I live in Texas. I very nearly did not vote this year. Literally the only reason I did is because my grandma came over on election day and said, “Come on, let’s go vote.” I’m glad she did.
hell yeah grandma!
They’re completely missing the point in a very funny way but that’s ok
I might also be missing it? What’s the actual point?
Nobody is celebrating hurricanes or natural disasters or anything like that, even if they hit folks. The point of saying “guess god had it out for them” is to mock the hypocrisy and indefensible evil of them saying all their shit. Them is the depraved, subhuman scum rooting for AIDS in the 80s (“GAAAAAA–AAAWD sent this disease to punish them fer sinnin’!”). Etc, etc, etc. It’s the depraved psychopaths spreading this propaganda who are called out. People are supposed to understand that when they get offended by something that’s the exact same bullshit they’ve been saying, they should experience some cognitive dissonance.
Nobody is rooting for poor people to die. Except the leaders of that camp. Death is really profitable for them, it’s a great opportunity to grift. Every fucking time
I mean I definitely remember back in 2021 people were laughing that Texans were getting what they voted for when the power grid failed during a snow storm and people froze to death
These past few years on the social internet for me as a Brit have been a mess of wanting to maintain contact with nice Americans I know, but also wanting to build an enormous wall to stop all of the American shit that pollutes the world.
The vast majority of regular Americans are just trying to get on with their lives, while 1% of them fuck everything up for literally everyone but themselves.
It’s not 1%, it’s pretty consistently around 35%. Which makes it much harder to deal with and get rid of.
I’m thinking more of the billionaires who spent inordinate sums telling 34% of people to look at all the scary things, while they pocket as much cash as they possibly can.
People on lemmy so badly need to see this. Bitterness and hatred for the every day people you share this nation with is bad praxis.
When will this one chunk of Lemmy finally realise, that we’re on an international forum here?
Hell, everyone from outside the US needs to see this, read it, and comprehend it, too.
So many lemmings were shitting on the US as a whole over Trump. So many that there are several communities dedicated to it.
The guilt-by-association HAS TO STOP if humanity itself is to become anything but the ignorant shit-flinging tribalistic apes we all too often still are.
I’m waiting until y’all actually do something with the blue wave first.
It’s been 24 hours and nobody elected yesterday will actually be officially sworn in until January.
That said, several representative-elects have said there will be sweeping investigations and accountability, and lawyers are already being hired to start the investigations.
It’s been 24 hours and nobody elected yesterday will actually be officially sworn in until January.
I mean yeah, so I’m reserving judgement until I see what actually happens. Not that my judgement means much but yk. That said the first litmus test will be the leadership election on November 18th, not January.
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Let us know when you finally live up to your username.
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Of course don’t blame those who voted for decency, but the ones that sit out or vote for maga, the ones that swing back and forth like dithering dolts and don’t have any real, weighed convictions to understand that maga is toxic, regressive and not good for the majority of us. Too many are obliviously stuck in dualism and team identity, and never advance to critical thinking, to weigh the data, or they would see what is obvious in the world, which policies best help quality of life and reduce artificial scarcity for the majority, and the people would never give up these basic things all should have. Learn, grow, advance to highest Perry’s scheme with weighed convictions and eager for new discoveries to help humanity!
Forgiveness has to be earned. People’s attitudes have to change for more than just self-preservation. When things are going well again, are they going to be back on their bullshit? I’m glad for the bluclear winter but I still wouldn’t go back to the south
Nobody who needs forgiveness deserves forgiveness: it’s why they need forgiveness. And blaming individuals for what their corrupt government does is not cool.
As Abraham Lincoln famously said, there is more than one way to destroy an enemy. If you make him your friend, you have also destroyed your enemy.
For myself, I will gladly welcome anyone who has seen the error of their ways. It has been a BRUTAL fucking ten years and while the left is fine, I want ALL my American homies back.
I lived in the south. I still remember how they treated me. It’s why I moved. I couldn’t get a job without being sexually harassed for being the only out trans person. I was insulted for needing medical care due to cancer and almost got double charged. I had my mail stolen. People said I was a predator. Fuck you.
None of that has anything to do with me. And I never mentioned the south.
