US Politics, June 2018: This is a total goat rodeo.

moving to just up the numbers obv does very little, but moving to "get involved" can have impact i bet

tho be ready to stand accused of carpetbagging

to be fair in a lot of local elections one vote does indeed count

“I don’t like short people or tall people, I like middle people – people from Wyoming,”

heh

I see what you did there

I have for sure thought about finishing my teaching degree, embedding somewhere conservative, and infecting as many little minds as possible with my libruhl agenda. I just don't know if I'm built to withstand existence in the midst of hardcore Trump country.

People—particularly younger ones—are likely more mobile now than ever.

currently the opposite is true

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardgano/2018/02/05/unlike-previous-generations-millennials-arent-moving-but-neither-are-other-age-groups/#3800421b7093

nobody has money to move/homes are too expensive

I might consider buying a house when my household has less than $180K in student loan debt

yeah, I could move to a red state but I would almost certainly be unemployed with my skill set

just like everybody else soon will be in red states

Every city is effectively a blue city in a red state. Moving into the country won’t change much; we need to keep depopulating the countryside.

go on...

xp yeah sure but the opposite is happening in (e.g.) Seattle, everyone's getting priced out

I know! Housing in Seattle is my top political issue.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/394171-poll-comstock-trailing-by-10-points-in-va-house-race

forming a critical mass in a sparsely populated state

https://www.opb.org/images/fetch/c_fill,h_300,q_90,w_400/http:/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/opb-media/artsandlife/2012/11/rajneeshpuram_main.jpg

moving to just up the numbers obv does very little, but moving to "get involved" can have impact i bet

― gbx, Tuesday, June 26, 2018 6:50 PM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya this is what i was about to say, guys like Jesse Myerson or Johnathan Smucker who've left NYC to go start grassroots orgs in Indiana and Pennsylvania are doing dope shit imo

What’s JM Smucker been up to, anyway? I liked his book

he tweetin, ever with a well considered analysis https://twitter.com/jonathansmucker

and in the way of a good leader he's "organizing with" (i.e. is a founder of) new local PA org Lancaster Stand Up that's doing GOTV work and confronting shitty PA pols

impossibly, i have still not read his goddam book despite literally everyone telling me to read it

I mean I live in Chile most of the year, I constantly get tipsy and make hard left turns and the women love it. It's still a pretty fucking conservative country where job listings say they are only looking for older men and abortion is illegal. I probably won't make a dent and I am likely viewed as one of those self involved americans but at least the idea is out there as not being science fiction.

Schumer and Pelosi continue to successfully hold their caucuses together: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/democrats-reject-gops-narrow-fix-to-trumps-family-separation-policy/2018/06/26/1c716b2e-7943-11e8-80be-6d32e182a3bc_story.html?utm_term=.2b2c8d4af574

We confronted @SenateMajLdr and @SecElaineChao with @ProPublica audio of children separated from their families at the border while leaving a @Georgetown event. We must #AbolishICE & #AbolishCBP! #FreedomforImmigrants pic.twitter.com/ljv70F3F0L

— Roberto (@Roberto62543651) June 26, 2018

good for them

in other news
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/26/judge-rejects-challenge-676814

if u think about it, every undocumented immigrant is a criminal, therefore trump is correct that they "bring crime" into the country! slam dunk! maga!

really makes you thing

oh by the by me n some pals are gonna go say hi at the frozen water headquarters tomorrow: https://www.facebook.com/events/252504972178951/

good luck!

if u think about it, every undocumented immigrant is a criminal, therefore trump is correct that they "bring crime" into the country! slam dunk! maga!

I've definitely encountered this argument before

when immigration is outlawed only outlaws will be immigrants

How about the argument that immigrant parents are "irresponsible" for "breaking the law with their children"

Trump's parents were irresponsible for not immediately dashing his brains out on the nearest rock following his birth

Their own 'brains' tbf.

Even removed from whatever pernicious influence they had over his upbringing, I have to wonder how many disassembled pets the Trump family had to go through before they were finally able to admit that Little Donnie just came out wrong.

I know this is a shitty thing to say, but I can't help but shake my head at the thought of left-liberal advocates contemplating moving to hard-red areas to enlighten the locals with progressive thinking. The people in Trumpland know what they want, they voted for what they want, they got what they want, and they're happy with what they got, for the most part. Expressing challenging opinions to people who are on some level aware that their beliefs are inequitable / NAGL / "un-P.C." simply causes them to double down. As a naïve outsider it looks to me that the only way this schism will resolve is to wait for the boomer bigots to die. Thanks to the gutting of the health system even 5-10 years will make pretty significant inroads into their numbers.

there's always more bigots in the heartland, my guy

I live in a very liberal part of a very liberal metropolitan area. A few weeks ago my wife's cousin visited from Omaha. One day here she was wearing a "resist" shirt, or something along those lines, and said it was so weird to be wearing it in a place where she didn't see a single MAGA hat, let alone several, on any given day.

there's always more bigots in the heartland, my guy

^^^

Yeah, you think the bigots will die out but hello, there is a bumper crop every year.

I also just want to move to GA. Bigots and zombies be damned.

xpost to myself Strangely, to me at least, my wife's cousin didn't seem particularly distressed, which must be a family trait, because all of the Omaha family have been died in the wool liberals who just step up and do their thing. One of my wife's grandmothers broke from her Methodist church after some 50 years when they didn't support gay marriage. The other grandmother would, or so I was told, stand on coffee tables and decry Nixon and the Vietnam war. Those people are heroes to me, and they never leave Nebraska. With the exception of my wife's gay (and married) cousin who left Nebraska for Kansas.

and in Trump districts you'll often meet people, often under 40, with, for example, gay best buds or gay relatives whose husbands/wives/lovers they accept. Then they go on Facebook.

why I would even bet that some of their best friends are black

One of the good ones!

Americans who live in single-family homes are always going to be a problem, is basically my heuristic. They are the worst demographic at every scale.

I'm pretty sure it's a causal relationship.

I'm in a single family home. My neighbors, on my block, are black, Irish, gay, special needs, Italian, Indian, old white folks, Latino, kids, no kids, divorced, mixed families. Assholes are assholes, especially if they're surrounded b other likeminded assholes, with no contrast to reveal to them that they are assholes.