surprisingly, she only weakened it – it was actually broken after one of those butt picture pranks went horribly wrong. He will always have a blue rear from now on.
The printer at work lied to me today! “Tray 1 out of paper.” I opened it and that bongo had plenty of paper! Closed it and it resumed printing like normal.
Printers are made of almost entirely moving parts. Or at least, inkjets are. Though laser printers have their fair share as well. Plus they have to successfully feed a very fragile medium through them that is prone to folding and tearing. It’s also fibrous and creates a lot of dust.
Laser printers are fairly simple, but they rely on many small parts working together:
From beginning to end, the paper is moved around by rubber rollers. These wear down like tires. If they don’t have enough grip, the paper jams.
If you use cheap paper and the optical sensors get covered with paper dust, the printer just thinks it got jammed.
If the paper guides in the tray aren’t set up right, the paper may not get picked up. If it does, it might go in crooked and jam.
Tolerances get tighter as the print speed (PPM) increases. I’d take a bad laser printer over an inkjet any day.
Yeesh. Judgmental workmates. Then again I had similar reactions to people after Trump got elected so I can’t blame them. And I doubt Robin’s gonna pull a Chester A Arthur and actually learn from her past behavior to rectify problems in government.
Damn Willis, I gotta read the old Shortpacked just to remind myself why I liked them together in the past.
Yeah hard to say, but I feel like I’d be full of judgement for people who voted for her, whereas my main emotional reaction to Leslie’s actions is “OMG, you poor masochistic idiot.”
I really feel bad for Leslie here. Day Fucking One and she’s already having to deal with the bullshit of being caught up in a scandal with a hideously backwards politician.
I hope she gets a break soon.
Hahaha this is Dumbing of Age she might end up okay (for all the trauma our characters endure they always end up physically fine as far as I can remember, Joyce’s wrist notwithstanding, and as someone with a damaged mind but working body being able to say “Hey, I’m not completely broken,” is important, dammit) but she’s going to go through hell before she gets there.
Eurgh…so the question is, is Leslie getting this because of the recent media campout around her house, or because she’s known to have that massive crush on Robin?
Also, would a straight male colleague with a crush on Robin be getting the same ostracization? :/
At the very least I guess this means she’s aware of the situation now.
I think it might that her crush was not terribly secret, plus the unfortunate timing of the photo of her and Robin coming out, followed by the one of Ryan now going around.
Probably not. But that might be because people sort of expect at this point to be let down by straight male allies. So a straight “ally” sleeping or presumed to be sleeping with an anti-gay politician would be less likely to get flak than someone presumed to be selling out “her people”.
When a cis/straight/white/male ally messes up, it’s “oh, cis/straight/white/male allies.” When someone in a marginalized group messes up, especially towards a different marginalized group, it’s “can you believe this specific person”. Not all the time, but sometimes. And I’m not angry because of something asinine like “reverse bigotry”. I’m angry because it’s just another example of more being expected of marginalized people, without them realizing it. When people generalize the failings of cis/straight/white/male allies as a property of the same, they sometimes remove a level of culpability that often remains intact for marginalized people, and it’s a very insidious problem that can be hard to rout without stepping on some serious toes.
Which sucks, because it means that those who are the most marginalized are given the least room to fuck up and those who have the most privilege are never held to a high standard and an expectation of better behavior when they really need to be to grow and change.
But it’s a really easy natural reaction to fall into, because it hurts more when we get hit sideways by someone we didn’t expect to hurt us and so it’s natural to try and respond to that increased feeling of hurt even if it fits in this insidious system.
Of course that’s only from within the community and an interesting reversal: Normally when the straight white cis man screws up, it’s just him, but when it’s a LGBT, minority or woman screwing up, they get to represent their entire group.
You’ve only explained one half. How is it that holding Leslie individually accountable for her actions (setting aside for the moment that she’s actually done nothing wrong) is somehow bad for … women? lesbians?, and the opposite (some horrible generalization like “women will fall for a sufficiently attractive public figure regardless of their political opinions”, maybe?) would be better?
Because Leslie ends up seen as representing all women or all lesbians, which then makes it easier to justify being shitty to them (ex. ‘See, lesbians SAY these policies are bad, but one slept with Robin, so it can’t be that bad, so we can continue pushing for them’).
Holding Leslie individually accountable would be a good thing, if she were actually accountable, and if the same applied to people who weren’t part of a marginalized group.
Then again they also outright stated that “white date rapist” is a natural subset of “desanto supporter”. I’m not entirely sure if it matters that they call her by name rather than by ” Republican “
That’s actually a thing. Women Republicans tend to get a lot more direct blame than their male counterparts. If a Republican who is a man screws up or has awful followers, that tends to be blamed on generic Republicans whereas if a Republican who is a woman gets singled out.
Think Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann (who are awful awful people) getting a lot more direct flak and negative attention than their equally awful peers.
I think it’s because we expect men to support policies that favor men at the expense of women. It makes sense, no matter how awful it is. But when women support those same policies, it is senseless and self-destructive, and it feels more like a betrayal.
Because he’s wearing a DeSanto shirt. If “DeSanto intern” had been included in the description of the guy, presumably they wouldn’t have had to work it out from the shirt.
If they saw the original post, sure. Chances are, it has been manually reposted in several places in addition to being linked to/retweeted/etc., so who knows what the caption (if any) they read could have said, or whether they had any reason to believe it beyond their own expectations/interpretation?
But didn’t Ryan delete the photo off of Amber’s phone earlier? And how can you barely make out his face, yet manage to notice a scar? It kinda seems to me like Willis is trying to drag out this subplot.
Yes, but not the one sent to Dorothy. Also, scars tend to be pretty distinguishable, even if other features aren’t. They may not be able to describe a shape or see much more than fuzz, but they can see one exists and an approximate location (scar, right cheek), especially when its still fairly red like Ryan’s.
I do kinda hate how someones political alignment is associated with their personality. Ryan’s a rapist who just so happens to support Robin, not because he supports her, and all of her supporters aren’t rapists.
I dunno, given modern conservatism… yeah, rape is kind of a core value at this point for that ideology, like it or not. And I really really don’t like it.
I know enough kind and lovely people who vote Republican that I’m not really comfortable with that statement… I don’t think that that kind of rhetoric is helpful. Obviously there are a lot of contradictions in modern conservatism, to the point where the politicians themselves are insane, but the people themselves aren’t that different from most Democratic people (and of course, there are contradictions in Democratic stuff too).
I say this as a liberal currently attending UC Berkeley, so I don’t really know… It just feels like to me that to some level a lot of people kind of learned how to vote and think politically from their parents, and there’s a lot of stuff that breaks down to “well this feels true based on some underlying pieces of my political worldview that I can’t quite place and that aren’t really touched by my personal morality” if you think about it for too long, whatever your political party.
(And also there are people that suck sooo much but they really really do live on both sides, too.)
*Also I know that this entire comment has been very two-party system-y, but I don’t feel like rewriting it, nor do I know if I’m totally qualified to.
Kind and lovely people can also make a lot of excuses for rape, not that they support rape, of course, just that whatever particular case they’re talking about wasn’t really rape and think of the poor man’s promising future.
That said, this kind of drugging of strangers is one least likely to be excused, though it does run into the “don’t go to those kinds of parties” attack.
I mean, you’ve just said the politicians are terrible horrible awful, and you’ve also said that these kind, lovely people still vote Republican, so…….
They’re voting for terrible horrible awful people, in support of their terrible horrible awful policies.
At that point, if they get tarred with the same brush as the people they’re supporting…….
I too have known Republicans and conservatives who weren’t awful. They have all gotten the heck off the train that is the current Republican Party, and don’t need to be coddled and reassured that #NotAllRepublicans. They know perfectly well that their party is awful now and have not been voting for Republican candidates when given the option. It’s been increasingly difficult to actually vote Republican without voting for people who are openly and proudly racist, islamophobic, antisemitic, misogynistic; who hate the entire LGBTQIAPN+ acronym; who are anti-science and who hate the poor and who want to destroy our economy with trickle-down policies that have been proven to not work.
Those positions aren’t necessarily “Republican”, but they have become core to the platform, as many, many Republicans have talked about in recent years.
But also, come on. Criticism of the Republican platform was not a personal attack on people you know.
Those kind and lovely people – and I know a lot of them because I live in rural West Texas – need to push back against the cesspool, otherwise they’re either cowards or complicit.
> Ryan’s a rapist who just so happens to support Robin, not because he supports her
Sure, but at the end of the day both being a rapist and supporting a Republican* candidate are effects of the fact that he doesn’t respect women (I am not saying that all people who support Republicans don’t respect women – nor that all people who don’t respect women are rapists, but I am saying that it is a factor for some of them)
*well, technically I’m assuming here. But some things about the story arcs surrounding Robin don’t make sense if she’s not intended to be, including Leslie’s colleagues’ reactions to her crush in the most recent few strips.
EVERYONE’S POLITICAL ALIGNMENT IS ASSOCIATED WITH THEIR PERSONALITY!!!! EVERYONE’S!!!! A POLITICAL ALIGNMENT IS A FUCKING IDEOLOGY, AND YOUR PERSONALITY IS DEFINED BY THE IDEOLOGIES YOU SUPPORT!!!!! THE MAN BRAGGED ABOUT SEXUAL ASSAULTING WOMEN, ON STAGE, AND THE CROWD FUCKING CHEERED, AND AT LEAST ONE WOMAN PROCEEDED TO SEXUALLY ASSAULT ANOTHER WOMEN BECAUSE OF IT!!!!
Thank you. You cannot vote for someone on one of their policies without implicitly accepting all of them.
I do not particularly like Hillary Clinton. She is an impeccable stateswoman and public servant with an extremely-accomplished history, but she is also a bit of a warmonger and that alone was enough to make me jump ship to another candidate (Bernie, if you would like to know). I voted for her in November because there was no other viable alternative, and in the face of the prospect of a Trump White House (Everyone with your wait-and-see/”give him a chance” attitude, we did, and it took the fucker 7 days to [and I really need to emphasise this next part] VIOLATE THE CONSTITUTION) I was able to reconcile the damage Hillary would inflict afar with the good she would do at home.
More importantly, my little sister is transgender, and she has already been directly targeted by legislation in Congress. So when I’m told I’m overreacting because nothing has happened yet, and an Indian man is dead because someone THOUGHT he was Middle Eastern, I will tell that messenger to go fuck themselves.
More than anything else, what upsets me the most is that Trump was always a horrible candidate even if you NEVER CONSIDER his social policies and voted for him for purely economic reasons. He abuses his workers and has worked for years to move money out of public hands and into his pockets through any means necessary. Why the fuck did you think he was ever going to help you?
He is, to be fair, an exceptional businessman. I have no knowledge of who else could bankrupt a casino, a business that literally consists of people walking in off the street and giving you their money.
She already heard people talk about it at the end of her math class. It was when Sal convinced the girl to share it after the guy said that it’s “probably just made up for attention”. Link
Well, in DeSanto’s defense, not every intern or volunteer at a political event is actually a supporter. If they’re college-age, they may be doing it for a class or experience, not so much for idealism.
(Though, as she ran on a platform of conservative values, and he’s a preacher’s son, he probably does politically support her… but there’s a SMALL chance he doesn’t actually follow politics.)
I’d be more sympathetic to that point of view if the GOP and most “conservative” voices weren’t upping each other on the worst fucking thing someone could support every day at this point. Treason? Starting a thermonuclear war? Rape? Running over protestors? Harassing and bullying kids into suicide? Trying to reinstate child labor? Openly stating that people should die if they are going to be a “burden” by wanting health care or welfare? Giving hate groups a blank check to commit as much violence without oversight? Bringing neo-nazism into the mainstream?
Like, I’d love to say, hey, there’s some positive conservative values, but I’m genuinely struggling to think of one conservative value or fight in the last 60 years that wasn’t straight up evil and actively harmful to giant swaths of people.
One of the main “opposing views” right now is actively trying to take away the health insurance my fiancee relies on to not die. “Opposing views” are openly supporting fascism and open attempts to destroy democracy and prevent folks from having any real vote or voice.
And it’s because we’ve created this twisted idea that there are two equal and opposite “opposing views” that are to be treated as morally equivalent and equally worthy of support.
But these shouldn’t be “opposing views”, these shouldn’t be major parts of any party’s platform. And the reason that shit has gotten so fucked up that they are is because we keep on culturally treating “opposing views” with this “the truth lies in the middle” garbage that makes everything about sides rather than about empathy and what is right.
Like, we’ve got a whole party thinking it must be part of their core identity to support some truly awful stuff because it’s an “opposing side” to the other fractionated party trying to argue amongst themselves the best way to handle major issues in our society.
When the real debate should be that. Earnest well-meaning attempts to help people, all people, to enrich and improve humanity. Open acknowledgment of reality and an acceptance of base ideas that everyone is deserving of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Bigotry should never have been allowed to become an “opposing side”. I should not have been forced to become part of a “side” because I was born the way I was.
And if those actions against me are villainous, are demonstrably harmful, are openly hateful, then why should we not call that out? Or at least acknowledge the legacy that has been created rather than treating this all as some game between Team Red and Team Blue?
Like, I would love to see something worthy of praise in conservatism. I would love conservatism to not be defined by its hatred and cruelty. I would love not to be targeted and hunted by people who’ve decided their “side” should be defined by loathing and trying to harm people like me.
I understand the sentiment, and Honestly I disagree with a lot of conservative ideas too. But the idea that conservatives WHOLLY want to harm people or that their actions are purely negative creates a fallacy. The same sort of Fallacy that causes people to immediately decide that someone is a horrible human being. As someone from the south I know MANY people who identify as republican and I can say you wouldn’t ever think that from hanging out with them. Not every conservative stance or desire is meant to shit on other people and not everyone shares the beliefs of those who do.
It’s the same logical fallacy that people who say “Lots of black people commited crime so ALL black people commit crime” or “Men Sexually assault people more so all men have a predisposition towards Sexual assault.”
It’s the reason why people feel nervous around people they don’t even know, because neither side believes the other should exist. That the other group wants to only see the destruction of the other. And because of that they do. It’s become increasingly weary to me constantly being juggled between conversations about how “These people want to ruin everything” It’s the inherit problem with our inability to get out of our own heads.
Those good people still nonetheless regularly vote to take away my right to life.
And I don’t want conservatism or conservatives destroyed and I know that there can be people who are good and kind in private while supporting a worldview that is harmful. We’re a very complex species and people’s political viewpoints don’t always match up with their individual behavior.
Honestly, mostly I just want to be able to live my life for five seconds without the most prominent and powerful members of organized conservatism trying to fucking kill me or make my life miserable.
And I’m getting really scared and distraught by how bad it keeps getting and how often me and mine have been stuck in desperate fights for our basic rights to life and participation in society by the political consequences of conservative votes.
Like, I’m really tired of burying folks I care about.
Genuinely asking, what are some conservative values that the people you know would espouse that Don’t shit on the lives and liberties of others (whether intended to or not)?
A lot of them tend to care about junk like guns (it’s the south), Financial stuff I have absolutely no depth to try to explain. To be perfectly honest I rarely talk politics. It usually ends up nasty anyway, so I’m probably not the best to defend their honor 😛
Conservatives don’t intend to harm, I’ll grant you that.
