Category: Editorial

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America Editorial The Current Situation

U.S. Election post #3: Project 2025 comics! 

Since 1981, the American conservative think tank known as the Heritage Foundation — imagine decade-old mayonnaise in human form — have released a publication under their series of books called Mandate for Leadership, a right-wing “wish list” of things they’d like the U.S. federal government to do.

The latest edition, commonly known as Project 2025, is over 900 pages long, which is large enough to obfuscate its intent and dissuade the casual reader from diving in.

To counter this, a group of comics artists have pooled their talent to create the Stop Project 2025 Comic, which clearly and succinctly explains some key (and terrible) ideas in Project 2025:

  • Abortion
  • Anti-trans discrimination
  • Authoritarianism
  • Children
  • Christian nationalism
  • Climate
  • Cronyism
  • Education
  • EPA (Environment Protection Agency)
  • Executive Orders
  • Extreme Weather
  • Healthcare
  • Immigration
  • Internet freedom
  • Libraries
  • Militarism
  • Police Abuse
  • School lunches
  • Taxation
  • Teachers
  • Voting Matters
  • War on the Working Class

It’s a great way to learn about the details about Project 2025, and contains citations so that you can look it up in that odious manual, too. Check it out!

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Editorial Life Work

Your regular reminder

I disagree with hustle huckster Gary Vaynerchuk on a whole lot of things, but I do agree with him on the topic of comfort zones.

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America Editorial The Current Situation

U.S. Election post #2: Trump’s McCosplay is Dukakis’ tank ride all over again

Marc Canter (founder of MacroMind, which became Macromedia, which made Macromedia Director, the dev tool I used at my very first tech job), makes an excellent observation about Donald Trump’s McCosplay photo op: It’s got the same energy as 1988 presidential candidate Mike Dukakis’ cringey tank ride.

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Editorial Florida

Attention Florida drivers!

Bumper sticker on car bumper: “Using your turn signal is not ‘giving information to the enemy’.”
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America Editorial The Current Situation The Good Fight

Don’t vote with people who approvingly quote Hitler

Screenshots from the New York Times article “Conservative Moms, Charmed by Trump, Would Rather Avoid His Misogyny”

This recent article in the New York Times [it’s a gift link, you’ll be able to read it without a subscription] is a good reminder of how easily people abandon their principle when they think it will help them “win.”

The problem with siding with fascists — or quoting them — in order to be on “the winning team” is that they start off with a big, welcoming “circle”in group” when they need you — and then recategorize you into one of their “out groups” when you’re no longer useful. Moms for Liberty is willing to ignore Trump’s (and by extension, the Republican Party’s) disdain for women if it means that gay and trans kids people go back to being closeted and shunned.

Maybe, they hope, what he consistently and unfailingly says about women and how he views and treats them won’t be part of how he’ll govern. But he’ll get rid of the rainbow flags and gender-neutral bathrooms!

Vector art depicting a fasces.
A fasces — a bundle of rods with an embedded axe.
Roman magistrates carried them as symbols of their power, and they were later used as emblems of authority in Mussolini’s Italy.
Creative Commons image — click to see the source.

Lest you think I’m throwing around the term fascist as hyperbole for “evil,” or at least “people whose ideas I don’t like,” I’m not. I’m using it as the adjective that describes people who’ve bought into palingentic ultranationalism, a phrase made of two ten-dollar words that can be boiled down to these three points:

Palingenetic ultranationalism: - The nation is of utmost importance - The people running the nation should be a narrowly defined “us” - “We” should rule because it’s more or less, our destiny
  1. My nation is of the utmost importance
  2. The people running the nation should be a narrowly-defined “us”
  3. “We” should rule because it’s more or less our destiny

But once again, the New York Times buried the lede! The real story is in the correction at the end of the article:

Correction in article: “A correction was made on Sept. 1, 2024: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that a local chapter of Moms for Liberty had accidentally quoted Adolf Hitler in a newsletter. The group, which later issued an apology, was aware that the quote was from Hitler when the newsletter was published.”

Don’t vote with people who approvingly quote Hitler.

Worth watching

White Fascism, a disturbing yet necessary video by Ian Danskin and part of his video series, The Alt-Right Playbook, explains the topic very well.

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America Editorial The Current Situation

The U.S. Supreme Court is the ultimate “distracted boyfriend”

Need context?

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Editorial The Current Situation

And now, a message from the bear

Need context? It’s a recent internet debate, and you can find out more in this article, Women Are More Afraid of Men Than Bears, According to TikTok.

And if you don’t read the whole article, at least read its closing paragraph (added emphasis is mine):

The bear experiment shouldn’t make men mad, it should make them pause. The more we can be curious about the experiences of women under patriarchy, rather than question them, the better positioned we are to modify the systems that harm us all. The fact that this dialogue about gender-based violence could be uncomfortable is what makes it most imperative. Men should be bold and have that conversation, even if they’re scared. If women are strong enough to brave a bear alone in the woods, then surely men can muster up the courage to talk about the reason why.