Pundits: The fact that Ossoff and Warnock are unlikely to both win their elections means Joe Biden needs to court Republican votes rather than push a much-needed progressive agenda

*Ossoff and Warnock win handily*

Pundits: Ah. Nevertheless,

The only way political reporting in this country makes sense is if you understand that the almost universal, almost subconscious default assumption: that conservative white people are the protagonists of any story that's being told, no matter the facts of the story.
Just do the obvious and necessary good things and let the horrid evil people who hate good things squeal and cry about it forever.
I really need Democrats who will state the clear and obvious truth, which is that Republicans are our enemies, because they insist on attacking the very idea of a shared society and are more than happy to use violence to do it, which is the very definition of an enemy.
You can't make people who want to kill you not be your enemies even if you wish they'd be your friend.

They can stop trying to kill you, but until that happens they are your enemy, and acknowledging that fact isn't what makes that fact true.
Here's what I want to do to my enemies: Make sure all their basic human needs are secured as fundamental human rights, and make sure they're guaranteed equal protection under just laws fairly applied.

To accomplish this, we must refuse to entertain their beliefs about anything.
Here's what I want to do to my enemies: Make sure their children have access to free education that allows them to explore their potential, and make sure that when they get ill they receive free care.

To accomplish this, we must refuse to entertain their beliefs about anything.
Here's what I want to do to my enemies: demolish our white supremacist fascist police state, so they never fall victim to the brutality it has been engineered to deliver to its own citizens.

To accomplish this, we must refuse to entertain our enemies' beliefs about anything.
We tried conservatism. It led to an almost collapsed state, reeling from self-inflicted damage, controlled by malicious fools, on the edge of a host of terrifying but embarrassingly preventable disasters.

It failed. It's a failed philosophy. It's done.

It should be destroyed.
Conservatives: If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?

More from Andrew R.R. Moxon

Bullshit.

I have family members all the way up the Fox News Facebook misinformation hole, and they didn’t get vaccinated because they felt respected; they got vaccinated because their children told them they wouldn’t get to see their grandchildren until they got vaccinated.


3 observations:

People don't tend to change their worldviews from a place of comfort.

When selfish assholes decide to behave like selfish assholes, the problem isn't that others aren't coddling their feelings enough.

Selfish assholes aren't everyone else's job to fix.

Selfish assholes would love for you to *think* they are everybody else's job to fix.

It puts them at the center and in control.

That means when they act like a selfish asshole, it's *your* fault. You should have been more persuasive. Daddy hits you because you made him angry.

Truth is, vaccine resistors are behaving this way because their feelings ARE being respected.

Malicious media entities created self-feeding networks that reassure selfish assholes they can be selfish assholes and still be respected.

Antvax, racist, sexist, all are welcome.

The way you make a selfish asshole stop being a selfish asshole is well known.

You draw a clear boundary and then you enforce that boundary. You tell them that their bullshit won't be tolerated, and then you don't tolerate their bullshit.

I think we all know that, actually.
If you ever want to consider how committed our society is to the foundational lie that life must be earned, and those who fail to earn it must die, consider that the proposition “giving everyone money to spend would be bad for the economy” is widely accepted as truth.


“Giving money to people in poverty solves poverty” is an obvious truth, which needs (another) study for proof, for the same reason that this finding will be ignored (again).

We don’t want to fix poverty, even if doing so helps everyone—not if it means life for the “undeserving.”

It’s not about saving money.

There's a great fear in this country that a single dollar might go to someone who might not deserve it; or that a single given dollar might be spent on something we deem unworthy.

We'll spend five dollars to prevent the waste of that one dollar.

The manifestations are everywhere. From the overt, gleefully cruel hostility of conservatism toward people in poverty, of course. But also hidden in almost everyone's assumptions.

Our use of charity as a way of controlling who gets helped, for example.


Even the reversal—a desire to prevent aid from going to "undeserving" wealthy who don't need it (true)—leads us to create obstacles to aid people in poverty often can't overcome, but wealthy people can.

Which is why wealthy people like means
People have wondered why I have spent 3 days mostly pushing back on this idea that "defund the police" is bad marketing.

The reason is, it's an example of this magic trick, the oldest trick in the book.

It's a competition between what I call compass statements. And it matters.


There are a lot of people who think "defund the police" is a bad slogan.

But it's a directional intention. A compass statement.

The real effect of calling it a bad slogan, whether or not intentional (but usually intentional), is to reduce a compass statement down to a slogan.

Whenever there is a real problem and a clear solution, there will be people who benefit from the problem and therefore oppose the solution in a variety of ways.

And this is true of any real problem, not just the problem of lawless militarized white supremacist police.

There are people who oppose it directly using a wide variety of tactics, one of which is misconstruing anything—quite literally anything—said by those who propose solutions—any solutions.

They'd appreciate it if you mistake their deliberate misrepresentation for confusion.

The reason they'd appreciate if if you mistake their deliberate misrepresentation for confusion is, it wastes time that could have been spend on the solution trying to persuade them, with different arguments and metaphors or solutions.

Which they intend to misconstrue.

More from Politics

This is partly what makes it impossible to have a constructive conversation nowadays. The stubborn refusal to accept that opposition to Trumpism and GOP nationalism is about more than simply holding different beliefs about things in and of itself. 👇


It's fine for people to hold different beliefs. But that doesn't mean all beliefs deserve equal treatment or tolerance and it doesn't mean intolerance of some beliefs makes a person intolerant of every belief which they don't share.

So if I said I don't think Trumpism deserves to be tolerated because it's just a fresh 21st century coat of cheap paint on a failed, dangerous 20th century ideology (fascism) that doesn't mean I'm intolerant of all beliefs with which I disagree. You'd think this would be obvious.

Another important facet. People who support fascist movements tend to give what they think are valid reasons for supporting them. That doesn't mean anyone is obliged to tolerate fascism or accept their proffered excuse.


Say you joined a neighborhood group that sets up community gardens and does roadside beautification projects. All good, right? Say one day you're having a meeting and you notice the President and exec board of this group are saying some bizarre things about certain neighbors.

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