They don’t care if they harm, so long as they get their [tax break / gun control repeal / insert conservative bugbear here]. They are perfectly willing to vote in people who would fund torture camps for queer kids, if they get a tax break and a loosening of gun control – and then they’ll turn around and tell me I’m unreasonable to be pissed with them over it because “not all conservatives” want to shove queer kids in torture camps.
No, they don’t. But it sure as hell isn’t a deal-breaker.
So, yes, I will grant you there is a difference between willful and passive harm. But it’s not one I am highly comforted by.
Except of course for the ones who do intend harm. Or may even think their victims would be better off after “reparative therapy”. Or whatever else it is they’re supporting that actually does real harm to people.
I’ve met many religious conservatives who think harm done on Earth is outweighed by the good done in making sure someone goes to heaven, so… yeah. They don’t intend harm, but they sure as hell do it. Fuckers.
Plus, you don’t see conservatives agonising about whether they should respect their opponent’s point of view. They trot out that line ONLY to use against liberals, who they see as prone to hand-wringing self doubt.
Yeah, that part frustrates me. Like, it’s always on liberals to look past all the awfulness and reach out and still think the best of conservatives and never get bitter about everything, whereas no one expects conservatives to do even the slightest thing to recognize the humanity of the liberals they demonize and seek to harm.
Like I’m really bad about not getting bitter, I recognize that, but it’d be nice if conservatives were called upon to see the humanity of people they are actually harming as often as liberals are called upon to see the goodness in people actually voting for policies and candidates that hurt them.
Like, can you even imagine that article, profiling a liberal voter who is hurting now and calling on conservatives to sympathize and empathize in the same way every Trump voter sympathy piece excoriates liberals to “stop being mean” by pointing out things like racism or sexism?
The whole thing just ends up feeling like an abusive relationship where we are being hit repeatedly and when we raise our hands in defense, that’s used as a sign of our “irrational anger and hatred” and a clear sign we deserve even more abuse.
The real issue here is that Trump is the focus and he’s not even that bad. Yeah, he’s a social conservative, but he’s still an economic liberal, he’s barely homophobic at all, and he’s not for shoving religion into government. Would you have preferred Ted Cruz instead?
The real danger, the one that basically no one is talking about, is that Republicans control 34 state legislatures out of 50. If they flip four more in 2018 they’ll be able to unilaterally amend the Constitution.
“economic liberal” is strong. His plan is tax & regulation cuts and talk a lot about jobs while doing nothing about them.
The two big problems with Trump in office are that he’s aggressively arrogant and ignorant and that he’s basically willing to sign off on the Republican agenda, even the parts he doesn’t really care about.
Cruz would be a disaster too, but in different ways.
The Constitutional Convention is possible, but I think it’s a long shot. As things are going, I also expect them to lose states in 2018, though anything can change.
While yes, state, local, and Congressional elections are important, and people need to get ready for those, the idea that Trump is “not that bad” is absurd.
The only reason things aren’t much, much worse is because almost no-one in the cabinet has any political or even legal experience. If Trump was competent, or had experienced advisors, or even had the work ethic to put in more than a couple hours a day, the difference would be dramatic.
And the idea that he’s liberal on any level is observably false. Tax cuts for the rich, cuts to pretty much every program that helps disadvantaged people, and down environmental, health and safety regulations.
“Economic liberal” – No. He’s all about botching regulations and cutting things like welfare.
“barely homophobic at all” – A) No, he is not. He campaigned on the idea that LGBT+ marriage should have been answered by the states, been an anti LGBT+ marriage, put a lot of homophobes in positions of power (Jeff Sessions, most of his cabinet), and nearly signed an anti-LGBTQIAPN+ executive order (Ivanka and Kushner apparently had to talk him out of it), and his campaign platform involved cutting HIV research. Trump’s pretty damn homophobic. B) Even if he WERE ‘barely homophobic’, that is not a good thing, and is absolutely not a point in his favour.
“Not for shoving religion into government” – Which is why he’s worked on ending separation of church and state and caters to the religious right on issues like LGBT+ rights, abortion, and quote unquote ‘religious freedom’.
While it’s true that Trump did officially toe the party line on gay marriage, that was basically obligatory. He ran as a Republican, you have to do that. He hasn’t really done anything against LGBT people since entering office, in fact he preserved the rules preventing discrimination against LGBT people in federal service and those are rules he could have unilaterally removed without consulting anyone else.
Remember that trade protectionism and immigration control are historically liberal stances. “Free trade and open borders” are basically Economic Conservatism 101, and I actually find the current state of politics regarding them to be really bizarre, it was not long ago that it was the Democrats that wanted the border wall. Bill Clinton actually started building one during his term and it was the neocons that defunded it. The Democrats also made a major push for a wall in 2006 (the Secure Fence Act) and they mostly got it, it was the Republicans again that tried to obstruct this by defunding it again.
tarmaniel: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
indiana had a goddamned AIDS outbreak which pence CAUSED and then DID NOTHING ABOUT because he assumes if you get AIDS god has obviously chosen you to die
and pence made national news when he did that whole Gay Cakes law which made his state a laughing stock, and which would have moved him off the political board entirely forever if trump hadn’t plucked him from the jaws of defeat
pence appealed a new law allowing gay spouses from visiting their spouses in the hospital SPECIFICALLY TO KEEP ONE SPECIFIC LADY FROM BEING ABLE TO BE WITH HER WIFE AS SHE DIED
I think Trump really might be the worst one internationally, though, from the sheer might of his ignorance. Domestic blunders will take a decade to fix, and people will die in the meantime (so, uh, sucks if we’re among those who die). International incompetence, though, I don’t think there’s a way to fix any of it afterwards, I think it lasts a century.
OTOH, Trump is so tremendously, ratings-pumpingly terrible that he’s given rise to this beautiful sense of activism and political involvement against him. Another republican could’ve been more evil, and far more competent, and so boring that people would lose interest instead of standing against him.
So, silver lining is that at least Trump is bad in a showy, mobilizing manner? I’m trying hard, here.
Even aside from Pence, there are things like Trump’s promise to repeal Obama’s guidance on transgender student rights, which he kept in February. There might be some places where he counts as barely homophobic, but the 21st century is not one of them.
I’m not even really able to wrap my head around the worldview idea currently that Trump is not that bad. Fuck, I lost a former kid I mentored when he got elected and it’s just been worse since then.
After all he’s done. After everyone he’s hurt. After the horrors he has perpetuated, I’m not sure how anyone can argue he’s “not that bad”.
But ONLY because “not that bad” is a relative measure.
Not that bad… compared to what?
I mean, compared to almost anyone else who could have conceivably won a major party’s primary in the last 20 years? Yeah, he is that bad.
Compared to, say, a worldwide pandemic that leaves half the population dead? He’s not that bad.
…. yet. But the potential nuclear showdown with Russia doesn’t bode well. Hmmm.
Um…. compared to a planet-killer on a crash course with Earth? Maybe he’s not that bad…. but we know how to divert those now… if NASA’s funding doesn’t get slashed… which…. hrrrm.
…. okay, given time, it is THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE that I can come up with some measure of awful against which I can unequivocally say that Trump is not that bad.
Trump picked him as his running mate, and has already – of his own volition – removed protections for trans students. It’s not even as if Congress passed a discriminatory bill and he “merely” signed it.
The fact that he COULD be much worse does NOT mean he’s “not that bad”.
If somebody is punching you, it doesn’t matter how much harder they COULD be hitting you, it won’t suddenly turn the punch into a gentle poke. Things don’t work that way.
Fundamentally that’s true, but US politics has been about picking the lesser evil for quite a while now. I certainly didn’t vote for Trump, but I’m still glad we got him instead of Cruz. Trump’s first major initiative was a somewhat-nerfed version of Obamacare that failed anyway because the Freedom Caucus didn’t think it was conservative enough. Cruz’s first initiative would have been his pet project, the First Amendment Defense Act, a bill that actually implements harsh discrimination against LGBT people, rather than simply not granting federal protections to them, and one that the Freedom Caucus would have broken speed records lining up to vote for.
Hillary was the lesser evil in this election. Hell, Cruz had been her opponent, she probably would’ve won.
And in case you’ve forgotten, Congress writes laws, and Cruz is still there. He can still try to get that bill through, and if it passed, we’d have to hope he’s feeling spiteful that day because I wouldn’t count on a veto otherwise.
But even if every alternative was worse, even if Charles Manson was the other candidate, that wouldn’t make the harm Trump is doing any less significant.
When the “opposing viewpoint” is that I am subhuman and should be locked up or killed or that people should be allowed to fire me for who I am and then I should be allowed to starve in the streets, all for being a bi trans person, it doesn’t need vilification. It’s awful enough on its own.
I will have sympathy for conservatives who complain about getting painted with the same brush as the far-right extremists when I see conservatives actually doing something about said far-right extremists. All I see them doing is wringing their hands and bleating, “We’re not all like that!”
Ok, show me. Show me you’re not like that.
Come to a protest against the anti-immigration policies. Complain to your rep about the extremist direction the party is headed. Hell, run for office with an explicitly socially progressive platform. You say you don’t believe that stuff and think it’s terrible? Put your action where your mouth is and show me you think it’s terrible.
Then, maybe, I’ll start believing that not all conservatives are perfectly A-OK with a guy who wants to send queer kids to re-education torture camps being second in command of the damn country in the US, or a woman who thinks human rights protections shouldn’t apply to non-citizens as the leader of the opposition here in Canada.
I’m trying to laugh about all the conservative pundits who are turning on Trump tonight, but the reasons WHY they’re finally criticizing him are too horrific. Mostly complaints that Syria isn’t “our problem”, or conspiracy theories that the gas attacks were faked.
Plus a ton of people who voted against letting Obama act in Syria now trekking everyone they need to “stand behind the president”. Fuck that.
How about believing that criminals should be held accountable for their crimes? That’s a conservative value. Paying your bills? Conservative value. Living within your income? Conservative value.
It’s just that as the term is used today, “conservative values” are more in keeping with what were called “reactionary extremes” when I was growing up and in school. The values haven’t changed, but the people who define them have.
Those three aren’t “conservative values”, they’re basic societal fabric. No one across the spectrum of political thought (except for the various types of anarchists) would state that they are against those three “conservative values”. The variantions those three broad stroke statements determines whether or not it is conservative for nature. For example, what if you cannot live within your income because of economic conditions such as mass economic depression or hyperinflation leaving one either unemployed or without a liveable wage? The conservative responds to that situation by either blaming the person for either not working hard enough or secretly being a spendthrift, and that those truly in trouble will be provided by private charity. The progressive liberal responds that the public should attempt to help those in need. Also, by saying that those three are “conservative values”, you imply that non-conservatives are against the punishment of crime, against the paying of bills, and against living within one’s means. The result of such implications and mindset is the idea that “liberals are a bunch of lazy people who want criminals to run free and to support themselves off the sweat and work of others.” In other words, the beginning to political demagoguery.
It’s a fiction of propaganda. And it belies awfulness and sets up a false idea of the other “side” that is not backed up by evidence.
Liberals very much support criminals going to jail (fuck, how many times have I critiqued how under-prosecuted sexual assault is in our society or the lack of justice responses for anti-trans murders?), but they critique the racist way certain groups are targeted by the justice system more than others, or the way citizenship or ability to participate in society is taken away by overly punitive systems, or the way jails have been allowed to be more about punishment and suffering than rehabilitation.
Liberals very much support paying bills.
Like, no shit. Do you really believe that liberals don’t pay their bills when groups that are more likely to be liberal fucking put themselves into debt making sure all their bills are paid while the major players in conservatism have made a virtue out of getting out of paying one’s fair share in society (like, I mean, Trump…)?
Liberals very much support living within your income. But that means one’s income needs to be enough to live on. That means roof, food, medicine, water. The basic needs of Mazlow’s. And right now that isn’t the case for a majority of Americans.
And the response from the conservatives to that is to blame the poor for not “living within their means” and just… I dunno, not eating? Not having a roof? Not going to the doctor when they need to? As if the poor don’t already do that.
But yeah, that’s the problem. We’ve got a movement that has abandoned real honest points of disagreement about the distribution of resources and what is moral and has needed to abandon reality and believe a fictional narrative about their enemies in order to sustain themselves.
Trans people are child molesters but the child molester in the White House is God’s chosen leader. Poor people could be rich if they just worked harder. Ignore that they are already working multiple jobs and way more than 40 hours a week or that a minimum wage isn’t enough to live on. Refugees are secret terrorist meaning us all harm rather than folks running from Hell on Earth.
This shouldn’t be a thing. We should have a conservatism that is based in reality, which strives to do something positive, which isn’t based on empty platitudes and false ideas of what the other “side” is like.
Like, there’s so much room for disagreement on how best to fix our world. On what we should most care about. On how to best help those in need. On what is our most important priorities. There are so many meaningful sides that could be drawn on that. And I would love to be able to relax and not have to fight for the lives of myself or all my friends from folks all the damn time.
Yeah. Our “Justice” system has been warped to an incredible degree (we have a larger gross prison population than China starting I believe three years ago), being “enforced” on minority segments of the population disproportionately, with a warped sense of punishment were a non-violent drug offense will give a person more time in prison than being a rapist, sexual crimes and abuse are investigated to little, and you can end up in prison for a crime you didn’t commit because it’s simply cheaper and easier to sign a plea bargain than to hire a lawyer and go to court with the possibility of losing anyway for any number of reasons. This type of shit is why parts of the US might as well be a “third nation” country (or worse in some cases) and why Martin Luther King Jr. talked about there being two Americas: the America we present, and the America within that we’re people are impoverished and starve in one of the world’s most prosperous and affluent countries. It’s why, if not for our military, we would be the laughing stock of the “Western World”.
*claps* Rukduk and Cerberus, Thank you for all that you just said. I, for one, am tired of having to say such things so many other places. This thank you was far shorter to type. You people are wonderful, please do not ever forget that.
This is what happens when all nuance is thrown out of political discourse. We’re left with a binary, “us vs them” environment of doublethink and regurgitated talking points.
“That makes some sense. Who came up with that idea? Oh, they have the letter I don’t like next to their name therefore their idea is bad and they are literally Satan for proposing it.”
Bull fucking shit. That’s the most regurgitated, false-binary talking point of them all. Giving hate a viewpoint — and not all, but a lot, of conservative ideas are built on hate — is the epitome of no nuance.
We can talk nuance when one side of the spectrum isn’t unanimously striving for my death.
Until then, finding the ‘right’ answer in politics is as simple as picking the person that isn’t evil. simple. And if someone isn’t willing to do that, that reflects on them.
One of our professors has a cartoon on his door of a man sitting in an easy chair, reading the paper and talking to his dog. He says; “No wonder Democrats don’t mind taxes – they don’t pay them!” It’s been there for years and I’m not in a place in the org chart where I could confront him about it, but it’s very insulting, and untrue. In what universe do Democrats not pay taxes? I’m a Democrat and I pay plenty. Or Republicans? Poor Republicans are being played by that myth. Rich people pay a lower tax rate, by their own design, and are predominately Republican.
Yeah, that value list definitely leaves a sour taste in my mouth after watching the elected Republicans repeatedly ignore blatant unconstitutional rule-breaking in favor of party power, overwhelmingly support a tax dodger who gleefully stiffs his contractors, and who also has needed to borrow repeatedly from foreign and domestic organized crime organizations to fund his lavish and extravagant lifestyle of intentional excess.
