American (Trump) fascism on full display.
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While some people lose themselves in pointless āculture warā issues, I got this message from Terre des Hommes:
Suspension of American aid: a humanitarian tragedy
The brutal announcement by the American government to freeze all international aid has hit humanitarian organizations, including Terre des hommes, hard. Since January 20, 2025, this unjust and revolting situation has endangered the lives of 1.5 million beneficiaries already facing extreme poverty.
In several countries, our essential health, drinking water and child protection programs have had to be abruptly suspended due to a lack of promised funding. 47,000 Rohingya refugees could be deprived of drinking water in Bangladesh. 27,000 children and adults could lose vital support in refugee camps in Kenya.
This is an urgent appeal: the more time passes, the more urgent the situation becomes. In this chaotic context, we need you. Every gesture counts to allow us to continue our actions and save childrenās lives.
Thank you for your solidarity.
āThis is an extremely violent situation. Funds were frozen overnight, without warning. I have never experienced this in my 35-year career in humanitarian work. I am thinking especially of the families who find themselves without emergency support, protection or treatment for their children.ā
Barbara Hintermann
Executive Director of Terre des hommes
Terre de Hommes were relying on USAid for around 20% of their annual budget. The brutality of it, if not the crime against humanity, is the suddenness of it all. It literally means that tens of thousands people already on the brink, and sustained by Terre des Hommes, are in danger of dying.
And remember: Terre des Hommes is just one relatively small organization. There are thousands of them active in the whole world. Most, if not all of them, are in the same situation.
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IOW Someone I disagree with = troll
The leftās cancel culture is alive and well
Thatās the point.
The Democrats have a winning message on economics. They have a losing message on culture wars.
The playbook should be obvious. But the party is captured in large part by culture warriors. Unions - other than maybe teachers unions - are way way down the list.
I think fwiw.
The democrats establishment need to listen to what @toro is saying. This is not about polls amongst a certain audience and then having that extrapolation.
The democrats dismissing peopleās concerns , whether valid or invalid , has led to this.
Iām not talking of persons in specific. Plainly , the democrats havenāt done enough door to door etc and neither have they tailored their message to target demographics effectively.
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I live in America and I am a naturalized citizen here. In my opinion, the right wing goes on about culture war issues a LOT more than the left.
I am a left leaning person politically, certainly in America, but the portrayal of the left by the right over here is something I donāt recognize in my own real life experience.
The culture war stuff might have a small amount of merit at certain points that are worthy of discussion, but for the most part it is a massive red herring. It is a distraction to take peopleās gaze away from real issues.
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Excuse me, dear sir.
There is a chance that we got this particular memo previously. There is also a chance that many actually agree with that particular sentence and are aware of it (after all, it was written much about it in the past inā¦MSM, that a fair few sometimes read).
Deep irony, as this was written by the greatest Culture Warrior I have met on a forum.
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Indeed and to everyone with half a brain, it ought to be obvious.
While it is true to that the ultra liberals push an agenda that is deeply unpopular regarding social issues, the reactions are far more volatile and for many, like Toro, some sort of insanity takes hold, where the social fringe issues becomes the entire world. These then become, not as much Culture Warriors, as Culture Berserkers, forgetting ignoring everything but these fringe issues, allowing Trump to get elected in the process as a vehicle of their wrath.
It is impossible for me to respect such people, but it is their right to rant on, no matter how much drivel they spew. Listening is certainly something they cannot do, after all, they are in Berserk-mode and nothing else matters but their Culture War. Blame for electing Trump ? That is all on the Democrats!!! They have a fringe element pushing unpopular social issues, which of course justifies electing Trump, according to this magnificent logic.
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@redalways , fully expected you to well do a lol react on my post.
But the truth still hits. The democrats have fucked up. And the rest of the world has to pay the price. America still has to pay the price too.
https://x.com/NTarnopolsky/status/1893978419911618822
I will not try to explain why the US is giving Russia and Turkey strategic victories without getting anything back.
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The Dems lost an election and so of course have to look hard at what they should have done differently. That does not mean though to accept the bad faith framing of the RW as being legitimate and respond to that.
The data shows there were two groups of voters who were upset about immigration and other culture war issues. The first are those who were committed Republican voters. The second were the winnable voters were less upset about these issue in isolation and more so in the context of being dissatisfied with their perception of the Demās response to their economic concerns, instead feeling like too much effort was being paid to the plight of immigrants and trans people than to āfixing the economyā.
The response to that is figure out how the communicate their economic message better. A big part of that is actually being present in the public discourse and saying something. That is in contrast to a white house who sat back for the best part of 3 years letting everyone criticize them without push back or arguing their own case meaning that the campaign started with a massive deficit in trust in the economy that had to be overcome.
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Or for that matter, trying to figure out how to deal with the propaganda machine of the right pushing blatant lies unchecked.
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No the Dems dont, thatās the point. They tried āsensibleā and while it may have worked on normal economic metrics people didnāt buy it.
Meanwhile, youāve had a massive effort telling you that genders, immigrants, cyclists, climate change, vaccines, and whatever else is the problem. They arenāt in reality but people currently believe it is.
What happens when you get rid of all of that?
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Iād add having the balls to tax the fuck out of multi millionaireās and billionaires.
The person that can figure out how to do that and survive the media onslaught that would come their way would be someone special indeed.
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For sure. I think it is a 3 pronged problem
- they need to be present in spaces people were hearing political messages that were RW coded without any pushback or counter narrative being aired. That really feels like the most modern of the problems
- they need to figure out how to package up that message in a way that resonates. People hated build back better because they didnt want to be ābackā. They wanted Trump gone in 2020, but they still wanted the āchangeā he promised in 2016, and simply telling the voters we were going ābackā pissed them off
- this goes hand and hand with the above, but if you have a hodgepodge of different ideas then there is no way package that effectively even if each is individually good and helps the people whose vote you need. Home health care support was an interesting policy that seemed popular, but where does that fit into the Dem economic branding of the Biden years? Policy shouldnt necessarily be downstream from message, but the winning message you decide you need to run on should inform what are good policy priorities to promote. This is where this campaign seems to have fallen flat. Biden ran without any compelling reason to and then the late shift to Harris didnt give them without time to build a viable narrative other than āIm not either of those guys.ā
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I think the conflicting messages about economy was possibly a big factor too. Biden doesnt get the credit his government deserved, voters who think economy is tanking dont think his policies address that.
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Oh for sure. When Ezra Klein broke out in Feb or so being one of the first high profile libs to call for Biden to step aside he made the distinction of being president vs performing the presidency. His take was that no only had Biden failed to do the latter but that message vacuum it resulted in showed how important that part of the job was.
I commented about 2 years in how concerned I was about their lack of engagement over these economic doom mongering perceptions, and questioned whether it was a conscious choice to instead spend all of their effort up through the midterms on getting shit done and then allow whomever was going to run next time to figure out the messaging for the next cycle. No, it just turns out they were incapable of filling that space thus allowing the population to think we actually lived through a recession.
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Iran and China abstained, Russophile Serbia, voted forā¦
Also a new rant from the president of the United States:
It certainly is!
This isnāt Trump, as such, it is indeed the United States:
https://x.com/yarotrof/status/1894072412561358920
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Trump wants it to be OK to invade your neighborsā¦ who is he planning on invading?
Or is it better to ask when?
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