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

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.

I mean in aggregate, yknow?

Oh, and my immediate neighbor, who is of Mexican descent and is married to a German, whose kids still, in this progressive paradise, get shit at school for being darker skinned.

Since moving into a single-fam home for 1st time as an adult I have caught myself having a few "the outside world is scary, my castle and kin needs to be protected at all costs" type thoughts so I get where you're coming from silby and yeah I think on aggregate there's something to it...but Josh also right that assholes are assholes and I gotta think the main factors are education/intelligence, parents as role models/morality teachers, direct experiences with wide variety of people, a strong and frequently-exercised empathy muscle, etc.

^^^People, a lot of white people, are fucking terrified of everything/willing to stab their mother to maintain what they think is godsent. Callback to that The Root article "white people are cowards."

But also about Europe. Most of it better than the US. FFS one can actually afford nice vegetables, bread and cheese here. Farmer's markets in the US are the most bougie. expensive shit.

xp to myself Those qualities are the commonalities I've noticed among non-assholes. However, if you go back a couplefew generations, pretty sure most had ancestors who lived in urban areas. Like my friends (and obv my family) had grandparents who were raised in urban areas in apartments, moved out to the burbs after WW2 to start their family, and instilled liberal mindsets in their kids, and on down the generations.

I gotta think the main factors are education/intelligence, parents as role models/morality teachers, direct experiences with wide variety of people, a strong and frequently-exercised empathy muscle, etc.

This is so right. Been thinking a lot about how parents, especially fathers, can shape this.

People, a lot of white people, are fucking terrified of everything/willing

Very small sample size and could be some data cherry-picking but I've noticed that people who have the typical "fear and loathing" conservative outlook are likewise scared to try new foods, go to unfamiliar places, deviate from routines, deviate from the crowd, and in an almost constant state of worry far out of proportion to any real threat.

Guess I'm echoing what those studies of conservative vs liberal brains have found huh. ie conservatives have larger amygdalas etc.

I guess my Boomer logic is that the fewer people voting who have direct memory of living a privileged, consequence-free lifestyle ignorant of its cost will be fewer, and thus the sense of entitlement (excuse me, "American freedom") will diminish a little.

yeah it's hard to argue with "fewer people ... will be fewer"

At this point I think the only thing that will dent Trump is if the economy seriously tanks - which of course it may well, what with trade wars and tax cuts that will mean there's no money in the coffers to deal with a downturn. But it's pretty depressing to think the only way out of this might be an economic crisis

Usually I'd say, "Fuck this guy," but Steve Schmidt is being unusually eloquent on Chris Hayes' show, and apparently he's going to help Democrats in the fall.

after watching woody harrelson as schmidt Game Change it's hard not to think of him as this charming, affable guy

^in^ Game Change