Like, if these are core conservative beliefs, it’s sure not being reflected in the leadership or the followers. Like, when Obama went against anti-war principles, there were no end of folks on the left criticizing that strongly and pushing against him, even growing to hate him over that.
The very term “conservative” means that one wishes to maintain the status quo as closely as possibly without too much forward change. Mainly because such forward change empowers other groups within a society while endangering the power of the privileged members. Any “conservative value” by its very nature as “conservative” seeks to keep people “in there place” and out of power or full equality as a result.
Note that people and groups describing themselves with a term do not necessarily subscribe to the original or even definitional meaning of that term.
Modern American conservatives tend to not want the status quo, but some mythical status quo decades in the past. Both socially and economically, though farther back economically. 50s TV America socially and 20s Gilded Age economic rules. Not that the two are compatible.
So I’d describe that as more reactionary or regressive. Meanwhile modern “liberals” tend to be pretty conservative economically and moderately liberal socially.
In Britain, the Conservative Party is currently all about destroying, not “conserving.” They’re on a mission to tear down the institutions created by more moderate governments.
I fully expect one of the crazier republicans to try to pass a law against colour, because all their ideas of when America was great are from black and white TV.
True. Plus, our modern “conservative” party is actually in favor of economic policies that are technically “liberal” if we were to go with the original meaning of the term in relation to economics.
thejeff- I know what you mean, I even have a friend who once pointed out that she “an “Eisenhower Conservative” which is to say a liberal” and we started talking about how most conservatives don’t understand that their party was the party of “help the poor” once upon a time. They were the party of social reform and all the programs that they are working so hard to dismantle.
Not really. It was still Democrats who built most of those programs and social reforms. Democrats were at least less opposed to the Labor movement and occasionally even helped out. The New Deal was a Democratic project. As was LBJ’s Great Society.
The party’s were closer together on such issues, especially in the post-war period, but it wasn’t Republicans who were the party of “Help the poor”.
Fair point, but Eisenhower was very much in line with that way of thinking. He was the next guy to raise the minimum wage and was all about expanding on on what Truman started. Though he wanted to limit government spending a bit more. I find it all very fascinating because to me it’s kind of like a schism I guess then because it does represent a different kind of Republican party and it was one that was much more closely aligned with the Democrats on the big issues – which is how things should be. I just hate the fact that they have become the party of the lobbyists and the corporate raiders and the super rich. 🙁
Also ironic, despite (or because of) being a former general (and overall commander of the Allied forces on the Western Front in WW2) Eisenhower was very much against a military industry complex and warned the country against taking such a turn during the Cold War in one of his last speeches, and well as being concerned with the overexploitation of natural resources. Guess what the country as a whole (and his party with greater fervor) have been doing for the past forty years?
Isn’t the problem with the “conservative party” currently that its actually the “alt-right party” who are just claiming to be “middle of the line conservatives” in order to string along the masses who will just vote R cause they’re bought into the “Democrats are all crazy, evil, and stupid…and probably commies too.” story?
Even if its Trump’s organization that seems to have all the ties with Russia?
Sadly, I live in a Republican state, thats mainly Republican cause 1. “thats what people in rural areas vote”, 2. “Killary wants your guns”, or 3. “Repubicans mean the Federal Government doesn’t boss us around, right?”
That said, the only candidate who was locally particularly popular in my Town seemed to be Bernie. Idaho might have swung for Bernie, but if its between the Red person they hate and the Blue one, most of the districts will vote Red every time. And between Gerrymandering and just general disbelief in being able to have your vote matter, well a lot of people who didn’t want Trump seem like they gave up before they even got out the door to go vote.
Its bad enough that even just voting third party in the hopes that they’ll seem a bit more legitimized seems more viable than voting anything but Republican.
One good deed doesn’t fix all the horrible shit that is Robin. Leslie isn’t just embarassed her crush is a monster politically, she’s embarassed her crush is a fucking asshole. Stalking, breaking-and-entering, dismissing ALL of it and not considering Leslie’s feelings on the matter. Has Robin left Leslie’s yet? Leslie’s in a different outfit than when we last saw her, but we also saw her give up trying to remove Robin (I can’t remember the exact timeline).
Last time we saw Robin, she was still home invading, yes. And planning (insofar as she plans anything) on making it permanent. She was also wearing Leslie’s clothes, because, hey, she’s already using her HOME without permission, why shouldn’t she make use of Leslie’s other things?
Fun note: I have never met anyone with the first name “Mitch” in my life who was a decent person to be around. I feel like it’s a cursed name that turns people into sanctimonious mansplainers. And this is from having met nine “Mitch”s over the years.
Heh, I know two Mitch’s and they’re both really cool. Both studying biomed with me, one who I don’t know that well but is really involved in trying to help science graduates get jobs (laughably difficult here); one who is the most chill person I’ve ever met and I always just want to hug him. He’s super sweet.
Either you’ve had horrible Mitch luck, or the rest of us have had abnormally good Mitch luck. Whichever it is, it leads to very important scientific questions.
Where are all these good Mitch’s hiding? Is the same place where the guys with the name Cassie who are actually decent are hiding? Because I’ve had bad luck with those as well.
There’s actually guys who are actually named Cassie?
I thought that was generally just people not understanding that Casey is a completely different name? One that actually is pretty gender neutral overall, where Cassie is just that one girl from Animorphs to me tbh.
I’ve met two people named Mitch. Both were pretty decent people. I’m sure there’s a name out there where everyone I know that has it is a douche (lots of names, lots of douchebags, overlap is inevitable), but Mitch isn’t it.
According to the DoA Timeline on Walkypedia Ryan tried to roofie Joyce and got ‘glassed’ at the party on Friday of their first week on campus. Ryan made his next appearance at the ‘Re-Elect DeSanto’ rally a month later and the scar was still visible and significant enough for it to show up on a cell-phone picture. This must be one serious gash that Joyce gave him, as a lesser scar or scrape would have healed to almost invisibility in that length of time.
Cheek scars are no joke. Serious blood tubes flow through there, the skin is soft and easily damaged, and he may be forming a Keloid for all we know if he didn’t treat it properly.
Heck, I fell on rough pavement once and my knee was so cut open that the scar is still here today, years later. I ‘weathered’ it out, no stiches. If it had been my check, it would be easily distinguishable. Correlating this with the surge of adrenaline anyone experiences in the flight-or-fight response Joyce had, she may had very well slashed him with equivalent or likewise force.
Panel 2: Oh yay, the picture is going viral. And it seems to be implied here that at least 2 professor level folks are taking it seriously and treating it as a major thing, which is positive. At the very least, ol’ Scarface is going to find it a lot harder to do his usual dirty work, which is the benefit of outing a missing stair in the community like that.
Panel 3: Oh no. Oh no, this isn’t going to go anywhere good.
And it’s awful for Leslie, because well, it’s something she felt guilty about with regards to Dorothy and it’s the hook that got her to go out to the bar with Robin in the first place and start this whole waking nightmare for her.
So this has got to be triggering and awful as all hell.
Panel 4: Oh wow. Fuck. There’s so much to unpack here.
That first point about someone drugging girls being a supporter of a right-wing family values candidate… yeah.
Like, it’s not a hundred percent and there are plenty of people who espouse liberal values who are vile rapists or abusers, but there is definitely a correlation with being a rapist and being a misogynist as not fully being able to see women as people and to feel entitled to their presence makes it easier to self-justify awful actions such as rape.
And that’s been backed up with a lot of the most regressive misogynist “family values” groups having some of the highest incidences of rape and some of the most vile statements with regards to it including Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” BS, Mike Pence’s “I can’t be alone with a woman lest I jump her” crap, or the eager support for proud rapist Donald Trump by every major “family values” supporter with a fervor that less misogynist fellow travelers never received.
And that’s before factoring in things like the major child molestation scandals in the Catholic, Mormon, and Fundamentalist churches. Or major “family values” spokespeople being picked up for sexual assault or child molestation. *Cough cough* Duggars *cough cough*.
It’s a reputation unfortunately well earned, though I wish it weren’t the case. Because I would like to live in a world where rape was non-existent or at least way way less common than it is now.
Then there’s the second bubble. The well-meaning person. They’re clearly trying to be sensitive, but oof, there’s still stuff that’s just going to pummel Leslie in it. First up is the assumption that Leslie must be a “DeSanto Supporter” or is likely to be defensive about Robin because she’s presumed to be fucking her. Which oof, that’s got to hurt that she would be assumed to support someone so violently against every value she holds.
Second up, that drop voice in the middle is trying to be discreet, but it also highlights and points out Leslie in the conversation, making her now the topic and thus linking her in the conversation with the awfulness being discussed.
And that final bubble. The emphasis on “see” makes it feel that Mitch while following his compatriot’s lead nonetheless has clearly lost some major respect for Leslie and seems to be casting some direct shade her way. Yeah, he sees her and he’s judging her as the type of person who would overlook things like this in order to get with someone.
Which, is just awful for Leslie because she isn’t like that. She actually has pushed away against her libido and repeatedly tried to establish boundaries because of that moral disconnect. But in everyone else’s eyes, they don’t see that, they just see a “traitor”.
And that’s the thing I was worried about when the Robin/Leslie news broke. That her community and peers would view her negatively as someone who betrayed them to support and sleep with someone they despise and who actively harms the community.
Mitch’s shade here is an early sign of that pulling away Leslie is likely to receive from the acquaintances around her and that’s going to hit hard and unfairly, especially as she’s being judged for this fantasy idea of what she’s doing while her actual life is basically just her being relentlessly stalked.
Well, if you want to be optimistic about Mitch, you might interpret his comment as realizing the moment he made the Desanto Supporter comment that Leslie was within earshot, with his “I see her, goddamit” being a “Goddamit, I just put my foot in my mouth” sort of realization. Probably a stretch and it doesn’t make him a much better person, but it is less shitty than “Yes, I’m deliberately trash talking in front of Leslie to upset her”.
True, that’s a possible interpretation. And would be a bit better. Though I’m willing to bet that Leslie’s headspace is more likely to latch on to my pessimistic reading than that.
The worst thing about humanity: We tend to want to draw judgements about others’ character based on even the loosest possible associations they have with others.
The person you support to decide policies and how your governative area should be run is not, was never, and never will be the “loosest possible association.” It is, in fact, the opposite, and I wish people would stop trying to pass it as otherwise.
THAT SAID, Leslie is not actually a de Santo supporter (we know she voted for the other guy), though adding another body to her rally is… less than stellar.
Oh shit, I’m just realizing that this is just in response to the pictures in the paper. None of these people know she actually attended a rally and held up a sign in support of Robin. And I’m betting this gets twice as nasty when that little tidbit comes out.
And yeah, I’m so so done with this weird treatment of politics as something that should be deemed immaterial about someone’s character like what sports team you support. Like, this shit is real and dramatically affects real people’s lives and the weird muzzling that occurs where we’re asked to separate any blame for awful things that hurt us from the people who regularly vote for that out of tribal loyalty frustrates me.
Like, maybe those people should stop treating politics as a tribal loyalty thing and actually start taking this shit seriously.
It’s amazing to see how far people will take it that way. “I vote Republican, I always will, but I hope they change their mind about taking away the health care I need to survive” is a real thing. As if you’re not allowed to change your support based on what you’re supporting.
I feel like these are the same kind of people who believe their faith requires things they feel are horrible, but do them anyway.
It’s why – although I have no problem with religion in general – I absolutely deplore the sort that teaches that this life is just one long entrance exam for the next. It leads to this exact kind of self-harming mentality.
“None of this suffering matters, we’ll be rewarded in Heaven”
See, the terrifying thing, is that I’m pretty sure to a lot of the people who vote Republican because Republican, even if it means shooting themselves in the foot in the process, sports team they support generally isn’t considered “immaterial about their character”.
In fact it basically is a lot of the same tribal instinct going around in both politics and religion for quite a long time now. Gotta support the “team” no matter what, cause its “yours”.
Also, not putting the source on this one in deference of the person’s privacy, but I’m pretty sure most “Okay Conservatives” basically at least were living by the mindset of “I wasn’t pro Trump, I was Anti Hilary, So I convinced myself he had merits”, due to all the scandals she had come up and the like.
So, you know, basically “Trump can’t be that bad, because I already hate the other option and I don’t want to accept that this game has no way for me to win. So he’s gotta actually be an okay guy who is just being slandered by lying liars right?”
Except Trump should have not been voted in purely due to him being the sort who doesn’t even actually seem to believe truth…just whatever is convenient for him to spout at the moment to get whatever he wants right then and there, even before getting into his various hate speech tactics and the policies he’s has pushed through….as well as the ones that are currently still too unconstitutional to actually make it through.
But no, people have to believe that they didn’t make the wrong choice, or that they gambled on something that never actually seemed like a great bet to begin with on the hopes that it’d save them from their problems.
Panel 5: Oh dear, animated whispered conversation after that opening. Perfect to flare up the paranoia, especially as Leslie definitely knows that every ounce of those whispers is about her given the start of their quieting down. Leslie really is having the morning from hell.
Panel 6: Yeah, I don’t blame you Leslie. Those situations are awful to put up with and often times the desire to flee is high to go where you don’t have to be so aware of the rumors flying around you. Like, I’ve never been in her exact circumstances, but I have had folks whispering and gesturing at me in disapproving ways or been the subject of a massive harassment and rumor campaign in the past and so I know that moment of feeling watched and judged and like things could get nasty in a second depending on how things go.
It’s stressful and in those circumstances, the urge to flee is high. So yeah, I empathize greatly with Leslie and feel so so bad for her. She really doesn’t deserve all the shit she is getting thanks to Robin’s terrible respect for boundaries.
Even if Leslie supported every last one of her policies, I doubt “give frat boys sedatives to commit rape with” is one of her policies. There’s no way “Mitch” and his friend come off well here.
The extra irony is that quick condemnation and rejection of rapists in her organization was like the one political thing that Robin got right.
Like Leslie didn’t even need to argue on that point like she did over her humanity as a gay woman. Robin was super quick to be like “fuck that guy, I’ll help you bust him if I can”.
I honestly can see this arc ending with Leslie bursting into tears in the middle of a lesson because of the stress of what is happening with Robin. Which of her students will end up helping her, I wonder?
Roz because she’ll feel partially guilty for getting Leslie into this mess. Dorothy because of how they left things off. Joyce because of her empathy and likelihood of a parallel feeling of stress because of the spread of the Scarface news and overhearing people’s responses to it.
I know from experience what being talked about as if you’re not there while you’re in the room feels like. It sucks.
It sucks even worse when people are gossiping about something that was completely out of your control and not your fault at all but you’re getting blamed regardless.
It sucks worse still when you also have the stress of someone purposefully and repeatedly violating your boundaries until you just give up in resignation.
It’s probably worst of all when the thing they’re gossiping about is the result and fault of the person who is abusing you.
The mutterings are actually just the other people quietly gushing over Leslie’s vest. They’d tell her how nice it is to her face, but they’re just so darn bashful about it.
Fun fact: I recently made a support ticket in a game I play, and the support system uses the same gravatar as the DoA comment section. Turns out the person who addressed my ticket recognised it. We (DoAers) are EVERYWHERE. And soon, the world will be ours, mwahahahahah.
All this political discussion? Yeah, it – like most political discussion – is predicated on two fallacies.
