The sad thing is I remember Florida used to be one of the better places to be queer in the South. Sure, the countryside was never safe much like the rest of the US, But each city had its own scene, Miami and Orlando were two of the US’s gay cities, and as someone who grew up outside of Florida, but close enough to frequently visit, it felt like an Island in a sea of intolerance.
Now I don’t even feel safe enough to visit the nearest city on the state border, or even Disneyworld anymore. And people I used to know there are trying to flee to my state, because as bad as things are here, they are no where near as oppressive as they are in Florida.
I think Florida is worth taking note of, because even though Florida’s path towards fascism is decades in the making, things really accelerated against the queer community within the past 3 years. It went from being one of the safest places to be queer in the South to being the worst, and I still can’t believe how quickly it happened.
I mean, what’s the platform this article is on? What site is the article on? If this story was hosted on fox news, people would be sceptical right off the bat.
The site linked is BBC, BBC has a history within the past three years of transphobia. Therefore any message about respect for others is undermined by the fact that the host doesn’t consider certain groups of people worthy of respect.
The platform that hosts your content matters to your messaging.
About a decade ago, me and my family were part of the very movement that changed the Republican party into the beast it is today. We made it very clear to party members that moderates would not be tolerated. We demonized the RINOs as much as we demonized the Democrats, the Liberals and the Obamas. By primary season of 2016, the last influences of the old Republican party were stamped out. Trump was the achievement of the Tea Party, and how it flipped the neo liberal conservative party into a fascist one.
Blame the Democrats all you want for being milquetoast, weak, or ineffective in the face of the Republican party. As someone who has played for both teams, I have never seen the same fire from Democratic voters to change their party as I have from the Republicans. There is no party wide effort to weed out Democrats who work in the interests of companies only, or are essentially Republicans with the Democrat label. There has been no unified direction for the future Democrats want to see for the US other than the current status quo.
What we did in the Tea Party, is we got involved at every stage of government. We found out who our state and federal legislators were, and if they did not stand with our views, we primaried them out. We took trips to Washington as a church, or as a young Republican’s association, and we rallied in front of every monument that they would allow us in front of. In our eyes, our goal was righteous, and we were in a battle for the soul of the country.
I abhor everything I was back then, and feel guilty for the present we have created today. But if there is one take away from my time in the Tea Party that I think could apply to Democrats is you don’t have to settle for less. By all means vote for Biden again, but you should make it clear to every Democrat defending their seat next year that you won’t be settling for spineless enablers. Now’s the time to start campaigning progressive candidates to run against them. Any progressive you get elected should be seen as a victory, and every neo liberal who loses should take it as a message that they are no longer electable. You should practice that democracy as much as you can while you still have it.
Democrat isn’t really an ideology though as much as it’s a coalition of voters. They can be anyone from Communists and socialists to conservatives who don’t align with the Republican party. The majority of politicians within the party tend to be free market liberals akin to Clinton, with a few European style Social Democrats akin to Bernie Sanders and AOC. As someone who supports gun ownership and rejects the existence of corporate welfare and monopolies, I might not identify with many of the politicians within the Democratic party. Likewise I take issue with the Republican’s stances towards human rights, the establishment of religion, and putting the legitimacy of elections into question. I might be more comfortable with voting Democrat, but the party’s platform would not be how I would describe my ideology.
Anecdotally I want to say boys have always felt more conservative around that age, especially when I was in highschool in the early 2000s. Granted I lived my teen years in the south, and this probably more of a cope than an actual explanation. There definitely seems to be a lot more active targeting of young men by right wing influencers now. In the past right wing media seemed to always be the domain of old people.
In many ways I still consider myself libertarian, but moreso in anti authority leaning than Republican but with a cooler label. Many of my peers in highschool and university clicked with the pro guns, pro expression sentiment, but when it came actually letting queer people and religious minorities live their lives, or allowing women control over their own bodies and healthcare, they always seemed to side with the Authoritarians in power threatening the to restrict these people. Not to mention many of them had no problem with authority as long as it came from a corporate entity or oligarch.
I still identify with the term Libertarian, but have stopped using it because it truly doesn’t represent what it was supposed to mean anymore.
Same here. I would have been excited if Sony made a vita follow up, because Nintendo proved there was still a niche for handheld gaming. My biggest problem with the switch is even the lite models are too bulky to justify carrying everywhere. The Vita is the perfect size, but the platform is dead, support all but dried up, and the potential unmet.
If Vita 2 was announced tomorrow, with the same capabilities of the switch or steam deck, but with the form factor of the vita, I would preorder that day.
I don’t know about “MOST” as there are still a good amount of mainstream companies that advertise on the site. At least you wouldn’t know it if you are still on the site constantly. And I’m mostly going on about the users there who don’t like the changes there and constantly complain about them in articles or youtube, yet it is the only way they insist on engaging with their followers still.
The thing about Mastodon and Lemmy to users who exclusively use those sites is they are themselves a bubble. There are weeks I spend most of my web activity on kbin, and would believe reddit is on its death spiral. Yet I peak over there, and it’s about as active as when I left it. I even see articles about reddit or twitters activity recovering that I never see get shared here, because at the end of the day, the narrative we want to hear is “Corporate site is dying, we are the future!”
Hell no. If there is one thing I learned from moving over to fediverse, it’s that people are what make the site enjoyable or frustrating. As it is now, I enjoy the userbase here and on Mastodon, and the last thing I would want is for the most insufferable of Twitter users to come and ruin it. I’m happy most people who are quitting Twitter are joining the other alternatives. I would rather people join the fediverse as a more deliberate choice based on what we offer.
No joke, the manual for the original pokemon games was one of the best gaming manuals ever created. Not only did it explain everything, but it contained a lot of cool art work that really sold the game world to you. I still remember coming home from the dentist, high af from the nitrous oxide, flipping through the Pokemon yellow manual, and wanting to get home as quick as possible so I could try out my new gameboy color!
“How dare you not fall for misinformation!”