yes, seattle is fine. we’ve been fine. we’re still fine.

Below you’ll find a letter I’m sending around to people I know, some of whom I’m pretty sure are covertly Trumpy but don’t and won’t admit it to me. Everything I say in it is true; I have had people contact me as I describe, and about the topics I talk about here, and they’ve genuinely been worried for me.

I mentioned this phenomenon on Facebook, and immediately had two other people saying this was happening to them, too. So it’s not just me, and I am exactly this mad about it.

The fact that my little letter is also an example of how to show borderline/covert Trumpy people that he’s a fucking liar while utilising the emotional connection leverage I keep talking about, well, that’s… very convenient. It’s an opportunity, as much as I might hate recognising it as one, and as much as I might hate having to take it, even if it’s honest.

But in this climate, with these stakes, yeah – I will take that opportunity when it is presented.

And yes, it’s exactly the kind of outreach I’m asking everyone to do.

But aside from that – read the attached letter anyway. Because we are fine, it is all lies, and I actually do want to make sure everyone knows that. Because people actually are getting scared.

53 days remain.

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As a Seattleite, I feel that after the debate on Tuesday evening, I have to say yet again that at no point did anyone “[take] over a big percentage of the city of Seattle” to anyone who will listen.

(Or burn it. That’s been said too, but I’m gonna talk about the “taking over” a “big percentage of the city of Seattle,” because that’s what Cheeto said on Tuesday.)

To show you how insulting – how insane, how infuriating – this is, I am attaching a Google Maps image of the area making up Greater Seattle, plus or minus a bit. Maple Valley and Tiger Mountain shouldn’t be included, arguably Monroe shouldn’t be, but I can’t include Carnation, Vashon Island, and Mill Creek without including those towns too, so.

If that feels like cheating for you, it shouldn’t, it’s a smaller area than the Census uses. They go all the way up to Everett. But if it feels like cheating, then shown as a red and white outline are the Seattle City Limits. There are skyscrapers outside of that line, but, well, that’s still Seattle’s official city limits.

Finally, shown as a bright orange rectangle, I present the CHOP, the protest area against police violence that he was clearly talking about. This covers the entire CHOP protest area, at the height of its size. Most of the time, it was actually smaller than this.

Here y’go:

If you can’t find the orange rectangle, look at the “tt” in Seattle and zoom in. A lot. You’ll find it. If you can’t, it looks like this:

I had to attach this image as a PNG, because when I used a JPEG, the orange rectangle disappeared from the image due to the compression and the CHOP being so small. I’m hoping WordPress won’t compress it away for me. It might.

In terms relative to the rural and small-town midwest, the comparable scale of the CHOP protests would be like … I figure about… one or two guys and a yappy dog with a sign and a portable speaker “taking over” a corner of an intersection not too far from the Walmart. Seriously. I think that’s about right.

And why am I putting this out there?

Because thanks to all the horseshit in this campaign season I am again getting messages from people who don’t live here asking if we’re ‘okay’ and ‘how we’re coping with all the unrest and violence’ that ISN’T! HAPPENING! Yeah, some kinds of crime jumped during the height of the pandemic, but even that was only back “up” to the then-30-year-lows we hit in the 1990s, before it fell even further. Since then, it’s fallen back down again as people have got over it.

And I’m sick of all this. Seattle is fine. Seattle has been fine the entire time. It’s not perfect, gods know – we have issues! COVID-19 hit us hard, and first – it was bad! Everybody here knows people who died and/or people who have Long COVID. We also still have a housing crisis due to high land values and population growth, and that’s really ramped up the homelessness crisis we already had. Only recently have rents started to go down again following a huge construction wave, but there’s a lot more to be done. We have problems, sure. You know: normal problems, that actually exist.

But “taking over Seattle” is the kind of bullshit they sell and they’re lying about my town and it’s scaring people I know, and yeah, I am mad about it.

So if anyone was believing that crap, please stop. It’s bullshit. No one needs to believe it. In fact, no one should believe it.

And so I ask: please stop buying the bullshit. Please.

Stop believing the lies.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.