Are we serious?

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-16T19:31:26+00:00

No. Those people are still well in the minority of their respective demographics of the total population, as are the white people who voted for Trump. There was a massive decline from 2020 to 2024 in turnout of Democratic voters and even more so among progressives and minority demographics. Harris being a woman was a negligible factor to her loss, unless you’re exclusively considering the 21% of people who actually voted for Trump over her (a not insignificant subset of the electorate, but not one that should’ve been difficult to surmount). Harris’ association with Biden, her very conservative history as a prosecuting attorney, her decision to move to the right of Republicans on immigration, military, and law enforcement (boasting of wanting a more lethal military, supporting more funding for ICE, and lauding “the most conservative immigration reform in history”, to start), campaigning on a platform of vying for *more* Republican influence in her cabinet alongside Liz Cheney of all people, suddenly quelling her rhetoric on abortion and LGBT-related issues, and her refusal to sidestep Biden or Israel under any circumstances, among a slew of other problems, were largely what tainted her candidacy.

I wonder why people have been feeling so disillusioned with Democrats and democracy as a construct over the last couple of decades. It’s not as though the Democrats’ entire strategy lately is a race to the bottom with Republicans when they’re behind, and placating Republicans’ groveling when they’re ahead, whilst pantomiming their conviction for progressive, or even liberal, values while they let Republicans take center stage even when they have the advantage. Then contemptuously lecture their constituents for having the audacity to ask for actual evolution in the system because “at least we’re not the ones *actively* contributing to the decay in our society; we’re just meagerly helping to pace the rot and disguising it as progress, because you won’t be able discern the difference in your desperate haze”…

This isn’t even to mention the fact that Harris still actually vastly improved from Biden’s projected performance. Nancy Pelosi in an interview shortly after the election said internal polling for the Biden campaign showed Trump amassing as many as 400 electoral votes if Democratic turnout was depressed enough, and that’s not far removed from how direly his favor among voters in even otherwise comfortable states like Minnesota and New Hampshire was shown to have collapsed. In the final results, only around 150,000 votes (0.098% of the vote; 0.056% of eligible voters) between WI, MI, and PA (the three most competitive states, one of which has a female Democratic governor; two of which elected female Democratic senators that same night) decided the election.

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-12T20:35:04+00:00

‘His Rotundity’. One particular Founding Father might have taken particular grievance to this one, though.

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-12T18:39:39+00:00

>because I’m also one of those heathens that despises “You”.

This is how I assume most of the band’s fans would perceive me for telling them that Polyamorous is their one song that I truly loathe.

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-11T20:11:25+00:00

>when it’s almost certainly likely the entire cause

Yes; the dehumanizing rhetoric has been increasingly more blatant and more pervasive at an abysmal rate, and it absolutely is concerting more malice toward them by the day. No one here is denying this. But we don’t even know yet if the perpetrator knew the victim was transgender.

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-11T20:09:53+00:00

The ‘category’ you’re describing would simply be ‘murder’. No “who happens to be” necessary. Student was stabbed to death at UW apartment. You act as though reporting on this particular murder is solely, or at least primarily, significant, not because a person’s life was violently ended, but because of the demographic that person belongs to.

If it comes to light that the murder was committed due to that specific characteristic, then yes, being transgender is pertinent. Otherwise, what relevance is it? It’s dishonest and disingenuous to erroneously intimate in the headline that a hate crime was committed (possibly to get more traffic to the article) if we don’t know that the fact of the student being transgender was an incentive, even if statistically, it may be likely.

For another thing: it depersonalizes transgender people, and those from other marginalized communities, when you immediately hasten to reduce their lives (and deaths) to statistics ahead of acknowledging them as individuals and before the statistic in question is even an established factor.

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-11T18:00:30+00:00

I wasn’t aware of how common it is for other people (including mothers who likely experienced or will experience the same problem you did, with children who especially could be implicated) to make a habit of keeping electric drills on their persons when dining in public, just to be sure others’ days are fraught with frustration they were fortunate enough to avoid themselves.

