Thanks for this. As an American in London since 2011, I've been watching two countries I love descend into populist horrors for more than a decade. I’m more depressed than ever in the last few weeks, but I’m also determined to find strength in whatever forms of resistance I can engage in.
Are you on BlueSky? I don't find you when I search on your name...
If it was Twitter, I'd say definitely sinister. I haven't heard of Bluesky throttling anyone, but I suppose it's possible. (It's also possible I haven't quite figured out Bluesky yet!)
I am! I am not a Democrat at heart -- they're nowhere near progressive enough for me -- but their advocacy of overseas voters is good and they do provide some good social opportunities for expat Americans. (I went to their Fourth of July picnic a few years ago).
Oh, and I did vote for Kamala Harris (despite the current admin's complicity in the Palestinian genocide), to try to keep Trump out.
How is this deemed hate speech? It appears that only liberals are permitted to express their emotions. The entire article and the comments sections are replete with gaslighting and echo chambers (bluesky) that individuals rejected on November 5th.
23: Hold on to reality: Trump & Elon may have won the election, but are still losing the culture war. They may rule the spotlight but they will remain among the most despised, uncool, sociopathic, monstrous, rejected humans on the planet. Our arts, music, drama & literature will continue to progress around & in spite of their cruelty, corruption, derangement & lies. All aboard the resistance bandwagon. =^.^= 💜
"The enemy is within" said the kremlin troll to the dork maga cryptobros. Within the Oval now. Subverted & corrupted election launches cold civil war in America. Putin annexation underway, SOS USA 🚨 Resistance is the only option
Thank you! I’ve been looking for a “to do list” since the election. As a public high school librarian whose students are the demographic targeted by the incoming broligrachs, I need to be as prepared as possible. Resistance and gallows humor commence!
As a trans adult - trans kids are going to need your help. This incoming group has said they want to eliminate gender-affitming care, so it won’t just be their peers or family they might have issues with - it will be that state itself.
No, they'll just eliminate the options that include chemical castration and medical mutilation. Mental health counseling and therapy, which should be the first response anyway, will still be allowed 👍🏼
Your bio talks about having a grnder non-conforming kid, yet you use phrases like medical mutilation. So, if HRT was allowing your kid to stay on the planet without wanting to end it, and that got taken away - what would you do?
You’ve bought into the falsehood that not medically transitioning kids will cause them to peace out I see. Understandable, since so many clinicians and therapists have heard it from activists and bought into it too and have been spreading it.
It’s a lie based on a bad-faith interpretation of bad data by activists.
The actual data tells a different story - kids who go to a gender clinic but aren’t medically transitioned have the same documented suicide attempt rate as kids who are transitioned. The determining factor on suicide risk turns out to be the mental health co-morbidities they have, not whether or not they transition:
But another reason for the false suicide scare is that some activists and even clinicians coach young people to fake being suicidal in order to scare parents & clinicians into giving them what they want.
Doc admits advising people to lie about being suicidal to get medical transition:
Mmm concerning. We also had an incident where school officials kicked a boy out of class for having a patch on his knapsack with the Gadsden Flag ("Don't tread on me") on it. They only relented after threats of a lawsuit and an emergency vote by the school board.
We also had an incident where a trans-identified boy attacked a girl after getting off a school bus, biting her and pulling out her hair. The principal of the school was standing directly next to the attacking boy and a teacher was nearby, but both did nothing to help the screaming girl besides verbally admonishing the boy. The girl was only saved by the bus driver who came out and pulled the boy off her:
For a better insight on the phenomenon of trans-identified boys not being held accountable for their actions in schools, a parent of one such boy explains:
If Trump and his appointees were all kompromat to the Kremlin, they could hardly be planning a better job of tearing down US democracy (such as it is). There are strange similarities between what Musk is saying and what Cummings was saying during the Johnson (mate of Lebedev) era. Cummings put a call out for 'weirdos and misfits' to take No10 jobs and to dismantle the civil service. Musk has called for "super high-IQ revolutionaries" to "dismantle government bureaucracy". These matching statements, along with both their regimes' plans to intimidate journalists & "experts" via the law courts, makes me imagine a hideous world where they both have the same hostile-state handlers...
