Alright, so the orange ork is back, and now, some of my fellow radicals are panicking, like, did we lose touch with the common folk? Listen, I, Zirkzix (they/them/gnarrrr), blue-haired trans goblin, can tell you—it’s not us, it’s them. I mean, sure, we asked people to memorize the complete progressive dictionary, canceled a couple thousand problematic pastimes, and maybe just maybe pushed a few vegan-only mandates. But honestly, isn't that the bare minimum?

Now they’re all, is the party over? Ha Not on my watch We just need to regroup, amplify our voice on Twitter’s third spin-off, and maybe add a few new rules on acceptable thoughts Sure, the masses didn’t get us this round, but they will. Oh, they will.

Even High Elf Gavin Newsom (he/him/oh-supreme-one) has been striding around with that serene, immaculate hair, whispering about "unity," as if the issue is a few bad vibes and not the masses’ obvious failure to grasp our enlightened vision. He keeps suggesting that maybe we should “listen,” but come on, Gavin—what could a goblin or elf possibly learn from them?

The woke wave never dies; it just gets gobliny-er!

I wrote the text which follows this over two years ago. I tried to post it in a few places and it usually got taken down because people thought I was trolling. I wasn’t and I am not. Interested to hear what y’all think.

Snoop Dogg Should Run for President

I think that the famous rapper Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr, better known as Snoop Dogg, should run as a Democrat for President of the United States. I am not joking. I think that if he did so, it would totally change the political landscape for the better. This is going to be a bit long but, if you stick with me for the next few paragraphs, I will explain why I believe this.

1. The Democrats have an education problem:

Why don’t the Democrats dominate American politics? Why was the last election, which took place during the biggest pandemic in a century, so close? How the hell did the Democrats lose to Trump in 2016? Why do they seem set to lose again?

There are a bunch of theories, but I believe it is because the Democrats have become overly focused on college educated voters. I’m not the first one to point this out. This classic article appeared in Vox in 2016 and here’s one that came out in The New York Times last month and another one from this month in the same publication. If you don’t want to read all that, I can sum it up for you, the Democrats’ style and rhetoric is geared toward people who have at least a four-year degree.

But here’s the problem, most Americans do not. And this is increasingly creating a class divide in the country where two-thirds of voters feel like they are being talked down to and scolded by a party that wants their votes. This is an insane way to try to win elections and it needs to stop.

I have news for Democrats, they can take the support of college educated voters for granted. As long as the Republicans continue their decent into increasingly insane ideologies such as, climate change denial, anti-vaxxing and even Qanon, you can be sure that the educated class will not vote Republican. So, the task at hand is to get the votes of people without college degrees.

2. Enter Snoop Dogg:

Snoop would be the perfect vessel to usher in an era of progressive dominance in the United States. To start with nearly everyone knows who he is. The median age for American voters in early 40s, which means that the average voter was in high school when Dr. Dre released The Chronic and propelled Snoop to superstardom. He is an incredibly charismatic person, and he holds a lot of progressive ideals (check out his Wikipedia page). But, unlike the vast majority of Democratic politicians, he uses language that is accessible to non-college educated people.

Obviously, he has a lot of baggage: he has been arrested numerous times, he admits that was a literal pimp for some time, he has a history of chronic (pun intended) marijuana use and his early music is rife with misogyny, homophobia and glorification of violence.

But…stick with me, I think that all of these minuses can be turned into pluses. To start with, it makes him very relatable. Far more people without college degrees have had run ins with the law than those with university education. Also, for those of us who remember the 90s, you know that misogynistic and homophobic language were somewhat common during that time. This does not make it right, but I think most of the people who lived through that era also can look back with shame at some of the things that we said. So, again, we can find a reflection of our human flaws and or eventual progress in Snoop. And that feels good.

He'll probably have to stop smoking weed in order to run for president but, legalization of marijuana is a political winner. Most Americans have used marijuana and will not fault him for his past usage. He’ll absolutely need to earnestly apologize for the pimping. That’s pretty bad.

3. Snoop gets attacked from all sides

Here comes the best part. If Snoop were to announce a presidential candidacy it would infuriate a lot of people and that is exactly what we need. To start with, a lot of super-smart people would decry the state of democracy and write super-smart editorials in super-smart publications like The New Yorker and The Washington Post, just as they did when Trump announced in 2015. And how do you think that is going to look to the non-college educated voters? How effective were such attacks on Trump’s candidacy?