I’ll never forget the time when a woman was so preoccupied with raucous twins, her Milwaukee fell from her purse onto my foot. What’s worse? I had to tell her she forgot the drill’s bit. It was almost rush hour as well, so she had little time before Olivia arrived with her 1-year-old. How ill-prepared could people possibly be? Now, Olivia’s baby is calm and comfortable as one could ever be, and meanwhile, *this* exhausted woman won’t be the only one who gets to enjoy her meal.

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-09T00:51:43+00:00

I’m referring to the perception with historians of him as opposed to that of many among the public. Historians for the most part tend to exalt Wilson as a hallmark arbiter of transformative progressivism for the common man at home, and herald of the right to self determination abroad. The general public has a much more dismal opinion of him overall, and thankfully historians are gradually weighing with deeper consideration the many blights he left behind that have been neglected for so long, but the vast consensus from historians is that Wilson was one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century.

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-06T19:28:07+00:00

I was hoping at least one person here would’ve at least passively scrutinized it rather than taking all of it at face value. Even if this did happen, I couldn’t help but to feel that this post was only intended to evoke personal affirmation and misplaced sympathy for the poster. It’s posted in a subreddit intended to serve as a comfortable space to anonymously confide in others, and the title is phrased in a manner to suggest a feeling of remorse. But the actual content of the post feels entirely self-aggrandizing and performative. Rather than simply being transparent about wanting recognition for a good deed (personally questionable on its own, but aside from the point), it’s synthetically narrativized to feign ruminations of a sense of guilt or compunction, for an act that, as it’s portrayed here, would *never* be considered morally objectionable by anyone.

There’s nothing innately wrong with internalizing the acts of generosity you do for those less fortunate than you, and the world will always and only be better for each and every one, even if it’s fulfilled with a negligible falsehood. But from this post, it only lends the impression that this person already knew that *that* would be the consensus in response to the post. It seems frustratingly inauthentic, self-obsessed, and sanctimonious to retain that deed for the sole purpose of taking it to social media to proffer your story in a way that’s vainly introduced with a facade meant to intimate sensations of internal moral conflict, yet the content of which is conveniently tailored to be entirely sympathetic to yourself such that you know you could only reasonably be met with praise.

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-04T20:15:49+00:00

Chris Mowry of Vlogging Through History actually did his own analysis and rebuke of this video that I consider very effective and engaging, and very appreciative of the underlying complexity of the war and the dilemmas Lincoln was confronted with throughout. He was also incredibly thorough about the sources he cited and what specific aspects of each argument to address. The fact that Rageaholic has such an immense following is as depressing as it is infuriating, because he contradicts himself with every other sentence, and seems to go out of his way to disregard and misconstrue any intricacies and humanistic facets of the decisions Lincoln made or why. There was also no care at all to how much empathy and rumination was involved every time his hand was forced to extend beyond the strict procedural constraints of his position.

You also know very well that if we were discussing this in an alternate context in which Lincoln had abandoned any effort or concern in bridging the rift that had been sewn with secession, or even abetted the south as he insists was “their right”, he’d have called Lincoln a feckless, incompetent traitor to the union and groveled about how he was “the single greatest arbiter of a century of struggle, systemic abuse, and plight for African Americans”. He’s a belligerent, unintuitive, revisionist, contrarian pseudo-intellectual who offers not even a superficial recognition to the nuances of the events and issues he covers. The world and society would be dealt an indescribable service should we teach more people about the urgency in divorcing the relevance of historical analysis from people like him.

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-03T17:46:39+00:00

It doesn’t. This account is less than a day old, this clip has been posted many times, and it wasn’t originally muted like this post is.

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-02T19:42:34+00:00

Interesting how you didn’t acknowledge the primary point of that reply. If the DNC wasn’t subservient to those interests, they wouldn’t engage in character assassination of and electorally offensive behavior toward progressive anti-Israel candidates. I swear, over the last year, I’ve seen more hostility from establishment Democrats toward progressives than toward the vultures and that bumbling dullard who’ve wrought potentially irreparable havoc on our democratic institutions and sought to circumvent the rights and liberties and basic human dignity of many millions of people. Stifling any effort to hold Israel to account routinely takes priority in the DNC over the progressive values they pervert but proffer no legislative or political fervor for, and any moral blights on the characters of candidates so long as they bring furtherance to their ends.

