Exactly. The biggest reason the United States is a wealthy place with the ability to pay for a good social safety net* isn’t because we have the best system of government or regulations or people or any of that nonsense politicians and pundits will say, it’s because we never had WWI and II play out across our territory and we haven’t had to waste a bunch of money protecting ourselves from Canada or Mexico.

Fuck a lot of what my country has done throughout history, but it’s got a great foundation for building something that doesn’t suck.

*Of course it’s definitely not doing this currently, but there’s potential here

The fuck would they have?

Lots of guns and zero humility or acceptance of their own mistakes. Also, Florida sinking into the ocean probably isn’t going to make anyone in that territory more well behaved.

Also also - it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the world to let this red state country come into existence, because when they aren’t attacking us they’d probably be flinging shit at places like Mexico and Cuba. Also, you know their environmental policies would be a fucking disaster that the global climate really can’t afford.

Usha Vance is the brilliant daughter of immigrant professionals, who was a clerk at the Supreme Court after studying at Yale and Cambridge universities

Really? Brilliant? Being married to JD Vance and working for the Supreme Court are two bits of evidence pointing to her being stupid as hell and/or evil as hell, neither of which I’d describe as “brilliant.”

No way the red state faction stays peaceful, as soon as they fuck something up they’ll deflect blame on to the blue state faction and start doing airstrikes on us to distract

e; Also, this red state faction could never ever ever be allowed to have a nuclear arsenal or we would all be very fucked, so that’s another big hurdle to any kind of breakup plan

An unnamed relative of the roommate told the network that the person “hates conservatives and Christians.”

I’m sure that’s a one way street /s

The relative said she suspected her family member had influenced Robinson’s politics in the year they had been dating.

“Please please please arrest my daughter/niece/granddaughter/[other],” fuckin christ what a piece of work

Yep, and trans folks. The fact that their suspect’s partner’s full name and picture are being published by conservative ragebait sites today is extremely worrying.

Nope, no proof or details, but he was on there and Meet the Press and a bunch of other shows today pushing the same two talking points (Robinson was dating a trans woman and was radicalized by the left), so, yeah, this is what they’re going with and it’s going to be more important than ever before that people step up to protect trans folks because the right very obviously is trying to tie this to them any way they can

Of course this fucking scumbag had to put out that their suspect was dating a trans woman as soon as he possibly could, and of course he misgendered her while talking about it, and of course there are dog shit conservative sites out there putting out her full name and any other info they can find on her

100%. The CNN title for the interview where he said some of this stuff (which I would have posted but it’s just video with no article) is “Pressed by CNN, Gov. Cox declines to give detail on ‘leftist ideology’ claims in Kirk shooting” (arc).

I’m not going to link to them, but there are a bunch of dogshit conservative news sites putting the roommate’s name out there and misgendering her, because of course they are

Their ideas aren’t popular, Trump won because the economy sucks the Democratic party sucks and the media sucks. Fix any of those three problems up a bit and they lose.

All easier said than done, but let’s define the problem properly. It isn’t that people on average are bad and can’t handle democracy, it’s that our systems are bad and manipulating people into supporting bad things.

Chipocalypse Now TBD

“In light of yesterday’s horrific assassination of a leading political figure, I want to underscore that foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country,” Landau wrote.

Pretty soon “I don’t think you should be the victim of violence but I do somewhat disagree with your policy proposals” is going to count as “hatred”

When I was in school conservative events were always packed but only because they gave out tons of free food and other random crap broke college kids needed because they had the infinite money cheat code turned on

Michel Martin is incredible. The intellectual discipline it takes to keep your cool live on a mic in this moment and stick with the question and get an answer (or non answer that says it all) is just amazing and we’re fortunate to have her doing the work she does.

But it’s not like ills that are just as bad and worse haven’t and won’t continue to happen without a strong federal government. A weak federal government leads to Shay’s rebellion, rise of the KKK, gilded age, great depression, etc. Someone needs to be in charge and if they don’t step into the vacuum bigots and business will.

Civic nationalism, ok fine, ethnic nationalism fuck no, it’s insanity grounded in fiction that devolves into tail-eating fascist bullshit very easily.

Indigenous nations already are and should remain independent (admittedly our federal government has ignored that frequently throughout their history, but we’ve been wrong about a lot of stuff). I do have some cognitive dissonance around my beliefs that a) race and ethnicity are unscientific social constructs we really shouldn’t get too hung up on b) indigenous nations are sovereign and independent nations defined by a common genetic ancestry and there is a moral imperative to recognize them as such, but I think given the particular history and the fact that we have made treaties and other formal promises we are obligated to stand by it’s a special case.

Either way, I like and dislike some things about both, but if I’m choosing between DuBois’ racial integration and Garvey’s black separatism, I’ve gotta go with DuBois every day of the week. Ethnostates are bad for everyone, even historically marginalized people, and separatism is no treatment for authoritarianism or fascism because they will come for you eventually when they need fuel to keep their social bonfire going.

That’s an accurate summary of history, but I gotta disagree with

time has proven the wisdom behind it

Even after we scrapped the articles of confederation and moved halfway towards an actual union of states we had a civil war a few decades later because we were too afraid to confront slave state governments and tell them that shit was unacceptable. And then we did a half-ass job of Reconstruction.

This country’s best moments imo has been the rare instances we get decent and capable people in the federal government who are able to push progress all the way out into rural backwaters, e.g. New Deal public works programs in the Tennessee valley and west Texas, Brown v the Board and Obergefell v. Hodges setting an enforceable standard for basic human rights even though it made places like Mississippi and Alabama big mad, Great Society programs bringing huge improvements to education and childcare through things like Head Start and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, etc.

It’s hard to remember because we haven’t had a good one in about five to six decades, but when the US federal government gets it shit together and stops turning brown kids into skeletons for two seconds it is actually capable of great things.

Given the fact that every named person in this article was interviewed for this story I am pretty certain it was their own choice to disclose their names.

That being said, I definitely see where you’re coming from, but I think there’s need for two kinds of community protectors here - ones that everyone in the neighborhood knows on sight and are comfortable talking to who put their names in news stories and on posts and flyers so community members know who to pass information on to, and volunteers who keep a lower profile so they can do other stuff. This group is the former kind

[Last name] has been trying to recruit more volunteers for the Pilsen patrol. He’s been posting flyers this week. But [last name] is quick to make clear they are not vigilantes.

They might step in if they witness someone being assaulted or in danger or some way. But he insists they are not looking to start violence.

“We’re just eyes and ears in the community,” he said. “We want to help alert.”

I said “ok” not perfect or even good. About as well as other governments in the world during the same time periods though.

Is that what you’re advocating for?

No, I’m advocating for a strong federal government that’s able to go into Arkansas and force their dipshit state government to desegregate their schools. What are you advocating for? Because to me it just sounds like a bunch of tiny and more easily manipulated ethnostates.