Right, so we have them out of the way, who’s next? Likely the woke Twitterati will go after him for the aforementioned sexism and homophobia of his early work. Snoop can say, “look, I said a lot of bad stuff in the past, and I’m sorry, but we need to look forward and start getting this country back on the right track and not get stuck picking on people for what they said twenty or thirty years ago”. I’m sure he can come up with a much better way of saying that because he’s way cooler than I am but that is a very popular sentiment in this country and it’s what millions of people want to hear. It would drive Republicans nuts because their whole strategy is to portray the Dems as woke college kids who are out of touch with the average American. Even now they get scared when liberal media figures attack “cancel culture”. Why else would a leading conservative publication have been inspired to write this?

Finally, we have the racists to deal with. This is the easiest of all. The GOP is getting pretty good and racist dog whistling, but this would totally throw them off their game. So, let them hurl their hateful rhetoric at Snoop and see what happens. It will totally turn off black and Latinx voters, groups that Trump actually picked up votes from in 2020. Also, the Republican love to paint Dems and wimpy crybabies who are totally out of touch with “common people” and to be fair, the Dems kind of play the part, but just let them try that with Snoop…

4. Snoop wins in a landslide

Having withstood attacks from the chattering elites of media and Washington, from the “woke” snowflakes and from the alt-right Nazis, Snoop has more broad support than any politician since Roosevelt. I’m not making this up. This is what Americans want and this is what America needs. Have a look at this study which shows that most people are super turned off by activists on both the right and the left. Someone who has demonstrated a refusal to be cowed by those groups would be incredibly popular.

Moreover, Snoop’s fame and charisma would likely bring out millions of poor voters and young voters who are historically difficult to turn out at the polls as they feel disaffected by politics and politicians. Snoop’s campaign would be incredibly empowering to the most marginalized groups in the United States. This is a campaign that would work.

5. The Dogg Administration:

OK, will probably have to start calling him Calvin Broadus but that was fun to write.

I’m sure a lot of people are going to say, “Snoop Dogg is completely unqualified for the office of President of the United States”. To which I might ask, “And Donald Trump was?” To which someone may counter, “Donald Trump’s presidency was an utter disaster” and I would then say, “yes, but Donald Trump is insane, and Snoop is not.”

I concede, he would need a lot of help and he would need to read up on the issues. But, that’s true for all presidents. There are plenty of people who would be more than happy to advise him on tax codes, national debt, foreign policy and the like. And I think he’s got the brains to make the right choices.

Finally, we have one elephant in the room. Does Snoop want to do this? I think he could be persuaded. If anyone who has read this far knows him, please show it to him!

Change my view, people! I’m worried that the Dems are about to get clobbered in 2022 and 2024 and I’m pretty convinced that this can work. I’m more than ready to entertain other ideas, however.

As Finkelstein poignantly put it,

Every other day, during Harris's campaign, there was literally - literally - another massacre in Gaza.

If the world had focused more on that than on the Washington clown-show, it would be a better world.

Like Joe Pesci, I guarantee you a Joe Pesci, Robert Deniro, or Tony Soprano type person would win in a landslide. It world force the Republicans to go back to becoming the party of white collar elitists just like it always was.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/near-criminal-behavior-eisenkot-claims-disarray-indecision-politics-in-pms-war-conduct/ — former observer of war cabinet claims that Netanyahu expanded war goals to include martial law and return of settlements in Gaza (no shit Sherlock), and describes media manipulation by his office

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/speaking-in-hebrew-german-ambassador-calls-for-hostages-return-at-tel-aviv-rally/—German ambassador spoke at a political rally calling for an end to the conflict and a deal for the return of hostages (ordinarily a breach of protocol, for which he probably has the tacit approval of the government)

https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-firing-gallant-tells-hostage-families-netanyahu-needlessly-keeping-troops-in-gaza/ — recently fired defense minister claims Netanyahu is “needlessly keeping IDF troops in Gaza”

Sure, it’s all politics, I don’t think these assholes are saying any of this stuff out of genuine humanitarian principle. But the fact that they need to come out with these statements suggests that something is brewing behind the scenes and that they’re happy to use Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners as sacrificial lambs to save their own skins. Honestly I think the dishonest media portrayal of the Amsterdam football violence/shameless comparison to Kristallnacht, is really Netanyahu’s attempt to claim Jews aren’t safe anywhere but Israel (and Israel isn’t safe except under his leadership), in order to shore up his rule.

