keepcarrot [she/her]

In order to counter the Trump bot accusations going on this thread:

The Trump appointed Supreme Justices are conservative stooges that are clearly just trying to ram through as much conservative stuff into the justice system as they can. The cagey abortion rights the US enjoyed (though sometimes not in practicality) were abolished, which is bad. There were in fact a lot of posts about this on hexbear at the time it was happening. You can now search this if you so desire.

Trump escalated sanctions against Cuba. This comes up from time to time, but he’s obviously not in a position to directly affect this at this precise moment, though the cudgel of “swing state” Florida Cubans is used to avoid any de-escalation.

Trump-supporting state legislatures are escalating attacks against trans people, both as a practical threat (bigots can attack trans people under the assumption that their state’s law enforcement won’t do anything about it) and as a legal escalation to remove any federal protections for trans people. This is also bad. Trump is also partly running on this. This comes up frequently on hexbear.

Trump didn’t succeed in the wall (which itself has had varied response amongst his supporters), but he did increase funding for ICE, expanded detention camps etc. This comes up when it’s in the news, but Trump specific policies don’t tend to be news regarding this right now for some reason.

Trump’s tax cuts for certain sectors and the ultra-wealthy. idk why you’d think hexbear would support this?

and so on

I’m not sure why I’m doing this. I’m not sure why people are surprised that a news aggregation and commentary site tends to talk about things that are currently happening as opposed to things that happened three years ago.

I dropped acid and watched this movie (while hungover too, generally bad ideas) and came up with a thesis for an essay that the monster was the creeping influence of neoliberalism. This was in the same trip where I was reading Graeber’s Debt. I peaked around the time Graeber was talking about free market principles in the 9th Century Islamic empire in the Indian Ocean.

Looking back, not a super strong case was made. Not nothing, and Carpenter’s Halloween and They Live speak a lot about American modernity. Maybe I’ll give it a shot

I should test this with my locals

But someone else might get land, silly tankie

I remember my sphere was obsessed with the turn of the millenium

That’s how you know technology was inside them. I vaguely remember we had an eMac which had a combined CRT and computer inside it. Do not remember liking it

Yes, I am the butterfly

I know some “free Speech advocates” think it means an audience has to stand there and be harassed wherever, at least when it comes to “their side”

I know a few people living in them and similar odds and ends. Lots of trips into the house for amenities, some pissing into a jug because the walk is too long for regular bathroom trips

Debit card. Some of my clients pay in cash, which slowly gets used up as I remember it. Sometimes random homeless people end up with $20 because I don’t have change.

Thanks, it’s getting better, stress depending

I am a boring “functional” drunk that can type and speak clearly while blackout, but won’t remember anything and will occasionally say a completely off-the-wall thing haha

Or people who just happen not to be in/around Illinois

In Australia, at least, our “Liberal” party is OG Liberal, but in the US Liberal has come to mean a sort of coastal consensus. Just throwing darts at the board, it’s a cagey alliance of progressives, Hollywood, Seattle, and New York, with varying opinions on “property rights” and capital.

Based on my fairly cursory reading, this split in the usage of the word “liberal” comes from the influence of liberal scholars in the US like Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill, who didn’t have the same clout in Europe or the UK. Their emancipatory theory, accept it or not, was whether minorities (e.g. Black people, women, indigenous people) could potentially have access to Capital, assuming it was accessible at all. You can still see echoes of this today in the “Margaret Thatcher girlboss” meme. If you want a short primer of “Liberals vs Conservatives” in the US context, you could say its a competition between current capital owners and potential capital owners, though obviously there’s a lot of cultural signifiers, political inertia, and alliances that in the short term go against that.

Leftist is an even more nebulous term. A lot of libs (in the US sense) consider themselves on the left, earnestly so. It could be defined as anti-capitalist in the modern context, but that would be the speaker declaring such a thing to their audience more than any cultural definition with any power. Obviously, the original reference to the French parliament, where more or less aristocratic parties were arranged from right to left, no longer has much relevance. Liberalism has subsumed aristocracy; the only aristocrats with much power do so within the context of Liberalism. It’s hard to say if vanguardism vs direct worker democracy is more or less left, I think the dichotomy breaks down at some point, partly motivated by the equivocation of “left” meaning “more good”.

I think its worthwhile to consciously avoid getting caught up in these games, especially at the behest of a bunch of online nerds. Take stock of yourself and the needs of your (real life) communities, advocate for their interests but also help them to improve. What else can one truly do?

(I am rather drunk right now, not in a fighty mood)

I don’t remember what my og argument was

I wish I was as funny as I think I am

I’ll share the bits when I get home tonight. Being drunk and fat tonight

It clearly has lower utility than being able to buy drugs legally

Battle Passes

Like Thermopylae?

Omg, 106 new comments! Hot dog, here I go!