I did not ever treat you badly. I did not deny you a job, nor mistreat any trans person, nor insult your needs, nor mock your illness and cancer. I did not ever call you a predator. Ever. And I know this because I have always bent over backwards to treat trans people well, and to be gentle with the sick.
But you told me, “Fuck you” just as if I had, which means that in your mind there is no difference between me – someone who has never harmed you – and those who have actually done you these wrongs. That’s a hard way to live.
If there was ever a poster child for why forgiveness is a great thing, you are that person.
Forgiveness is not for the other guy, it’s for you. And instead of being free to live your life of choice in your own body, you have created a prison of what others have told you and done to you to live in instead, banging against the walls of it and reliving the injustice and harm and indignity again and again any time someone says something that triggers your particular wounds. You have made an art out of taking up where your abusers left off and pointing it back at yourself again and again.
I did not do that to you. You did that to yourself. Deal with your hate, because it is only drawing hate back to you.
ChunkMcBuddha over here raining enlightened speech on us, and unawakened minds are calling him a demon for it.
I hear what you’re saying. People are interpreting you uncharitably because pain can become a comfort zone when it’s all someone has known for so long.
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This is politics not a marriage. Politics is a competition for resources
How is saying things like “Texas has an evil political culture spewing malice across this country for my entire adult life, it needs to shattered into pieces, and the land salted,” “Texas is the heart and soul of this evil empire, no decent person is safe as long as it exists,” and “it needs to go because I will not live in fear” less than two days after it turns blue supposed to help with that?
It sounds like you just want to vindictively genocide an entire state because a portion of that state is composed of assholes who cause problems for others. That’s only going to perpetuate the cycles of hatred, violence, and suffering.
Don’t you realize a large number of Texans are hispanic? And you really want to claim they need to be “shattered into pieces” and their land salted? And you’re trying to place yourself on some exceptionalist moral pedestal so you can feel superior while you say it?
Don’t become the monster you seek to destroy. Because currently, from what you’re saying, it sounds like you want to turn the whole state of Texas into another Gaza. And I can’t get behind that.
Hold ICE accountable, hold the broligarchs and oil tycoons accountable, hold the talking heads accountable, hold the GOP accountable, and hold all the corrupt Texas politicians accountable. Do all that, no one here is saying not to.
What we’re saying not to do, is advocating for seemingly a genocide of the entire state of Texas. Because that’s only going to fuel more fear and hatred, and make you look like the bad guy, and all those corrupt assholes will only get to ride out the victim card you’re handing them by lumping all the decent people of that state into the same category as the indecent people, because your worldview is too narrow and immature to avoid such pitfalls of sweepingly broad generalizations like you’re doing now.
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Texas did all this? What are you talking about? Yeah it’s a large population center but Ted Cruz is Canadian and Trumpf is from NYC. Idk what your logic is to somehow restrict an international hate/populist movement geographically to one (admittedly egotistical) state, but judging by your account age and name I’m going to assume you’re a bot or another paid ruzzian actor. Hope the FSB, PRC, or DPRK pays you well.
They’re just trying to fuel the same old, stale cycles of hatred, fear, and violence. Because right now we’re at a moment of optimism and hope for a brighter future, and that’s intolerable to some people.
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I’ve done nothing wrong so cry about it.
Yes, you did. You took your righteous anger at others and aimed it at me, someone who never harmed you. Just as others mistreated you without cause, you decided to be like them and do it yourself to an online stranger, thinking I’d be a good punching bag because I mentioned forgiveness in a positive light and you got triggered.
Explain how you’re different than the people who mistreated you? Because I’m not seeing it. The only difference is the recipient: you seem fine with dishing it out at strangers yourself.
Funny how someone who adamantly does not believe in forgiveness is ordering me to “get over it.” You mean I should forgive.
This is Twitter energy. I don’t owe anyone forgiveness and telling me I have to forgive people without knowing my situation is a dick move. I owe you nothing nor do I care if you forgive me.
What the other user is saying is that you owe yourself forgiveness. Not for anyone else’s benefit. Not for their benefit nor for the benefit of your past abusers. For your benefit.
Maybe someday you’ll see through this cloud of pain and understand what that person is trying to tell you, instead of hearing echos of your wounds and seeing phantoms of the people who hurt you in the past.
I hope you see the sunshine again, and the open skies.