As a veteran Army JAGC officer stationed in West Germany during the Cold War years, I am familiar with the Posse Comitatus statute. Only today did I realize, with horror, the connection between the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year that gratuitously expanded presidential powers and immunity, and the alt-right Catholic that Trump wants to be his Secretary of Defense. It is all laid out, just as you and Tim Snyder have warned.
Sharon I worry about the military, given that I hear Fox News plays 24/7 wherever they are. I'm seriously concerned about whether the Constitution will still be held higher than the Trumpstitution.
Anne I worry about the same thing. From my observations, the active duty military community is as politically split as our civilian society is. That gives the conservative faction a huge number of apt pupils to obey any order as a lawful one.
This is really discouraging. I’m not naive, I know the military can’t filter out all the psycho’s. Adam Kinzinger has talked about this. MAGA has so little insight, that they can’t understand that THEY are “the enemy within”. Sharon I sure hope enough sanity prevails in the armed forces that the crazies don’t take over the asylum, as it were.
Please don’t be discouraged as the military community is so vast that it mirrors the society it serves. It’s the power that the military is capable of wielding that is the alarming factor here. But for every Pete Hegseth there is an Alexander Vindman who served with honor and conviction. I don’t believe many soldiers see their mission as an unhinged President’s “ retribution “.
Look at the numbers for 2024 Muscogee Georgia voting precincts. They overlap the home of the United States infantry at Ft Moore GA. This is where permanently stationed soldiers and their families can most easily vote. If you believe the military is a Republican bastion explain how Harris had 61% of the vote and the opposition numbers dropped for the second straight election in a row? App.Enhancedvoting.com
My brothers and sisters in arms have protected and defended the constitution in the United States of America for the last 20 years in three separate theaters of combat I was a combatant in all and spent 36 months of my life fighting. If you disagree with the war, fine, but careful the way you speak about soldiers being brainwashed automatons. There’s no other profession that dedicates and risk their lives in defense of the US Constitution. Unless you served, please try not to integrate the service of others. But again for them, speeches in the United States Constitution and I support your right to say whatever you want, but I have the right to disagree.
The McDonald’s may not be the most important point, but as it is Trump’s signature feast to share, it is telling. But, I write to add that RFK Jr. is the only one who can’t make himself grin over this meal. The World’s Richest Man looks only somewhat happy. Would that they start wondering what they got themselves into!
Only imagine the emotional stunting that had to occur to return that SMFPOS. They’re the epitome of needy. Sophomoric and dangerous.
Obsequious Sycophancy. 🤮
4 years of incessant ad hominem attacks and reading about him being referred to as BOSS among staff. Unbelievable disrespect to any defined protocol about EVERYTHING. Gawd, it’s gonna blow.
Retreating to an echo chamber is the wrong response. People in there are even less informed about the world than the rest of y'all on the Left and the Right who each only get approximately 50% of the news.
Wow, after everything that has happened recently and even to you, to some extent. You still don't get it. How is Trump even relevant to you? Or even Musk? Do you know how you win in the marketplace of ideas? You tell the truth (gasp). You and your ilk didn't for years and now you are completely irrelevant. Even worse, even with all the chips stacked in your favour, including social media working overtime to censor the inconvenient truths popping up everywhere, the truth still got out, as it always does. Crowing that your propaganda empire is crumbling is hypocrisy at it's best. I recommend doing some actual journalism at some point, then your material may once again be in demand.
I read ‘On Tyranny’ by Timothy Snyder in 2017. A no nonsense book on how to not fall for the authoritarian trap. I have it on my night stand for another re-read.
Mr Snyder’s ‘ways to resist’ along with your well thought out ideas on how to survive in these ‘interesting times’ are much needed and appreciated.
How can it not warm your heart to see our next Health and Human Services Secretary chowing down on a double McDonald's sandwich meal? They all are! He eats this stuff and yet is sure that vaccines will kill you! Sigh.
Thanks for this. As an American in London since 2011, I've been watching two countries I love descend into populist horrors for more than a decade. I’m more depressed than ever in the last few weeks, but I’m also determined to find strength in whatever forms of resistance I can engage in.
