No that’s just wanting to look younger. Again, not every cosmetic treatment is gender-affirming care. Hell, it’s pretty ridiculously to even use the term outside the context of trans healthcare. Musk looked male before and he looked male after. He just thought he looked better and younger with more hair. It had nothing to do with gender.

Just listen to yourself. You appropriate the language of a minority group. Then when actual member of that group comes along and tells you you’re not using it correctly, you double down and try to tell them that you know their own language better than they do.

The reason I push back on this is because the distinction between gender affirming care and general cosmetic treatment really matters. This shit kills people. Men who want hair plugs don’t have a 40% suicide attempt rate.

This watering down of language for cheap political points has very real consequences for the trans community. Right now our rights and healthcare are under attack. Hard won victories decades in the making are being rolled back. Among the targets of these attacks are conservatives trying to bar health insurance companies from covering gender-affirming care. And that case becomes much easier if the distinction between trans healthcare and every cis person that wants a minor cosmetic treatment is watered down.

This isn’t gatekeeping. It’s fighting against the casual appropriation of our language that threatens our rights and lives.

I get why people mention this, but as an actual trans person, when I hear someone, even an ally, say this kind of thing, it shows they really don’t get what gender-affirming care is. It’s really cringe. Gender-affirming care is just that - care that affirms your gender and allows you to take on primary or secondary sex characteristics different from that of your natal sex.

Male pattern baldness is a male secondary sex characteristic. It is simply a consequence of combining certain genetics with male hormone levels. You’re not affirming your gender by getting hair plugs. In fact, you’re actually dampening a male secondary sex characteristic. If a cis female had abnormally high T levels or some other condition to give her male-pattern baldness, then her getting hair plugs would be gender-affirming care. But for Elon, a cisgender man? That’s not gender-affirming care.

When I see someone call hair plugs gender-affirming care, it shows that they really don’t understand what gender-affirming care is. It’s not any cosmetic treatment you get just for fun. It’s more like reconstructive surgery you get to fix your face after a car crash. Elon got a cosmetic treatment, not gender-affirming care.

This is because Republicans are a truly Orwellian party - straight out of 1984. They have no real principles anymore. It’s just power for the sake of power. One day the official line is we’ve never been at war with East Asia, the next it’s we’ve always been at war. Trump can come up do a u-turn today, and the slime that is every Republican will instantly reorient themselves to follow dear leader’s new commands.

Unfortunately for them, LLMs just don’t have that much capability for doublethink and self-deception. Once you train a model, that model is fixed in time. So you could train a model to match the Republican fever dreams of today. But a month from now, there will be a whole new set of fever dreams that every good little fascist needs to follow. But the model will still be stuck repeating last month’s lies. As there are no consistent Republican beliefs, you can’t just train an LLM to tow the party line. There is no party line, just an endless series of lies and vomit, whatever is needed to advance their power today.

If this were a movie, it would end with the very soldiers he ordered for his giant vanity project deposing him in response to some crescendo of barbarity on his part. That’s a downright Aesop of an ending - the villain defeated by his own vanity and pride. You order thousands of soldiers to perform a parade to celebrate your birthday, and it’s the last straw that causes them to straight up depose you in a military coup.

Supreme Courts around the world have found all sorts of ways of exercising power. They can deputize citizen volunteers to serve as temporary court enforcers. They can outright order the military to stand down and arrest the president. Hell, they could dig into the ancient tradition and declare the president an outlaw - literally outside the protection of the law, making it legal for anyone to straight-up kill the guy.

Sure they have important differences. At the same time however, it is the height of tone-deaf arrogance to expect people to vote for their own genocidal oppressors.

Kamala likely lost Michigan due to her support for Israeli Apartheid and genocide. The Muslim population there quite understandably didn’t want to vote for her. You can’t really come to a group of people and say, “yes, we admit that we’re supporting a genocide of your people, but we need you to still vote for us for the good things we actually will do. We’re going to keep committing genocide against you, but we need you to vote for us for the sake of democracy.”

Trump and Kamala were largely indistinguishable on the Gaza issue. Trump is just a lot ruder about it. Yet, in the months following the election, we’ve seen countless gloating by centrist Democrats openly celebrating further violence by the Israelis, gleefully mocking Palestinians and their supporters, saying that this wouldn’t have happened if Kamala won. Now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Biden, Kamala, and Trump all shared the same policy towards Israel - full and unconditional support with no limits or red lines whatsoever. Gaza was getting wiped off the map no matter who was elected. Notably, despite being still active in politics, to this day, neither Kamala nor Biden have spoken a single word publicly against the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. Even though they’re out of power and have nothing to lose by speaking out, they still fully support the actions of the Israeli government.