You are opposing the very concept of accountability. Bunny is treating you like the people who hurt them because you stand on the sidelines and champion the idea that those people should be forgiven. But to forgive someone who continues to hurt you is to allow that harm, and to encourage Bunny to allow themselves to be harmed is deeply wrong. The idea that you should not resist harm is equivalent to the idea that you have no right to be unharmed.
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” -MLK
That’s not what they’re saying though.
No. To forgive is to let it go yourself, you can still protect yourself and deny that harm. Even in Biblical examples that’s a given. C’mon.
It seems obvious to me that there must be some criteria for who can be forgiven. Even you give the criteria that someone has seen the error of their ways. It would be foolish to forgive someone who is currently harming you and plans to do so again in the future; this is who you are asking the other commenter to forgive, and it is not a reasonable request. Those individuals who are harming them voted for the corrupt government and share many of its beliefs. How do you expect people to change for the better if there is no accountability for what they not only have done, but continue to do?
And yet the other commenter was, in the same breath, telling me to “get over it” – literally to forgive, to abandon pursuing the debt he had created with his words.
Interesting that you would not allow me the same freedom of choice: to not forgive when that other commenter is verbally abusive toward me personally.
Forgiveness is not in itself accountability, any more than it is reconciliation or a resumption of relationship. Those are entirely different things that also happen outside the context of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is merely the acknowledgement of a wrong done, and the decision by an act of will to let it go, to not pursue the debt, to free oneself of attachment to the debtor. And in that, there is magic and freedom.
Conflating forgiveness with all the other things forgiveness is not is disingenuous, no? Maybe go back and think it over a bit more.
And yet the other commenter was, in the same breath, telling me to “get over it” – literally to forgive, to abandon pursuing the debt he had created with his words.
Interesting that you would not allow me the same freedom of choice: to not forgive when that other commenter is verbally abusive toward me personally.
Uh… I never said you had to get over it. That was the other guy.
I also don’t agree that “getting over it” and “forgiving” are the same thing-- to me, getting over it means to move past obsessing over a wrong, while forgiving means to… well, forgive the “debt” it has incurred, ie. treat the person as if they had not committed the wrong.
I realize now (due to another commenter in the thread) that you may be using slightly different definitions of “forgive”, “get over it”, “move past”, “reconcile”, etc. than I am. I am not purposely being disingenuous by thinking of these words differently.
I do disagree that it is unreasonable for me to assume that by “forgive” you meant to encourage reconciliation. Your original comment used language like (bolded):
As Abraham Lincoln famously said, there is more than one way to destroy an enemy. If you make him your friend, you have also destroyed your enemy.
For myself, I will gladly welcome anyone who has seen the error of their ways. It has been a BRUTAL fucking ten years and while the left is fine, I want ALL my American homies back.
These are all statements that indicate you intend to reconcile and renew relationships with the people you are telling the commenter to forgive. You don’t necessarily say that they should do the same, but to someone like myself or (I presume) OP, who thinks of forgiveness as creating a state where there is no reason not to reconcile, it seems to be a suggestion.
So, to skip any further ambiguity, let me ask you: What exactly do you suggest when you say OP should forgive those who harmed them? To stop obsessing over the wrongs? To not pursue accountability or remediation for them if given the opportunity? To treat their relationships with those people as if those wrongs were not important, or to forget/ignore the wrongs entirely? To reconcile?
As a separate issue, it’s pretty crazy imo to equate real social, financial, and oftentimes physical (not to the OP, but it happens to many lgbtq people in the south) harm done against one due to their identity, and someone getting mad at you on the internet for trying to get them to forgive those harms. This is basically the tolerance of intolerance “paradox”, or the “I want to kill you”/“I disagree”/“I see no difference between you two” meme. If your meaning of forgiveness includes accepting the wrongs or exposing yourself to future wrongs, then:
- People harmed OP (wrong)
- You perpetuate that harm by telling OP to accept it and/or allow themselves to be harmed in the future (also wrong)
- OP responded to you perpetuating that harm by defending themself (right!)