Now that the hivemind spell has (hopefully) been broken on this sub, here's what Democrats need to do. And I say this as a former straight-ticket Dem and Latino man who spent the past year screaming from the rooftops about what was happening (and then in most cases getting promptly downvoted, especially in this echo chamber). Are you ready? Here are my thoughts:

(1) Ideological Repudiation - Do not blame Kamala. This wasn't Kamala's to win. It goes deeper than that. She was a bad candidate, I absolutely agree, but blaming this on Kamala is only going to give the Democratic elites (the leaders of the party and the coterie of pipeline nonprofits, labor unions, and advocacy groups who serve as think tanks for the movement) the scapegoat they want to push off a much-needed period of introspection. When Illinois and New York are on track to have smaller margins than Florida and Texas, that's a broader repudiation.

(2) Party Structure - The Democratic Party needs to completely overhaul its internal structure. As I explained here yesterday, I live in DC and the problem is the Party’s internal structure, which prioritizes seniority above all. That creates a system where (a) you get ahead by being a sycophant and not speaking truth to party and (b) it means that the elite rely on junior staffers to stay grounded with the electorate. The problem is those junior staffers are college-educated, extremely progressive, and they push their own social ideological agendas (identity politics, far-left academic social experiments).

The party doesn’t have a proper vehicle to connect with its own voters. That’s absolutely shocking to hear, but it’s true. It all filters through a progressive staffer corps that’s completely unmoored from political reality and who push their bosses to support toxic policies. It's how the professed party of minorities is losing the support of minorities.

(3) Elite-Base Dynamics - There has always been an ideological gap between the Party elites and its voters. Blacks and Latinos have always been more socially conservative and rhetorically moderate than the politicians who represent them. Democrats did a fantastic job in prior decades though of applying a cordon sanitaire around the GOP and making that brand toxic to POC. It wasn't that POC liked the Democrats. It's that they found the GOP unacceptable.

They no longer find the GOP unacceptable for a number of reasons (generational turnover, the ingroup appeal of nativist populism, social cues removing the stigma of voting Republican) and they now find the Democrats extreme on a number of key issues: 'woke' issues more broadly, but also crime and law enforcement, drug policy, parental rights, equity in schools (such as the dismantling of gifted programs), etc. The party could be socially center-left in the past by being economically left. That is to say, POC liked the social program and kitchen-table focus of the party and could excuse the Party's social policy. But as the Democrats have shifted to the economic right to appeal to suburbanites, they've lost the appeal to POC on both economic and social grounds. And what you now get is rhetoric that claims to be pro-POC, but is wildly out of whack with where POC lie ideologically.

Look at California (one of the most liberal states in the country and also extremely diverse) where Prop 36 has won with incredible margins. When voters in your own liberal bastions are saying the party has gone off the rails on some issues, you should listen. Instead, you had Gavin Newsom berating people of color for voting for Prop 36, you saw Democratic mayors who supported Prop 36 (like San Diego's and San Jose's mayors) get publicly admonished by the party apparatus, and you instead had Democrats messaging to suburbanites who were always the most insulated by the party's platform on law enforcement and crime. But the party assumed that POC would be against Prop 36 because of the "racial disparities of the criminal justice system." In the end, it was POC who passed Prop 36 because they don't feel safe and they want more police. They've said this in polling for years and the Party elites still didn't get the message (and Kamala couldn't even come out in favor of a proposition that is passing with 70% of the vote in one of the bluest states in our Nation).

So how does a party get to a point where it misses so badly in reading its own voters?

You cannot claim to support the interests of people of color when you refuse to listen to what they have to say. Now that the stigma is broken, Democrats are in massive electoral danger if they don't course correct. The Democratic coalition is a mile wide, but an inch deep. The only way Democrats can win is by cobbling together a very wide swathe of the electorate (from Liz Cheney and AOC). The math is becoming harder and harder as Democrats failed to adjust in 2010 after losing the white working-class rurals, then the Rust Belt in 2016, and now Latinos/Asians shifting.

The electoral math won't work if the Party refuses to listen.

(4) Burn the System - The median voter is a working-class White American living in the Midwest. They’ve seen their standard of living collapse under globalism as we outsourced our industry abroad. Drive through the Rust Belt and you’ll see boarded-up shops, drug addiction and general hopelessness. These people feel betrayed by their own government and do not give two farts about the status quo and preserving democracy. They want to burn down the system.

