Would you prefer the term malignant psychopath? Or sociopath? Same general outcome in meaning, just more clinical. The way it comes across to me in a context like this, is it's trying to convey how shockingly deceptive and anti-social a person is. It would be a different kind of thing to say "people with white hair are demons" or something. Bill Clinton can choose not to say victim-blaming things, but he can't choose what his natural hair color is.

Does this sound lib to you?

Trump has vowed to carry out a massive police state crackdown on immigrants, pledging to round up millions of undocumented people in militarized raids that would take place in every part of the country. He has whipped up support for this mass deportation campaign using the most vile, racist rhetoric that slanders immigrants as violent criminals.

The Democratic Party has reacted to this by essentially adopting Trump’s anti-immigrant program, but without his demonizing language. Harris touted her plan to vastly expand Border Patrol, and emphasized the support of the Border Patrol officers’ association for her policy. She presented herself as a “tough on crime” prosecutor ready to take on “the border”.

Not exactly short, but I like Blood in My Eye by George Jackson and I think there are audio readings of it out there as well as text. I feel like it's a good one for jumping straight past the risk of "working class, but western chauvinist" phase right into the experiences and thought process of a black revolutionary who put in a lot of theory and practice work while being an imprisoned enemy of the state, and in the context of the US. Making it more concretized and direct for a USian than, say, State and Revolution, which is also an eye-opening one in its own way, but could be read abstractly as "the working class needs to seize power" without any regard for the unique conditions as they relate to the US.

That'd be wild. Would not be surprised if Russia fear-mongering goes into overdrive.

You know, I was trying to figure out how I feel about the results because like, I knew no matter which it would be, it wasn't going to be a big difference to me (both genocidal imperialists, ya know). But like, I think what I figured out is I have some secondhand anxiety about it? Like I have some anxiety about how other people are going to react to it, because people have been hyped up to such a degree to believe it's a world-ending scenario.

Good thing I didn't bet on it then.

I think there's a number of reasons, but a couple contributing are probably:

1. They're actually a lot closer in views to republicans than they are those who are even a little "left" and whether they tend to be all that conscious of it or not, it can be a system shock when they hear where people are drawing a line. I mean, I saw someone online in one place I go, who said words to the effect of they love the democratic party, but they need to do better. I could not even begin to imagine using the word "love" anywhere near the democratic party myself, unless it was like "love the thought of them not being a party anymore."

2. They get told in the media to blame "the left" and "3rd party voters" for election losses rather than being told to take responsibility for failing to court those voters.

What pops into my head is a quote from the movie A Man for All Seasons (I've seen it numerous times cause of my Catholic family members and their like for it). There's a quote from it that goes like:

Sir Thomas More: [to Will Roper] Now, listen, Will. Two years ago you were a passionate churchman. Now you're a passionate Lutheran. We must just pray that when your head's finished turning, your face is to the front again.

It feels like every other headline with her is "damn, she's just a lib", "no wait, she might be more than that". Maybe she's just ignorant and learning as she goes, maybe she is a form of controlled opposition. I dunno, but hopefully she gets more clear as time goes on. Given how these things tend to go though, if she does get clear-headed enough, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the moment when western imperialist media stops talking about her and we only ever hear from her anymore from other sources. Western imperialists love the "debate ideas in public" conception of things until those ideas involve coherent communism and anti-imperialism, and then they suddenly remember what deplatforming is and sweep those ideas under the rug as fast and brutally as they can.

Yes. It feels similar to what I've been learning about with the history of occupied Korea in that way. US props up government run by Syngman Rhee that is rabidly suppressive and violent. [Skipping ahead some] DPRK forces almost take over occupied Korea, with Syngman Rhee fleeing, but US along with UN forces (which are at this point in time basically beholden to the US from what I can gather about how Blowback was presenting it) intervenes, led by the rabidly violent MacArthur, without which Korea would prob just be Korea today and run by DPRK.

Of course, difference with Korea is Korea as a whole is a legitimately named region and israel is a made up colonizer state, but if we think of it as what gets called "South Korea" being like israel, both are basically states / territorial divisions made up by colonizer/occupier forces and are historically dependent on those forces because they are lone outposts of terror in a region that wants peace and self-determination.

It makes sense, in other words, that these sort of ghoulish outposts would be so dependent on support from imperialists/colonizers in other regions. They are an invader in the region they occupy and they terrorize, if not genocide, the locals. Which is going to make them violently unpopular to said locals and, thankfully in the case of israel, is at least starting to make them viscerally unpopular to the rest of the world too. Though it's little consolation with all the mass murdering they're getting away with so far.

Similar train of thought, the other day I was posing a question to someone who can be pretty lib, like, if the republicans are such a terrible fascist threat, why aren't the powers in charge doing more to suppress them? Instead of just letting them do what they want electorally and being like "we'll vote them out." I think I actually got through to them a bit on that specific point. Like existential threat to "democracy", supposedly, but we're gonna let em do a popularity contest and get power that "takes away democracy", what sense does that make.

My prediction is:

• If it's close at all, both sides (of the same ideology) will be rabid

• If it's a clear win for Kamala, Trump and co will crow about how it was stolen and use stochastic terrorism and/or try to get the supreme court to give him the election anyway

• If it's a clear win for Trump, Kamala and the democratic party will be like, "Welp, shucks, that's how democracy goes, sometimes you hand over the reigns peacefully to fascism! Guess we have to fight against them in 2022, plz send another $10." Meanwhile, liberal voters will be like, "Whiplash, wth democratic party, you can't give in that easy!" And then some people to the left of them will be like, "We told you it would be like this" and they'll be like, "Oh hey, yeah, you exist. It was your fault that we lost, 'the left'. How dare you two remaining voters of a left-leaning persuasion in a country ravaged by red scare paranoia vote in fascism!"

Edit: Meant to say 2026 in reference to midterms lol, but the slip there just shows how similar my brain is processing this to being like past elections.