Are you on BlueSky? I don't find you when I search on your name...
@carolecadwalla.bsky.social
Thanks. So bizarre that that did not come up while searching.
Their search function for profiles has been wonky, but thanks for asking this!
Bizarre or sinister?
If it was Twitter, I'd say definitely sinister. I haven't heard of Bluesky throttling anyone, but I suppose it's possible. (It's also possible I haven't quite figured out Bluesky yet!)
I have high hopes, but it is a bit random. And who knows…
I hope you're a member of Democrats Abroad!
I am! I am not a Democrat at heart -- they're nowhere near progressive enough for me -- but their advocacy of overseas voters is good and they do provide some good social opportunities for expat Americans. (I went to their Fourth of July picnic a few years ago).
Oh, and I did vote for Kamala Harris (despite the current admin's complicity in the Palestinian genocide), to try to keep Trump out.
Good Riddance, stay there!
"#GodLoving" but full of hate, huh? Typical.
How is this deemed hate speech? It appears that only liberals are permitted to express their emotions. The entire article and the comments sections are replete with gaslighting and echo chambers (bluesky) that individuals rejected on November 5th.
That doesn't help anything.
23: Hold on to reality: Trump & Elon may have won the election, but are still losing the culture war. They may rule the spotlight but they will remain among the most despised, uncool, sociopathic, monstrous, rejected humans on the planet. Our arts, music, drama & literature will continue to progress around & in spite of their cruelty, corruption, derangement & lies. All aboard the resistance bandwagon. =^.^= 💜
"The enemy is within" said the kremlin troll to the dork maga cryptobros. Within the Oval now. Subverted & corrupted election launches cold civil war in America. Putin annexation underway, SOS USA 🚨 Resistance is the only option
What’s Next, America? | PoliticsGirl https://youtube.com/watch?v=Kmeo6eGy1wI&ab_channel=MeidasTouch
Thank you! I’ve been looking for a “to do list” since the election. As a public high school librarian whose students are the demographic targeted by the incoming broligrachs, I need to be as prepared as possible. Resistance and gallows humor commence!
As a trans adult - trans kids are going to need your help. This incoming group has said they want to eliminate gender-affitming care, so it won’t just be their peers or family they might have issues with - it will be that state itself.
No, they'll just eliminate the options that include chemical castration and medical mutilation. Mental health counseling and therapy, which should be the first response anyway, will still be allowed 👍🏼
Go back to truth social.
^Lefties with their usual intelligent contributions to the discourse 😂
Your bio talks about having a grnder non-conforming kid, yet you use phrases like medical mutilation. So, if HRT was allowing your kid to stay on the planet without wanting to end it, and that got taken away - what would you do?
You’ve bought into the falsehood that not medically transitioning kids will cause them to peace out I see. Understandable, since so many clinicians and therapists have heard it from activists and bought into it too and have been spreading it.
It’s a lie based on a bad-faith interpretation of bad data by activists.
The actual data tells a different story - kids who go to a gender clinic but aren’t medically transitioned have the same documented suicide attempt rate as kids who are transitioned. The determining factor on suicide risk turns out to be the mental health co-morbidities they have, not whether or not they transition:
https://mentalhealth.bmj.com/content/27/1/e300940.full
But another reason for the false suicide scare is that some activists and even clinicians coach young people to fake being suicidal in order to scare parents & clinicians into giving them what they want.
Doc admits advising people to lie about being suicidal to get medical transition:
https://thebridgehead.ca/2019/04/22/gender-therapy-doctor-admits-to-advising-kids-to-fake-being-suicidal-to-get-transgender-treatments/
Trans activist admits that people who say they’re the opposite sex lie in order to get treatment:
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1702031201224077504
Shouldn’t things be up to the parents to decide what to allow their minors to do? Why are debating what the kids can and can’t do?
You're arguing for no limits on what parents can do to their kids.
Think about that.
People used to think it was reasonable for a parent to have their kid lobotomized.
Some parents REALLY believe in "spare the rod and spoil the child".
And some parents believe in never saying "No" to their kid.