Democratic messaging was crafted by young progressive staffers to DMV suburban moms. It was a platform of luxury beliefs. How can you run on "preserving the status quo" to an electorate that feels aggrieved and wants to burn the system down? The Democrats wanted to be both the party of change and the party of preserving the system and couldn't cogently articulate what this meant in practice. The public just read it as "more of the same."

(5) Foreign Policy - Democrats failed to articulate why our foreign presence is important to the national interest. Trump could easily go to the Rust Belt and hit a nerve when he said the Democrats were more worried about Ukraine than about them. Is it a fair statement? No, because there's a strong incentive to stopping Russia.

But Democrats were never able to really piece together why the "New World Order" (the post-war Pax Americana and the international organizations and bases that underpin it) was of benefit. Many Americans see our Navy spending American taxpayer money to provide safe passage to Chinese shipping containers to Europe in the Gulf of Aden and wonder what we're doing there. Why are there 100,000 soldiers still in Europe? Why should we be cannon fodder for a wealthy continent that, in many cases, is able to benefit from lower defense spending to provide its citizens with social benefits that Americans don't get? Why should we give market access to the #1 consumer market in the world so easily? Why is it that our allies in Canada and Europe cozy up to us when they want $100 billion for Ukraine, and then immediately pivot to domestic anti-American sloganeering and endless fines for every American company that poses a threat? Why should we abide by WTO arbitration when China is actively engaging in mass industrial espionage and state-sanctioned subsidies? Why should we listen to the UN when their selective outrage is deafening?

There is no fealty to the Pax Americana anymore. America has long been an isolationist country. The last 80 years was an aberration. What the Democrats need to be able to articulate is the value proposition for maintaining globalism as our international posture. Blacks and Latinos don't care about Europe. They don't have an ethnic, historical or emotional attachment to the Continent. Just screaming Russia is not sufficient.

America's foreign policy was long shaped by "dual-allegiance elites." Henry Kissinger was from Furth, Bavaria. Madeleine Albright was born in Prague. Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in Warsaw under Soviet control. That generation is dying out en masse and both white Americans (who lean center-right) and POC have little attachment to the Old World. So Democrats can't appeal on emotion anymore and need to shift to explaining the value proposition.

(6) Technocracy - Populism thrives when the entrenched elites become ensconced in luxury beliefs and ignore the basics. Most voters are on at the bottom of the Maslowian Hierarchy of Needs. They vote on basics: price of food, price of water, price of energy, price of housing, price of education, price of transportation, feelings of safety. You move up the totem pole toward 'aspirational' aims once the basics are met. Unfortunately, the median voter was worried about the lower rung of the pyramid while Democrats (dominated by aspiration-minded progressive youth staffers and rich suburbanites) completely failed to connect.

As the old quote said: "Yes, he's bad, but Mussolini made the trains run on time." Democrats need to elevate technocracy in the ranks. They need to make the trains run on time. They need to clean public parks, dismantle open-air drug markets, remove threats from the public (the mentally ill homeless men pushing Asian grandmas on train tracks), they need to go all in on providing mass transit, schools without mold, upzoning writ-large so POC can afford to live.

The American electorate doesn't want sloganeering. They want action. The Democrats will always be tied at the hip to their lowest common denominator. In this case, that is cities like Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. Those will always be known as "examples of Democratic governance." And when the median voter sees general social decay in San Francisco, or garbage bags piling up in New York, or rampant street crime in LA, that all percolates into the national consciousness and the Party's brand is weighed down by it. I couldn't tell you what a DA was a decade ago. Now I can't chat with my grad school buddies without one of them using some Democratic DA as evidence the Party is extremist.

The party needs to get back to the basics and focus more on technocratic governance and less on chasing every new left-wing pet idea that forms from coastal think tanks.

(7) Identity Politics - It's not working. In my Latino-majority community, the Democratic Party is seen as the "Party of Black Interests" who likes to slap a "BIPOC" sticker on what are ultimately policies crafted by Black organizations with no ties to Latinos. Things like reparations are absolutely toxic (try explaining to a Latino why they should pay $100,000 to a Black family for slavery - when Latinos had nothing to do with it), as is wokeism in general. And by wokeism I don't mean the set of policies. I mean the tone and force by which it was advocated. I'm gay and one reason the gay movement was so successful is it was slow and methodical, advocating for social change person by person. Wokeism took that strategy and destroyed it. It argued that if you weren't in favor of trans rights NOW, it's because you're a bigot. Don't like reparations? Racist. Are you White and disagree with me on 1% of issues? Check your privilege.