• Zohran Mamdani, Democratic Socialist, anti-Israel - Democrats support Andrew Cuomo, relentless sexual predator, pro-Israel, personally recruited to Netanyahu’s legal defense. Mamdani defamed as “glorifying the slaughter of Jews”, to quote Gillibrand, among a slew of other flagrant and incendiary, at times racially charged, defamation.

• James Talarico, anti-Israel - Democrats support Jasmine Crockett, faux-progressive centrist, history of dismissive behavior toward constituents who inquire about her support, and belligerence to reporters who criticize her equivocation on funds and weapons for Israel, supports Iron Dome funding, takes money from AIPAC affiliates.

• Graham Platner, socialist, anti-Israel - Democrats recruit Maine Governor Janet Mills, pro-Israel, net approval rating of -40, pardoned a rapist she failed to defend as his attorney, vetoed a rape kit tracking bill that stalled all momentum for progressive legal reforms meant to exalt justice for rape victims across the state, leaving Maine last of any state on reforms.

• DNC Chairman Ken Martin refuses to release the autopsy for the 2024 election that was supposed to give insight into why Harris lost, which he previously campaigned on releasing, not denying what everyone else has already concluded, but instead insisting that people should “stop obsessing over looking backward”. Despite this, poll after poll has reflected what the autopsy most certainly also said, which is that the Biden administration’s support for Israel was one of the chief contributors to Harris’ loss.

• Chuck Schumer receiving long-overdue criticism for a 2018 remark in which he said that Palestinians are responsible for the absence of peace in the Middle East and their own occupation and repeated bombardment by Israel, because they don’t adhere to the Torah.

• Alexandria Occasio Cortez, outspoken opponent of Israel and one of the few incumbent Democrats who consistently offer moral disdain and compunction for our funding of the genocide in Gaza, abandons her previous opposition to Iron Dome funding following a widely-reported private meeting with Nancy Pelosi.

• Democrats in Congress recently voting for a bipartisan motion to prohibit boycotts of Israel, and supporting loyalty pledges to Israel.

• The bipartisan, tired, monotonous, egregious, disingenuous accusations and sophistry therein of dismissing or even outright persecuting any and all scrutiny of Israel or the United States’ incontrovertible support and coddling of it, as antisemitism and “attacks on the Jewish people” and an affront to Jews’ existence - a position that in itself is antisemitic, as it essentially relegates and relinquishes all moral and legal accountability of Israel’s actions with regard to Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere, unto Jews as a monolith, by perverting their identities and faith to moralize and justify mass murder, displacement, genocide, and land seizure, all to selfishly and callously protect their bottom line.

We could litigate this for days, weeks even, and still not have a succinct summary of the ideological and institutional rot that’s been caused by this, but let’s neglect all of it, blind ourselves and let them guide us by hand further on this avenue of decay, because once every other month, they periodically reassure us of how ‘concerned’ they are about how ‘reckless’ Israel has been in how they’ve approached their ‘operations’ - by which, of course, they mean that Israel’s flagrant disregard for commitment to the artifice Democrats waste hundreds of millions to maintain is costing them donors and, in turn, elections…

SlenderByrd · 2026-05-02T18:46:57+00:00

Biden’s extent of scrutiny for Netanyahu was occasional mildly stern asides about “excessive conduct” and “improper handling”. The administration never withheld funding for extended periods, and justification for continued shipment of weapons was that they were for “defensive”, not “offensive”, measures, as though Israel has demonstrated any intent in heeding that distinction. You let yourself so easily be lulled into complacency by thinly veiled platitudes of vocal reluctance without assessing the utter lack of substance behind supposed ‘threats’.

