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Oh, you mean the study that says lesbians experience more domestic violence...

From MEN.

🤷‍♀️

See, you've been arguing about a lie that a man made up. It upset you and wasted your time. Never accept a man's version of reality. I found a video on tumblr debunking this lie, too. If you take away male perpetrators, then bisexual and lesbian women have the lowest rates of domestic abuse. I hope debunking this nonsense will make you feel better.

But even if that wasn't a lie, it wouldn't change the fact that it is men who torture, kill and enslave women on a massive scale globally. It would be a distraction.

And all the other moids on reddit are jumping on the women/feminist hate train because they need a reason to. Saying the law is set against men, etc. etc.

even serena williams faced misogynoir when she gave birth.

Bernie-style populism didn’t land because billionaires figured out long ago they could undermine it by being socially right-wing, and the working class would forgive their wealth and privilege. That’s why this same demographic is willing to make it rain for grifters like Joel Osteen and Pat Robertson. That’s why they worship the wealthiest man on the planet like a God and consider him some real-life Tony Stark. People dismissed Donald Trump as a shameless attention-hungry New York oligarch until he called Mexicans rapists. Then he shot up to the top of the GOP primary polls. The working class didn’t think much of Elon Musk until he said “pronouns suck.” Then he became their hero. A scion of working-class Pennsylvania lost his US Senate seat last week to a hedge fund manager from Connecticut. West Virginia elected their richest man to the Senate after electing him governor – as a Democrat and later a Republican. Ohio tossed out their longtime Democratic senator, known for his strong support of labor rights, for – literally, no joke – a used-car salesman.

You can’t tell me the working class in America thinks being a billionaire alone is what makes one a “wealthy elite.” There are significant factors at play here Bernie is either oblivious to or purposely ignorant of.

In college, a professor once told me that Communism never succeeded in the United States because we are too religious and proud as a country. Religion, traditions, and culture were never widely discredited the way they were in Europe and Asia, where the clergy and nobility kept the bourgeoisie in figurative chains for centuries. The relative ease of social mobility made America unique compared to its Western counterparts. Historically, American progressivism has been focused on expanding social mobility – initially limited to only white men – to identity groups who had been denied it at the start: blacks, women, and immigrants. We have done it, with various amounts of success. While it may seem counterintuitive, Americans pride themselves in being the nation that pioneered the idea that wealth and status can be achieved through ingenuity and hard work and not just based on a lucky roll of the genetic dice, as it was in the Old World. It doesn’t mean we don’t have generational wealth in our country; we do, but since it isn’t the sole way to achieve wealth and power, we don’t care nearly as much about destroying all of it. Further, we will happily endorse it if the oligarchs and the aristocrats vow to promote and protect the social values we care about and the social hierarchy that benefits us.

It’s one of the reasons I believe Bernie could never beat Trump. If you ask working-class people what they want: an anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual billionaire or a Vermont socialist backed by kids from Harvard and UC Berkeley who hate our traditions and customs, the working class will always back the billionaire.

The one thing Bernie has not gotten and never gotten, even with all his Champion of the Working Class cosplay crusading (as a wealthy Vermont millionaire who has accomplished very little during his long tenure in office aside from repeatedly fracturing the Democratic party), is that a lot of the American working class see billionaires (as pointed out above) as aspirational role models, not evil parasites. Scholars can and indeed have written many long sociological, political, and analytical papers about the "What's the Matter with Kansas?" problem, wherein working class and poor people vote against their own economic interests in order to elevate grifting xenophobic populists whose policies only benefit the already-rich. For one thing, this presupposes the "rational individual" economic-maximization model of human behavior, which was popularized in the free-market 1970s and 80s, and has never been true in any meaningful sense, but as pointed out above: America is addicted to the "hard work makes you rich and billionaires have clearly worked to earn their wealth" mindset. They are equally addicted to the "temporarily dispossessed millionaire" fallacy, wherein if they too just Pull Themselves Up By The Bootstraps, that is the only thing stopping them from being equally wealthy. It's not, but we're still absolutely throttled by the "Republicans Are Better For The Economy" myth that just played a huge part in Trump's second election win. What's empirically "real" or not matters less and less.

Bernie's brand of faux-leftist populism is so toxic in America precisely because it pairs this apparent destruction of the American Dream (hey why do you want to destroy my chance of becoming a billionaire?!) with virulent anti-American tankie-lite rhetoric spouted by the online left, who see America as the source of all evil in the world despite benefiting enormously from their upbringing in America and access to American privilege. We can (and again, have!) written many, many papers about the founding and continuing social ills embedded in America: its establishment on the back of slavery, racism, genocide, and so on. But when it comes to day-to-day electoral politics, the average mid-to-low-information American voter does not give a shit about complicated historical debates and generational injustices. They just don't. They care about how much things cost at the grocery store and what the vibes "feel" like to them. After a brief upsurge of social acceptance in 2020 with BLM/George Floyd, they've also lost interest in dealing with systemic racism, and are inclined to accept Trump's easy-scapegoating rhetoric. This is not limited to white people either; witness the major gains he made with Hispanics in particular. The ones who are able to vote in presidential elections are US citizens and see themselves as safely insulated from Trump's mass-deportation policies because they're not undocumented (even if they have friends and relatives who are and who are very much NOT safe). They want to preserve their own piece of the pie and are not acting in grand pan-Latino racial solidarity. Nobody says they have to -- they can focus on their own personal interests just as much as white voters -- but they're definitely one of the communities who are in the soonest for a rude wakeup call.