The first is that people actually think through their positions and choose they one they think is correct, or just, or what have you. THIS IS SIMPLY NEVER TRUE. A lot of people have deluded themselves into thinking they have, but their rationales are actually rationalizations, and saying they aren’t is dishonest. Political positions are a result of ‘life scripts’, things which you have learned subconsciously as ‘workable strategies’ and ‘things in my own self-interest’. All the talk of political platforms and reasoning and lofty ideals? Just sugar-coating of things like anger, self-aggrandizement, expediency, push-back, hidden assumptions, etc. This holds for everyone, regardless of their espoused views.
The second is the more significant: that leaders have choices. This is so far beyond true that it is laughable. The moe political power you have, the fewer options you have in how it is applied. Or, as I often state it, Kim Jong Un doesn’t get to choose what he has for dinner most nights.
Trump? Clinton? Irrelevant. If Gore had won in 2000, we would still have been at war in Iraq in 2003. If Nader had won, the same. If Harry Brown had won, if BUCHANAN had won, if freaking LAROUCHE had won, the war would have gone exactly as it had, with only some wiggle room on the details. Obamacare? That was already on Congress’ docket, in exactly the form it eventually took, in 2005, and would have been voted on – and passed – under Shrub had it not been for some committee delays.
People need to get over themselves. We aren’t as important – even in our own lives – as we like to think.
And by ‘people’ I mean H. sapiens as a species. Or maybe even all biological life on Earth. Were just some little fellows in a great big universe, after all, and we don’t even have any magic rings.
Yes yes, you’ve learned a few things about how big the planet and universe is, so you get to be all intellectual and impressive while putting a cover on pure apathy and ignorance.
What we do doesn’t matter to the orbit of the Earth, no, but it does matter to us. People’s suffering on earth isn’t irrelevant to *other people*, and the increasing number of people who have rallied behind gay rights, mostly from personal contact with a queer person, is a good anecdotal point that the cultural scripts are at least somewhat malleable on an individual level.
With polite disagreement that is bollocks. People’s votes matter. People’s actions matter.
Yeah, there’s a whole system designed to make people feel weak and helpless and like everything is rigged and that’s because a lot of our democracy is rigged to favor certain interests over others because they have more material power.
But protests matter, activism matters, who we elect matters. We’re seeing that right now as Trump tears down all the infrastructure that Clinton would not have done. We saw it in the past when dedicated activism turned back the steamroller of Prop 6 or pushed forward the Civil Rights Act after decades of stagnation.
The forces of the powerful want us to feel powerless, work really hard to make everyone feel powerless, because at the end of the day, we’ve got more power in one brick than we realize and if the people as one were to rise up together, that would really fuck up everything.
I actually do agree with the cultural scripts model – look at Joyce and all the real-world Joyces who escaped conservative Christianity only to find that the subtle beliefs about gender etc followed them out. But Schol-R-LEA is taking the model WAY too far to remove all human agency and control over our own choices.
Let’s not forget the Pipeline protests that have at the very least delayed actions that would poison Native American drinking water if an accident occurred, or the townhall meetings and outrage earlier this year that made sure the plan to replace and repeal Obamacare was dead on arrival. Or the outrage late last year when they wanted to gut the ethics committee and everyone was infuriated over that. Protests and vocal opposition does matter. Because a career politician in our system fears losing re-election, and fears the wrath of their constituents as a result. When the chips fall down, most will choose their constituents over party loyalty, unless they hold a “safe seat” the gerrymandering created bane of our governmental system.
Also, what sort of “money can’t buy happiness” koolaid is all of this? Are you really trying to argue that Trump has less political influence than random citizens? Where in the world does your bizarre “saying” come from? On what is that based? Sounds like comforting claptrap meant to discourage anyone from trying to so much as dream of improving their situation.
There’s a kernel of truth in it. Things (and especially the Presidency) are often more constrained than many believe. No one can walk into the office, wave a magic wand and make everything the way they want. They can come closer if they’ve got support in Congress, though then it becomes more of a compromise between them.
Which isn’t to say the differences aren’t real and critical. They absolutely are.
Speaaaaaking of which… was the thing congress just did similar to what you told me the other day? Only instead of removing the possibility for a filibuster, they lowered the votes required for a nomination?
Fun fact: Here’s the news I came up to today, shortly after waking up:
My friend just told me ‘launched missiles’ when it happened and a quick google search told me they were sometimes nuclear and ahahahaha sobbing breakdowns are fun, aren’t they?
Ehhh…I personally prefer some form of axe as my angry mob weapon of choice. Normally lumberjack style with a couple hatchets for good measure. Plus, it’s always good to be the guy in the angry mob with supplies and now how to make Molotov Cocktails. They’re like torches but with range when comes to burning down defensive structures made of wood.
No. They did essentially what I said. The Democrats staged a filibuster (withheld unanimous consent to move to a vote). The Republicans called for a cloture vote. Which failed to reach the 60 vote threshold. They then held a simple majority vote to change the rules for cloture votes on SC Justices to a simple majority. That passed. They then took the vote to end debate again and it now passed (52 votes!).
This morning Gorsuch was confirmed with a majority vote.
I think the misleading bit is that technically, there is no such thing as a filibuster, so it can’t actually be abolished. It’s just a tactic using the rules of the Senate, but the rules don’t say “filibuster”, so when they get changed it doesn’t look like what you expect.
Sure, but KERNEL is the key word. Even in America, where the government is absolutely designed to restrict presidential power, that was a load of hot nihilistic nonsense.
If you seriously STILL think the difference between Trump and Clinton being elected is irrelevant, you aren’t living in this planet.
Would Clinton have ended up bombing Syria? Quite possible. But she would’ve coordinated out with Congress instead of a hostile foreign government.
She also would’ve ordered it from the goddamn White House, because she actually takes that shit seriously.
It’s also ridiculous to claim we’d have gone to war in Iraq under Gore. Certainly in Afghanistan, but Iraq happened because the Bush admin went to great pains to convince people there were WMDs. Without Dubya, that doesn’t happen.
She also wouldn’t have signaled to Assad that we wouldn’t interfere by telling him he was a matter for the Syrian people to decide.
Quite likely, he wouldn’t have made the attack in the first place.
It’s also possible that Gore wouldn’t have ignored the reports that Bin Laden was planning attacks on the US as Bush did. Perhaps they would have been stopped.
From her own comments, Clinton would have wanted to bomb Syria. I gather Obama considered it, but could not get the congress to approve. Trump didn’t care if they did. Admittedly, it’s not as big a difference as whether the war would happen – which I agree, is very obviously the case for the Iraq war, which had no causes beyond the particular ambitions of Bush’s circle.
And what, Schol-R-LEA is just going to assert all Homo sapiens are too constrained by the world around for the individuals to make a difference? Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, even Adolf Hitler, none of them altered anything about history? That’s quite the article of faith.
Obama considered it and used that threat as a negotiating lever to get Assad to turn over some of his chemical weapons and hide and not use the rest. For which he was simultaneously pilloried for being a warmonger and a pushover, depending on who you talked to.
Assad didn’t use them again, until after Trump took office and started sending signals he was okay with Assad staying in power. Sensing weakness …
Trump retaliates with what’s looking more and more like an ineffective and possibly coordinated attack. Jets used that same base to attack targets in Homs
today apparently, so it’s still functional.
Trump informed Syria’s patron, Russia, of the strikes ahead of time and there are some reports the base was partly evacuated before it was hit.
But hey, Trump looks tough and looks opposed to Russia. Attentions off all the other scandals for the moment. Mission accomplished.
Schol-R-LEA, your second fallacy is too simplistic. Leaders do matter. While 99.99% of what they do is prescribed, the .01% really matters. An immediate example: Trump choice to bomb Syria. He easily could have chosen not to do that. Obama had that choice and chose not to. It is too early to tell all the repercusions Trump’s decision will have, but there will be some. What if Obama had bombed Syria a few years ago? How would the world be different today? I don’t know, but it is likely the world would not be the way it is now.
“People don’t make choices based on their beliefs. They only think they do because they’re acting in ways they’ve wound up believing align with what they’ve been led to believe they believe, based on things that have happened around them.”
See, I’ll admit to not really mattering in the overall scheme of things as an individual entity…
But the rest doesn’t really apply to me at least. I mean, I bet the two party system that is made up more and more of corrupt career politicians on both sides, or corrupt non-career politicians under Trump I guess, since he mainly handed out seats to people who helped support his campaign.
But yeah, foolish or not, whether anyone else does or not, I actually try and see if my ideals can actually support the sort of person who is running for the job.
I mean, maybe you’re right that most people will just toe the party line, or that a lot of politicians will cover up their own selfishness and lust for power under the guise of a lofty ideal, or a not so lofty ideal for that matter. Emotions are a lot easier to sell and buy after all.
But that doesn’t mean the rest of us necessarily live by that ideology of “Get mine first, try and make up a reason for me to not feel bad about what it costs others after the fact”.
We’ve not quite run out of Walkyverse folks (we got Angie, Drew, Manny, Carly, but tbh, they’re easy to forget), but tbh, new people are exciting! I’m eager to meet her and Molly.
I wish Leslie could turn around and say “I had a stupid crush on a politician, then I actually met her and couldn’t stand her (or her views), so I left. But, now she’s stalking me, it’s horrible.”
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oh THAT’S how our printer/copier broke
Ours too. Think Leslie does this often?
surprisingly, she only weakened it – it was actually broken after one of those butt picture pranks went horribly wrong. He will always have a blue rear from now on.
Well it could only support #DesantoHugeHonkers for so long…
Help is on the way. It should be arriving in 4 to 6 weeks.
Hopefully I’ll last, thanks.
Don’t worry, I got this.
*Comes back looking like Bert from Mary Poppins*
I think it’s fixed, try it now
I’m so glad this picture is spreading and not dying in obscurity.
It should have achieved meme status by now. Probably also has its own subreddit.
If it’s on reddit, they probably support the guy.
#NotOurRapist
Not only does it have its own subreddit, it got so popular that people plastered it all over r/place.
VIVIAN!… is somehow at fault for this.
…and on and on…
Orbital – Halcyon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV-hSgL1R74
And then Leslie burned down the building
Hell yeah! Destroy school property!
Those smug printers always lead people into trouble, with their slowness and their ink jets and their copy/load errors, whatever the hell those are!
The printer at work lied to me today! “Tray 1 out of paper.” I opened it and that bongo had plenty of paper! Closed it and it resumed printing like normal.
“Oh, oh, paper jam.”
WTF is PC LOAD LETTER?? I need to watch the printer smashing scene from Office Space again.
+1
Means you’ve either run out of Letter sized paper or you’ve set the printer to print from the wrong tray.
113 SQUIRREL JAMI prefer raspberry myself
“There’s only one man who would dare give me the raspberry!”
+1
LONE STAR!
Michael Jordan was not on his top performance in that sequel.
Printers are made of almost entirely moving parts. Or at least, inkjets are. Though laser printers have their fair share as well. Plus they have to successfully feed a very fragile medium through them that is prone to folding and tearing. It’s also fibrous and creates a lot of dust.
Printers have a rough go of it.
Laser printers are fairly simple, but they rely on many small parts working together:
From beginning to end, the paper is moved around by rubber rollers. These wear down like tires. If they don’t have enough grip, the paper jams.
If you use cheap paper and the optical sensors get covered with paper dust, the printer just thinks it got jammed.
If the paper guides in the tray aren’t set up right, the paper may not get picked up. If it does, it might go in crooked and jam.
Tolerances get tighter as the print speed (PPM) increases. I’d take a bad laser printer over an inkjet any day.
I just email PDFs. If someone can’t open a PDF in 2017, it’s probably just as well that they don’t receive my document.
Hey! They knew the job was dangerous when they took it!
VIVIAN!
Whenever I hear Vivian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FTFifA3btU
Hey! You pinched my link from yesterday!! 🙂
*fires up “Die Motherfucker”*
“did you hear about desanto’s tiny hands?”
*in a burst of strength, Leslie throws the whole. damn. printer at them*
When everyone notices your crush and talks about them in front of you even after the magic has worn off.
story of my life
not even a joke
Mimeographed lesson plans always smelled better, though. What was in that ink anyway?
Nostalgia and love of learning, in liquid form.
Speaking of nostalgia, may I squee in delight at the fact you have the baby Sabermoose from ATLA, or should I hold it in until another time?
Squee away. If you hold it in, might explode.
Looks like part of the last panel got cut off… Makes me wonder just how much graphic violence Leslie perpetrated against that poor copier.
Ha. “Graphic”.
Text-only violence only achieves so much.
*BIFF*
*BOOM*
*CRACK*
*POW*
*BAM*
*CRASH*
Sooo much…
You kinda suck, Mitch
It’s always Mitch. Fucking Mitch.
Yeesh. Judgmental workmates. Then again I had similar reactions to people after Trump got elected so I can’t blame them. And I doubt Robin’s gonna pull a Chester A Arthur and actually learn from her past behavior to rectify problems in government.
Damn Willis, I gotta read the old Shortpacked just to remind myself why I liked them together in the past.
Yeah hard to say, but I feel like I’d be full of judgement for people who voted for her, whereas my main emotional reaction to Leslie’s actions is “OMG, you poor masochistic idiot.”
Your KICKS just keep getting harder to find…
That’s because kids today pump them up, and then outrun your gun.
I’m sure this is somehow Vivian’s fault.
Vivian is boxbot.
What does Hayes Brown have to do with photocopies?
Something about Buzzfeed? v(*n*)v
https://twitter.com/HayesBrown/status/817632845401358336
I owe someone five dollars
Specifically, JBento. JBento, if you’re here, you just got stiffed.
I really feel bad for Leslie here. Day Fucking One and she’s already having to deal with the bullshit of being caught up in a scandal with a hideously backwards politician.
I hope she gets a break soon.
Hahaha this is Dumbing of Age she might end up okay (for all the trauma our characters endure they always end up physically fine as far as I can remember, Joyce’s wrist notwithstanding, and as someone with a damaged mind but working body being able to say “Hey, I’m not completely broken,” is important, dammit) but she’s going to go through hell before she gets there.
Eurgh…so the question is, is Leslie getting this because of the recent media campout around her house, or because she’s known to have that massive crush on Robin?
Also, would a straight male colleague with a crush on Robin be getting the same ostracization? :/
At the very least I guess this means she’s aware of the situation now.
I think it might that her crush was not terribly secret, plus the unfortunate timing of the photo of her and Robin coming out, followed by the one of Ryan now going around.
I don’t see why a straight male colleague will not also get mocked,only less ” hypocrite sellout ” and more ” what regressive troglodyte ” …
And if that straight man was an ally, he might get the “hypocrite sellout” tag as well.
I’m talking less about mocking, and more about the high school lunchroom bullshit whispering going on there.
People will gossip about ANYTHING. Mocking is actually LESS likely than gossip.
Yes. HS lunchroom bullshit whispering was inevitable no matter who Leslie is.
Probably not. But that might be because people sort of expect at this point to be let down by straight male allies. So a straight “ally” sleeping or presumed to be sleeping with an anti-gay politician would be less likely to get flak than someone presumed to be selling out “her people”.