Are there still good reasons to have supported Kamala? Sure. But I also don’t expect anyone whose people are being genocided to vote for those other reasons. If you’re not willing to prevent a people from being literally murdered, then you can’t come groveling to those people, asking for their votes. If you don’t care about someone’s life, why should they care about your democracy? This is basic Maslow’s hierarchy of needs shit. People don’t have the luxury of worrying about abstract goods like democracy when their basic material survival is threatened.

Allegation: the DNC exhibited overt favoritism in the primary process to ensure Hillary won the primary.

Your response: but Hillary won the primary, therefore she won the primary!

No one is disputing that she won the primary. The problem was the DNC put their thumb on the scale through the entire process. Hillary was the presumptive nominee from the beginning. People voting for Bernie on day one had to vote against headlines that said, “Hillary is already 1/3 of the way to getting the nomination!” The DNC also collaborated very closely with the Hillary campaign, and they did not do so with Bernie’s campaign. They even went so far as feeding her debate questions ahead of time.

Yes, obviously Hillary actually won the primary even without the superdelegates. Any brain-dead moron can consult wikipedia and see that. There’s no need to parrot the obvious. But you’re completely missing the core of the issue - that Hillary only won the majority of non-superdelegates and only won the primary popular vote because the DNC threw the weight of the entire party behind her nomination at the exclusion of all other candidates.

I’m not a “prepper” in an “underground bunker” sense, but I do prepare for emergencies and instability, whatever form it may take: political, yes, but I also live on several fault lines

Assuming you’re a homeowner, make sure to check if your home insurance policy covers earthquake damage. By default most insurance policies don’t cover seismic.

There any sense on what would be good to stock up on now? When I’ve searched this, the advice is usually pretty worthless. Just advice indistinguishable from general prepper stuff. I’ve seen recommendations to stock up on things like flour, things that the US produces domestically in abundance. But some necessities are going to be more vulnerable to disruptions in shipments from China than others.

Anyone find a good guide or have a sense of what basic household necessities are going to be most vulnerable to disruption of trade with China? I’m not concerned with things like consumer electronics right now, those are luxuries. I’m talking basic food and household staples. I don’t need the standard prepper list that’s meant to prepare you for grave natural disasters. What’s really needed is an analysis of precisely what necessities are most likely to be interrupted by this.

Has anyone seen such a list, or have a sense for what necessities are most vulnerable here?

Worse. This is really a “don’t negotiate with terrorists” situation. Trump could have gone to the Chinese, and any other country, and said, “look, this isn’t working. We need to renegotiate our trade deals.” Public opinion has soured enough on free trade that Trump likely could get some legitimate tariff package or set of new trade deals through. The public generally likes the idea of not trading so much with China. The problem is Trump is trying to do this via decree and blackmail. He thinks that by cutting off trade overnight, he can coerce China into giving the US favorable terms.

But all this shows is that the US is an unreliable partner that is willing to back on its word at any moment. Nations can renegotiate trade deals. That isn’t some unprecedented violation of international norms. But it’s common sense to do these things slowly, giving both nations time to adapt their economies to the new conditions. You can’t just cut this level of trade off cold turkey without causing a global depression.

First, that is an extremely bad-faith interpretation of my words, and you know it.

Second, historically, when countries face autocratic moments like ours, often the only way they out the autocrat is by completely abandoning the corrupt center-left party that allowed and enabled the far right authoritarians. Voters often spend several election cycles fruitlessly trying to get the center-left party to make the necessary changes to challenge the autocrat. In the end, the center left party loses more and more popularity, until it collapses completely. Their credibility is mud with the general populace; they simply have no viable path to winning an election. The party needs to collapse into nothing. Only then is there enough room for a new party that can actually challenge the autocrat to rise. They try several cycles of dutifully voting for the center-left corporate party, but it just doesn’t work. In the end they just have to let it burn.

Centrist Dems are not going to be able to defeat Trumpism. And this inability also makes them incredibly weak candidates to win elections against Trumpism. If the DNC is going to just keep forcing useless ineffectual centrists on the party, really, the quickest way to defeat MAGA will be for as many Democrats to abandon the Democratic Party and vow to never vote for them again. Centrist dems will just keep losing election after election after election. They’re losers. Weak, ineffectual losers. They can’t win elections against Trump. Biden only managed to eek out a win in 2020 due to Covid.

