…as it’s, you know, a form of privilege.
EXCEPT WHEN IT’S THE FUCKING SECRETARY OF FUCKING EDUCATION JFC.
Death to Squirrels
by Iris Vander Pluym
…as it’s, you know, a form of privilege.
EXCEPT WHEN IT’S THE FUCKING SECRETARY OF FUCKING EDUCATION JFC.
“#NOT MY PRESIDENT!” in hot pink paint
Hudson & Christopher Sts.
__________
You know what? I also approve this tactic. Remember waaaaaay back in the ancient times of the Bush/Cheney regime, when protesters were banished to remote “First Amendment zones”? Apparently fragile conservatives – from the Commander In Chief to your ordinary right-wing doucheweasel – could never, ever be exposed to even the mildest, fact-based, critical messaging. Especially not anywhere near their Hitler Youth rallies/campaign events, or even en route thereto.
GOOD TIMES.
I want to see hot pink #NOTMYPRESIDENT everyfuckingwhere. Billboards. TV and print ads. T-shirts and jackets. Social media profiles. Bumper stickers. Tie pins. Skywriters.
#NOTMYPRESIDENT projected in gorgeous, searing fuchsia light, onto every Trump building in the world, every single night.
#NOTMYPRESIDENT spray painted in giant letters on the front of the goddamn White House. (Paging Banksy…)
I want hot pink #NOTMYPRESIDENT to be so ubiquitous that there is nowhere Trump or his supporters can go, in public, in media or online, without encountering it.
Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?
Although now that I think about it, no one ever explained to my satisfaction what dire calamity would befall us all if these delicate conservative flowers actually encountered meaningful criticism, much less vehement protest. But based on my own experience with conservative specimens I’ve personally observed, I can predict with near certainty that they will flail and lash out like overindulged toddlers on a sugar high. Frankly this could be problematic if they have, say, the US’s entire surveillance and law enforcement institutions under their direct control. To say nothing of the nuclear launch codes…
Okay nevermind. Forget I said anything.
Have a nice day.
[CONTENT NOTE: worker exploitation and abuse, nativism.]
Whenever immigration policy lands on the front burner we are all treated to “news” stories noting the inevitability of food costs soaring and the nation’s agricultural economy collapsing when undocumented farm workers suddenly become scarce. Here is one such article from The Nation in 2011 reporting on the eminently foreseeable catastrophes after Georgia and Alabama enacted draconian anti-immigrant statutes. Among other shitty fascist provisions, the laws required employers to confirm their worker’s legal status via the federal government’s E-Verify system. Any worker who used false documents to secure a job could be subject to fifteen years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
In perhaps the most utterly predictable chain of events in the universe ever, undocumented farm workers fled Georgia and Alabama in droves, leaving watermelons, peaches, blackberries and cucumbers rotting in the fields and businesses collapsing in their wake. The estimated loss for Georgia’s agricultural sector alone was $1 billion—for one season.
How on Earth could such a senseless situation come to pass? [SPOILER ALERT! Because conservatives.]
[CONTENT NOTE: graphic descriptions of fetal remains and menstrual blood; no images.]
Via Rewire:
Texas Officials to Force Burial, Cremation of ‘Fetal Remains’
Texas health officials on Monday filed the final version of proposed rules requiring the remains of aborted or miscarried fetuses to be buried or cremated, despite criticism from funeral homes, abortion providers, and reproductive rights advocates.
The regulations will apply to all fetal remains, regardless of the period of gestation when the miscarriage or abortion occurred.
O.o
: The Twit in Chief took to Twitter to demand an apology for this unconscionable harassment:
Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!
And:
The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!
“Harassed.” LOL. Sure.
__________
Vice President-elect Mike Pence (R-eligious Bigot) went to see the Broadway show Hamilton last night, and got booed by the audience. Good.
[CONTENT NOTE: racism, white supremacy, domestic violence.]
[CONTENT NOTE: harassment, abuse, assault.]
I’m sure you’ve seen some of the various online accounts (like this one) of violence, harassment, assault and abuse, after the worst elements of our society were emboldened by the election of perhaps the most despicable human being I have known of in my lifetime. Not all of these stories make it to a hashtag much less a news story, and I have a sickening feeling there are orders of magnitude more of them that don’t than do. Here is one from a dear friend of mine, posted here with permission (names and other identifying details have been altered):
Remember all those years ago when we laughed and laughed at the mooks carrying protest signs saying “keep government out of my Medicare”? I know I sure do!
Good times! But it turns out that we had them all wrong. The Tea Party is made up of psychic geniuses.
Caine’s comment on my last post brought to mind something I wrote on a friend’s Facebook post yesterday:
Sadly, I used to have much more empathy and compassion for conservatives than I do now. When their political orientation comes down to “I got mine, f*ck you and f*ck them” – and yes, it really is that simple, narcissistic, infantile and un-nuanced – I no longer find myself able to give a single, solitary f*ck about them. I can *understand* them, and to a certain limited extent have basic empathy for them as I would any human being. But I can no longer honestly say that I don’t wish for them that they reap exactly what they have sown. And then some. I am not proud of this, BTW. But “be the better person” no longer cuts it for me as a survival mechanism (if it ever really did). Not when conservatives are *by nature* opposed to equality in principle, and indifferent (at best) to unnecessary suffering, except for their own.
And in case you were wondering, that also goes for the conservatives in the Democratic Party Squirrel People.
We the People suck. The deadly contagion of right-wing conservatism in the US will no longer be restrained, however tenuously and imperfectly. It has been unleashed to destroy the earth like flesh-eating bacteria. It will start, as it always does, with more death and harm to the bodies of the most marginalized among us, and eventually work its way to harming the very people who enable it—which is to say, harming almost everyone.