Looking at the election results shows that America is, as ever, an extremely divided country. This election was not a landslide for Trump. The Republicans benefited from an extremely favorable map to pick up WV, OH, MT, PA in the Senate, but added no House seats and still have a tiny majority of about 3 (which may shrink further with special elections and/or unexpected departure). Trump got 49.9% of the vote; Harris got around 48.5%. The American electorate is not left-wing; it is also not immutably right-wing. It is primarily transactional, "what have you done for me lately," and cursed with low information literacy, sophisticated disinformation campaigns, and short-term memory that is worse than a goldfish. Abortion passed everywhere except in FL (where it needed 60% and got 57%). As ever, the public liked Democratic policies, but voted for Republicans to punish Democrats for not implementing them fast enough. That is one of the most maddening paradoxes in all of American politics and it fucked us good this time, but that's the twist of the screw. The Republicans also benefited from the post-COVID anti-incumbency that kicked Trump out in 2020. A lot of the scary things that happened in the last four years -- rising prices, ongoing threats to democracy, Dobbs, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, etc -- were not necessarily Biden's fault, but they happened on his watch and contributed to the sense of visceral fear and threat that is always a better predictor of electoral behavior than the flawed idea of Rational Economic Maximization.

As such, despite the avalanche of "What Democrats Must Do Now" postmortems, we should definitely point out that Bernie instantly threw them under the bus for not being "pro-worker," when the Biden administration was the most pro-worker, pro-labor, and anti-corporate in recent history (and due to the electoral backlash it received as a result, quite possibly for a very long time). Bernie primarily conceives of the American working class as white people, often white men, engaged in customary trade-union pursuits, which is outdated and inadequate and reeks of the rancid "the left wasn't nice enough to fragile insecure white men" takes that are latently or openly misogynist. Biden did a hell of a lot to address their economic interests, and they punished him for it, because what is at stake, in their minds, isn't actually their economic interest (even if that's what is often used to describe it) but their position of unquestioned power as white men. They will happily give up the chance of better economic policies if it means continuing to assert their authority over other marginalized people; their lot might not be great, but at least they're still white. And indeed, still men. Bernie complaining that the Democrats didn't cater enough to White Men is, objectively, bullshit.

As such, I can tell you that one way that the Democrats can get back to electoral relevancy, which is definitely likely in 2026 and 2028 if we can get that far, is not by listening to Bernie. "Destroy the billionaires" paired with toxic tankie rhetoric driven by the online left competing with each other to be more extreme and unpleasant is electoral poison and that's why Bernie's chronic campaigning got him nowhere and fatally splintered the Democratic party in 2016, allowing Trump to win in the first place. It's a dud. The end. There is nothing positive or constructive in that vision, and while riding aggrieved populism can get you decently far, it also has to be a populism that's rooted in some idea of America, however shallow and lip-service. "Make America Great Again," despite how much Trump does to destroy America in every conceivable sense, works because MAGAts wave American flags and feel like a righteous and integral part of their country. The fact that in this election cycle, Democrats actually embraced love-of-country rhetoric, American flags, and appeals to fundamental "American" values, no matter how cringy and schmaltizily-nationalistic it feels to educated liberals, is an important part of getting that ground back. It promotes the idea that you can love America (however defined) and vote Democratic, and we can't give that up. Because then yeah, everyone waving the flag will be a jingoistic MAGA fascist, and people who like and respond to that imagery (which is a decent majority of ordinary Americans) will want to associate with them by default.

THIS

"Bernie primarily conceives of the American working class as white people, often white men, engaged in customary trade-union pursuits, which is outdated and inadequate and reeks of the rancid "the left wasn't nice enough to fragile insecure white men" takes that are latently or openly misogynist. Biden did a hell of a lot to address their economic interests, and they punished him for it, because what is at stake, in their minds, isn't actually their economic interest (even if that's what is often used to describe it) but their position of unquestioned power as white men. They will happily give up the chance of better economic policies if it means continuing to assert their authority over other marginalized people; their lot might not be great, but at least they're still white. And indeed, still men. Bernie complaining that the Democrats didn't cater enough to White Men is, objectively, bullshit."

This is exactly what i've been trying to express about so many many voters. It works just as well for Trump's false prophesying as it does for Bernie's. Is Bernie the same as Trump, not on a personal level not at all, but they both draw from the same ROOT MISOGYNY and tap the same discontented funny-bone desire for a SAVIOR LEADER.

