so, so often this isn't 'blue team good, red team bad', exactly, it's "*i'm* a good person BECAUSE i'm a democrat", and that kind of self-definition having to torture itself into all kinds of shapes to accommodate what people with actual power in their party do

the strategy never fucking works and even they can see this but they have to keep reassuring themselves that all of this is fine because their personal sense of morality is so tied up in identifying as a democrat that any sort of skepticism would make them shatter

it's all self soothing stuff, it always is. it's not even political fandom half the time, it's grasping onto whatever they can find to reassure themselves the system works and smart, moral people are in charge. "they don't ACTUALLY support any of this stuff, it's just strategy"

this fucking bullshit internal political math that the republicans are terrible for the right wing immigration bill they introduced that would violate international treaties on asylum, but simultaneously, democrats supporting it, campaigning for it, and voting for it were okay

god it really is just so fucking funny though. we're supposed to hate republican ideas, republican bills, republicans goals, but when dems agree with or vote for any of these, we're supposed to pretend we didn't see that or actually support it while simultaneously still hating republicans for it

a sense of helplessness to affect electeds combined with a desperation to maintain faith that the party - particularly its leadership - really does care and is trying their best results in excusing them for not hating republicans while bashing critics for supposedly not hating republicans enough

ultimately what you've got are a bunch of people who desperately want some fucking basic partisanship from the dems, but they have to hold this desire at the same time with the dems they're constantly defending always wanting bipartisanship. to square this circle, they focus on randos instead

one of the 'funniest' results of this is anytime immigration is involved, because of those bipartisan bills that are just terrible for immigrants. the position you are expected to take by these types is to hate republicans for introducing the bills but be neutral-to-supportive of dems voting for it

you getting mad at dems for being conciliatory towards republicans, friendly towards republicans, voting with republicans, confirming republicans, etc. = helping republicans

those elected dems talking about republicans are their trustworthy pals = this is okay for some reason

people think dems shouldn't even do this, either, or that there's no point to doing so. and it makes for a funny thing, because the same people going on like this will also berate others for not focusing their hatred on republicans enough. while excusing electeds talking about the GOP as their pals

people talk about how certain issues just aren't popular enough for politicians to support them yet but gee golly there are certain things where unpopularity doesn't seem to matter one fucking bit in electeds being gung-ho for it. funny how that works.

insanely unpopular, these wars, voters don't want this shit, but boy does that not matter one fucking bit to the bloodthirstiness from politicians, be it loud and overt or feigning at being mild and 'reasonable'

Love em or hate em, they're here to stay: laserdiscs, crt screens, beta tapes, gas street lamps, floppy disks, palm pilots, c-band satellite, rotary phones, radiators, mercury fillings, manual typewriters, carbon paper, the juicero, the segway, the Sega channel, bbs systems, telegrams, dialup inter-

We’re at the point now where people are calling being anti-LLMs as “outrage” as a convenient way to characterise it as unreasonable, and it’s annoying. I’m not outraged, I’m repulsed. I don’t want your stolen shit. It’s gross. You are a fucking loser to me