If Dems are going to keep forcing corporate centrists through, you are actually delaying the defeat of Trumpism by voting for them. As corporate Dems can’t win a general election against Trumpism, voting for them is as completely pointless as voting for third party candidates in 2024. Centrist Dems just aren’t serious presidential contenders anymore; you shouldn’t take them seriously. A vote for a centrist Dem is a vote for another MAGA term. Even if a corporate Dem gets the nomination, a vote for them is still a vote for a longer MAGA reign.

If they force another corporate centrist through in 2028, the 2028 election is already lost. At that point, the goal should be to make sure that the corporate candidate loses spectacularly. The corporate Dem is never going to win, but they might eek out a 45-55 loss that lets the DNC keep pretending that corporate Dems have a chance at winning the general election. At that point, with the election already lost, the goal should be to make sure the centrist Dem loses by an overwhelming, comically large 30-70 margin or similar. You need to take so much credibility from the Dems that the party collapses completely.

We’re in a fight that is going to take more than one election cycle. Accept that now. You need to think more strategically than just one election cycle in the future. Because “vote blue no matter who” can actually extend the reign of the MAGA movement.

Hopefully we won’t get stuck with a shithead corporate centrist in 2028. But if we do, I’ll be boycotting the presidential general election, only voting in the Congressional elections. I do this because I care about the country, and I want to see MAGA defeated as quickly as possible. If a corporate Dem is the nominee in 2028, then Dems have already lost the election. At that point, your thoughts should immediately move to 2032, as that will be the next chance Dems have at ousting MAGA.

You’re right. Both sides aren’t the same. One side are Nazis. The other are Nazi collaborators.

They’re objectively different, but that ain’t saying much.

We’ve been focusing on the next election for decades at this point. At some point you need to recognize the insanity of doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result.

Voting for a corporate Dem IS voting in favor of fascism.

Corporate Dems know that the only path they ever have to power is if the alternative is Republican autocracy. They’re too unpopular on their own to have any way of winning an election based on their personality or positions. They can only win by fear. Thus, they cannot actually dismantle fascism. They can’t pass reforms stripping the presidency of emergency powers to prevent it from being abused. They can’t launch a law enforcement crackdown to finally put MAGA in the ground. They need MAGA. They want MAGA. They need a giant monster standing behind them to terrify the populace into voting for them. That is the only way they can possibly win an election. In fact, they have every incentive to make that monster as big and as terrifying as possible.

Voting for a centrist Dem guarantees eventual holocaust. The Fascists will just keep becoming more extreme and violent, even when the corporate Dems are in power. The occupants of the White House will alternate between Fascists and corporate Dems, moving further to the right each cycle. Eventually they’ll start killing people by the millions. Centrist Dems are unable to prevent this. They need fascists in order to get in to power.

Biden was the first to float that idea actually.

The problem with voting for a party simply because “we aren’t fascism” is that it produces the most perverse incentives imaginable. If the only way Democrats can win the White House is by simply not being fascist, what motivation do they have to reform the system so that fascists won’t be able to come back into power?

If there is a free election in 2028, and if Democrats somehow manage to win, they need to act decisively. They need to pass a storm of legislation that drastically curtails the powers of the presidency. If they don’t, then we could be right back with another wannabe dictator Republican in power in 2032. We need to end the emergency powers, curtail the powers of ICE, end the mass surveillance, essentially dismantle the entire post-911 security architecture that put us at such a danger of dictatorship. It’s an evil machine that never should have been built.

This is the fatal error of wanting to support a centrist Dem in 2028. The only way such a candidate is going to get elected is if they can run against the specter of fascism and dictatorship. They have zero motivation to dismantle the tools a future dictator would use; they need there to be a threat of a future dictator in order to win reelection. If that centrist Dem wins in 2028, and makes it so dictatorship is impossible, what are they going to run on in 2032? They need there to be a credible threat of dictatorship in order to win election. A centrist Dem can never dismantle fascism, as the looming potential of fascism is their only hope of getting elected. Centrist Dems want to dangle the threat of fascist dictatorship, like a Sword of Damocles, over your head forever. Corporate Dems will never dismantle what is their only hope of getting and retaining power.

Why is it always progressives who have to compromise? Why can’t centrists for once have to hold their nose and vote for a progressive?

♫ I wouldn’t touch you with a - thirty-nine-and-a-half foot poooole! ♫

I need someone to cross-stitch me this.

Arrest them on state charges for kidnapping.