When a cis/straight/white/male ally messes up, it’s “oh, cis/straight/white/male allies.” When someone in a marginalized group messes up, especially towards a different marginalized group, it’s “can you believe this specific person”. Not all the time, but sometimes. And I’m not angry because of something asinine like “reverse bigotry”. I’m angry because it’s just another example of more being expected of marginalized people, without them realizing it. When people generalize the failings of cis/straight/white/male allies as a property of the same, they sometimes remove a level of culpability that often remains intact for marginalized people, and it’s a very insidious problem that can be hard to rout without stepping on some serious toes.
Yeah, it really is.
Which sucks, because it means that those who are the most marginalized are given the least room to fuck up and those who have the most privilege are never held to a high standard and an expectation of better behavior when they really need to be to grow and change.
But it’s a really easy natural reaction to fall into, because it hurts more when we get hit sideways by someone we didn’t expect to hurt us and so it’s natural to try and respond to that increased feeling of hurt even if it fits in this insidious system.
Of course that’s only from within the community and an interesting reversal: Normally when the straight white cis man screws up, it’s just him, but when it’s a LGBT, minority or woman screwing up, they get to represent their entire group.
Why is it that both dynamics are considered to favor the straight/white/cis groups and hurt the other groups?
I mean, I’m honestly not even disagreeing, this is my gut feeling too, but I can’t figure out how it makes sense.
Because a prejudice held against a privileged group doesn’t foment structural oppression. A prejudice held against an underprivileged group does.
You’ve only explained one half. How is it that holding Leslie individually accountable for her actions (setting aside for the moment that she’s actually done nothing wrong) is somehow bad for … women? lesbians?, and the opposite (some horrible generalization like “women will fall for a sufficiently attractive public figure regardless of their political opinions”, maybe?) would be better?
Because Leslie ends up seen as representing all women or all lesbians, which then makes it easier to justify being shitty to them (ex. ‘See, lesbians SAY these policies are bad, but one slept with Robin, so it can’t be that bad, so we can continue pushing for them’).
Holding Leslie individually accountable would be a good thing, if she were actually accountable, and if the same applied to people who weren’t part of a marginalized group.
Then again they also outright stated that “white date rapist” is a natural subset of “desanto supporter”. I’m not entirely sure if it matters that they call her by name rather than by ” Republican “
That’s actually a thing. Women Republicans tend to get a lot more direct blame than their male counterparts. If a Republican who is a man screws up or has awful followers, that tends to be blamed on generic Republicans whereas if a Republican who is a woman gets singled out.
Think Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann (who are awful awful people) getting a lot more direct flak and negative attention than their equally awful peers.
I think it’s because we expect men to support policies that favor men at the expense of women. It makes sense, no matter how awful it is. But when women support those same policies, it is senseless and self-destructive, and it feels more like a betrayal.
And yet, this is still continuing to be much less of a big deal than I was expecting.
(Leslie’s thing, not the Ryan thing)
As for Ryan, did they not include in the information that he actually was a DeSanto intern? Because that would make him much easier to identify.
Yes they did. That’s why they commented about him being a typical DeSanto supporter.
Because he’s wearing a DeSanto shirt. If “DeSanto intern” had been included in the description of the guy, presumably they wouldn’t have had to work it out from the shirt.
If they saw the original post, sure. Chances are, it has been manually reposted in several places in addition to being linked to/retweeted/etc., so who knows what the caption (if any) they read could have said, or whether they had any reason to believe it beyond their own expectations/interpretation?
Well at least they can notice the scar. That’s pretty identifiable.
But didn’t Ryan delete the photo off of Amber’s phone earlier? And how can you barely make out his face, yet manage to notice a scar? It kinda seems to me like Willis is trying to drag out this subplot.
Yes, but not the one sent to Dorothy. Also, scars tend to be pretty distinguishable, even if other features aren’t. They may not be able to describe a shape or see much more than fuzz, but they can see one exists and an approximate location (scar, right cheek), especially when its still fairly red like Ryan’s.
Relevant video
The printer deserved it. It knows what it did.
This being a Willis comic, what it did was probably take copies of someone’s naked butt. Butts. Butts everywhere.
This isn’t in reaction to all the background conversation. This is actually perfectly-normal for a teacher at a printer sometime around copy #149.
Literally every morning I hear at least one of my teachers holding back their swearing.
I will never forgive you for reminding me of Rob Schnieder’s continued existence with that strip title.
Tarmaniel! The Tar-ster! Tar-TheMan-Iel!
Irrationally angry about the Schneid-ster!
Tarmaniel!
I do kinda hate how someones political alignment is associated with their personality. Ryan’s a rapist who just so happens to support Robin, not because he supports her, and all of her supporters aren’t rapists.
Oh no, people’s personalities are associated with their personalities. That sounds terrible.
Political opinions generally have to do with one’s personality or at least values, though.
I dunno, given modern conservatism… yeah, rape is kind of a core value at this point for that ideology, like it or not. And I really really don’t like it.
I know enough kind and lovely people who vote Republican that I’m not really comfortable with that statement… I don’t think that that kind of rhetoric is helpful. Obviously there are a lot of contradictions in modern conservatism, to the point where the politicians themselves are insane, but the people themselves aren’t that different from most Democratic people (and of course, there are contradictions in Democratic stuff too).
I say this as a liberal currently attending UC Berkeley, so I don’t really know… It just feels like to me that to some level a lot of people kind of learned how to vote and think politically from their parents, and there’s a lot of stuff that breaks down to “well this feels true based on some underlying pieces of my political worldview that I can’t quite place and that aren’t really touched by my personal morality” if you think about it for too long, whatever your political party.
(And also there are people that suck sooo much but they really really do live on both sides, too.)
*Also I know that this entire comment has been very two-party system-y, but I don’t feel like rewriting it, nor do I know if I’m totally qualified to.
Kind and lovely people can absolutely vote for an ideology that promotes rape via its policies.
Kind and lovely people can also make a lot of excuses for rape, not that they support rape, of course, just that whatever particular case they’re talking about wasn’t really rape and think of the poor man’s promising future.
That said, this kind of drugging of strangers is one least likely to be excused, though it does run into the “don’t go to those kinds of parties” attack.
THIS /\
I mean, you’ve just said the politicians are terrible horrible awful, and you’ve also said that these kind, lovely people still vote Republican, so…….
They’re voting for terrible horrible awful people, in support of their terrible horrible awful policies.
At that point, if they get tarred with the same brush as the people they’re supporting…….
I too have known Republicans and conservatives who weren’t awful. They have all gotten the heck off the train that is the current Republican Party, and don’t need to be coddled and reassured that #NotAllRepublicans. They know perfectly well that their party is awful now and have not been voting for Republican candidates when given the option. It’s been increasingly difficult to actually vote Republican without voting for people who are openly and proudly racist, islamophobic, antisemitic, misogynistic; who hate the entire LGBTQIAPN+ acronym; who are anti-science and who hate the poor and who want to destroy our economy with trickle-down policies that have been proven to not work.
Those positions aren’t necessarily “Republican”, but they have become core to the platform, as many, many Republicans have talked about in recent years.
But also, come on. Criticism of the Republican platform was not a personal attack on people you know.
Those kind and lovely people voted for a rapist and whatever the hell Mike Pence is.
Those kind and lovely people – and I know a lot of them because I live in rural West Texas – need to push back against the cesspool, otherwise they’re either cowards or complicit.
Yeah I’m one of the most leftist people I know and I’m a HUGE asshole.
> Ryan’s a rapist who just so happens to support Robin, not because he supports her
Sure, but at the end of the day both being a rapist and supporting a Republican* candidate are effects of the fact that he doesn’t respect women (I am not saying that all people who support Republicans don’t respect women – nor that all people who don’t respect women are rapists, but I am saying that it is a factor for some of them)
*well, technically I’m assuming here. But some things about the story arcs surrounding Robin don’t make sense if she’s not intended to be, including Leslie’s colleagues’ reactions to her crush in the most recent few strips.
EVERYONE’S POLITICAL ALIGNMENT IS ASSOCIATED WITH THEIR PERSONALITY!!!! EVERYONE’S!!!! A POLITICAL ALIGNMENT IS A FUCKING IDEOLOGY, AND YOUR PERSONALITY IS DEFINED BY THE IDEOLOGIES YOU SUPPORT!!!!! THE MAN BRAGGED ABOUT SEXUAL ASSAULTING WOMEN, ON STAGE, AND THE CROWD FUCKING CHEERED, AND AT LEAST ONE WOMAN PROCEEDED TO SEXUALLY ASSAULT ANOTHER WOMEN BECAUSE OF IT!!!!
Thank you. You cannot vote for someone on one of their policies without implicitly accepting all of them.
I do not particularly like Hillary Clinton. She is an impeccable stateswoman and public servant with an extremely-accomplished history, but she is also a bit of a warmonger and that alone was enough to make me jump ship to another candidate (Bernie, if you would like to know). I voted for her in November because there was no other viable alternative, and in the face of the prospect of a Trump White House (Everyone with your wait-and-see/”give him a chance” attitude, we did, and it took the fucker 7 days to [and I really need to emphasise this next part] VIOLATE THE CONSTITUTION) I was able to reconcile the damage Hillary would inflict afar with the good she would do at home.
More importantly, my little sister is transgender, and she has already been directly targeted by legislation in Congress. So when I’m told I’m overreacting because nothing has happened yet, and an Indian man is dead because someone THOUGHT he was Middle Eastern, I will tell that messenger to go fuck themselves.
More than anything else, what upsets me the most is that Trump was always a horrible candidate even if you NEVER CONSIDER his social policies and voted for him for purely economic reasons. He abuses his workers and has worked for years to move money out of public hands and into his pockets through any means necessary. Why the fuck did you think he was ever going to help you?
He is, to be fair, an exceptional businessman. I have no knowledge of who else could bankrupt a casino, a business that literally consists of people walking in off the street and giving you their money.
*I was able to reconcile the damage Hillary would inflict afar with the good she would do at home.*
This is the same logic the “good” Trump supporters are using. See <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/opinion/sunday/in-trump-country-shock-at-trump-budget-cuts-but-still-loyalty.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fnicholas-kristof&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection&_r=0" this column by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times for some of their views.
Screwed up the @#$! link, but it is still usable.
*desired expression of support for your sister* 8(
This is actually a good thing. Others are talking about Ryan’s picture, and it won’t be long before someone rats him out.
It also won’t be long before Joyce hears.
She already heard people talk about it at the end of her math class. It was when Sal convinced the girl to share it after the guy said that it’s “probably just made up for attention”. Link
Thank you! I did not remember that.
You’re welcome. 🙂
When I read the title, I read it in the voice of Dana Carvey. I don’t think I was even *born* when that Sketch came out….
Well, in DeSanto’s defense, not every intern or volunteer at a political event is actually a supporter. If they’re college-age, they may be doing it for a class or experience, not so much for idealism.
(Though, as she ran on a platform of conservative values, and he’s a preacher’s son, he probably does politically support her… but there’s a SMALL chance he doesn’t actually follow politics.)
You know, not ALL so-called ‘conservative values’ are automatically or inherently evil.
I’d be more sympathetic to that point of view if the GOP and most “conservative” voices weren’t upping each other on the worst fucking thing someone could support every day at this point. Treason? Starting a thermonuclear war? Rape? Running over protestors? Harassing and bullying kids into suicide? Trying to reinstate child labor? Openly stating that people should die if they are going to be a “burden” by wanting health care or welfare? Giving hate groups a blank check to commit as much violence without oversight? Bringing neo-nazism into the mainstream?
Like, I’d love to say, hey, there’s some positive conservative values, but I’m genuinely struggling to think of one conservative value or fight in the last 60 years that wasn’t straight up evil and actively harmful to giant swaths of people.
Nice job vilifying opposing viewpoints there.
Nice job off-handedly discounting legitimate complaints through a simplistic, nobody’s-ever-in-the-wrong worldview there.
She didn’t even say there aren’t conservative values that aren’t awful.Only that she’s having trouble seeing any right now.
If you can think of a few, why not make your case? I for one wouldn’t mind a reason to feel less pessimistic about the state of politics right now.
Fucking hell, there’s no equal and opposite “sides”. This isn’t a fucking chess game carefully balanced and meaningless. This is people’s lives.
One of the major “opposing views” right now is that I am literally a subhuman monster who can’t be allowed to pee in a restroom because I pose a danger to children and may rape them. And thus it is right and good to kill me:
http://www.advocate.com/transgender/2016/6/01/james-dobson-be-man-shoot-transgender-woman-bathroom
One of the main “opposing views” right now is actively trying to take away the health insurance my fiancee relies on to not die. “Opposing views” are openly supporting fascism and open attempts to destroy democracy and prevent folks from having any real vote or voice.
And it’s because we’ve created this twisted idea that there are two equal and opposite “opposing views” that are to be treated as morally equivalent and equally worthy of support.
But these shouldn’t be “opposing views”, these shouldn’t be major parts of any party’s platform. And the reason that shit has gotten so fucked up that they are is because we keep on culturally treating “opposing views” with this “the truth lies in the middle” garbage that makes everything about sides rather than about empathy and what is right.
Like, we’ve got a whole party thinking it must be part of their core identity to support some truly awful stuff because it’s an “opposing side” to the other fractionated party trying to argue amongst themselves the best way to handle major issues in our society.
When the real debate should be that. Earnest well-meaning attempts to help people, all people, to enrich and improve humanity. Open acknowledgment of reality and an acceptance of base ideas that everyone is deserving of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Bigotry should never have been allowed to become an “opposing side”. I should not have been forced to become part of a “side” because I was born the way I was.
And if those actions against me are villainous, are demonstrably harmful, are openly hateful, then why should we not call that out? Or at least acknowledge the legacy that has been created rather than treating this all as some game between Team Red and Team Blue?
Like, I would love to see something worthy of praise in conservatism. I would love conservatism to not be defined by its hatred and cruelty. I would love not to be targeted and hunted by people who’ve decided their “side” should be defined by loathing and trying to harm people like me.
I understand the sentiment, and Honestly I disagree with a lot of conservative ideas too. But the idea that conservatives WHOLLY want to harm people or that their actions are purely negative creates a fallacy. The same sort of Fallacy that causes people to immediately decide that someone is a horrible human being. As someone from the south I know MANY people who identify as republican and I can say you wouldn’t ever think that from hanging out with them. Not every conservative stance or desire is meant to shit on other people and not everyone shares the beliefs of those who do.
It’s the same logical fallacy that people who say “Lots of black people commited crime so ALL black people commit crime” or “Men Sexually assault people more so all men have a predisposition towards Sexual assault.”
It’s the reason why people feel nervous around people they don’t even know, because neither side believes the other should exist. That the other group wants to only see the destruction of the other. And because of that they do. It’s become increasingly weary to me constantly being juggled between conversations about how “These people want to ruin everything” It’s the inherit problem with our inability to get out of our own heads.
Those good people still nonetheless regularly vote to take away my right to life.
And I don’t want conservatism or conservatives destroyed and I know that there can be people who are good and kind in private while supporting a worldview that is harmful. We’re a very complex species and people’s political viewpoints don’t always match up with their individual behavior.
Honestly, mostly I just want to be able to live my life for five seconds without the most prominent and powerful members of organized conservatism trying to fucking kill me or make my life miserable.
And I’m getting really scared and distraught by how bad it keeps getting and how often me and mine have been stuck in desperate fights for our basic rights to life and participation in society by the political consequences of conservative votes.
Like, I’m really tired of burying folks I care about.