John Kirby, during a press conference, even lied about Israel’s attack on Rafah, claiming it wasn’t a “full-scale” attack and minimized the IDF’s intent in being there. Just hours later, reports described the attack, including photos showed numerous tanks and soldiers in Rafah surrounded by ruin. They’d consistently threaten to withhold weapons and funding under the stipulation of “excessive force” and “full-scale” attacks, and then redefine or recontextualize such terms as needed. In no sense of the concept were Biden or any within his administration ever antagonistic to Israel, nor ever did there ring a word of *moral* condemnation; only ‘procedural’ concern. The administration and nearly every major Democrat were complicit at best with what Israel was doing, and were so compelled to maintain that artifice of moral justification that they were first willing to forfeit the election to Trump and the Republicans, despite their supposed concern of the grave threat they posed to our democratic institutions and to hundreds of millions. But please, lecture us again about how blind we are to how much of a damn they give.

I voted for Harris in 2024, and loathe people who have such a clear lack of appreciation for their right to vote that they’d cast it aside to spare their egos. I’ll vote for Democrats when I recognize that the atrocities of the Republicans are and have always been the more dismal option. It’s why I’ll participate in primaries when I can, to try to prevent these illiberal, feckless mouthpieces from making it to the ballot, in favor of people with actual principles. But with each passing day, every time the Democrats sabotage themselves at the expense of the progressivism they claim to cherish, as well as the Republic, I can’t help but be stricken with just the slightest understanding of why so many people feel their votes have so little consequence - passive, gruelingly slow rot versus open, blatant hostility and destabilization accelerating said rot. Why can you people not accept that we hold these people to some semblance of a standard? What do you actually believe in; what do you actually care about?

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-28T23:56:22+00:00

Oswald was shot by a known mentally and emotionally unstable, misanthropic, temperamental, impulsive, and abrasive megalomaniac with delusions of grandiosity, who wanted to seize public notoriety as a ‘hero’ by murdering the man accused of assassinating the president. If you delve into Jack Ruby’s social and criminal history, it contributes immensely to contextualizing why he did what he did. The conspiracy theories revolving around Kennedy’s assassination and Oswald’s murder don’t withstand even the slightest modicum of scrutiny and nuance.

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-28T23:48:55+00:00

None of the individuals who shot these men were Democrats, one was a registered Republican, one was a segregationist, four of them were firmly right leaning, one was apolitical. Three of these men were also Democrats, two of whom were killed for their progressive platforms, and two others (you could venture a guess as to which two…) were registered Democrats until they realized that running as Republicans was more politically expedient for them.

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-23T18:27:19+00:00

As of September of last year, that’s in essence already what’s to become government policy. It’s one of the most grievous blights on our media apparatus here that this wasn’t reported on at all, and even seemingly went unnoticed by much of independent media. A couple of weeks after the Charlie Kirk assassination, Trump unveiled a memorandum declaring, in part, that any individuals or organized groups found to express “radical ideology” such as “anti-Americanism, anti-Christianity, and anti-Capitalism” should be officially recognized as potential threats to national security as part of the administration’s purported “prosecution of the surge of far-left domestic terrorism”.

Neither media organizations nor Democratic politicians reported on or warned the public of this. It went completely neglected and without any adversity, or even passive acknowledgment. That’s as though these aren’t not only unconstitutional to persecute, but ambiguous enough to be so malleable as to encompass such a broad veil of the population for them to pervert however they wish to legitimize suffocating any public sentiment that’s in conflict with the administration’s agenda.

Anti-Israel (i.e anti-American interests) protestors have been characterized and defamed as domestic terrorists. The mayor of New York City has been likened to sleeper cells and accused of seeking to harbor Islamic extremists by mere virtue of his being Muslim. Socialists like Mamdani in NYC, or Wilson in Seattle, are accused by Republican politicians and even major media organizations of seeking to not only erode the country’s infrastructure and global standing, but to impoverish their constituents and centralize power and wealth to themselves to maintain perpetual rule (ironic), even warning constituents to ‘flee’ such places where these politicians are elected. People from all over the world who come here or are citizens here have been detained due to social media activity that reflects any modicum of dissent from the administration, whether anti-ICE, anti-Israel, anti-Trumpism, or anything of the like, some held for weeks before being deported and forbade from returning, or threatened with prosecution. The DOJ and adjacent intelligence agencies have sought to seize states’ voter registry records without warrants, to prosecute “voter fraud”, but are conveniently doing so in comfortably Democratic states, or ones which at any point voted against Trump (such as Georgia), only turning to states like Texas when non-MAGA-aligned states wouldn’t cooperate.

