What He Said
via Clayton Cubitt
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Filtering by Tag: POLITICS
Ignore the Man in the White House
I was somewhat surprised this tweet was as popular as it was—liked by a couple hundred and tweeted by a few dozen. It’s the basic best practices strategy in dealing with bullies: ignore them into nonexistence. I really admired Biden’s Delaware speech and realized afterwards that it was charmingly and largely absent the looming lummox that is Trump. This is how you disempower people who have no real power. You render them invisible. Trump has been annihilated.
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Fraud-in-Chief
Vote! (Blue)
A Trump Rally
In October 2016, I attended a Trump rally in Naples, Florida. I was and am not a Trump fan, I vote Democrat all the way, but I was curious to see what was so compelling about this cartoonish figure. I figured this was my last opportunity to see him in this way. There was no chance he’d win the presidential election the following month. As I recall, the rally was held in a field. As I walked toward the gathering crowd, an older white man looked at me and said: “Isn’t this great?” Out front, a Black man was selling Trump-themed T-shirts. Eventually, the president-who-surely-wouldn’t-be made a dramatic arrival in a helicopter. Most of the attendees, largely white, hooted in excitement. Finally, Trump made his way to the stage. He was taller than I expected, and while I find his politics utterly repellent, I could see there was something compelling about him. His strongman delivery offered comfort to people who perceived themselves as weak and under threat and wanted to protect their way of life, a way of life based on the exploitation of others and the devaluation of people of color. They didn’t think of themselves as white supremacists, but they were. Trump appealed to their closeted desires: for a man in a blue suit wearing an invisible Klu Klux Klan robe to restore their place in the world, one in which anyone who wasn’t white had no right to exist, to be heard, to vote. At a certain point, the attendees started chanting: “Lock her up!” The only thing more apparent than their racism was their misogyny. Eventually, I left. It was a weird window into an awful world, but surely it wouldn’t lead to a presidency. Yet, here we are. Four years later, the country has been turned topsy-turvy, by a sociopath. Here’s hoping for an empath as our next president.
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I've Been Counted
Both California and Los Angeles County have been very aggressive about reminding people to vote. Early on, I signed up for BallotTrax, which enabled me to track my ballot. About a week after I got my ballot in the mail, I filled it out, consulting the endorsements from The Los Angeles Times. Then I drove down the street and dropped it in an official ballot box. Last week, I checked the status of my ballot. I was a little concerned there might be an issue, perhaps if my signatures didn’t match. But my ballot was approved and counted. I’m 100% Joe Biden / Kamala Harris and hope that they’ll prevail in November and lead the charge to turn around this country.
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I Voted
I voted. Joe and Kamala all the way. Here’s hoping for a blue wave in November.
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Truth Coming Out of Her Well
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Get Your Booty to the Poll
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The Interrupters
Image via Wikipedia
Great piece by Betty Márquez Rosales for The New York Times, featuring “the Interrupters” in Stockton, where “Covid-19 and the issue of police brutality have intertwined with the existing problems of gun violence and unemployment to create fresh ways of ensnaring young Black and Latino men.”
An excerpt:
“Stockton sits in the vast agricultural flatlands of central California, about 80 miles east of San Francisco. It is a working-class community that fell into steep decline after the Great Recession. A universal basic income project, investments in its downtown, and the election of its youngest and first Black mayor have generated optimism in the city. But violence remains a challenge. A 2018 F.B.I. report found that Stockton’s violent crime rate was the highest of 70 California cities with more than 100,000 residents. ‘A lot of folks in our community were in a crisis before the coronavirus crisis,’ Michael Tubbs, Stockton’s mayor, said.”
Read it here.
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America Must Change
An amazing cover from TIME. Art by Charly Palmer. Story behind the cover here.
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Just Say No to Bloomberg
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The Better President
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Genius
The Only Trump I Fuck With
Adult star Teanna Trump created a fashion line that couldn’t be more fitting for our times. The url? Teanna2020. The slogan? “THE ONLY TRUMP I FUCK WITH IS TEANNA.” It’s a viral sensation.