Of course, this depends on if you intended to tell OP to let themself be harmed, or if you just wanted to tell them to stop obsessing over past harm; if it’s the latter, then you did not do anything wrong and so OP attacking you was not justified. My point here is that attacking you is right if it’s justified, and wrong if it’s not; it’s not always wrong to attack someone, so you can’t assume OP and the people who hurt him are equally wrong simply because they were both hostile. The reason for that hostility is the sole determiner of its morality.
I also don’t agree that “getting over it” and “forgiving” are the same thing
That’s the problem. Your definition doesn’t work for me, and you’re forcing your own concepts onto others, even as you’re spending a great many words trying to convince me of – what, exactly? I clarified what I meant, and you are free to take it or leave it, but you only muddied your own. Where are you going with all this? You seem very deeply concerned. Why is that?
For myself, in the world of forgiveness, it is not up to anyone but the harmed to decide the type and level of harm, and what forgiveness means to them. As much as you clearly want to, you don’t get to decide any of that for either me or him, or frankly anyone but yourself.
If your definitions work for you, great! But they don’t really seem to be bringing you much peace. And you seem almost desperate to somehow prove my lived experience wrong to me directly with mere philosophical argument. Why is that? Do you know what motivates your response, and produced this confused, driven thing you wrote?
But those answers are not for me, they are for you. I already have mine, I worked for them, and I would not go back to that tangled, worried, overwrought mess you’re currently in (and I have been in) for all the world. Now I’m going to forgive – deeply let your offense go – and forget you both, while I have a great evening and you sit and overthink the whole thing.
Your definition doesn’t work for me, and you’re forcing your own concepts onto others […] I clarified what I meant, and you are free to take it or leave it
No, I am not forcing you to use a definition, I am explaining what I meant and asking you what you meant so that I can better understand what you are saying. That is quite literally the opposite of forcing my concepts onto others; it is trying to understand how others are using a concept so that I can interpret what they are saying correctly.
I see no reason you could have this misunderstanding other than misreading my comment or arguing in bad faith. If you are not doing the latter, you may want to reread it with the above in mind; I rambled a bit but my point should be quite clear.
You seem very deeply concerned. Why is that?
If your definitions work for you, great! But they don’t really seem to be bringing you much peace. And you seem almost desperate to somehow prove my lived experience wrong to me directly with mere philosophical argument. Why is that? Do you know what motivates your response, and produced this confused, driven thing you wrote?
???
Not looking good for the “bad faith” allegations. I’m not even sure what most of this mess is referring to, and frankly I don’t care to put much effort into untangling it, as what I have seen is a blatant misrepresentation of what I’ve said. You try to paint me as desparate, confused, and unreasonable, as if it will make you right or do anything but sustain a defensive sense of superiority. Clearly I have slighted you in some way; if you were serious about what you mean by forgiveness, would it not be best to simply move on from this conversation rather than obsessing over making me look bad by lying about what I’ve said?
I will not reply further.
I didn’t think Texas could have a Democrat governor. I was here last time it happened, it just ceased to exist as a possibility in my mind after so many years. I thought Talarico had a shot because Ken Paxton sucks so very much, but Abbott losing and conceding? Madness.
Yeah I feel this hard as a Kansan who has been voting in every freaking election for decades.
I’ve never been happy when red states as a whole get hit with any tragedy. I do however, not give a shit when a see someone who willfully voted for something that’s ended in a negative outcome they’re receiving.
When individuals get their comeuppance, then that’s just consequences. It’s the innocent bystanders that I feel for.
Writing people off in general is an impulse everyone should work to correct. It gives you a little hit of dopamine so you want to do it more and more. Very dangerous and will lead you astray.
Not to detract from the point, but I’m starting to think this person should’ve done something more than vote if voting kept not working.
You don’t know that they didn’t.
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Lmao, you think the democrats will actually change anything? Didn’t they also get the upper hand during Trumps previous term and what exactly did that get you? All the politics is rotten right now, doesn’t matter who of the popular parties is running the show.
I mean, no, this isn’t going to change anything drastic at the federal level. The republicans control 2/3 branches of government and all the dems can do is prevent them from making new laws.
It will however change state government for a lot of people who desperately need it.
A lot of dsa were elected this time around, so there’s more hope then last time since they’re not part of the establishment
Exactly. Dems didn’t sweep the elections, the progressives did. And now we have to get Jeffries and Schumer out of the drivers’ seats.
Godspeed then.
