I live! Probably not going to be posting a ton, but I needed to get back to where I don’t have to police my words so much.
Before anyone jumps down my throat being the PC police, I’d like to point out my family and some friends and coworkers are a bit toxic, but not toxic enough to justify cutting them out of my life completely, and deleting them from all my social media would be more of a hassle with them bugging me irl as to why I did that. One tiny facet of my life is that my sister is a bit of a narcissist who will turn into a heinous witch at the drop of a hat if she is criticized in any way, no matter how constructive or gentle, every thing has to be positive, if I plainly state a fact without spinning it in a happy positive manner, she accuses me of being a heartless robot and uses the Ben Stein gif A LOT, ‘mansplains’ things to me that she 100% does not and should not be doing if she ever listened to a thing anyone ever said. My mom is…..well, the only thing for certain is she’s a hoarder who gets sad and cries a lot when my sister and I don’t get along which is mostly when my sister is mansplaining/talking down to me and I’m trying to get her to change the subject before I accidently say something I’ll regret if only because I need to keep the peace. And peacekeeping(me being a two faced bitch) is only needed because they ‘gatekeep’ the rest of the family for the simple fact I can’t drive and am too broke to pay for a bus ticket to see them as much as I want.
Sorry to dump all this on you on my first post back, but I need to get it off my chest to someone other than my husband(which is a whole other issue we’re never going to talk about here). Also I’m very sleep deprived right now, having been up since 6 am yesterday, but can’t go to sleep now that I’m finally crying my emotions out since I have to go to work. ugh. sorry.
Listen, if Toph had went off on her own for a while in Ba Sing Se there is no way she wouldn’t vibe with Zuko.
“Welcome to Pao’s Family tea shop, I’m Li, waddaya want?”
“Chaos.”
“Understandable. Sadly, that’s not on the menu. Would you settle for a cup of Jasmine tea?”
“Sure.”
Jet, bursting into the tea shop: THOSE TWO ARE FIRE BENDERS! Toph, interrupting Zuko who is about go attack this mouth wheat boy: And where’s your proof? Jet, suspiciously: I saw the old man with a hot cup of tea right after he complained that it was cold? Toph, about to cause some chaos: Then clearly, you need your eyes checked. Toph, gesturing to Iroh: This man is a Water Bender.
THIS MAN IS A WATERBENDER
wait i wanna add to this - so toph can tell when people lie, right? so she can probably feel zuko’s heart racing when jet accuses them of being firebenders. also, she would’ve met iroh by this point
so im imagining she’s like “okay. 2 firebenders. in a shop in the earth kingdom. but the old man is nice and wants better things for his nephew so honestly this checks out. yeah im gonna meddle”
That is 100% the thought process
Jet tries to argue that he heated his tea again.
“I know a waterbender and she can turn water into ice, who says they can’t make liquids hotter too?”
Jet has no argument.
He doesn’t have an argument cuz he knows the Water Bender Toph knows and has FELT her turn water to ice
Terror fills his body as he realizes that if Toph, who knows Katara, is friends with Li, then KATARA must be friends with Li TOO.
This is for the… accountants out there or if you’re like me and people have stolen your photos before and sent several angry perverts to your personal accounts
The inherent fucking racism/xenophobia in the “Save Christmas” rhetoric????? They imposed lockdowns twice right before Eid, countless Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist and more holidays went by in lockdown and now that its Christmas it’s somehow more important? People out there telling all of us that our holidays and religions don’t matter and we have to step up for society (which we did btw) are now going “oh no not Christmas whatever will we do??” Now that it’s YOUR holiday you finally pay attention? Fuck off. We could have been careful and ended this months ago but y’all decided to play around until it came to Christmas. The government deciding to not give a shit about Eid but decide to “protect Christmas” tells you everything you need to know.
On Rosh Hashannah it is an OBLIGATION, not a tradition, but an OBLIGATION to pray in groups of ten or more. Any other year, we must pray in person because the use of electricity is not permitted on our holy days.