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I'm Looking Forward to Seeing "Vice"
I’m ready to see “Vice,” the Dick Cheney pic by Adam “The Big Short” McKay. There’s a lot of good stuff in this NYT profile of McKay, including this part:
“Recently, a sizable portion of the left has adopted surprising, relatively sanguine attitudes toward the Bush-Cheney years. I asked McKay, who directed a scathingly satirical 2009 Broadway show about Bush called, ‘You’re Welcome America,’ whether he saw his unsparing portrait of Cheney in ‘Vice’ — humanizing gestures notwithstanding — as a would-be corrective to liberal amnesia on this score. ‘I hope to God that it is,’ McKay said, nodding. ‘Really what that shows you is the number of people for whom government is just about appearance. Bush and Cheney just kept up the facade, whereas this administration doesn’t even remotely pretend. So when I hear people say, “I miss the days of Bush and Cheney,” what they’re really saying is, “I miss the days when people would at least pretend.”’” He went on: ‘Every time I see it, I shake my head, like, “You’ve got to be kidding me. The world economy collapsed, we had the greatest military fiasco in U.S. history apart from Vietnam.” When I hear “Trump makes you miss Bush,” I go, “There’s no question that Bush and Cheney are way ahead of him in terms of damage done.”’” He characterized such Bush nostalgia bluntly: “Now that my house is on fire, I long for when it was infested by bees.”’”
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Ratioed
Buy "The Tumor" — my short story that’s been called "a masterpiece of short fiction."
I'm on TV
19 Likes, 3 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "That's my ostrich leather journalism for @forbeslife on @chrislhayes' show on @msnbc. Link in bio...."
That Forbes post I wrote about Paul Manafort's ostrich leather jacket made an appearance on "All in With Chris Hayes" on MSNBC. Thanks to this lady for the tip.
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The Must-Read on Trump
If you haven't already, make sure to read David Roth's "The President of Blank Sucking Nullity." It's my favorite thing I've read on Trump thus far, and it really gets to the ... uh, heart of the man.
"To understand Trump is also to understand his appeal as an aspirational brand to the worst people in the United States. What his intransigent admirers like most about him—the thing they aspire to, in their online cosplay sessions and their desperately thirsty performances for a media they loathe and to which they are so helplessly addicted—is his freedom to be unconcerned with anything but himself. This is not because he is rich or brave or astute; it’s because he is an asshole, and so authentically unconcerned. The howling and unreflective void at his core will keep him lonely and stupid until the moment a sufficient number of his vital organs finally resign in disgrace, but it liberates him to devote every bit of his being to his pursuit of himself. Actual hate and actual love, as other people feel them, are too complicated to fit into this world. In their place, for Trump and for the people who see in him a way of being that they are too busy or burdened or humane to pursue, are the versions that exist in a lower orbit, around the self. Instead of hate, there is simple resentment—abject and valueless and recursively self-pitying; instead of love, there is the blank sucking nullity of vanity and appetite."
Calling
33 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "💖"
The other night I volunteered for Planned Parenthood. Usually, I'm an escort for those who are going to the clinic to have abortions. This time, I went to a house where maybe 40 or so mostly women were trying to stop one of this red state's senators from voting for legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. Typically, I would've joined the group of folks writing letters to the senator, but because I had recently read this article, by a guy who chose phone calls over emails and discovered a greater intimacy, I decided to stand on the back patio in the heavy humidity and call people to ask them to call the Senator and tell him they stand with Planned Parenthood and they don't appreciate his attempt to defund it. I actually haven't really done anything like this before. Sure, I've cold called, but this was more like chilly calling. Some numbers had since been changed. Sometimes, I left a message. Occasionally, I got a person. My favorite response on the no end of the spectrum was: "Honey, I'm 90 -- click." Clearly, she had better things to do. Sometimes, you got an enthusiastic response. More often than not, that was from a woman. Yes, she would call. Clearly, she was delighted to hear from Planned Parenthood. She understood that this was a call to action. She was ready to go.