That's why Child Endangerment and Child Neglect and Contributing To The Delinquency of a Minor are crimes.
We recently had an incident where a teacher sided with a student that called another student wearing a Harris/Walz pin a "baby killer" expressing that they didn't like the baby killers either. https://www.whitelakemirror.com/article/2024/11/public-comments-address-politically-charged-incident-at-montague-high-school
Mmm concerning. We also had an incident where school officials kicked a boy out of class for having a patch on his knapsack with the Gadsden Flag ("Don't tread on me") on it. They only relented after threats of a lawsuit and an emergency vote by the school board.
https://www.newsweek.com/colorado-schools-gadsden-flag-ban-overturned-after-student-goes-viral-1823325
We also had an incident where a trans-identified boy attacked a girl after getting off a school bus, biting her and pulling out her hair. The principal of the school was standing directly next to the attacking boy and a teacher was nearby, but both did nothing to help the screaming girl besides verbally admonishing the boy. The girl was only saved by the bus driver who came out and pulled the boy off her:
https://www.themainewire.com/2024/10/trans-student-had-history-of-sexual-harassment-prior-to-assault-biting-attack-that-left-maine-girl-concussed-vision-impaired/
Girls at the school protested the attack and the lack of staff response by walking out of class:
https://eedition.bangordailynews.com/9906/20241026/281517936609352
For a better insight on the phenomenon of trans-identified boys not being held accountable for their actions in schools, a parent of one such boy explains:
https://substack.com/home/post/p-59234142
In my comment "we" meant in my local community with people I know. I didn't go googling for controversies across the country for false equivalencies.
Thank you for being here. And thank you for this piece. I am listening, please keep writing.
If Trump and his appointees were all kompromat to the Kremlin, they could hardly be planning a better job of tearing down US democracy (such as it is). There are strange similarities between what Musk is saying and what Cummings was saying during the Johnson (mate of Lebedev) era. Cummings put a call out for 'weirdos and misfits' to take No10 jobs and to dismantle the civil service. Musk has called for "super high-IQ revolutionaries" to "dismantle government bureaucracy". These matching statements, along with both their regimes' plans to intimidate journalists & "experts" via the law courts, makes me imagine a hideous world where they both have the same hostile-state handlers...
If you haven't heard of the Heritage Foundation, you might want to take a look.
As a veteran Army JAGC officer stationed in West Germany during the Cold War years, I am familiar with the Posse Comitatus statute. Only today did I realize, with horror, the connection between the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this year that gratuitously expanded presidential powers and immunity, and the alt-right Catholic that Trump wants to be his Secretary of Defense. It is all laid out, just as you and Tim Snyder have warned.
Keep writing truth. Courage, friend.
Sharon I worry about the military, given that I hear Fox News plays 24/7 wherever they are. I'm seriously concerned about whether the Constitution will still be held higher than the Trumpstitution.
Anne I worry about the same thing. From my observations, the active duty military community is as politically split as our civilian society is. That gives the conservative faction a huge number of apt pupils to obey any order as a lawful one.
This is really discouraging. I’m not naive, I know the military can’t filter out all the psycho’s. Adam Kinzinger has talked about this. MAGA has so little insight, that they can’t understand that THEY are “the enemy within”. Sharon I sure hope enough sanity prevails in the armed forces that the crazies don’t take over the asylum, as it were.
Please don’t be discouraged as the military community is so vast that it mirrors the society it serves. It’s the power that the military is capable of wielding that is the alarming factor here. But for every Pete Hegseth there is an Alexander Vindman who served with honor and conviction. I don’t believe many soldiers see their mission as an unhinged President’s “ retribution “.
Thanks for your service, and this response. Much appreciated.
Look at the numbers for 2024 Muscogee Georgia voting precincts. They overlap the home of the United States infantry at Ft Moore GA. This is where permanently stationed soldiers and their families can most easily vote. If you believe the military is a Republican bastion explain how Harris had 61% of the vote and the opposition numbers dropped for the second straight election in a row? App.Enhancedvoting.com
My brothers and sisters in arms have protected and defended the constitution in the United States of America for the last 20 years in three separate theaters of combat I was a combatant in all and spent 36 months of my life fighting. If you disagree with the war, fine, but careful the way you speak about soldiers being brainwashed automatons. There’s no other profession that dedicates and risk their lives in defense of the US Constitution. Unless you served, please try not to integrate the service of others. But again for them, speeches in the United States Constitution and I support your right to say whatever you want, but I have the right to disagree.