I had my Rosh Hashannah alone, in my basement, through streaming. It was the first and only time my cat has gone to synagogue with me.
hi my name is destiel nevada putin elec’tion covid way and i have long ebony black hair
this is it. this is peak meme. do you have any idea the specific culmination of absurd and unlikely events that needed to happen in order for this one single awful sentence to live comfortably, no, effortlessly within the general populace of human comprehension?
also with all due respect the main reason the left loses so much is that y’all refuse to compromise on the language and messaging you use to speak to voters. i swear if you rebranded “defund the police” as “invest in community safety from the ground up” most white suburban moderates would be like “that sounds great” and i know that because that’s how i’ve literally reframed it to white suburban moderates who think “defund the police” means we’re going to live in a scary lawless mad max world
like maybe it comes across as mealy-mouthed and corny to people steeped in online cynicism but just to be clear, this is the country that wouldn’t eat french fries after 9/11 so we renamed them “freedom fries” and everyone was suddenly cool again. americans are not, by and large, super sophisticated about this stuff
okay, so, as a followup…. basically, i joined this “christians against trump” fb group for a work research project in 2017 and just ended up never leaving, bc it turned out to be such a great experiment in just… observing and listening and talking to people and figuring out the language that works! so like, as a basic glossary for talking to the well-meaning anti-trump moderate dems in your life about progressive policies:
instead of “defund the police,” say “invest in community safety” and emphasize things like participatory budgeting giving you power over where YOUR taxes go and reallocating funds to after-school programs, social services, and food pantries
instead of “abolish ice,” say “immigration reform” and “create a new agency for immigration and citizenship services”
instead of “medicare for all,” say “universal health care” or even just really harp on making healthcare affordable and accessible to everyone
instead of “the green new deal” (which was a great piece of messaging in the first place before it became inextricably tied up with aoc’s theatrics), talk about what an effective piece of climate legislation will create, not what it will destroy. when you say “ban fracking” or “ban fossil fuels” or “reduce methane emissions in agriculture” people go “YOU WON’T TAKE MY JOB OR MY FARTING COWS.” climate is really an area where being able to reframe it through the language of capitalism helps. say “let’s give tax breaks to farmers, especially small family farms who are already being squeezed out by the big guys, so they can invest in the future of their business” and other noise-shaped air stuff like that. instead of “ban fracking” talk about the jobs that renewable energy will create in communities that have been left behind by our reliance on foreign oil. i mean, fuck, the phrase “climate change” can be a real problem when you’re talking to the whole country because of how effective the “climate and weather are the same things” and “climate change is a hoax” disinfo campaigns have been over the past 20 years or so - but when you talk about “conserving our natural resources” and all that teddy roosevelt, ranger rick shit, it just comes across different.
instead of “abortion rights”…. listen, you know i hate equivocating about abortion but at the end of the day, when you’re talking to people who are probably anti-abortion for religious reasons but will still vote democrat because they’re not a single-issue anti-abortion voter, don’t say “abortion (on demand without apology etc),” say “the constitutional right to privacy” or “the right to make personal medical decisions without the government intervening.” fearmonger about attacks on abortion the way sarah palin fearmongered about how obamacare would lead to “death panels” deciding whether your grandma would live or die! and if you’re talking to someone who just doesn’t feel that strongly about abortion because yada yada roe is settled who cares, talk about how “empowering women to decide when they start a family fuels economic growth and leads to more wanted children growing up in stable, happy two-parent homes” and so on.
inversely, instead of “abolish the death penalty,” talk about “saving the lives of the innocent” and “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” if you’re talking to a christian and honestly just look at the libertarian arguments against the death penalty and ape some of those - cost to the taxpayer, high wrongful conviction rates as a reflection of government incompetence. honestly, the libertarian right is frequently aligned with the left on criminal justice issues and i know we all love to dunk on libertarians but the language they use is pretty appealing to moderates who might be coming from a more conservative background or region where it’s just normal
instead of “democratic socialism,” just talk about, like, values - ending poverty and hunger, living wages and better educational opportunities, creating jobs and protecting ordinary working people and families and putting money back in their pockets and creating a stable economy. people really do vote based on kitchen table issues and you can really make a moral appeal on the rest.