Like, I want conservatives to be happy and healthy and with their full rights. Free from pain and fear and as much awfulness as we can prevent.
I don’t want them to hurt just because so many with that label have hurt me.
I just want to stop being hurt because I’m seen as a soft target.
Holy false equivalence, Batman.
Genuinely asking, what are some conservative values that the people you know would espouse that Don’t shit on the lives and liberties of others (whether intended to or not)?
A lot of them tend to care about junk like guns (it’s the south), Financial stuff I have absolutely no depth to try to explain. To be perfectly honest I rarely talk politics. It usually ends up nasty anyway, so I’m probably not the best to defend their honor 😛
Conservatives don’t intend to harm, I’ll grant you that.
They don’t care if they harm, so long as they get their [tax break / gun control repeal / insert conservative bugbear here]. They are perfectly willing to vote in people who would fund torture camps for queer kids, if they get a tax break and a loosening of gun control – and then they’ll turn around and tell me I’m unreasonable to be pissed with them over it because “not all conservatives” want to shove queer kids in torture camps.
No, they don’t. But it sure as hell isn’t a deal-breaker.
So, yes, I will grant you there is a difference between willful and passive harm. But it’s not one I am highly comforted by.
Except of course for the ones who do intend harm. Or may even think their victims would be better off after “reparative therapy”. Or whatever else it is they’re supporting that actually does real harm to people.
I’ve met many religious conservatives who think harm done on Earth is outweighed by the good done in making sure someone goes to heaven, so… yeah. They don’t intend harm, but they sure as hell do it. Fuckers.
Plus, you don’t see conservatives agonising about whether they should respect their opponent’s point of view. They trot out that line ONLY to use against liberals, who they see as prone to hand-wringing self doubt.
Yeah, that part frustrates me. Like, it’s always on liberals to look past all the awfulness and reach out and still think the best of conservatives and never get bitter about everything, whereas no one expects conservatives to do even the slightest thing to recognize the humanity of the liberals they demonize and seek to harm.
Like I’m really bad about not getting bitter, I recognize that, but it’d be nice if conservatives were called upon to see the humanity of people they are actually harming as often as liberals are called upon to see the goodness in people actually voting for policies and candidates that hurt them.
Like, can you even imagine that article, profiling a liberal voter who is hurting now and calling on conservatives to sympathize and empathize in the same way every Trump voter sympathy piece excoriates liberals to “stop being mean” by pointing out things like racism or sexism?
The whole thing just ends up feeling like an abusive relationship where we are being hit repeatedly and when we raise our hands in defense, that’s used as a sign of our “irrational anger and hatred” and a clear sign we deserve even more abuse.
The real issue here is that Trump is the focus and he’s not even that bad. Yeah, he’s a social conservative, but he’s still an economic liberal, he’s barely homophobic at all, and he’s not for shoving religion into government. Would you have preferred Ted Cruz instead?
The real danger, the one that basically no one is talking about, is that Republicans control 34 state legislatures out of 50. If they flip four more in 2018 they’ll be able to unilaterally amend the Constitution.
“economic liberal” is strong. His plan is tax & regulation cuts and talk a lot about jobs while doing nothing about them.
The two big problems with Trump in office are that he’s aggressively arrogant and ignorant and that he’s basically willing to sign off on the Republican agenda, even the parts he doesn’t really care about.
Cruz would be a disaster too, but in different ways.
The Constitutional Convention is possible, but I think it’s a long shot. As things are going, I also expect them to lose states in 2018, though anything can change.
While yes, state, local, and Congressional elections are important, and people need to get ready for those, the idea that Trump is “not that bad” is absurd.
The only reason things aren’t much, much worse is because almost no-one in the cabinet has any political or even legal experience. If Trump was competent, or had experienced advisors, or even had the work ethic to put in more than a couple hours a day, the difference would be dramatic.
And the idea that he’s liberal on any level is observably false. Tax cuts for the rich, cuts to pretty much every program that helps disadvantaged people, and down environmental, health and safety regulations.
“Economic liberal” – No. He’s all about botching regulations and cutting things like welfare.
“barely homophobic at all” – A) No, he is not. He campaigned on the idea that LGBT+ marriage should have been answered by the states, been an anti LGBT+ marriage, put a lot of homophobes in positions of power (Jeff Sessions, most of his cabinet), and nearly signed an anti-LGBTQIAPN+ executive order (Ivanka and Kushner apparently had to talk him out of it), and his campaign platform involved cutting HIV research. Trump’s pretty damn homophobic. B) Even if he WERE ‘barely homophobic’, that is not a good thing, and is absolutely not a point in his favour.
“Not for shoving religion into government” – Which is why he’s worked on ending separation of church and state and caters to the religious right on issues like LGBT+ rights, abortion, and quote unquote ‘religious freedom’.
While it’s true that Trump did officially toe the party line on gay marriage, that was basically obligatory. He ran as a Republican, you have to do that. He hasn’t really done anything against LGBT people since entering office, in fact he preserved the rules preventing discrimination against LGBT people in federal service and those are rules he could have unilaterally removed without consulting anyone else.
Remember that trade protectionism and immigration control are historically liberal stances. “Free trade and open borders” are basically Economic Conservatism 101, and I actually find the current state of politics regarding them to be really bizarre, it was not long ago that it was the Democrats that wanted the border wall. Bill Clinton actually started building one during his term and it was the neocons that defunded it. The Democrats also made a major push for a wall in 2006 (the Secure Fence Act) and they mostly got it, it was the Republicans again that tried to obstruct this by defunding it again.
Trump picked Pence as his running mate. That is not what an ally would do.
He’s certainly not an ally, but literally any other serious Republican candidate would have been worse.
tarmaniel: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
indiana had a goddamned AIDS outbreak which pence CAUSED and then DID NOTHING ABOUT because he assumes if you get AIDS god has obviously chosen you to die
a man was exonerated for a crime for which he was stuck in prison for, and needed pence to pardon him so he could go home
pence was like
naw
and pence made national news when he did that whole Gay Cakes law which made his state a laughing stock, and which would have moved him off the political board entirely forever if trump hadn’t plucked him from the jaws of defeat
pence appealed a new law allowing gay spouses from visiting their spouses in the hospital SPECIFICALLY TO KEEP ONE SPECIFIC LADY FROM BEING ABLE TO BE WITH HER WIFE AS SHE DIED
pence is SO TERRIBLE even among his own party that HIS REPUBLICAN REPLACEMENT now that pence is veep is rolling back all of pence’s horrible shit
I remain grateful that we didn’t get Cruz.
I think Trump really might be the worst one internationally, though, from the sheer might of his ignorance. Domestic blunders will take a decade to fix, and people will die in the meantime (so, uh, sucks if we’re among those who die). International incompetence, though, I don’t think there’s a way to fix any of it afterwards, I think it lasts a century.
OTOH, Trump is so tremendously, ratings-pumpingly terrible that he’s given rise to this beautiful sense of activism and political involvement against him. Another republican could’ve been more evil, and far more competent, and so boring that people would lose interest instead of standing against him.
So, silver lining is that at least Trump is bad in a showy, mobilizing manner? I’m trying hard, here.
Maybe Pence is, like, Trump’s anti-assassination insurance policy.
Even aside from Pence, there are things like Trump’s promise to repeal Obama’s guidance on transgender student rights, which he kept in February. There might be some places where he counts as barely homophobic, but the 21st century is not one of them.
I’m not even really able to wrap my head around the worldview idea currently that Trump is not that bad. Fuck, I lost a former kid I mentored when he got elected and it’s just been worse since then.
After all he’s done. After everyone he’s hurt. After the horrors he has perpetuated, I’m not sure how anyone can argue he’s “not that bad”.
I suppose we can say that Trump is not that bad.
But ONLY because “not that bad” is a relative measure.
Not that bad… compared to what?
I mean, compared to almost anyone else who could have conceivably won a major party’s primary in the last 20 years? Yeah, he is that bad.
Compared to, say, a worldwide pandemic that leaves half the population dead? He’s not that bad.
…. yet. But the potential nuclear showdown with Russia doesn’t bode well. Hmmm.
Um…. compared to a planet-killer on a crash course with Earth? Maybe he’s not that bad…. but we know how to divert those now… if NASA’s funding doesn’t get slashed… which…. hrrrm.
…. okay, given time, it is THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE that I can come up with some measure of awful against which I can unequivocally say that Trump is not that bad.
Ohh, I know this one.
“So much for the tolerant left!” Pbbbbbtttt.
I was referring to Trump there, not Pence. I probably should have been clearer there. Yes, Pence is really bad.
Trump picked him as his running mate, and has already – of his own volition – removed protections for trans students. It’s not even as if Congress passed a discriminatory bill and he “merely” signed it.
The fact that he COULD be much worse does NOT mean he’s “not that bad”.
If somebody is punching you, it doesn’t matter how much harder they COULD be hitting you, it won’t suddenly turn the punch into a gentle poke. Things don’t work that way.
Fundamentally that’s true, but US politics has been about picking the lesser evil for quite a while now. I certainly didn’t vote for Trump, but I’m still glad we got him instead of Cruz. Trump’s first major initiative was a somewhat-nerfed version of Obamacare that failed anyway because the Freedom Caucus didn’t think it was conservative enough. Cruz’s first initiative would have been his pet project, the First Amendment Defense Act, a bill that actually implements harsh discrimination against LGBT people, rather than simply not granting federal protections to them, and one that the Freedom Caucus would have broken speed records lining up to vote for.
Hillary was the lesser evil in this election. Hell, Cruz had been her opponent, she probably would’ve won.
And in case you’ve forgotten, Congress writes laws, and Cruz is still there. He can still try to get that bill through, and if it passed, we’d have to hope he’s feeling spiteful that day because I wouldn’t count on a veto otherwise.
But even if every alternative was worse, even if Charles Manson was the other candidate, that wouldn’t make the harm Trump is doing any less significant.
Maybe the opposition should stop acting like actual comic book villains then
When the “opposing viewpoint” is that I am subhuman and should be locked up or killed or that people should be allowed to fire me for who I am and then I should be allowed to starve in the streets, all for being a bi trans person, it doesn’t need vilification. It’s awful enough on its own.
I will have sympathy for conservatives who complain about getting painted with the same brush as the far-right extremists when I see conservatives actually doing something about said far-right extremists. All I see them doing is wringing their hands and bleating, “We’re not all like that!”
Ok, show me. Show me you’re not like that.
Come to a protest against the anti-immigration policies. Complain to your rep about the extremist direction the party is headed. Hell, run for office with an explicitly socially progressive platform. You say you don’t believe that stuff and think it’s terrible? Put your action where your mouth is and show me you think it’s terrible.
Then, maybe, I’ll start believing that not all conservatives are perfectly A-OK with a guy who wants to send queer kids to re-education torture camps being second in command of the damn country in the US, or a woman who thinks human rights protections shouldn’t apply to non-citizens as the leader of the opposition here in Canada.
For the record : she’s not yet the leader of the opposition but she’s the odds-on favorite to win that position last time I checked.
I’m trying to laugh about all the conservative pundits who are turning on Trump tonight, but the reasons WHY they’re finally criticizing him are too horrific. Mostly complaints that Syria isn’t “our problem”, or conspiracy theories that the gas attacks were faked.
Plus a ton of people who voted against letting Obama act in Syria now trekking everyone they need to “stand behind the president”. Fuck that.
How about believing that criminals should be held accountable for their crimes? That’s a conservative value. Paying your bills? Conservative value. Living within your income? Conservative value.
It’s just that as the term is used today, “conservative values” are more in keeping with what were called “reactionary extremes” when I was growing up and in school. The values haven’t changed, but the people who define them have.
Those three aren’t “conservative values”, they’re basic societal fabric. No one across the spectrum of political thought (except for the various types of anarchists) would state that they are against those three “conservative values”. The variantions those three broad stroke statements determines whether or not it is conservative for nature. For example, what if you cannot live within your income because of economic conditions such as mass economic depression or hyperinflation leaving one either unemployed or without a liveable wage? The conservative responds to that situation by either blaming the person for either not working hard enough or secretly being a spendthrift, and that those truly in trouble will be provided by private charity. The progressive liberal responds that the public should attempt to help those in need. Also, by saying that those three are “conservative values”, you imply that non-conservatives are against the punishment of crime, against the paying of bills, and against living within one’s means. The result of such implications and mindset is the idea that “liberals are a bunch of lazy people who want criminals to run free and to support themselves off the sweat and work of others.” In other words, the beginning to political demagoguery.
This.
It’s a fiction of propaganda. And it belies awfulness and sets up a false idea of the other “side” that is not backed up by evidence.
Liberals very much support criminals going to jail (fuck, how many times have I critiqued how under-prosecuted sexual assault is in our society or the lack of justice responses for anti-trans murders?), but they critique the racist way certain groups are targeted by the justice system more than others, or the way citizenship or ability to participate in society is taken away by overly punitive systems, or the way jails have been allowed to be more about punishment and suffering than rehabilitation.
Liberals very much support paying bills.
Like, no shit. Do you really believe that liberals don’t pay their bills when groups that are more likely to be liberal fucking put themselves into debt making sure all their bills are paid while the major players in conservatism have made a virtue out of getting out of paying one’s fair share in society (like, I mean, Trump…)?
Liberals very much support living within your income. But that means one’s income needs to be enough to live on. That means roof, food, medicine, water. The basic needs of Mazlow’s. And right now that isn’t the case for a majority of Americans.
And the response from the conservatives to that is to blame the poor for not “living within their means” and just… I dunno, not eating? Not having a roof? Not going to the doctor when they need to? As if the poor don’t already do that.
But yeah, that’s the problem. We’ve got a movement that has abandoned real honest points of disagreement about the distribution of resources and what is moral and has needed to abandon reality and believe a fictional narrative about their enemies in order to sustain themselves.
Trans people are child molesters but the child molester in the White House is God’s chosen leader. Poor people could be rich if they just worked harder. Ignore that they are already working multiple jobs and way more than 40 hours a week or that a minimum wage isn’t enough to live on. Refugees are secret terrorist meaning us all harm rather than folks running from Hell on Earth.
This shouldn’t be a thing. We should have a conservatism that is based in reality, which strives to do something positive, which isn’t based on empty platitudes and false ideas of what the other “side” is like.
Like, there’s so much room for disagreement on how best to fix our world. On what we should most care about. On how to best help those in need. On what is our most important priorities. There are so many meaningful sides that could be drawn on that. And I would love to be able to relax and not have to fight for the lives of myself or all my friends from folks all the damn time.
Yeah. Our “Justice” system has been warped to an incredible degree (we have a larger gross prison population than China starting I believe three years ago), being “enforced” on minority segments of the population disproportionately, with a warped sense of punishment were a non-violent drug offense will give a person more time in prison than being a rapist, sexual crimes and abuse are investigated to little, and you can end up in prison for a crime you didn’t commit because it’s simply cheaper and easier to sign a plea bargain than to hire a lawyer and go to court with the possibility of losing anyway for any number of reasons. This type of shit is why parts of the US might as well be a “third nation” country (or worse in some cases) and why Martin Luther King Jr. talked about there being two Americas: the America we present, and the America within that we’re people are impoverished and starve in one of the world’s most prosperous and affluent countries. It’s why, if not for our military, we would be the laughing stock of the “Western World”.
*claps* Rukduk and Cerberus, Thank you for all that you just said. I, for one, am tired of having to say such things so many other places. This thank you was far shorter to type. You people are wonderful, please do not ever forget that.