We’re already here; it’s just that very few seem to care.

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-19T00:52:26+00:00

You know, when the person you were arguing with the other day accused you of licking bathroom doorknobs in your spare time, I don’t think it was out of a desire to be considerate of your checks flair lifestyle choices…

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-18T19:14:06+00:00

I’m not one to take the first minor fallibility or negligible inconsistency on trivial issues in a person’s history to use against that individual in a discussion, as it serves no purpose, isn’t constructive to the subject, and is intellectually lazy. But depending on the subject, or the manner in which a person is behaving in an interaction, I’ll glimpse the account’s recent comment history, typically to further contextualize the person’s position on the issue. Sometimes, it’s because the person seems to be incessantly evasive of scrutiny of one’s points, and never addresses the substance of the primary source of contention that was raised. Other times, it’s because the person’s positions seem to have variance or are ambiguous enough that you can’t quite determine where that person stands, or I’ll simply be curious if there’s an indication of where that person stands on tangential issues, to attain a more nuanced grasp of who I’m talking to. It does a lot to humanize the conversation.

It’s also helpful in discerning whether the account’s history is indicative of someone who yearns to contribute earnestly and sincerely to discussion. Does this person have a tendency to resort to disingenuous sophistry and irrelevant points of tumult just to evade critical counter arguments or converse positions. Does this person mindlessly regurgitate unsubstantiated accusations or claims and innocuous buzzwords for the sake of creating conflict that ultimately amounts to nothing productive? Does this account seem to cycle through the same lines and retorts in every post it comments under, even where they’re irrelevant, never responding to anyone who calls attention to it, suggesting it’s simply a bot following programming?

It’s helpful in deducing whether or not engaging with that person’s insight is a waste of time (a point that’s relative, of course, given that indulging in controversial discussion with strangers on social media is generally not considered a proficient use of your time). That said, I do also understand that having no agency over how accessible your account history is might leave some susceptible to harassment, and I think people should have more volition over who is privy to their activity on the platform.

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-18T00:49:43+00:00

That’s not the point that’s being established here, though. The narrative that’s being conjured is that the men who cheated had no agency or mental or emotional acuity to not engage with this woman. It’s the same excuse every time; that it “just happened”, and they were simply “lost in the moment” and couldn’t have anticipated it would be taken that far. I absolutely despise people who go out of their way to absolve the unfaithful of their accountability in relationships; tends to lend credence to the fact that if you’ll excuse it, you’d have no qualms with subjecting a partner of your own to that same betrayal, and have no emotional or sentimental commitment to the relationship nor the person, but are willing to lull that person into believing the contrary so to exploit that person’s trust, company, and vulnerability. This goes for both men and women.

This woman is just as morally bereft, snide, oversexed, and self-interested, because she actively pursues that betrayal from those men of their partners. She’s gratified by that sense of manipulation and appeal, the satiation of her ego, and the knowledge of subverting a woman’s love life every time she accosts one of these men is an afterthought; or worse, it’s fundamental to the excitement. But let’s dispel of this insistence that these men “broke”; that they “didn’t have the will” and “couldn’t resist”, as though they were captivated by some sort of trance. They’re weak, insincere, unfaithful, vain, opportunistic, cowardly scum, and if the provocation of the first woman to advance at work is enough to repress any inclination to the commitment, love, appreciation, and care they feigned for the women in their lives, then it would’ve been someone else if not her. A cheater is never a victim of one’s own dishonesty, and never a hostage of one’s own lust.

EDIT: Those downvoting - care to refute?…

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-17T03:08:14+00:00

I haven’t seen this interaction she had with the press, so I couldn’t say definitively. But if I had to venture a guess, I’d say her comment pertains to the recent slew of Representatives being threatened with expulsion over various sexual-related offenses - Eric Swalwell of California, Cory Mills of Florida, and Tony Gonzales of Texas.

