One key way I know conservatives and my own beliefs are not "both sides" is this: When a conservative tells me what I believe - and they love to - it's nonsense like "you want to turn all our kids transgender." When I tell them what they believe, as I understand it, they strongly *agree* with me.
I'd love to have a shorthand for this (beyond "strawman") for this terminally online thing where people argue with the imaginary person they decided you are. (I muted the convo but the topic was "critique is improved by knowing the medium" and the strawman was "oh so I can't have an opinion?")
It's telling that the Republican response to the "blue dot" campaign was simply to put up red dot signs, as if they're totally oblivious to the meaning of the blue signs and instead simply intending to piss off Harris voters as badly as the blue signs angered them. www.cbsnews.com/news/omaha-e...
Nebraska awards electoral votes by congressional district, and Omaha is at the heart of the state's second district.
"Hi, [deadname], I'm contacting you because we don't currently see you on the voter rolls." I could explain that I'm registered under my actual name; but I don't know them, they're not owed an explanation, and I'm not volunteering any information, so I guess I'll just respond "that's not my name."
and is having ADHD also forgetting whether you actually took your ADHD medication or not and repeatedly asking yourself throughout the course of the day, "am I focused? I think I'm distracted. or maybe not. maybe I did take my meds. or wait - I didn't. I'm sure I didn't." etc.?
The last family member to tell me "I'm just old-fashioned" was explaining how he hadn't yet fully accepted the Civil Rights Act. He fully acknowledged said belief was unconscionable, but he couldn't separate that belief from the respect he held for the authority figures who had taught it to him.
There are so many "men are lonely and babies aren't happening, why?" thinkieces out there and yet this never seems to come up as a possible explanation. Many men my age never got taught the basics of domestic responsibility or childcare. Or the humility or sense of responsibility to learn and do.
This is much more than an essay about superfans. It starts there and goes on to the carceral state and executions, Israel and Palestine, the elections and more to make an important point about violence and self-image in modern America.
There was a story that went around this week about movie studios' woes with "superfans." A "superfan" is somebody who has attached their whole personality to hating an intellectual property they loved in their youth. Full Essay: www.the-reframe.com/killing-our-...
"One really violent day" in our morally underdeveloped nation. Supremacist superfans, Star Wars, and the popular insistence within a violent empire of owning heroism as exclusive property.
I heard a meteorologist use the phrase "approaching the mathematical limit [of what our atmosphere is capable of]" to describe Hurricane Milton. Just to put it in perspective.
The longer I've been transitioning the more I have come to realize that "persistently having a strong desire to be the other gender, to the point of expressing yourself in games and message boards to avoid reality" is gender dysphoria, and I had it bad. I was scared of anyone thinking I'm a guy.