This is what happens when all nuance is thrown out of political discourse. We’re left with a binary, “us vs them” environment of doublethink and regurgitated talking points.
“That makes some sense. Who came up with that idea? Oh, they have the letter I don’t like next to their name therefore their idea is bad and they are literally Satan for proposing it.”
Bull fucking shit. That’s the most regurgitated, false-binary talking point of them all. Giving hate a viewpoint — and not all, but a lot, of conservative ideas are built on hate — is the epitome of no nuance.
We can talk nuance when one side of the spectrum isn’t unanimously striving for my death.
Until then, finding the ‘right’ answer in politics is as simple as picking the person that isn’t evil. simple. And if someone isn’t willing to do that, that reflects on them.
But those are, like… universal values across the board???
I don’t know a single person who doesn’t pay their rent. Like. Do you really believe liberal people don’t pay rent and live within their means?
One of our professors has a cartoon on his door of a man sitting in an easy chair, reading the paper and talking to his dog. He says; “No wonder Democrats don’t mind taxes – they don’t pay them!” It’s been there for years and I’m not in a place in the org chart where I could confront him about it, but it’s very insulting, and untrue. In what universe do Democrats not pay taxes? I’m a Democrat and I pay plenty. Or Republicans? Poor Republicans are being played by that myth. Rich people pay a lower tax rate, by their own design, and are predominately Republican.
Republicans believe in none of this, as evidenced by every single person in a position of power in their party. Like, 0 of them.
Yeah, that value list definitely leaves a sour taste in my mouth after watching the elected Republicans repeatedly ignore blatant unconstitutional rule-breaking in favor of party power, overwhelmingly support a tax dodger who gleefully stiffs his contractors, and who also has needed to borrow repeatedly from foreign and domestic organized crime organizations to fund his lavish and extravagant lifestyle of intentional excess.
Like, if these are core conservative beliefs, it’s sure not being reflected in the leadership or the followers. Like, when Obama went against anti-war principles, there were no end of folks on the left criticizing that strongly and pushing against him, even growing to hate him over that.
The very term “conservative” means that one wishes to maintain the status quo as closely as possibly without too much forward change. Mainly because such forward change empowers other groups within a society while endangering the power of the privileged members. Any “conservative value” by its very nature as “conservative” seeks to keep people “in there place” and out of power or full equality as a result.
Note that people and groups describing themselves with a term do not necessarily subscribe to the original or even definitional meaning of that term.
Modern American conservatives tend to not want the status quo, but some mythical status quo decades in the past. Both socially and economically, though farther back economically. 50s TV America socially and 20s Gilded Age economic rules. Not that the two are compatible.
So I’d describe that as more reactionary or regressive. Meanwhile modern “liberals” tend to be pretty conservative economically and moderately liberal socially.
In Britain, the Conservative Party is currently all about destroying, not “conserving.” They’re on a mission to tear down the institutions created by more moderate governments.
I fully expect one of the crazier republicans to try to pass a law against colour, because all their ideas of when America was great are from black and white TV.
True. Plus, our modern “conservative” party is actually in favor of economic policies that are technically “liberal” if we were to go with the original meaning of the term in relation to economics.
thejeff- I know what you mean, I even have a friend who once pointed out that she “an “Eisenhower Conservative” which is to say a liberal” and we started talking about how most conservatives don’t understand that their party was the party of “help the poor” once upon a time. They were the party of social reform and all the programs that they are working so hard to dismantle.
Not really. It was still Democrats who built most of those programs and social reforms. Democrats were at least less opposed to the Labor movement and occasionally even helped out. The New Deal was a Democratic project. As was LBJ’s Great Society.
The party’s were closer together on such issues, especially in the post-war period, but it wasn’t Republicans who were the party of “Help the poor”.
Fair point, but Eisenhower was very much in line with that way of thinking. He was the next guy to raise the minimum wage and was all about expanding on on what Truman started. Though he wanted to limit government spending a bit more. I find it all very fascinating because to me it’s kind of like a schism I guess then because it does represent a different kind of Republican party and it was one that was much more closely aligned with the Democrats on the big issues – which is how things should be. I just hate the fact that they have become the party of the lobbyists and the corporate raiders and the super rich. 🙁
Also ironic, despite (or because of) being a former general (and overall commander of the Allied forces on the Western Front in WW2) Eisenhower was very much against a military industry complex and warned the country against taking such a turn during the Cold War in one of his last speeches, and well as being concerned with the overexploitation of natural resources. Guess what the country as a whole (and his party with greater fervor) have been doing for the past forty years?
Isn’t the problem with the “conservative party” currently that its actually the “alt-right party” who are just claiming to be “middle of the line conservatives” in order to string along the masses who will just vote R cause they’re bought into the “Democrats are all crazy, evil, and stupid…and probably commies too.” story?
Even if its Trump’s organization that seems to have all the ties with Russia?
Sadly, I live in a Republican state, thats mainly Republican cause 1. “thats what people in rural areas vote”, 2. “Killary wants your guns”, or 3. “Repubicans mean the Federal Government doesn’t boss us around, right?”
That said, the only candidate who was locally particularly popular in my Town seemed to be Bernie. Idaho might have swung for Bernie, but if its between the Red person they hate and the Blue one, most of the districts will vote Red every time. And between Gerrymandering and just general disbelief in being able to have your vote matter, well a lot of people who didn’t want Trump seem like they gave up before they even got out the door to go vote.
Its bad enough that even just voting third party in the hopes that they’ll seem a bit more legitimized seems more viable than voting anything but Republican.
Nah, just the overwhelming majority of them at this point.
Prediction: Robin herself digs up Ryan’s identity and gets him busted, sacrificing (the now-tattered remains) of her political career.
Leslie is turned on.
Makeouts happen for real.
One good deed doesn’t fix all the horrible shit that is Robin. Leslie isn’t just embarassed her crush is a monster politically, she’s embarassed her crush is a fucking asshole. Stalking, breaking-and-entering, dismissing ALL of it and not considering Leslie’s feelings on the matter. Has Robin left Leslie’s yet? Leslie’s in a different outfit than when we last saw her, but we also saw her give up trying to remove Robin (I can’t remember the exact timeline).
Last time we saw Robin, she was still home invading, yes. And planning (insofar as she plans anything) on making it permanent. She was also wearing Leslie’s clothes, because, hey, she’s already using her HOME without permission, why shouldn’t she make use of Leslie’s other things?
This is the latest Robin comic: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/fort-2/
Leslie, don’t yell so loud! The panels can’t contain it!
… okay, since no one else is going to ask, I will.
Why is Leslie making photocopies of her Lesson Plan? Handouts, sure. Lecture notes, maybe. But her lesson plan?
I mean, maybe she has to turn a copy in to the department, but that would be at most three copies.
So why is she printing out tons of lesson plans?
Maybe she means syllabus and everyone lost theirs? Or maybe she made changes? That’s all I’ve got.
THIS IS THE REAL QUESTION
Maybe she teaches several courses, and these are plans for the whole next semester. Leslie is super prepared?
Well it’s not like there are a lot of guys with facial scars in the area, right? Shouldn’t be difficult to find.
That printer is a jerk.
Fun note: I have never met anyone with the first name “Mitch” in my life who was a decent person to be around. I feel like it’s a cursed name that turns people into sanctimonious mansplainers. And this is from having met nine “Mitch”s over the years.
I know one and he’s weird but very decent. Maybe the only decent one there is. XD
Adding to the chorus of people who know at least one perfectly lovely Mitch. The one I know is quietly cheerful, self-effacing, and fluent in ASL.
#notallMitches
Heh, I know two Mitch’s and they’re both really cool. Both studying biomed with me, one who I don’t know that well but is really involved in trying to help science graduates get jobs (laughably difficult here); one who is the most chill person I’ve ever met and I always just want to hug him. He’s super sweet.
Either you’ve had horrible Mitch luck, or the rest of us have had abnormally good Mitch luck. Whichever it is, it leads to very important scientific questions.
We’re totally hogging all the good Mitches.
Where are all these good Mitch’s hiding? Is the same place where the guys with the name Cassie who are actually decent are hiding? Because I’ve had bad luck with those as well.
There’s actually guys who are actually named Cassie?
I thought that was generally just people not understanding that Casey is a completely different name? One that actually is pretty gender neutral overall, where Cassie is just that one girl from Animorphs to me tbh.
I’ve met two people named Mitch. Both were pretty decent people. I’m sure there’s a name out there where everyone I know that has it is a douche (lots of names, lots of douchebags, overlap is inevitable), but Mitch isn’t it.
I’m the same way with guys named Dana. Hopefully I’m an exception and actually decent.
Mitch didn’t even receive a tag. We’re never seeing them again~
According to the DoA Timeline on Walkypedia Ryan tried to roofie Joyce and got ‘glassed’ at the party on Friday of their first week on campus. Ryan made his next appearance at the ‘Re-Elect DeSanto’ rally a month later and the scar was still visible and significant enough for it to show up on a cell-phone picture. This must be one serious gash that Joyce gave him, as a lesser scar or scrape would have healed to almost invisibility in that length of time.
Most likely, he never sought medical attention – worried that they’d reported “attempted rapist with face wound” to the police.
It would be kinda satisfying that the amount of his disfigurement is a direct result of his intended crime.
Cheek scars are no joke. Serious blood tubes flow through there, the skin is soft and easily damaged, and he may be forming a Keloid for all we know if he didn’t treat it properly.
Heck, I fell on rough pavement once and my knee was so cut open that the scar is still here today, years later. I ‘weathered’ it out, no stiches. If it had been my check, it would be easily distinguishable. Correlating this with the surge of adrenaline anyone experiences in the flight-or-fight response Joyce had, she may had very well slashed him with equivalent or likewise force.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 2: Oh yay, the picture is going viral. And it seems to be implied here that at least 2 professor level folks are taking it seriously and treating it as a major thing, which is positive. At the very least, ol’ Scarface is going to find it a lot harder to do his usual dirty work, which is the benefit of outing a missing stair in the community like that.
Panel 3: Oh no. Oh no, this isn’t going to go anywhere good.
And it’s awful for Leslie, because well, it’s something she felt guilty about with regards to Dorothy and it’s the hook that got her to go out to the bar with Robin in the first place and start this whole waking nightmare for her.
So this has got to be triggering and awful as all hell.
What is she actually saying in that last panel? ‘You o piece of shit’? What’s the o part of?
I’m guessing ‘old’? Seems kind of off cropped.
Panel 4: Oh wow. Fuck. There’s so much to unpack here.
That first point about someone drugging girls being a supporter of a right-wing family values candidate… yeah.
Like, it’s not a hundred percent and there are plenty of people who espouse liberal values who are vile rapists or abusers, but there is definitely a correlation with being a rapist and being a misogynist as not fully being able to see women as people and to feel entitled to their presence makes it easier to self-justify awful actions such as rape.
And that’s been backed up with a lot of the most regressive misogynist “family values” groups having some of the highest incidences of rape and some of the most vile statements with regards to it including Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” BS, Mike Pence’s “I can’t be alone with a woman lest I jump her” crap, or the eager support for proud rapist Donald Trump by every major “family values” supporter with a fervor that less misogynist fellow travelers never received.
And that’s before factoring in things like the major child molestation scandals in the Catholic, Mormon, and Fundamentalist churches. Or major “family values” spokespeople being picked up for sexual assault or child molestation. *Cough cough* Duggars *cough cough*.
It’s a reputation unfortunately well earned, though I wish it weren’t the case. Because I would like to live in a world where rape was non-existent or at least way way less common than it is now.
Then there’s the second bubble. The well-meaning person. They’re clearly trying to be sensitive, but oof, there’s still stuff that’s just going to pummel Leslie in it. First up is the assumption that Leslie must be a “DeSanto Supporter” or is likely to be defensive about Robin because she’s presumed to be fucking her. Which oof, that’s got to hurt that she would be assumed to support someone so violently against every value she holds.
Second up, that drop voice in the middle is trying to be discreet, but it also highlights and points out Leslie in the conversation, making her now the topic and thus linking her in the conversation with the awfulness being discussed.
And that final bubble. The emphasis on “see” makes it feel that Mitch while following his compatriot’s lead nonetheless has clearly lost some major respect for Leslie and seems to be casting some direct shade her way. Yeah, he sees her and he’s judging her as the type of person who would overlook things like this in order to get with someone.
Which, is just awful for Leslie because she isn’t like that. She actually has pushed away against her libido and repeatedly tried to establish boundaries because of that moral disconnect. But in everyone else’s eyes, they don’t see that, they just see a “traitor”.
And that’s the thing I was worried about when the Robin/Leslie news broke. That her community and peers would view her negatively as someone who betrayed them to support and sleep with someone they despise and who actively harms the community.
Mitch’s shade here is an early sign of that pulling away Leslie is likely to receive from the acquaintances around her and that’s going to hit hard and unfairly, especially as she’s being judged for this fantasy idea of what she’s doing while her actual life is basically just her being relentlessly stalked.
Well, if you want to be optimistic about Mitch, you might interpret his comment as realizing the moment he made the Desanto Supporter comment that Leslie was within earshot, with his “I see her, goddamit” being a “Goddamit, I just put my foot in my mouth” sort of realization. Probably a stretch and it doesn’t make him a much better person, but it is less shitty than “Yes, I’m deliberately trash talking in front of Leslie to upset her”.
True, that’s a possible interpretation. And would be a bit better. Though I’m willing to bet that Leslie’s headspace is more likely to latch on to my pessimistic reading than that.
The worst thing about humanity: We tend to want to draw judgements about others’ character based on even the loosest possible associations they have with others.
That, and the grouping, discrimination, and hatred we’ve built up for one another for the most ridiculous reasons.
The person you support to decide policies and how your governative area should be run is not, was never, and never will be the “loosest possible association.” It is, in fact, the opposite, and I wish people would stop trying to pass it as otherwise.
THAT SAID, Leslie is not actually a de Santo supporter (we know she voted for the other guy), though adding another body to her rally is… less than stellar.
Oh shit, I’m just realizing that this is just in response to the pictures in the paper. None of these people know she actually attended a rally and held up a sign in support of Robin. And I’m betting this gets twice as nasty when that little tidbit comes out.
And yeah, I’m so so done with this weird treatment of politics as something that should be deemed immaterial about someone’s character like what sports team you support. Like, this shit is real and dramatically affects real people’s lives and the weird muzzling that occurs where we’re asked to separate any blame for awful things that hurt us from the people who regularly vote for that out of tribal loyalty frustrates me.
Like, maybe those people should stop treating politics as a tribal loyalty thing and actually start taking this shit seriously.
It’s amazing to see how far people will take it that way. “I vote Republican, I always will, but I hope they change their mind about taking away the health care I need to survive” is a real thing. As if you’re not allowed to change your support based on what you’re supporting.
“Keep the damn government out of my Medicare!”
and
“I don’t care if they kill Obamacare, I get my coverage through the ACA.”
Yes, but I’ve even heard “I know Trump is trying to kill ACA, and that probably means we would die, but of course I’d still vote for him again”.
I feel like these are the same kind of people who believe their faith requires things they feel are horrible, but do them anyway.
It’s why – although I have no problem with religion in general – I absolutely deplore the sort that teaches that this life is just one long entrance exam for the next. It leads to this exact kind of self-harming mentality.
