𝙹𝚘𝚎 𝚆𝚊𝚐𝚗𝚎𝚛

Can someone explain what happened in the 90s?

Many of these people were threatening us last September that the gloves would come off, that they would avenge Charlie by uniting against and utterly crushing the degenerate liberals.

In less than a month, they were mired in factional fights over conspiracy theories.

MAGA last September: "Oh, you fucked up big time. You killed the calm, rational, diplomatic debater, the middle ground, the off-ramp. Get ready for what comes next!"

What came next:

I installed a browser extension called One-Click Block that puts a "block" button on every tweet. It dramatically speeds up the process

I gave it up for Lent so now I'm hanging around here more

There might not be any amount of progressive messaging/education/propaganda that will make a majority of the public view the possibility of an adult with a penis in the women's locker room as "none of my business."

But what if they oppose biological males in women's sports and bathrooms not because of right-wing propaganda, but because those issues cross the same "this affects me or my near relations" line that employment and housing nondiscrimination protections didn't cross?

That rule might also apply to trans issues, but likely not to the extent progressives want.

So, on one hand, Americans don't feel that trans people having housing and jobs affects them in any negative way, so they broadly support protecting trans people from employment and housing discrimination.

That impression was reinforced by and might even have originated in entertainment. But in my theory, public attitudes toward gays changed because of the gradual removal of those impressions, which were the only reasons most Americans ever thought that gays' gayness affected them.

. . . because there was a widespread impression that gay people did in some way affect their lives, such as by being (supposedly) sexually aggressive toward straight adults and even predatory toward children and young people.

I mean that on most issues, Americans' default position is "none of my business" unless given a reason why it does affect them—why it is, in fact, their business. Within this framing, Americans were able to be anti-gay marriage—and even anti-gay—for so long . . .

*Why* those public attitudes changed is kinda the real question. Maybe pressure on the entertainment industry to portray gay people with more dignity instead of as punchlines? But I think the public's shift had a lot to do with what I call Americans' "natural libertarianism."

Instead, Dems were still nominally against gay marriage until the early 2010s, while public attitudes changed for other reasons. Dems only came out for gay marriage when the coast was clear.

And the end result of it all was a progressive victory on the marriage issue.

In the marriage fight, gay activists didn't successfully pressure the Dem party into adopting an unpopular position, and the Dem party didn't make a pro-gay case to voters to change their minds.

The history of the gay marriage issue doesn't provide much encouragement for progressives' current posture on trans issues like sports and bathrooms (i.e., that retreating from those issues is essentially the same as abandoning trans people to death).

This was never going to be anything other than another venue for him to stand behind a microphone and blather at people

The company that manufactured replica 1913 Patton sabers discontinued them a few years ago, and it's now easier to find originals than replicas

one thing the trump era has made clear, i think, is that the american people themselves are far more committed to the values of our founding documents than our elites

Does anyone know if there was any significant ICE deployment to Springfield, OH, in December? The one lady is wearing a santa hat.

If we can admit DC as many states, then that's one of the things we need to change in a new constitution.

Is the sausage andouille?

Just the absolute stupidest fucking people

Something to do with them being just the right content that we and our parents could both appreciate

Do the people running the administration even know that investigations can serve a purpose other than petty revenge?

Unironically, this woman grasped the moment and the political stakes better than most of the media commentariat and nearly all of the Respectable, Sane Conservatives

Green Afternoon

The Fairly Formidable Bosstones

Blink-181

Their entire exculpatory theory of this video is that the partner saying "drive, baby, drive" proves the driver's intent

Hello Bluesky: if you are a reporter who would be interested in covering an upcoming memorial prayer service for victims of ICE outside of the Delaney Hall ICE facility in Newark, NJ, please DM me so I can put you in contact with organizers.

The rioters and embedded militias should not have gotten more than ten feet inside the Capitol and their progress should've required climbing over the downed forms of their fellow insurrectionists, because if you're going to try and overthrow democracy by force then you should get your shit rocked.

Treason shouldn't be a capital crime b/c of some "they insulted the FLAG and sided with the TERRORISTS over MURICA"

It should be death because that is the only tier of consequence that keeps the powerful from attempting it again and again until they get lucky. You need to stop them before they do.