Sunny Dystopia.

Paul Krugman, March 2016

Please remember this as “tax reform” goes forward. The whole point of the Republican Party is to convince middle class and poor white people that it is better to give tax cuts to rich white people, in the hopes of promoting economic growth (which won’t happen), rather than supporting all Americans, including the non-white ones, in living better lives.

‘Queer’ was reclaimed as an umbrella term for people identifying as not-heterosexual and/or not-cisgender in the early 1980s, but being queer is more than just being non-straight/non-cis; it’s a political and ideological statement, a label asserting an identity distinct from gay and/or traditional gender identities.People identifying as queer are typically not cis gays or cis lesbians, but bi, pan, ace, trans, nonbinary, intersex, etc.: we’re the silent/ced letters. We’re the marginalised majority within the LGBTQIA+ community, and‘queer’ is our rallying cry.

And that’s equally pissing off and terrifying terfs and cis LGs.

There’s absolutely no historical or sociolinguistic reason why ‘queer’ should be a worse slur than ‘gay.’ Remember how we had all those campaigns to make people stop using ‘gay’ as a synonym for ‘bad’?

Yet nobody is suggesting we should abolish ‘gay’ as a label. We accept that even though ‘gay’ sometimes is and historically frequently was used in a derogatory manner, mlm individuals have the right to use that word. We have ad campaigns, twitter hashtags, and viral Facebook posts defending ‘gay’ as an identity label and asking people to stop using it as a slur.

Whereas ‘queer’ is treated exactly opposite: a small but vocal group of people within feminist and LGBTQIA+ circles insists that it’s a slur and demands that others to stop using it as a personal, self-chosen identity label.

Why?

Because “queer is a slur” was invented by terfs specifically to exclude trans, nonbinary, and intersex people from feminist and non-heterosexual discourse, and was subsequently adopted by cis gays and cis lesbians to exclude bi/pan and ace people.

It’s classic divide-and-conquer tactics: when our umbrella term is redefined as a slur and we’re harassed into silence for using it, we no longer have a word for what we are allowing us to organise for social/political/economic support; we are denied the opportunity to influence or shape the spaces we inhabit; we can’t challenge existing community power structures; we’re erased from our own history.

I’m not kidding. Cis LGs have literally taken historical evidence of queer people’s involvement in the LGBT rights struggle and photoshopped it to erase us:

Pro tip: when you alter historical evidence to deny a marginalised group empowerment, you’re one of the bad guys.

“Queer is a slur” is used by terfs and cis gays/lesbians to silence the voices of trans/nonbinary/intersex/bi/pan/ace people in society and even within our own communities, to isolate us and shame us for existing.

“Queer is a slur” is saying “I am offended by people who do not conform to traditional gender or sexual identities because they are not sexually available to me or validate my personal identity.”

“Queer is a slur” is defending heteronormativity.

“Queer is a slur” is frankly embarrassing. It’s an admission of ignorance and prejudice. It’s an insidious discriminatory discourse parroted uncritically in support of a divisive us-vs-them mentality targeting the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQIA+ community for lack of courage to confront the white cis straight men who pose an actual danger to us as individuals and as a community.

Tl;dr:

Not trying to dwell on that one grandma in upstate New York who’s no longer in politics like the right does, I’m just like

2. Congratulations, the decade long PR smear campaign run against her by republicans and then Russians who saw her as a threat worked on you.

3. She’d been working in the civil rights movement since the day she came out of college, helping to expose schools that weren’t integrating kids, and later went on to champion social issue after social issue. She absolutely came up short sometimes, but the fact is she learned and evolved afterwards.

More importantly though, what the fuck have you ever done besides attack others who are ACTUALLY doing something? Like it’s really easy to sit behind a keyboard and demonize others while you don’t lift a god damn finger to help anyone.

Democracy is predicated on the idea that a given population is both educated enough to understand the issues they are voting on and also capable of critically thinking about issues beyond their partisanship or personal interest, thus being able to asses, debate, and implement policies that allow their nation to thrive.

As far back as Socrates, great political thinkers have been suspicious, and at time outright pessimistic, that democracy can work given the fact that humans tend to be short-sighted, self-interested, and prone to complacency when things are going well which means successful democratic nations might prioritize, for example, military spending in lieu of education, even though education is what facilitated their initial ascent, because they take their current position for granted and don’t consider the long-term well being of their democracy. Sound familiar?

Acknowledging that American democracy is in decline, or stating that the reason for that decline is rooted in a reductive one-dimensional political rhetoric that is perpetuated by, well, stupidity, is not some anti-democratic statement. It’s simply a restatement of what the founders of democracy said about it, which is that it doesn’t work unless those making decisions are educated. 

In fact, the statement that girl made and then you made sorta underscore the slow death of political discourse that marks the decline of democracy. In her case she makes some nebulous allegations about Clinton, completely ignores any redeeming information about her, and then makes her conclusion that she will continue to demonize Hillary Clinton and frame her as a one-dimensional political villain without considering the long-term implications that her having lost the election will have on our most basic democratic institutions. It’s people like her who prioritize their short-term personal interest in seeing Clinton fail over the long-term well being of this democracy that exemplify the hurdles we face with self-governance. Moreover, you’re an anti-fa blog who reblogged this saying I had exposed myself, which probably means you think I exposed myself as a fascist. Instead of considering the totality and intent of what I was saying, you take one sentence, misconstrue it, and label me as something I’m not because you’re prioritizing the short-term victory of making a quick zinger over the long-term good of maintaining a level of critical and open dialogue in our political discourse that allows us to express a variety of opinions without labeling everyone who even slightly disagrees with us as our enemy. 

Fuck that. Fuck this. Fuck all these people. Fuck Burning Sandals. 

Fuck men who repeat women’s words as if they are their own, after spending months lambasting them for those exact words. Fuck people who dismiss or outright shit on women’s ideas, but immediately accept the same exact idea when it’s parroted from a man’s gaping maw. Fuck people who will say he can’t credit HRC because she’s ‘divisive’. 

 Fuck people who will still find a way to suggest that this wasn’t really HRC’s platform, and will try to write her out of that history, too. Fuck them, most of all.

Their end goals were the exact same. Both wanted universal affordable coverage. HRC via incremental improvements to ACA. As ACA is hindered from being universal due to how unaffordable many plans are, by making incremental improvements to lower premiums, Hillary made her goal universal coverage by way of improving affordability and accessibility. Bernie ran on overhauling the whole system end to end by setting up a single payer system.

To hit on the main point here again: both had end goals of affordable and universal healthcare.

To clarify terms: Universal healthcare = everyone is covered by some measure of insurance Single payer = a funding mechnicasm used to purchase insurance (the government is the payer) for citizens

Other methods of achieving universal coverage include managed competition and multi-tier systems. Germany has a great system that has universal coverage but is not single payer.

And let’s also add King’s response to Weaver dropping out:

media: 

trump: *makes a spelling mistake on twitter*

media: OMG have you heard of 

# of nyt articles on “covfefe”: 27 # of nyt articles on the paris agreement within the past 7 days: 292 # of wapo articles on “covfefe”: 54, but most of them are short mentions in news roundup blog posts so i’ll let it slide # of wapo articles on the paris agreement within the past 7 days: 288 # of politico articles on “covfefe”: 17 # of politico articles on the paris agreement within the past 7 days: 142

This is a tragedy. Wiped out by hate.

Just want to say their names again:

Richard Collins III 

Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche 

Rick Best