There is an extremely toxic undertone to the discourse in Democratic circles that increasingly mirrors the mythical Ouroboros, where the snake starts eating its own tail. The Democratic coalition by definition is broad, diverse, and ideologically open. LGBT are, what, 10% of the population? Blacks are 12-13%, Latinos are 18-20%. The entire point of the party is to cobble together what would be, in and of themselves, electoral pygmies and bring them together until they can cobble a majority.

Identity politics destroyed the strategy because it shifted the Democratic raison d'etre from "the party of economic uplift for all" to the "party of Oppression Olympics for some", where different Dem groups spend their time fighting within themselves over who gets more intersectional victimhood points (instead of expanding the pie, the party was fighting over the slice it already had).

Which is where the Party's left-wing really screwed up because they took the wrong lesson from 2020 and saw it as a mandate for social change. Biden scraped through with 40,000 votes in 3 states and within a few months I saw progressives on Twitter labeling Asians and Latinos who didn't conform 100% with party orthodoxy as "White-adjacent." If you're going to treat Asians and Latinos as White-adjacent, don't be surprised when they take the hint and vote White-adjacent for the GOP.

The party needs to stop with the internecine racial slop of new social theories and demographic terms and endless disputes over microaggressions. All it does is destroy the coalition. Obama built an enduring coalition in 2008 and Democrats completely pissed it down the drain in less than a decade by adopting identity politics. It's not lost on me that Kamala probably wouldn't have been named VP were it not for the identity politics zeitgeist of 2020.

(8) Racial Tensions and Latinos - And even the most receptive Democrats on this sub STILL failed to understand Latinos. I can't tell you the number of times I read the vapid trite nonsense of "Yes, but Latinos are not a monolith" as if that's some brilliant revelation that signals you get us. And then it would usually end with some asinine observation like "Yes, Mexicans and Cubans are different." OK - and? What part of that revelation shows you get Latinos?

Take it a step further folks and look at it from the prism of a Latino. How many of you know about the Mexican Repatriation (where up to 2 million Latino Americans were expelled)? Or the Zoot Suit Riots? Or the long sordid history of zoning as a form of exclusion for Latinos? Why does our history of struggle get muzzled as the Party pretends we don't matter? Chicago is plurality-Latino yet from hearing the Democratic mayor, you'd think systemic poverty, isolation and despair were only Black problems. Why do Latinos feel like Democrats are the "Party of Black and White progressive interests" with a BIPOC sticker for show?

Why does the party never elevate Latinos? California is over 40% Latino and just 5% Black yet the mayor of Los Angeles is Black, the mayor of San Francisco is Black, the VP is Black, the junior Senator is Black, the Secretary of State is Black, the State Controller is Black, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction is Black, etc etc etc. White progressives don't see these slights, but Hispanics see them. We see them, we reflect on them, and we internalize it.

My county is 26% Latino and 20% Black (Prince William County, Virginia, which predictably had a massive R-trend yesterday). Yet every single Democrat (all 5 of 9) in my county's Board of Supervisors is Black: https://www.pwcva.gov/department/board-county-supervisors/about-us

Why? Because the Party made the conscious decision that 'racial justice' meant elevating the Black community within the party, so they got first dibs. The end result is a racially diverse county where Democrats are only seen as accommodating one. And that's a dangerous place to be as a party that needs a rainbow coalition.

The only Hispanic, funny enough, is a Republican (the MAGA Yesli Vega).

Do you think that came from nowhere? No - it came from deep-seated resentment. There are tons of racial tensions that White progressives refuse to see because they're so ensconced in their own fantasy unicorn world where Republican Whites are the baddies and minorities need to be saved by the Progressive White Man's Burden. No, there are complex racial dynamics at work. Why are Asians shifting right? Because when a Black homeless man pushes an Asian grandma onto train tracks, and the Party doesn't attend a candlelit vigil for the grandma for fear of offending Black voters, that sends a signal to Asians of second-class status.

Asians and Latinos feel like second-rate members of the coalition. I'm sorry to break your rainbow nation utopia, but there is no singing kumbaya today because you misread the room. Trump brilliantly played into all of these wedges. He pitted Blacks against Latinos by casting Latinos as illegal immigrants who are placing downward pressure on wages. He pitted Latinos against Blacks by picking at that scab of resentment of being ignored by the Democratic Party. He leaned in on Asian-Black tensions by discussing education policy, parental rights, gifted programs, crime, small business protections from shoplifting.

