It's absolutely ridiculous that we let this guy into the country at all. It's also absolutely par for the course.
We have a fundamental conflict with doing what's right as a country. It's not because of individual Americans not knowing what's going on, it's because we let corporate power and monetary interests supersede doing the right thing at an institutional level and in our individual lives. The reason we're continuing to fund bombing innocent civilians is the same reason we tolerate all the other horrendous shit that goes on in this country. From factory farming to stretching labor to its limit to price gouging on everything from food to clothes to housing. We've been lulled into complacency by people who care about nothing at all except quarterly profits and their own stock portfolios.
The cruelty will not end until we refocus our society on cultivating compassion and doing what's right. We need to stop worshiping money and start giving a shit about one another and the world we share.
That means all of us. We need to stand up for ourselves and for one another. Stop sitting around politely when you see some shit. Ditch the deer in headlights bystander effect routine and do something. Speak up, even if it's scary. Help people, even if it's hard.
If we just sit here and coast by with the status quo, this will never end. We have to be willing to shake shit up regardless of the consequences because we know the consequences will be worse if we don't. We have to stop playing it safe, because it's not fucking safe.
Until we do, this is what we're going to have.
Yeah, politicians are part of it. Voting is part of it (let Trump in and it'll be worse). But the bigger component of it is individual decisions. We need a change in attitude. We need to ditch the whining and hopelessness and get fucking real.
If I were strategizing for the Trump campaign I would absolutely be trying to target smaller leftist-specific spaces to pull them away from the Democrats and inject talking points of benefit to the campaign. Beehaw has small numbers, but it has a very leftist and pretty vocal user-base. It's a small pool that it wouldn't be hard to change the narrative in by injecting the same opinions over and over again. Which is what we see.
It makes way more sense to focus on small communities like Beehaw where a small number of messages can have a larger impact on the thinking of people who use it regularly, than exclusively on huge social media spaces like Facebook and Twitter where they're shouting into the void.
Get some talking points stuck in the minds of a small pool of people, get them to normalize it, and they'll spread it for you.
Search Party was great. Alia Shawkat, John Early, Ron Livingston, eventually Jeff Goldblum. This show goes in some absolutely wild directions.
If you like Search Party, you'll notice a lot of the same actors in both The Characters (particularly John Early's episode) as well as I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. Some of them also show up on Difficult People, which I adore. If you like Difficult People, you'll probably love to watch Billy Eichner shouting at New Yorkers about pop culture on Billie on the Street.
If you find you want more Ron Livingston, Loudermilk is a great series.
For a little more Alia Shawkat, check out Izzie Gets the Fuck Across Town. Great movie starring Mackenzie Davis. Speaking of movies with Mackenzie Davis, Tully was also pretty good, and confusingly has both Ron Livingston and his doppelganger Mark Duplass in the same movie. Duck Butter is another good movie with Alia Shawkat that Mark and Jay Duplass show up in.
Speaking of the Duplass brothers, their movies are great. If you want some interesting low-tech weird scifi, check out both The Endless and The Resolution. These two movies co-exist, but you can really watch them in any order, though the Resolution came out first. They also put out a new movie this year called Something in the Dirt, which seems to be sort of related also. Personally, The Endless is my favorite of the three.
One of my favorites this year has been Pokerface, which features Natasha Lyonne as a drifter who wanders around solving murders. It feels kind of like Colombo or the old Incredible Hulk show. Typically they show you the murder at the beginning of the episode and then you get to see where Natasha fits in and how she goes about solving it. It's great. Fantastic guest stars. It's also very episodic, so you can easily just pick one up and watch it after not having seen the others for a while. There's a plot that goes across the seasons, but it's not a huge component of most of them or like heavily serialized. Still binge-worthy, but also a show that you can savor if you want to!
Staying on Natasha Lyonne for a moment, if you haven't seen Russian Doll I can't recommend it enough. It's been out for a bit, but it's absolutely amazing. I could watch Natasha all day. She's also a major character in Orange is the New Black, if you haven't gotten around to watching it yet. Highly recommended.
Others have mentioned Severance, which is definitely a must-watch also. The new season comes out in November.
If you want to watch some engaging trash TV, check out the Circle. It's extremely entertaining low-stakes reality game show fun.
One more to throw out there, if you haven't seen it, which I've been really enjoying lately, is Baroness Von Sketch Show. Canadian sketch show featuring four women that I literally have trouble believing I haven't seen in much else. They're amazing and should have as many shows as they want. It has kind of Portlandia vibes, but with a somewhat more modern sensibility? I don't know. It's great.
I could literally go on about movies and TV for days. If there's anything more specific like genre-wise you're looking for, let me know!
Yeah, that could be. But it's also worth remembering that disingenuousness is literally the conservative playbook right now. Sometimes a duck is actually Ed Gale in a costume being voiced by Chip Zien, but other times it's just a duck.
Did somebody really get bent out of shape over capitalization? Have they been outside?
As someone driving a cab while being trans, I can't even conceive of this level of micromanagement. I'm happy if people make the effort to correct themselves when they misgender me, which happens regularly. I can't imagine trying to be that specific that I'm worried about grammar or stylistic choices that have literally nothing to do with gender.
Are those voters likely to vote for Trump instead? Or do you think the centrists that Democrats tiptoe around during election years are?
Once she's in, once the immediate danger to the basic functioning of our government is over, I'll be interested to see how she handles it. Right now though? She seems to be providing criticism while walking a careful line and trying to play it safe.
If she doesn't come firmly down on refusing to materially support the IDF after the election, I'll be first in line to start making noise about it. But at the moment? We need to secure our ability to have future elections first or it's going to get a whole lot worse. I get it.
It's unfortunate that we have to take the time these days to consider whether the constant drum of gloom and doom is actually genuine concern or straight up astroturfing. It certainly does seem like the people who constantly spout this stuff and ignore all evidence that they're completely off base are being a bit disingenuous for some reason, though.
Democrats never get anything done? Guess none of us have ACA insurance or subsidized energy bills. I guess I'm hallucinating the massive jump in food stamp funding a few years back. I must also be making up Massachusetts providing free access to community college for literally everyone over 25 who doesn't have a degree.
I suppose it means literally nothing that Democrats have provided safe harbor for people seeking abortions from states that outlaw it. Bummer about all those marriages that didn't happen because Democrats never secured marriage equality.
It's cool, though. I'm sure the Republicans will actually go do all that stuff the Democrats totally haven't done.
I'm excited to give her a chance to put her money where her mouth is, considering she's offered about the most substantial criticism of Israel's genocide that we've seen from this administration.
Good to see wheels seem to be turning! Time to quit being pushovers!