Thanks, @buddybradley. Beat me to it. Louise was my Rep. She was fabulous and is missed greatly.
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before i start, i know that the plural of anecdote is not data, still . . .
my father grew more progressive with age. in 1972 when he was 38 he voted for nixon. in 2008 when he was 74 he voted for obama. every year of the george w bush administration made him more and more opposed to conservatives and republicans. my mother is the same way. she finds the present administration insane and thinks the fox news channel is the worst possible source of news available. i myself have only grown more and more ready for a shift to the left in our government. change is difficult for those who remain closed to the possibilities of change.
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perfectly good anecdotal data IMO 
the phrase of YMMV is apropos. but generally older folks don’t change well. My 70 something parents did better than the average I think. Others in their circle did not whatsoever.
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My daughter wears a shirt often that reads “They whispered to her, you cannot withstand the storm. / She whispered back, I am the storm.” No clue where that comes from, but I love it.
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They are all afraid of AOC because she will be president in 2024. Someone with this much charisma hasn’t been in politics in about 60 years.
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I dunno about making such a declarative pronouncement, but depending upon the age requirement date, it seems like she would be just old enough by then.
I know she is very refreshing and inspiring; and that definitely scares the shit out of the old regime. I hope she stays true and still manages to get some positive advancements made between now and then.
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She has a long way to go - while keeping up the momentum. However that everyone wants to send the news cycle her way is working in her favor - I’d say that it would seem easy enough for her detractors to lay off and let the news cycle move on - however Trump tells me that the news cycle will feed into it on it’s own - asking for quotes about her, or trying to get reactions - because it’s a product to them.
I said the same thing about Obama the first time I heard him give a speech - after GW, we were ready for a well spoken and articulate president - (I thought listening to Tony Blair vs GW was embarrassing - how little did I know back then).
AOC is more than that though - she is finally someone who is pushing away from the ‘panel tested’ non-answer to any question - which is quite frankly quite a bit of why people voted for Trump (in my opinion anyway) - people are sick of wishy washy answers that don’t mean anything but are safe because they are formulated to not offend any group in particular and give room to change an opinion.
I’d rather see someone like AOC fight for the green new deal (personally I don’t care for it - but not enough to matter really) and go down swinging - and in the end if she has to get only part of it - or compromise - have the guts to say ‘it’s not what I want - it’s what I’ll take now and we’ll keep working’ - that’s OK - not every damn game has to be a zero sum win - but I’d rather see the passion than the bland 30 flavors of ‘all-bran’ we have now.
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We shall see; I hope you’re right.
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Let’s see if it causes anyone to “softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again”.
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I favour a scale that is revolutionary-progressive-conservative-reactionary, where revolutionaries want rapid progress, progressives want slower progress, conservatives only want progress if it is absolutely necessary, and reactionaries are anti-progress and want to go back to an idealised past.
It still needs some work, the biggest problem I can see is that conservative and reactionary are pretty much synonymous in the US at the moment.
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So am I reactionary for wanting to go back to 2015?
I think the traditional labels are failing everywhere, not just the US. Just look at your own main opposition party, which can’t decide whether to return to an idealised past (Leave) or resist change (Remain). On your scale May would be the true progressive (proposing a system which is completely new), which is bizarre.
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Do you believe things were perfect in 2015 and should stay exactly like that forever? Or do you just want to go back to when there was progress?
There will be a minimum time period to stop people switching between progressive and reactionary every time there is change of party in government. Lets start with about 40 years in the past and work from there. Like I said, it need work. Do you expect me to already have a thesis explaining ideas that I am still working out in my head?
I would question if what May is suggesting is progress, just because it isn’t reactionary. It still seems to fit into conservative ‘we are only changing this because we have to’ territory.
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None of the 139 votes were D’s. That is a county Republican Party official. I find it a little disturbing, actually, that the vote was only 139-49. There are always a few crackpots, but that more than a quarter of the Republicans in Tarrant County who are active in local politics supported removing him is a sign that the idea that Islam=terrorism is not a radical one there. And that’s not a small county.
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Yup. The way I read it is she was making a joking reaction to the “can’t rein in latinas” twitter post. She’s no murderous psychopath, ha, but other than that, the quote works well. As does the follow up comic boing boing post of the dude realizing his obsession has imprisoned him too. The scary thing is that’s kinda how trump came to power. People couldn’t get him out of their heads. Justice save us from that one, please.
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Works in theory. Although I think it gives our current conservatives too much credit. They act like they want to go back to an idealized past, but really I think it’s more about corruption and protecting people who are profiteering off of the people and the environment… it’s more like a pyramid scheme or something. All these lower and middle class republicans believing they’ll get rich too if they just work hard enough. Then Lucy pulls away the football.
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I think it’s a split. A lot of the naive supporters actually want to go back to childhood because mommy and daddy took care of things and they’re too ego damaged to realize that the past only seems that way because they were children… that whole ignorance/innocence/garden of eden thinking that gets people in so fucking much trouble because it comes from a place that thinks like a 3 year old. Then there are the people who see the opportunity in a large body of emotionally stunted aging children… and those people keep them roped in. The more sunk costs the better, so fucking the suckers over works to their advantage. Just keep believing!
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Have you all seen Alan Moore’s Century 1910, part of his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen series? No spoilers other than that this song makes a rather dramatic appearance therein.
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I just want to go back to when Obama was president. As Archie Bunker says, those were the days.
I would question if what May is suggesting is progress, just because it isn’t reactionary. It still seems to fit into conservative ‘we are only changing this because we have to’ territory.
She says “because we have to” but she doesn’t have to.
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