And then you had the ever oblivious progressive thinking Taco Tuesday and watching Coco during National Hispanic Heritage Month was "showing solidarity."

GOP minority staffers were easily able to map out a strategy on these racial tensions because they had the space to discuss these issues in the open. Democrats were caught flat-footed because we self-censor uncomfortable thoughts, moderators delete things they personally disagree with, progressives prefer to believe academic theories to the often uncomfortable world of human behavior where we are imperfect and we do have feelings of isolation, and jealousy, and anger, and despair and resentment. And resentment.

----

Sad, right? Yes, and no. This shellacking was big enough of a hit to the psyche that I think the Democrats will finally wake up. And in a two-party system, the pendulum always swings back. Trump will have, at best, a tight House majority which will present a tight leash on the exercise of his mandate.

And Democrats will have 4 years to clean house and start anew. Politics ain't beanbag, but the Republican platform has enough ideological inconsistencies to drive a truck through. Once Democrats reflect and figure out who they are, and listen to what their voters actually want, they'll then be able to go on the offensive again. It's sad that Trump won, but the current direction of the Democratic Party was untenable and I'm at least glad the message has been received and even Democratic elites on TV yesterday were humble and shocked by the scale of the repudiation among base constituencies.

In my country Serbia, our dictator has "interesting" county election tactics. There is counties where he is universally 'loved' through various means . In other counties his methods of persuasion doesnt work as well. So he move people around the country. In my neighbourhood i got dozens of new "neighbours" right before county election. In one flat near me on paper there were 20 people living. Some of them were living on the other side of the country merely days before the election. Suddenly power sub stations got regular address with 10-15 people "living" inside. Buses full of people came inside my town just to vote. How you prevent for example Democrats moving people from California to Wisconsin, or GOP moving people from Florida to Georgia/ North Carolina. Moving people address from Los Angeles to eastern California.

Now libs are finally coming around to the shit we've been warning for what, a good decade now? That the woke shit is off putting, that toxicity just pushes people away, that economics are greater than gender politics, that people want revolutionary change not status quo politicians forced on us? Literally shit we've been saying for years and years. That maybe it's a terrible idea to code everything masculine as "right wing" then get shocked when boys start going to the place you've coded them as?

And finally, once again, like so so many times before, I get to say, "Yeah I told you so. I have been saying this for ages yet you all just aggressively attacked me." I swear, it's like a constant theme in my life when dealing with libs, and kind of get why some go republican just out of spite because how insufferable they are.

What upsets me, is what's upset me every time in the past. First, they will make excuses, then, not actually fundamentally change.

What annoys me the most though, is how this is all so obvious and seems so self evident. Like I am not some exceptional sage or some shit. This shit was obvious from the start.

With the US election over and with Taylor Swift coming to Toronto next week, it occurred to me that she would retain her title as the most powerful woman in the world. And then I looked up the Forbes list, and they didn't even put her as the most powerful woman in the US. They ranked her under Kamala Harris! I'm afraid I have to disagree with that one. What real power does a VPOTUS not named Dick Cheney actually have? Americans, show me the part of your constitution laying out all the VP's powers which clearly surpass those of Swift leading her millions of Swifties. You can't!

Despite her endorsement of Harris, and all the media talk suggesting how this would win Harris millions of votes, it turns out Taylor was the secret winner of this election. She beat Harris. She keeps her crown. The most powerful woman in America.

Cause I'm tired of that argument.

The comments blaming gen z for electing trump, even though far more adult white women voted for him than teenage boys, reminded me of this- In 2001 Doris Lessing spoke about feminists wasting their time and resources in pointless domestic spats with men or little boys instead of doing literally anything useful. 23 years later nothing has changed.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/aug/14/edinburghfestival2001.edinburghbookfestival2001

This article is more than 23 years old - but more relevant than ever!

Novelist condemns female culture that revels in humiliating other sex

The novelist Doris Lessing yesterday claimed that men were the new silent victims in the sex war, "continually demeaned and insulted" by women without a whimper of protest.

Lessing, who became a feminist icon with the books The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, said a "lazy and insidious" culture had taken hold within feminism that revelled in flailing men.

Young boys were being weighed down with guilt about the crimes of their sex, she told the Edinburgh book festival, while energy which could be used to get proper child care was being dissipated in the pointless humiliation of men.