Very helpful words to begin to live by.
I have one question. If Robert F Kennedy Jr. is going to make us healthy again does that begin by sucking down McDonald’s burgers?
The McDonald’s may not be the most important point, but as it is Trump’s signature feast to share, it is telling. But, I write to add that RFK Jr. is the only one who can’t make himself grin over this meal. The World’s Richest Man looks only somewhat happy. Would that they start wondering what they got themselves into!
Signature feast, like EVERY 7 year old.
Only imagine the emotional stunting that had to occur to return that SMFPOS. They’re the epitome of needy. Sophomoric and dangerous.
Obsequious Sycophancy. 🤮
4 years of incessant ad hominem attacks and reading about him being referred to as BOSS among staff. Unbelievable disrespect to any defined protocol about EVERYTHING. Gawd, it’s gonna blow.
RFK jr dissed the Trump airplane food hardcore as “sucking down poison” and I guess this photo is somehow payback
Trump was probably telling him “Eat every bite of it!”
Maybe you guys already know that
No, I for one didn’t know that; payback is an interesting thought. Payback is certainly Trump’s style!!
“Broligarchy” is spot on. Bullyonaires is which I call ’em. Spoiled little boys that never heard the word “no”, that grew up to become awful men.
I’m using “grew up” very loosely. More like Gru, but no intended insult towards the fictional character, who has infinitely MORE class.
Such an important post. Thank you. Shared widely. I'm not sure which social media is safe to post communications now.
I'm getting off meta for politics and joining bluesky 🦋. No algorithms there. Maga not tolerated.
yes - thanks - I've just joined bluesky now.
Great! I am WyBlueDot there. Hope to connect with you!
Retreating to an echo chamber is the wrong response. People in there are even less informed about the world than the rest of y'all on the Left and the Right who each only get approximately 50% of the news.
Wow, after everything that has happened recently and even to you, to some extent. You still don't get it. How is Trump even relevant to you? Or even Musk? Do you know how you win in the marketplace of ideas? You tell the truth (gasp). You and your ilk didn't for years and now you are completely irrelevant. Even worse, even with all the chips stacked in your favour, including social media working overtime to censor the inconvenient truths popping up everywhere, the truth still got out, as it always does. Crowing that your propaganda empire is crumbling is hypocrisy at it's best. I recommend doing some actual journalism at some point, then your material may once again be in demand.
I’m not obeying ever. Not in advance and not when they tell me to. Fuck that shit.
Thank you for the post and the list.
I read ‘On Tyranny’ by Timothy Snyder in 2017. A no nonsense book on how to not fall for the authoritarian trap. I have it on my night stand for another re-read.
Mr Snyder’s ‘ways to resist’ along with your well thought out ideas on how to survive in these ‘interesting times’ are much needed and appreciated.
He has a new book out called “On Freedom”.
Thank you. My next purchase!
You are a total Village Idiot
Name-calling doesn't help anything. Cut it out.
How can it not warm your heart to see our next Health and Human Services Secretary chowing down on a double McDonald's sandwich meal? They all are! He eats this stuff and yet is sure that vaccines will kill you! Sigh.
No wish to defend any of them, but he did make it clear that he considered that meal, and all of trump's diet, poison.
Good to hear Sherry and the photo says something opposite. Bad optics. I hope he becomes more careful.
As I understood it, it was likely a type of "hazing" or something like trump forcing him to humiliate himself so that trump can feel powerful.
Sigh...
I know, it's gross.
Aren’t you the journalist who was found guilty of inaccuracy and libel?
Yes, that does sound familiar 🤔. She’s eminently qualified to talk about disinformation.
Yep, she had to pay ￡1.2 million
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65644475
Where is the collective action here?
This is just typical Liberal cover your own ass nonsense.