it's always, without fail, a cishet white dude

[solarbird]

Patrick Sharkey · @patrick_sharkey · 5:09 PM · Apr 10, 2022
possibly unpopular opinion: finding a way to create a new coalition to uphold American democracy, even if it means explicitly sacrificing most priorities of the left and advancing a few key goals of the right, should be the primary focus of elected officials from @potus on down.

Do you think you're being clever?

Do you think better than you haven't offered us up as trade before?

Do you think this hasn't been tossed out over, and over, and over again, men who think they're the ones who really count, offering to throw us overboard to save themselves?

Do you think this hasn't been done?

Do you think this is somehow an innovation, somehow not the same as what you and yours do over, and over, and over again, as you pretend somehow it'll work this time?

When sacrificing us doesn't work, who will you sacrifice next?

How many rights, how many people, how many of us do you rule out, do you toss away, only to see them demanding more, because to them, your willingness to give up some means you'll give up even more?

And the answer, typically, is all of us.

All of us, until there's no one left to give up.

And they win anyway. Because by then, they've already won.

Without a fight.

Because you handed them the win.

It's always the same, it never changes, and yet, there's always...

...always...

...another you.

If you want to know why it is so. hard. for us to have to work you Democrats, even as we do it anyway?

Look in the goddamn mirror.

That's why.

Comments

[conuly]

Exactly which key goals does he think it's worth selling our souls for?

[solarbird]

He thinks if the Democrats give in on a bunch of unnamed items (spoiler: throw queers to the wolves) that it'll get middle-ground voters to vote Democratic, keeping this set of anti-election Republicans out of power for two to four years.

He's wrong - he fundamentally doesn't understand what the GOP are, and why it wouldn't work, and in reality would benefit the GOP. But even were he right, it would be abandoning the republic to save it - all they'd have to do, they know, is threaten the republic to get whatever they want at all times, which also ends the republic.

[dewline]

Screw throwing anyone to those wolves. Now and forever.

[kathmandu]

Agreed that we must not throw part of the country to the wolves in hopes of 'saving' the rest of us. Both on ethical grounds and because no matter which group you're in to start with, you're never safe if it's okay to throw people to the wolves.

But also he doesn't realize there is no one to form a coalition with, to uphold democracy. The GOP is explicitly the anti-democracy party.

[solarbird]

It won't even work.

It never does.

In the popular mind, it would validate everything the GOP said about queers, and they'd get more support, not less - and they pick a new target to destroy.

And this guy is a sociologist. Christ.

[solarbird]

That's not the only reason it wouldn't work, but that's one of them.

[melchar]

Perhaps HE could be thrown to the wolves? He has already said he likes the idea.

[andros_b]

He doesn't seem to get that one of the GOP's key goals is to, well. Destroy democracy.

[solarbird]

No, I think he gets that - it's just that he doesn't get that what he proposes, even if it worked, would only preserve the forms, not the actuality.

In addition to, you know, destroying millions of lives.