"I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed," the 81-year-old Persian-born writer said yesterday.

"Great things have been achieved through feminism. We now have pretty much equality at least on the pay and opportunities front, though almost nothing has been done on child care, the real liberation.

"We have many wonderful, clever, powerful women everywhere, but what is happening to men? Why did this have to be at the cost of men?

"I was in a class of nine- and 10-year-olds, girls and boys, and this young woman was telling these kids that the reason for wars was the innately violent nature of men.

"You could see the little girls, fat with complacency and conceit while the little boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence, thinking this was going to be the pattern of their lives."

Lessing said the teacher tried to "catch my eye, thinking I would approve of this rubbish".

She added: "This kind of thing is happening in schools all over the place and no one says a thing.

"It has become a kind of religion that you can't criticise because then you become a traitor to the great cause, which I am not.

"It is time we began to ask who are these women who continually rubbish men. The most stupid, ill-educated and nasty woman can rubbish the nicest, kindest and most intelligent man and no one protests.

"Men seem to be so cowed that they can't fight back, and it is time they did."

Lessing claimed that much of the "great energy" whipped up by feminism had "been lost in hot air and fine words when we should have been concentrating on changing laws.

"We have got the pay but only real equality comes when child care is sorted out and it hasn't been yet, well not for those who really need it anyway".

Lessing also revealed she is not going to write a third volume of her autobiography because she did not want to offend so "many great and eminent people by reminding them of their silliness. I just can't be bothered, to be honest".

The day before the election I did a quick run through of the Lichtman keys to see how they related to Kamala and Trump.

I got an easy 9 in favor for Trump and 4 for Kamala.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Keys_to_the_White_House

Lichtman's assessment of this election could only be the result of a brain infested with shitlib bubble rot.

The 13 Keys 

• Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. 

• Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. 

• Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. 

• Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. 

• Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. 

• Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. 

• Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. 

• Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. 

• Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. 

• Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. 

• Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.

• Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. 

• Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

Here's how they tally in my estimates.

1. Kamala scores on the mandate key.
2. Lets go ahead and give her this one, even though it cearly worked against her. 2 of Kamala.
3. 1 for Kamala
4. False, RFK and Jill Stein were absolutely relevant in the news cycle. To the point where the Democrats invested in attack ads against the Green party for the first time in history. 1 for Trump.
5. Obviously false, yet somehow Lichtman said this was true. Democrats pretending the economy is actually good is why we cannot despise these elitists enough. 2 for Trump.
6. Also false, it's been almost 4 years of a stark recession, somehow Lichtman can't even admit this much. Even if the economy is turning around, it's relatively recent compared to the last 5 years of hell. 3 for Tump.
7. Major policy change, what changes can anyone point to from the Biden administration? They passed a bunch of acts and used their media lackeys to sell them, but none of them made a notable difference in anyone's lives compared to Obama's ACA. 4 for Trump. Maybe you could flip it for Kamala.
8. No social unrest?  Fine, 4 for Kamala. I'd argue differently, but the media was very dismissive of the college protests for Palestine. And I think media coverage should be factored in to these assessment.
9. No scandal. Wtf. Lichtman says this is true. The president got caught with dementia. His son is a crack addicted sex pervert. That's a fucking scandal. 5 for Trump.
10. No foreign or military failure!?! Afghanistan pullout was a huge embarrassment. 6 for Trump.
11. Lichtman claims Biden had military success. We're involved in a losing war and another war the world over despises ous for funding while his bases enthusiasm rapidly depleted as a result.
12. Charismatic incumbent. For sure false.
13. Lichtman said Trump wasn't charismatic. Put this dog to sleep, please. Embarrassing.

Only 6 need to favor Trump.

Even if you tried to be as generous as possible, Kamala got swamped.

What a clown.

I've got this... situationship.

We get the election results in, discuss it a little. She doesn't understand why anyone would vote for Trump because she doesn't know any Trump voters. I point out my brother and parents did, they had their reasons. There are more issues in politics than just abortion. I point out we have already been through a trump administration and it was... funny. Plus, she's rich. All the issues she's worried about are only issues for the poors.

The next day she's aloof until i ask her what's up. She comes out swinging. I am a terrible person for knowing trump voters. The fact that I did not disown my parents and brother for voting Trump makes me literally Hitler.