instead of “tax the rich,” say “cut taxes.” period. never talk about raising taxes. not on the rich, not on the middle class, not for any reason whatsoever, even if you’re saying “if we raise taxes on billionaires we can give everyone a pony.” i don’t care how much you want to tax billionaires, don’t fucking bring it up. i hate bezos as much as everyone but we live in america, where everyone is simply a temporarily embarrassed billionaire and convinced that taxing the ultra-rich will somehow hurt them too. don’t expect middle-of-the-road normies to get on board with the “i’ll pay more taxes if it means other people have health care” thing you see from avowed liberals and lefties, because they will not, i’m sorry. frankly *****i***** have no interest in paying more taxes because nyc already taxes you out the nose regardless of where you are on the socioeconomic scale and if someone suggested i should pay more, even if it meant paying less on private services in the long run, i would simply be like, “nope!” so like, yeah, obviously the goal is to eliminate corporate tax loopholes and tax the ultra-rich at a higher rate while cutting tax burdens on everyone else, but what you want to say is stuff like “small business owners shouldn’t pay more in taxes than the companies like apple and amazon that are already squeezing them out” and “we’ll cut taxes and frivolous government spending,” period, no embellishment. “making american companies pay american taxes” is a succinct catchphrase i like to use.
instead of “defund/spend less on the military,” say “why is the government spending so much on building outdated outdated tanks and submarines from 50 years ago and so little on services for veterans? we need to revitalize our military spending so that we can spend less on safer, more modern equipment, preserve those manufacturing jobs, and make sure that veterans get the health care and job opportunities they deserve.” get it? like, republicans have been selling the “cut waste, cut taxes, cut spending” line for decades because it sounds good and people really respond to it. unfortunately, one of the many cursed legacies of ronald reagan is that most people still think that balancing a government budget is like balancing a checkbook, and obviously that’s not true but it lends a lot of familiar comparisons and metaphors, so like… use them.
don’t equivocate on “black lives matter” - it’s too important and too urgent - instead, give the non-activist liberals you already know the accessible language they can use to help normalize the phrase “black lives matter” in their own lives and encourage them to do so. they won’t convert the full-on blue lives matter cult members and other assorted balls-to-the-wall racists, but there are people in the middle who just need to hear a targeted explanation of why that isn’t a combative or controversial statement, and that totally depends on the individual… there’s the very basic 101-logicky “if saying ‘save the whales’ doesn’t mean you think dolphins can kick rocks, or if saying ‘spinach is a vegetable’ doesn’t mean that you think lettuce isn’t, why does ‘black lives matter’ imply that other lives don’t?” and i saw someone in the christians against trump group cite a brene brown quote they said (“In order for slavery to work, in order for us to buy, sell, beat, and trade people like animals, Americans had to completely dehumanize slaves. And whether we directly participated in that or were simply a member of a culture that at one time normalized that behavior, it shaped us. We can’t undo that level of dehumanizing in one or two generations. I believe Black Lives Matter is a movement to rehumanize black citizens. All lives matter, but not all lives need to be pulled back into moral inclusion. Not all people were subjected to the psychological process of demonizing and being made less than human so we could justify the inhumane practice of slavery.”) that made it click for them and they like to use to make it click for others, and there’s also this example that i think is probably pretty resonant for christians:
the point is, as with all the rest of this, that there are a lot of people out there who are alienated by the language (because there has been a billion-dollar media propaganda machine working overtime to make the language as alienating as possible) but not by the content of the argument. the right is SO good at messaging to its base by speaking their language, dog whistles and all. but because the democratic party is a coalition of moderates and liberals and leftists, you really have to be strategic about your messaging in a way that the right doesn’t. frankly, that’s why joe biden won - he made those same broad appeals to morality and civility and unity and prosperity that people want to hear.
i realize that everyone feels that if you have the moral high ground, you shouldn’t have to put in work to persuade people because they should automatically grasp that you’re right, but like i said above, this is america, and it doesn’t work like that. we need to talk to people, not in buzzwords or in highly stigmatized language that risks turning them off immediately, but in language that already means something to them. if you want to persuade people you have to actually make things sound appealing to them, whether that means evoking warm and fuzzy mental images or appealing to their principles and moral convictions and religious beliefs or just doing your best to sound like the adults in the room. you gotta do this stuff to build a majority instead of just a plurality within this party, because that’s just what we need to win.
I listened to the ILSR’s “building local power” podcast on the Green Tea Alliance, and it turns out you can absolutely market solar energy co-ops to trump supporters in Florida by focusing on:
How much they hate their energy bill
Opening up the electricity market to competition, so the invisible hand of the free market can keep prices down