“None of this suffering matters, we’ll be rewarded in Heaven”
It’s extremely disturbing to me.
See, the terrifying thing, is that I’m pretty sure to a lot of the people who vote Republican because Republican, even if it means shooting themselves in the foot in the process, sports team they support generally isn’t considered “immaterial about their character”.
In fact it basically is a lot of the same tribal instinct going around in both politics and religion for quite a long time now. Gotta support the “team” no matter what, cause its “yours”.
Also, not putting the source on this one in deference of the person’s privacy, but I’m pretty sure most “Okay Conservatives” basically at least were living by the mindset of “I wasn’t pro Trump, I was Anti Hilary, So I convinced myself he had merits”, due to all the scandals she had come up and the like.
So, you know, basically “Trump can’t be that bad, because I already hate the other option and I don’t want to accept that this game has no way for me to win. So he’s gotta actually be an okay guy who is just being slandered by lying liars right?”
Except Trump should have not been voted in purely due to him being the sort who doesn’t even actually seem to believe truth…just whatever is convenient for him to spout at the moment to get whatever he wants right then and there, even before getting into his various hate speech tactics and the policies he’s has pushed through….as well as the ones that are currently still too unconstitutional to actually make it through.
But no, people have to believe that they didn’t make the wrong choice, or that they gambled on something that never actually seemed like a great bet to begin with on the hopes that it’d save them from their problems.
Panel 5: Oh dear, animated whispered conversation after that opening. Perfect to flare up the paranoia, especially as Leslie definitely knows that every ounce of those whispers is about her given the start of their quieting down. Leslie really is having the morning from hell.
Panel 6: Yeah, I don’t blame you Leslie. Those situations are awful to put up with and often times the desire to flee is high to go where you don’t have to be so aware of the rumors flying around you. Like, I’ve never been in her exact circumstances, but I have had folks whispering and gesturing at me in disapproving ways or been the subject of a massive harassment and rumor campaign in the past and so I know that moment of feeling watched and judged and like things could get nasty in a second depending on how things go.
It’s stressful and in those circumstances, the urge to flee is high. So yeah, I empathize greatly with Leslie and feel so so bad for her. She really doesn’t deserve all the shit she is getting thanks to Robin’s terrible respect for boundaries.
well shit
Before I clicked through, this was the clip that came to mind: https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/copy-machine-ii/n10024?snl=1
Then of course, there is the video related to the sound effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vaN01VLYSQ
Leslie smash!
Even if Leslie supported every last one of her policies, I doubt “give frat boys sedatives to commit rape with” is one of her policies. There’s no way “Mitch” and his friend come off well here.
The extra irony is that quick condemnation and rejection of rapists in her organization was like the one political thing that Robin got right.
Like Leslie didn’t even need to argue on that point like she did over her humanity as a gay woman. Robin was super quick to be like “fuck that guy, I’ll help you bust him if I can”.
I honestly can see this arc ending with Leslie bursting into tears in the middle of a lesson because of the stress of what is happening with Robin. Which of her students will end up helping her, I wonder?
My guess is either Roz, Dorothy, or Joyce.
Roz because she’ll feel partially guilty for getting Leslie into this mess. Dorothy because of how they left things off. Joyce because of her empathy and likelihood of a parallel feeling of stress because of the spread of the Scarface news and overhearing people’s responses to it.
Poor Leslie. 🙁
I know from experience what being talked about as if you’re not there while you’re in the room feels like. It sucks.
It sucks even worse when people are gossiping about something that was completely out of your control and not your fault at all but you’re getting blamed regardless.
It sucks worse still when you also have the stress of someone purposefully and repeatedly violating your boundaries until you just give up in resignation.
It’s probably worst of all when the thing they’re gossiping about is the result and fault of the person who is abusing you.
I’ve been there, Leslie. I feel ya. 🙁
*supportive hug* Yeah, it really sucks to get external flak over something that’s the fault of the person abusing you.
Leslie. Makin’ copies. Lester. The Lesbian. Les!
The mutterings are actually just the other people quietly gushing over Leslie’s vest. They’d tell her how nice it is to her face, but they’re just so darn bashful about it.
BUT I’M TRYING TO REDEEM HER WITH HOT SEXY LOVING! wait, that sounds kind of bad too.
Fun fact: I recently made a support ticket in a game I play, and the support system uses the same gravatar as the DoA comment section. Turns out the person who addressed my ticket recognised it. We (DoAers) are EVERYWHERE. And soon, the world will be ours, mwahahahahah.
All this political discussion? Yeah, it – like most political discussion – is predicated on two fallacies.
The first is that people actually think through their positions and choose they one they think is correct, or just, or what have you. THIS IS SIMPLY NEVER TRUE. A lot of people have deluded themselves into thinking they have, but their rationales are actually rationalizations, and saying they aren’t is dishonest. Political positions are a result of ‘life scripts’, things which you have learned subconsciously as ‘workable strategies’ and ‘things in my own self-interest’. All the talk of political platforms and reasoning and lofty ideals? Just sugar-coating of things like anger, self-aggrandizement, expediency, push-back, hidden assumptions, etc. This holds for everyone, regardless of their espoused views.
The second is the more significant: that leaders have choices. This is so far beyond true that it is laughable. The moe political power you have, the fewer options you have in how it is applied. Or, as I often state it, Kim Jong Un doesn’t get to choose what he has for dinner most nights.
Trump? Clinton? Irrelevant. If Gore had won in 2000, we would still have been at war in Iraq in 2003. If Nader had won, the same. If Harry Brown had won, if BUCHANAN had won, if freaking LAROUCHE had won, the war would have gone exactly as it had, with only some wiggle room on the details. Obamacare? That was already on Congress’ docket, in exactly the form it eventually took, in 2005, and would have been voted on – and passed – under Shrub had it not been for some committee delays.
People need to get over themselves. We aren’t as important – even in our own lives – as we like to think.
And by ‘people’ I mean H. sapiens as a species. Or maybe even all biological life on Earth. Were just some little fellows in a great big universe, after all, and we don’t even have any magic rings.
Yes yes, you’ve learned a few things about how big the planet and universe is, so you get to be all intellectual and impressive while putting a cover on pure apathy and ignorance.
What we do doesn’t matter to the orbit of the Earth, no, but it does matter to us. People’s suffering on earth isn’t irrelevant to *other people*, and the increasing number of people who have rallied behind gay rights, mostly from personal contact with a queer person, is a good anecdotal point that the cultural scripts are at least somewhat malleable on an individual level.
With polite disagreement that is bollocks. People’s votes matter. People’s actions matter.
Yeah, there’s a whole system designed to make people feel weak and helpless and like everything is rigged and that’s because a lot of our democracy is rigged to favor certain interests over others because they have more material power.
But protests matter, activism matters, who we elect matters. We’re seeing that right now as Trump tears down all the infrastructure that Clinton would not have done. We saw it in the past when dedicated activism turned back the steamroller of Prop 6 or pushed forward the Civil Rights Act after decades of stagnation.
The forces of the powerful want us to feel powerless, work really hard to make everyone feel powerless, because at the end of the day, we’ve got more power in one brick than we realize and if the people as one were to rise up together, that would really fuck up everything.
+10000
I actually do agree with the cultural scripts model – look at Joyce and all the real-world Joyces who escaped conservative Christianity only to find that the subtle beliefs about gender etc followed them out. But Schol-R-LEA is taking the model WAY too far to remove all human agency and control over our own choices.
Let’s not forget the Pipeline protests that have at the very least delayed actions that would poison Native American drinking water if an accident occurred, or the townhall meetings and outrage earlier this year that made sure the plan to replace and repeal Obamacare was dead on arrival. Or the outrage late last year when they wanted to gut the ethics committee and everyone was infuriated over that. Protests and vocal opposition does matter. Because a career politician in our system fears losing re-election, and fears the wrath of their constituents as a result. When the chips fall down, most will choose their constituents over party loyalty, unless they hold a “safe seat” the gerrymandering created bane of our governmental system.
Also, what sort of “money can’t buy happiness” koolaid is all of this? Are you really trying to argue that Trump has less political influence than random citizens? Where in the world does your bizarre “saying” come from? On what is that based? Sounds like comforting claptrap meant to discourage anyone from trying to so much as dream of improving their situation.
There’s a kernel of truth in it. Things (and especially the Presidency) are often more constrained than many believe. No one can walk into the office, wave a magic wand and make everything the way they want. They can come closer if they’ve got support in Congress, though then it becomes more of a compromise between them.
Which isn’t to say the differences aren’t real and critical. They absolutely are.
Speaaaaaking of which… was the thing congress just did similar to what you told me the other day? Only instead of removing the possibility for a filibuster, they lowered the votes required for a nomination?
Fun fact: Here’s the news I came up to today, shortly after waking up:
– Trump launches missiles against Syria
– Senate approves nuclear option
Man, those were a fun couple of seconds before I realised they were two, unrelated news items. And by fun, I mean “Agh, heart attack”
My friend just told me ‘launched missiles’ when it happened and a quick google search told me they were sometimes nuclear and ahahahaha sobbing breakdowns are fun, aren’t they?
When Trump said he was going to be great for the economy, nobody imagined he was referring specifically to liquor store business.
I’m still invested heavily in torches and pitchforks. I swear it’s going to pay off one of these days.
Ehhh…I personally prefer some form of axe as my angry mob weapon of choice. Normally lumberjack style with a couple hatchets for good measure. Plus, it’s always good to be the guy in the angry mob with supplies and now how to make Molotov Cocktails. They’re like torches but with range when comes to burning down defensive structures made of wood.
No. They did essentially what I said. The Democrats staged a filibuster (withheld unanimous consent to move to a vote). The Republicans called for a cloture vote. Which failed to reach the 60 vote threshold. They then held a simple majority vote to change the rules for cloture votes on SC Justices to a simple majority. That passed. They then took the vote to end debate again and it now passed (52 votes!).
This morning Gorsuch was confirmed with a majority vote.
I think the misleading bit is that technically, there is no such thing as a filibuster, so it can’t actually be abolished. It’s just a tactic using the rules of the Senate, but the rules don’t say “filibuster”, so when they get changed it doesn’t look like what you expect.
Sure, but KERNEL is the key word. Even in America, where the government is absolutely designed to restrict presidential power, that was a load of hot nihilistic nonsense.
If you seriously STILL think the difference between Trump and Clinton being elected is irrelevant, you aren’t living in this planet.
Would Clinton have ended up bombing Syria? Quite possible. But she would’ve coordinated out with Congress instead of a hostile foreign government.
She also would’ve ordered it from the goddamn White House, because she actually takes that shit seriously.
It’s also ridiculous to claim we’d have gone to war in Iraq under Gore. Certainly in Afghanistan, but Iraq happened because the Bush admin went to great pains to convince people there were WMDs. Without Dubya, that doesn’t happen.
She also wouldn’t have signaled to Assad that we wouldn’t interfere by telling him he was a matter for the Syrian people to decide.
Quite likely, he wouldn’t have made the attack in the first place.
It’s also possible that Gore wouldn’t have ignored the reports that Bin Laden was planning attacks on the US as Bush did. Perhaps they would have been stopped.
From her own comments, Clinton would have wanted to bomb Syria. I gather Obama considered it, but could not get the congress to approve. Trump didn’t care if they did. Admittedly, it’s not as big a difference as whether the war would happen – which I agree, is very obviously the case for the Iraq war, which had no causes beyond the particular ambitions of Bush’s circle.
And what, Schol-R-LEA is just going to assert all Homo sapiens are too constrained by the world around for the individuals to make a difference? Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, even Adolf Hitler, none of them altered anything about history? That’s quite the article of faith.
Obama considered it and used that threat as a negotiating lever to get Assad to turn over some of his chemical weapons and hide and not use the rest. For which he was simultaneously pilloried for being a warmonger and a pushover, depending on who you talked to.
Assad didn’t use them again, until after Trump took office and started sending signals he was okay with Assad staying in power. Sensing weakness …
Trump retaliates with what’s looking more and more like an ineffective and possibly coordinated attack. Jets used that same base to attack targets in Homs
today apparently, so it’s still functional.
Trump informed Syria’s patron, Russia, of the strikes ahead of time and there are some reports the base was partly evacuated before it was hit.
But hey, Trump looks tough and looks opposed to Russia. Attentions off all the other scandals for the moment. Mission accomplished.
Schol-R-LEA, your second fallacy is too simplistic. Leaders do matter. While 99.99% of what they do is prescribed, the .01% really matters. An immediate example: Trump choice to bomb Syria. He easily could have chosen not to do that. Obama had that choice and chose not to. It is too early to tell all the repercusions Trump’s decision will have, but there will be some. What if Obama had bombed Syria a few years ago? How would the world be different today? I don’t know, but it is likely the world would not be the way it is now.
“People don’t make choices based on their beliefs. They only think they do because they’re acting in ways they’ve wound up believing align with what they’ve been led to believe they believe, based on things that have happened around them.”
Are you alright, dude?
Sorry if that’s not an accurate representation of what you think, but apparently neither are the choices people make.
It made me laugh, for what that’s worth.
See, I’ll admit to not really mattering in the overall scheme of things as an individual entity…
But the rest doesn’t really apply to me at least. I mean, I bet the two party system that is made up more and more of corrupt career politicians on both sides, or corrupt non-career politicians under Trump I guess, since he mainly handed out seats to people who helped support his campaign.
But yeah, foolish or not, whether anyone else does or not, I actually try and see if my ideals can actually support the sort of person who is running for the job.
I mean, maybe you’re right that most people will just toe the party line, or that a lot of politicians will cover up their own selfishness and lust for power under the guise of a lofty ideal, or a not so lofty ideal for that matter. Emotions are a lot easier to sell and buy after all.
But that doesn’t mean the rest of us necessarily live by that ideology of “Get mine first, try and make up a reason for me to not feel bad about what it costs others after the fact”.
De-lurking to say that what the copier is telling me is that with good friends who treat her well, Leslie will reach the point where she will exhale.
I ship Anna and Molly
https://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/159283280662/molly
I vociferously approve of Anna’s hair.
It’s to early to be sure, but I am pretty sure she is rad.
We’ve not quite run out of Walkyverse folks (we got Angie, Drew, Manny, Carly, but tbh, they’re easy to forget), but tbh, new people are exciting! I’m eager to meet her and Molly.
I approve of Molly’s eyes. The huge-irises-and-no-pupils mutation is not unique to the Brown family!
So what role do we think these two will play?
Part of Billie switching rooms?
Or maybe one of them is Meredith’s or Agatha’s mysterious roommate and are going to join the floor community proper? Just a (hopeful) guess.
Well, if someone’s switching with Billie, Sal gets a new roomie.
Molly and Anna seem pretty cool, and hey, Molly just has a pretty interesting design with her bushy eyebrows and fashion sense.
That said…
https://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/158556698802/carla Carla is super cute in this outfit.
LESLIE!
THE LES-MEISTER!
MAKIN’ COPIES!
MORE LESSON PLANS FOR THE LES-INATOR!
I wish Leslie could turn around and say “I had a stupid crush on a politician, then I actually met her and couldn’t stand her (or her views), so I left. But, now she’s stalking me, it’s horrible.”
^ This would be perfect.
I see the copier’s a Salt-N-Pepa fan.
…And now I can’t get that damn song out of my head.
Vivian