But i’m not willing to shake hands with bigots.
Would you shake hands with the White Knights and proud boys showing up to anti-israeli protests? Would you gladly sit and break bread with a KKK member because they dislike the current administration?
You’re a fake ally through and through, and you don’t get to proclaim that you care more about trans rights when a TRANS PERSON IS TELLING YOU YOU’RE BEING A BIGOT.
YOU’re self absorbed, self assured, and rude. Get it together.
I can’t speak on Smapti’s behalf but as far as I can tell I haven’t been successfully called out yet in this thread.
I’ve said some people indulge in hysteria. People responding to me by losing their shit doesn’t disprove what I said.
You ignored a citation of the lemkin institute, completely. That is calling you out. You ignored a primary source on oppression in repeteadly ignoring speaking over and condescending a transsexual indigenous woman. YOU HAVE BEEN CALLED OUT.
Get your shit together.
Ya couldn’t even be honest here, this is what you’re actually saying, I think the top priority is ending transphobia, even if it means working with terrible people transphobes to do it. because, IMHO, that sentence would be, actually is as you wrote it, absurd.
Do we have to be polite enough for you? Or do trans voices only count when we’re 7 stab wounds past a heartbeat?
Listen to trans voices. Not just mine, but the voices of generations of trans people.
Do I have to beg? Do you want a video of me sobbing or something and begging you to listen to trans people? What humiliation ritual should we go through to earn “cares more than a cishet guy about queer people’s rights”
No really.
When do I earn the “cares enough” badge? Maybe when I approach my local transphobe and allow him to violently assault me again? But I should shake his hand right, because he’s anti trump? That’s not a hypothetical i’ve been punched in the face among countless other items of harassment since I was a child, should I shake these people’s hands? Should I look in the eyes of the girl who threw dodgeballs at my crotch while calling me slurs and say “you’re such an ally"?
Tell me Nemo, oh great cis white man, tell me what I must do to earn the badge of caring about trans rights!!!
Tell me you care more than me when you have the scars I do. Tell me you are a better ally than me when your body aches and rots under the weight of a lifetime of oppression. Tell me you have fought more than me when you have had doctors tell you you are “clearly confused” and point to dysphoria as evidence. Tell me you’re a better ally than me when your ass is actually on the line instead of sitting comfortable and safe because you refuse to protect trans people.
I do not know how to make this clearer Nemo, the way you have treated me feels like microaggression in a way I cannot verbalize. You have serious work to do before calling yourself an ally. You have made me feel like I am talking to a republican, not like I am talking to a reasonable man who cares about my rights. You have put me down, ignored me, condescended, and slipped in every manner of subtle disrespect you can. You use your words the way transphobes use them, so that people like me look insane when we finally lose our temper and you can point and say “look!! Look at the crazy!! Bad trans bad!!”
I did my best at so many points to approach you with a degree of care. I didn’t swear, I changed my language, I modified things in the desperate hope that respectability politics would work with a man who seems to put so much conviction in them. It didn’t.
What you fail to acknowledge in your whole chat on essentially respectability politics and adjacent ideology, is that respect is not an option for women like me. You have made that loud and clear, like countless other liberals have, that respect is not something the transsexuals can afford, nor have we groveled enough for it. I can’t make successful safety in my country by playing respectful, because the body I live in is one that will automatically Garner me disrespect. I will be disrespected until eventually I die, and people like you will say “if only she was quieter” when I do.
Tell me, what gives you the right to speak over my voice when I have actively experienced the oppression you are trying to deny? What gives you the right to speak over every trans voice, every indigenous voice, every black or Hispanic voice? When did you become a better ally to our communities than US, THE PEOPLE IN SAID COMMUNITY??? How, and in what ways, have you been more of an ally to me than other trans individuals, other indigenous communities? No please enlighten me how your microaggresions are a sign of good fellowship!!
You claim you refuse to listen to anyone because they aren’t polite, or are simply repeating other takes, but that falls through when you refuse to listen to a primary source, and when I made a citation and argument that you refused to even acknowledge beyond one singular point. I did my best to be polite in so many of my responses, to call out only your words, to pare myself down because often I have no other choice.
Now I see that you are simply a man unwilling to unpack his transphobia and set it aside.
With every tear coming from my body as I type, fuck you Nemo. Fuck you SO deeply on behalf of every trans person. You have made us unsafe, YOU are the reason we are not sure who our allies are. You are cruel, and uncaring, and not by any stretch an ally. If you let the bigots vote we end up with trump, but you’ll let the bigots vote to get what you want for a little while. Screw you.
I hope that the souls of my dead brothers and sisters haunt you in your dreams. I hope that the people who have died because of rhetoric like yours slip their way into your head and I hope that some day the guilt and discomfort consumes you. I hope that when you beg to be let in, when you beg to be educated, you are turned away and told to go find community in the bigots you so gladly brush butts with. I hope anyone in your community knows you are unsafe for them.
This has been a rant of emotional proportion, but frankly I expect no response. I am done with this thread, and i’m done with watered down bigots like Nemo.
Commit to it. Commit to transphobia if you’re so comfortable with it.
Don’t forget his misogyny. He’s made it quite clear that he doesn’t care that he uses miogynistic language to dismiss ideas he finds weak. My uterus is closed for business, but it’s never wandered around my body and made me, “hysterical.” I really cannot believe he pulled the, “I care more about Trans rights than you do” to a Trans person. What a disgusting excuse for a person. I just bet he cares more about black, brown, indigenous, women’s, rights etc. etc. all those marginalized groups put together care about their own rights. ‘Cause patriarchy. Am it right?
I don’t want to minimize it, but transphobia is one of our least problems.
Tump has made the USA a pariah of the entire fucking world, and he is destroying our economy. Trans people are sort of invoveled in the economy too.
So basically, because he is so, so stupid, he’s hurting everyone.
Not if you are trans, or give enough of a fuck to stand beside them when the shit hits the fan.
If we’re talking about putting out fires, the fire that’s actually burning takes priority. over faulty wiring somewhere else. It’s the height of folly to go worrying about your neighbor’s aluminum wiring or Federal Pacific breaker box from the 1970s, if there’s an actual fire burning up part of your house. It’s not that it’s not important to worry about the other stuff, it’s a matter of priorities.
That’s what I suspect that @crowmanyclouds is getting at; the fire is Trump and his cronies’ disregard for laws, norms, and general civilized behavior. Putting that fire out is getting him out of office. THAT is the #1, ne plus ultra, pinnacle of goals, and what all efforts should be bent toward.
Stuff like trans rights, immigration, DEI removal, the DoD’s hostility toward the Boy Scouts, or whatever else is the neighbor’s faulty electrical system. Important and absolutely needs to be addressed, but not at the expense of putting the clear and present fire out. And concentrating on that instead of the fire is folly at best and outright stupid at worst.
And you certainly don’t turn away firemen to put the fire out because they’re not trained electricians or even worried about the neighbor’s wiring.
This!! The language of people entrenched in bigoted systems will always speak louder than their virtue signaling can. “I donate” probably only to organizations that would also throw us under the bus “i care more than you” yeah right.