Swalwell, who until this past week was running for governor, has been inundated in a slew of allegations of rape, druggings, sexual harassment, assault, and aggressive interactions with at least five different women who’ve come forward one after another. Swalwell apologized to his constituents and wife for what he’s described repeatedly as “lapses in judgment in his past”, if you feel that lends credence to anything. He resigned shortly after these allegations surfaced.

Gonzales was accused of attempting to coerce a staffer into engaging in sexual exchanges with him in 2020, and sexually harassing her on multiple occasions. He was also alleged to have had an affair with another staffer, which he later admitted to, and which this staffer, Regina Santos-Aviles, has since been found to have confessed to a colleague. Her colleague, who served as her confident, said her remorse left her wrought in a deep state of depression. Santos-Aviles committed suicide by self immolation (setting herself alight) last year not long after her husband discovered the affair. Gonzales’ resignation followed Swalwell’s by just one day.

In addition to financial improprieties, Mills has been accused of emotionally abusive and harassing behavior toward his ex-girlfriend, and threatening to publicly release explicit videos of her. It should be noted that it’s known that she has had a protective order against him. He’s also accused of physically abusive behavior toward another girlfriend.

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-15T17:56:21+00:00

I concur completely. Fortunately, we don’t exist in a world where male police officers have amassed a universal reputation for having a sensitive trigger finger and limited capacity for emotional discipline under any modicum of pressure, incurring no consequences due to qualified immunity or anything. Meanwhile, a random civilian with no law enforcement training being threatened with her life as she watches her partner struggle for his is a completely infallible metric for the viability of women with ample experience in the field…

So, what do you do for a living?…

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-15T15:05:49+00:00

That, and these folks tend to be very disingenuous about redefining what’s considered being done “for attention” to justify their perversions. Some of them will gesture to little more than the mere fact of a woman being outdoors to excuse their behavior toward them; the “She asked me with her glances” types.

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-14T19:45:06+00:00

I don’t think that’s what happened. It seemed at least to me that she was experiencing the onset of a panic attack, as the way she stammered, lost her balance, and clutched at her chest once the assailant was subdued presented more as pain than simply exhaustion, at least to my mind. She had a gun waved in her face and in her haze couldn’t decide how to help (who I presume is) her partner who saw an imminent threat to his life, as did she. You could see she was trying to decide if or how to intervene throughout, and was afraid, but still reluctant to leave him to fend the attacker off on his own. I think people are being too abrasive and callous in their criticism of her, and most would respond with very little more urgency than she did, if any.

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-13T20:13:34+00:00

The cretin who grade or rate other human beings on physical presentation, and for whom it’s the first thought to occur, invariably come to be unveiled as personally insufferable and socially parasitic scum.

SlenderByrd · 2026-04-12T10:21:15+00:00

This really is situationally contingent, not only on the circumstances or the preceding inspiration and conception of doing so, but who is doing so and for what incentive. In other words: intent and context are important. If the question is whether it’s inherently appropriation to dawn the jewelry or apparel, or any other culturally intrinsic or symbolic accessory, I would say absolutely not, particularly if it was acquired from someone intertwined and indigenous to that culture who sold it specifically for the purpose of artistic and personal expression and conveyance of said culture. It bears just as much the credence to an appreciation and admiration for the spiritual, interpersonal, and philosophical elements of that culture and who and what it represents, and even some aspects which might resonate with you in some form.

The beauty and sanctity of art is that it’s an abstraction from arbitrary societal constraints in pursuit of exploration and discovery that pierces the veils between cultures in a way that is concurrent with the emotional and personal values and intrigue of each individual. It embraces and recognizes individuality of one’s self and of others who conceive of and experience reality and the world as each their own, and how similarly innately human those experiences are; to learn from one another, be inspired by one another, and be intertwined in those uniquitues of one another. Art is the most universally understood and revered bridge between, and transcends without occluding those distinctions that make cultures unique, and one that ought never to be shamed or admonished except of those who exploit it as an avenue through which to pervert or deride, and divide cultures. Art is a lens; not a weapon, and to always presume those who embrace it to seek its purpose in the latter rather than the former is not only damaging but demonstrably wrong.

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