Bernie's is the left's Trump in the sense that his misogyny (SEE ABOVE. plus all of the casual disdain for women presidential candidates) and self-centering is EXACTLY the same brand of old white dude 'ONLY I CAN FIX IT.' Maybe he's not as destructively anti-social & sociopathic as Trump; but his sense that he can and should just insert himself constantly even when he has nothing meaningful to contribute has been dead weight for the democrats in three campaigns now.

There was NEVER a time when making Bernie president or following his policies was ever going to 'fix' anything. First of all, making anyone president doesn't magically fix things unless you are willing to wield presidential power like Trump & reactionary conservatives that believe in the 'imperial presidency.' Anyone telling you that the president can 'JUST x' anything is lying, fatally misunderstands the usa political system, or doesn't care about abusing liberal democracy. Since I don't think Bernie fucking Sanders is or was an autocrat in the making, i think he was lying, knowingly and misleadingly lying.

Second, most of his policies are just as much window dressing and posturing as Trump's are. Just because the policies he postured with weren't going to jail children doesn't mean they wouldn't have been destructive. Case in point, 'Medicare for All' is the leftist equivalent of 'Build the Wall.' It's a fucking dumb expensive impractical non-reality based slogan policy for a fucking difficult serious and complex problem. Absolutely EVERYBODY with any serious knowledge of health policy and our health system, DID NOT ENDORSE THIS POLICY and many were in fact openly opposed to it, not because they were captured by corpo interests, but because it WAS NEVER GOING TO WORK and failed policy is the number one killer for progress. (I would be happy to expound on this further but the short summary: Medicare has never met a child or a woman of reproductive age and has no way to pay for end of life care, rehabilitation services, dental care, prescription drugs, or eye glasses--this is not an exhaustive list. The most correct answer for rapidly expanding universal access to HEALTH SERVICES--not INSURANCE fucks sake--is Medicaid and FQHCs. You wouldn't even have to dismantle the insurance market because you're just not making that market the only way to actually get a health service.) Even the attempt to implement such a bullshit nonsense option would have resulted in collapse. It would have harmed people and killed any attempt a real reforms. As it is, just the suggestion of that irresponsible & impractical policy was enough to shut down other improvements in health care policies because of leftists demands that 'only medicare for all' would count. WASTED. OPPORTUNITY.

The point is: Bernie Fucking Sanders has been and always will be about BERNIE FUCKING SANDERS. He took a lot of young and idealistic people's time and effort and enthusiasm and channeled them into ideas and policies that were impractical at best and at worst doomed to failure in destructive & counterproductive ways. Just that alone. Taking all of that fire and good feeling and urge for change and channeling it into HIMSELF and not attaching it to REAL PROGRESS--I can't even describe the level of cynicism and selfishness. His messages attracted puritanical misogynist leftist blowhards because THAT IS WHO HE IS. His ideology is dependent on failure and lack of accomplishment because that is what is required for him to maintain his position as king of the contrarian killjoys who like to talk about how everything would be perfect if ONLY HE WAS IN CHARGE. Not being responsible for anything is what gives Bernie the veneer of correctness & righteousness--in reality he's just a shitty backseat driver.

I keep thinking about that essay right after Biden's disaster debate; basically it said we have to stop looking to politicians to save us and lead us. ONLY WE CAN DO THIS; we're going to have to change it ourselves. One step at a time. It won't be a Bernie or a Trump. It's going to be us. Finding leaders like Biden or Nancy Pelosi or Stacy Abrams or Pete Buttigieg or Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren or Jay Inslee or Hakeem Jefferies --who keep WORKING, who keep moving the needle a little bit at a time, who keep trying to respond to reality and public demands realistically, who build expertise, who build diverse coalitions under adverse conditions, who take responsibility. Perhaps most importantly, who view themselves not as visionary leaders or truth tellers, but as just people like us with jobs to do.

all of these issues are caused by misogyny, and perpetuated by males.

i know it’s a difficult reality for most people to come to terms with, but these are the realities for hundreds of MILLIONS of women and girls around the world.

I almost said I was disgusted by these little perverts but they’re not! They’re not little, they’re not babies. They’re big boys, young men. The average male fifth grader is roughly the same size as an adult woman on the shorter side. They’re as big as we are or bigger and they already see us as prey!

And that’s nothing compared to hearing it out of the mouths of even younger boys who don’t know what they’re saying but repeat it anyways. Who can’t conceptualize the idea of rape and forced pregnancy but DO understand that they can essentially do whatever they want to the little girls they go to school with and face no consequences whatsoever

when i was in 8th grade, there was a boy with down syndrome who would ALWAYS touch the girls in the class inappropriately. and he knew exactly what he was doing, because he specifically did it when the teacher wasn’t looking. and his aid knew about this, and she did NOTHING. she just gave him a slap on the wrist, told him that’s not okay, and then sent him off. and guess fucking what, he continued to do it. me and a few other girls asked her ourselves to do something about it and all she said was that he doesn’t know what he’s doing and that he’s a “sweet little boy” ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME HE IS FOURTEEN.