This. At the end of the day, these people treat the Republican party like their primary religion. They will say whatever keeps eyes off them so they can do stuff without criticism, but once they’re in the ballot box, it’s going to be really hard for them to leave that spot blank, let alone to vote for Biden.

It would have worked better in Germany too if we hadn’t had the USSR in the corner sucking the marrow from the sections they were in charge of.

Ding ding ding.

It’s one thing to say that this is a federal issue and must be handled by a federal court, but if states can’t decide who is on their ballot in this instance, what authority allows them to do so ever? Different states have different rules with regards to which candidates and how they get on the ballot.

Federal elections should not be run by States if States are going to be limited seemingly at random on what they can and can’t enforce. What happens if a 20 year old runs for president? Are states allowed to say no to that because it’s in the Constitution, or would Congress need to clarify that as well?

They do that with humans because it’s harder to just get away with killing us.

For whales? They’ll just try to revive the whaling industry.

Even if that’s true, it is not a reason to work someone to death.

He was in a penal colony. Places not known for adequate food, medical care, or reasonable work protections.

No one is saying that someone shot him in the head. He died “naturally” because the body cannot sustain in that environment indefinitely. And who put him there, and why?

As long as people are out in the wild trying to give cover to regressive fascists, we’ll never see the end of this shit.

The take is actually grounded in history.

The US has notoriously bad spy craft when it comes to Russia. We spent literal decades believing they were an equal power, spending vast sums on defense to make sure we didn’t fall behind. The government funded all sorts of “studies” but anyone who questioned the narrative got blackballed, and the people who kept getting that work just parroted back what the generals wanted to hear.

And then the iron curtain fell and the Berlin wall came down, and we saw the state of their military…and it was abysmal.

We are seeing the same thing with their basic war capabilities right now. Ukraine has been able to hold them off, more or less, for two years using mostly NATO cast off equipment and sunflower seeds.

There’s a pretty good book that goes over a lot of this by Anne Jacobsen called The Pentagon’s Brain.

This. The “just go through the steps!” people are ignoring that one of the steps is approval, which can and will be denied if it would cost them more than they could expect to recoup.

Girl scouts may be wrong here, but they’re still by far a better organization than the boy scouts.

There’s something to be said for the skills that are taught and the overall purported ethos, but like the Catholic church, you absolutely cannot trust them to not cover up heinous shit that they’ll allow to continue forever.

If you do, make sure you’re present all the time and be aware that predators have found a home there since their inception.

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Elie Wiesel said something similar.

https://www.ipl.org/essay/Essay-On-Neutrality-PCBW3QTTU#:~:text=The%20statement%20by%20Elie%20Wiesel,protect%20themselves%20and%20their%20people.

Cool. So you don’t actually want to know why people found your initial comment gross. Well, then all I can tell you is that if you do not like how people react to what you say, keep the distasteful parts inside thoughts. Good luck in all your future endeavors.

So first off, I’m taking this at face value and want to explain why this might not have read how you intended. Second, I am not trans, so others may have another opinion with more weight, but I want to try to explain so that they may be won’t have to do the emotional work of responding.

The trick, for me, is how much space and time you give, and in what order, and how much evidence is available to support it. Your comment began with suppositions and theories, we don’t have much (if any) evidence for drugs or self harm, and it’s an equal quantity to the good stuff you were saying toward the end.

Could suicide or drugs be a possible cause? Sure. But so could an exotic parasite, or the wrath of God, or someone sneaking into their house and poisoning them. But we don’t have any evidence for any of that, and spit balling it as a theory takes away from the concrete facts that we do know: they were assaulted, they sought medical care for the assault, and their condition worsened over the next few days in a way that seems to be related.

Been a death cult. Any pro-life stance they have is to create more soldiers for the forever war.

They don’t believe anyone should have a decent life, because then they wouldn’t be driven to die to get to heaven.

They don’t want to provide education beyond what’s needed to believe your pastor regarding his interpretation of the Bible. If you want education, they want to force you into the army for, you guessed it, forever war.

They worship a god who begat himself just to sacrifice himself to himself, to “save” us from the sin that he orchestrated. And every one of their policies mirrors this “logic.”

There are Christians who believe that Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love, grace, forgiveness, charity, etc. But they’re not the ones in control of the churches, or any of the “seven mountains.”

What they imply by deep state isn’t real, but their actual complaints is real - policies are enacted by normal, everyday workers, who are tasked with and usually pretty fastidious about following the laws that might not allow for immediate implementation of any crazy idea a regressive might think up and demand happen that day.

That’s the deep state - the workers doing the actual job of administering the government.

These people want to be monarchs and anyone who doesn’t bow to them is the enemy.

Oh look, the goal being achieved in real time.

They don’t want people to be able to manage their own bodies and families. They want to force them to use the religious groups that they’ve propped up for decades (if not centuries) that are willing to push more kids into WASP families.

Facts. But it explains why they’re trying. It’s really hard for most people to accept and act on the knowledge that these people operate in bad faith and are just trying to make everyone miserable enough to give up.

The only way to win is to 1) not play their game and 2) to get a critical mass of people around you to follow you instead of them. It’s like dealing with a narcissist, except there are millions of them bolstering each other and gaslighting the rest of us.

The requirement stems from knowing that if you aren’t explicit and specific, regressives will try to ruin your life directly and via stochastic terrorism.

Obama attempted to close gitmo. Then states started passing laws to ban the housing of those detainees and Republicans in Congress threw a giant hissy fit, including a straight up ban on housing those prisoners anywhere.

“May 19, 2010: The House Armed Services Committee rejects the Obama administration’s plan to bring Guantánamo detainees into domestic prisons by approving legislation that prohibits detention centers inside the U.S.”

Full timeline here with additional links: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/obama-closing-guantanamo-timeline/318980/

I think the only campaign promise Obama straight up broke was regarding horse meat. It was banned. He said he’d keep it banned. Then suddenly he signed the law allowing it, so now your beef products probably also have horse meat in them and there’s no requirement for companies to disclose that to you. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/30/obama-congress-restore-us-horse-slaughter-industry/

I’d encourage your mom to consider retiring and then running for local office.

We need the custodians of the public good to be in positions of authority. It’s scary to give up control you know for a long shot, but at the same time, if enough people make the leap and give us solid options in every jurisdiction, we might be able to get out ahead of the regressives’ next attack.