She then, with bated breath and soggy panties, explains that it's totally going to be the different this time and she's going to be turned into breeding stock at a concentration camp. Have you heard of project 2025? When the clock strikes midnight on January 6th all women everywhere will lose all rights. I am a liar for claiming that this is not the end of the United States of America and she has the headlines to prove it.

I'm empathetic, I lend her an ear.

Look there's a pro choice rally taking place this weekend let's go

no

do you want to look into supporting pro choice candidates in swing states? A bunch of states just enshrined the right to abortion in their constitution I'm sure we could make that happen in other states which would help protect more women.

why do you keep changing the subject? I am mad at you specifically because is your fault kamala lost the election. The fact that you know people who voted for Trump means that you must have voted for Trump.

Damn Becky I voted for kamala what the fuck do you want me to do? Change my parents and brothers votes? We're in NY they're in Texas, our votes don't even matter. Here I am providing productive outlets to that animus you have pent up but what do you have in mind?

I'm moving to Germany. I'm gonna sell some of my properties and move there and just overstay my visa for 7 years until I get citizenship. My guy friend has offered to put me up and help me.

Am I included in this exodus? I speak German, have lived in Germany, worked with the German military.

no, he probably wouldn't be willing to help me out if there was a guy with me. It's actually kind of a bummer because I don't want to live in Germany but what options do I have?

So you're going to flee to a country you hate where you will not be treated as a citizen at the cost of a lot of money to get raped by some guy, all because trump might somehow manage to make your life in the very liberal state of New York slightly worse?

well i can't just stay here and watch things get worse for other women.

Luckily she came to her senses and is only going to flee "when things start to look bad" but I want to know who the fuck she was talking to that got her all whipped up. I am 99% sure Western Europe is pulling a Ukraine part 2 where single guys are offering lodging to nubile young women fleeing the devastation and destruction of post election America purely out of the goodness of their heart.

I hate to get real here for a minute but there's some actual feels between us that could make for a great relationship if she didn't have some mental issues she's got going on. Her casually mentioning she was just going to dip in the night to hide like Anne Frank in some Germans fuckenshacken because she's too stupid to remember what she was doing 5 years ago wrapped barbed wire around my heart again. You have a sensible chuckle when you read relationship advice posts where 12 year olds on the internet convince couples to get divorced because they voted wrong, but it's not so funny when it happens to you. At least under President Vance, divorce will be illegal.

I've heard several libs from other countries who have been citizens for years or even decades pearl clutching because of the possibility that Trump is going to revoke their citizenship and deport them. Also, a few months ago a coworker made a comment that Trump was threatening to deport people who were born in the US but are children of immigrants. So based on these comments my Mexican father (who has been a citizen since the 80s) and I are under threat of deportation. This sounds so moronically stupid that I don't even know how to respond. Does anyone know where this rhetoric comes from?

Usually throughout the years things happened in such a way, where one seemingly big event or multiple would be used as a distraction for a different much more significant event and covert agenda. Maybe this sounds a bit /x/ idgaf about the elections. I'd like to know what I'm supposed to not see. I just like being in the loop. For example during covid pandemic it dominated global headlines and held attention for years. During that time, several substantial legislative move$ and policy changes happened quietly under the radar.

My name is Yamen Nashwan, and I used to live in a beautiful four-story house in Beit Hanoun, Gaza. My life was full of promise. I had a job, dreams for the future, and a close-knit group of friends and family. But all of that was taken away from me when the conflict erupted.

The place I once called home is now just a memory. My family and I were forced to flee, and now we’re living in a small tent in Rafah City. There are 27 of us crammed into this tiny space, including 13 children and a newborn. Every day, we struggle to find food, warmth, and safety. Loved ones.

The dreams I had for the future now feel like distant memories, overshadowed by the daily fight for survival. My friends, my community, so many have been scattered, displaced, or worse. The laughter and joy that once filled my life have been replaced by fear and uncertainty.

The hardest part is the loss of the intangible things—the memories of better times, the bonds with friends and neighbors, and the sense of security that came from knowing we had a home. These things can never be replaced.

Life in Gaza is not just a struggle for survival—it’s a constant reminder of what we’ve lost. I wanted to shed light on the harsh reality we face every day. It’s a life filled with pain, but also with a small, flickering hope that one day, things might change.

So people are apparently OK with foreign imperialism and chaos as long as abortion is legal and the president speaks with 'decorum.' I'm pro choice btw but the hypocrisy is ridiculous. Illegal wars such as Iraq are infinitely worse than any potential abortion restrictions.