Musk claimed that a journalist just posting their names was committing a crime. Doing real harm to his little twerps would probably put you first in line for the Gulag

The one whose name sounds like a printer model

Or sarcasm, even

The Israel lobby has a stranglehold on politics in the US. Both major parties are beholden to them, and need to bend over backwards to try to keep these groups happy, otherwise their campaign is dead in the water

The assertion that the Israel lobby would destroy Biden for simply calling a ceasefire after unequivocally supporting Israel’s post-October 7 actions, is utterly unfounded. The kind of strong condemnation of the Zionist project that would make AIPAC walk is something Biden/Harris would never do.

On the pro-Palestine side, my view is that all the Harris campaign had to show was progress, either a ceasefire or a policy break with Biden, to get most of the protesters back on side. But I’m not 100% on whether she had the political skill to walk that tightrope.

I do think you make my point for me, though. The party did the calculus, and came out on the side that they see AIPAC support as more valuable than the pro-Palestine vote. With that in mind, the party should own that decision and not vilify the voters they scorned for not supporting them anyway. People would be a lot less angry if they just accept that they got the strategy wrong in Michigan and commit to doing things differently next time. But they won’t, because this is a party that never learns its lessons.

Everything about this is disgusting, but I do find it interesting that one of his grievances is that Elon ‘stole his Nazi swag.’ I.e. that he was a Nazi innovator and Elon is terribly unoriginal in all his Nazi behaviour

The way white refugees are treated compared to brown ones is all you need to know to be radicalised against borders.

Ukrainians I get. They’re legitimately victims of a horrible war. But now the freaking Afrikaners are being invited? For what? Being told you don’t get to keep the land your Nazi grandpa stole?

Some insight from across the pond:

Our last Prime Minister was a British Indian from the Conservative party. Recent right wing and far-right members of cabinet have included many more Brits of Indian descent, including two of the most heinously anti-immigrant cabinet members we’ve ever had. One of them, Suella Braverman, ran for party leadership on an anti-immigrant platform, pointing out that Indians are the largest group who overstay their visas in the UK.

I think very similar things can explain why Usha Vance, Kash Patel, Vivek Ramaswamy and the like can align with an openly racist MAGA crowd:

1. Class matters more than race. Most of these people grew up privileged and don’t identify with the common immigrant or brown person’s experson

2. Power hungry people come from all backgrounds and will do whatever they need to get what they want (in Usha Vance’s case that’s being first lady one day)

3. Submitting to model minority status, as many well-to-do immigrant families from South Asia do, means implicitly accepting, and ultimately reflecting, white supremacist values

And as with all issues rooted in history, you can blame the British for some of this. A white supremacist world view where Indians stand above the darker races was introduced to India by the British over a century ago. The British wanted East Africa to become “the America of the Hindu” so they educated and trained a generation of Indian colonial administrators and enforcers. This world view of Indians as superior to others, if subordinate to whites, did not disappear with colonialism. A lot of the people who held those views came directly to Britain and their children became right-wing voters and politicians. The connection with the US is less of a straight line, but you can hear it when you listen to Vivek talk about African-Americans, for example.

You couldn’t invent a more cartoonishly evil guy than ‘than world’s richest man, who actively took food out of the mouths of starving people so he could save a little bit on taxes’

I’m well aware of how Bernie turned individual donations into a funding juggernaut. But if you think a third party candidate would win in a first past the post system, then you’re the one who’s not paying attention

I wouldn’t get too complacent about the fact that the UK finally moved ever-so-slightly to the left. The press is just waiting to tear Starmer limb-from-limb. You saw that with how they amplified all the BS stuff about his CPS days. One good scandal could topple Labour and open the door to reform. Not delivering any material improvements for people who are struggling could have the same effect

you guys continue to gaslight what it effectively was

You keep using that word but I’m not sure you know what means.

What it wasn’t was an opportunity to change the system by making a political statement

I’m not even advocating for people to vote third party or boycott the election. I’m just making the argument that if a political party wants a group of people’s votes, they should court those people. If they fail to do so, and those people choose not to vote for them, the political party only has itself to blame

The sad thing is that no Democrat will say fuck the norms to undo corporate fuckery, or to fix serious problems of inequality, or to slash the military budget, or to save the precious planet we live on from climate doom. They’ll insist on doing things the right way but get 1% of their agenda done before the other team takes over and rolls all progress back 50 years

I feel like I’m on something. Was there a deleted comment because I’m struggling to follow what happened here?

What does any of that have to do with what I said? I’m talking about the strategic decision the Democrats made to not make concessions to the people inflamed by the genocide in Gaza. In no way did I deny that Trump is far worse than Kamala/Biden. Pointing out that Kamala/Biden made a conscious decision to not move left on this issue isn’t gaslighting, not that you’re even using the term correctly

There was 0% chance a third party candidate was winning in 2016, Bernie or not. There was about a 50% chance of Hillary winning.

Also, viewing this as ‘bending the knee’ is so juvenile. Bernie knows who he is and has advocated for progressive values for longer than most of us have been alive. He made a calculated decision to do what had the highest chance of defeating Trump. It’s not his fault that Hillary and the Democratic machine are completely inept

You mean him running as a third party candidate? That’s a guaranteed loss under the current electoral system. He would’ve siphoned votes from both sides, but more from Hillary and delivered Trump an electoral college and popular vote victory. The left would’ve been demonised even more than they already were and AOC/The Squad would never have been elected to congress in 2018. Under First Past the Post, the only option for a populist progressive candidate is to do what Trump did. Take the party over from inside out. Going third party is just a fantasy.

It’s pretty insane that choosing the default instance is seen as being indicative of your politics

Democrats then: “We’ll win without appealing to Arabs in Michigan or anyone who demands we stop funding Israel. Shut them out of the DNC and scold them at every turn. Who cares how they react or that they’re forming PACs like ‘Arabs for Trump.’ We don’t need their votes.”

Democrats now: “We lost because you STUPID Palestine-lovers wouldn’t vote for us. Your country needed your votes, Gaza needed your votes. It’s actually your fault that we didn’t bother appealing to you.”

Bernie was ratfucked out of the nomination, no doubt. What happened in West Virginia, for example, where he won all counties and they lied about it, was insane.

But… you cannot blame him or call him a coward for doing the right thing. At some point he saw the writing was on the wall. They were coronating Hillary no matter what. The next president would either be Hillary or Trump. Bernie put country before himself and stood aside. He didn’t make Trump’s path to victory any easier, and actively did his best to prevent a dangerous man from rising to power. None of that makes him a coward, it makes him a leader. A mensch.

Trump’s first term was like this for me. Every day was like watching a car crash and waiting, praying for someone to do something.

I told myself I wasn’t going to do it this time, but we’ve gone from the slow-moving car crash of the first term to a full-on NASCAR accident happening every day. Not paying attention feels like they’re winning, but there’s only so much I can take