The idea of selling my home in Texas and moving elsewhere is unappealing at sixty-something years of age. I was born in the northeastern US and lived there until moving to Texas with my parents when I was just 5 years old. I have always had mixed feelings about that move. But 30+ years ago Texas conservatism was more about economics than race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Way back when, many Texas conservatives seemed to hold a live-and-let-live attitude that I could tolerate even as a lifelong liberal. But either they have changed or Texas conservatives are simply being more open about their bigotry than before. Texas conservatives no longer have qualms about interfering in the personal lives of others when doing so aligns with their own biases. Maybe Trump has enabled that, or Republicans have gradually enabled more of that since Ronald Reagan was president. As the father of an adult transgender daughter with special needs who relies on me for support, I understand why she feels not only unwelcome but outright unsafe in Texas. The results of the 2024 presidential election may determine whether I merely feel the need to move to a blue state or leave the country entirely. This decision is really weighing on me. But my ancestors immigrated to the USA from Europe and my parents relocated to Texas from the northeast. Maybe it is time for my family to move someplace where we would be happier.
The ban, which took effect on Wednesday, was part of Gov. Ron #DeSantis’s push into cultural #conservatism. But Florida #politics is rarely that simple.
I have taken care of a few sexual assault victims over the years in the ER. Anyone who thinks that raped women should have to carry the rapist’s baby to term is a horrible human being with no ability to understand the feelings of others.
Republicans like Ms. Noem have repeatedly doubled down on abortion bans, saying that rape victims should have to carry their rapist’s baby to term, suffer through childbirth, and deal with all of the emotional, physical, and financial costs of that alone.
With "compassionate #conservatism", the cruelty and sadism is not a technique, it's the whole point.
Being a #conservative is essentially announcing you lack moral reasoning skills, you enjoy inflicting pain suffering and humiliation, and both low character qualities allows you club membership to entitlement exclusion and false superiority.
"When I engage in a critique of liberalism, it often seems that by extension I'm engaged in a certain critique of protestantism as well. In other words, the tendency towards fragmentation, of individualism, of self-assertion, of a concept of tje human being that begins at the level of the individual, and the individual exercising choice as the primary self-understanding."
Patrick J. Deneen, Professor of Political Science, 2024
And the lynchpin holding that thought from being released is the sometimes inborn trait of seeing the world first through dominator/submission relationships before anything else.
Wilhoit’s law, etcetera, all derive from those two basic assumptions. The order is already settled, the ruled are to be saved by the dominators for their own good.
Why is reported illicit drug user, unmarried father of 11 children by 3 women, a man whose social media site is overrun w. hatred & pornography, celebrated across length/breadth of the New Right incl. Christian right?
#MitchMcConnell, the longest-serving Senate leader in history who maintained his #power in the face of dramatic convulsions in the #RepublicanParty for ~2 decades, will step down from that position in Nov.
McConnell, who turned 82 last week, was set to announce his decision Wed in the well of the Senate….
"One of life's most underappreciated talents is to know when it's time to move on to life's next chapter," he said in prepared remarks obtained by The AP. "So I stand before you today...to say that this will be my last term as #Republican leader of the #Senate."
His decision punctuates a powerful #ideological transition underway in the #RepublicanParty, from #RonaldReagan's brand of traditional #conservatism & strong international #alliances, to the fiery, often #isolationist#populism of Trump.
Jamil Jivani, #Poilievre's candidate in the March 4 by-election in #Durham, Ontario, doesn’t live in Durham.
He’s never lived in Durham.
He’s a parachute candidate who has absolutely no connection to the riding & every conservative operative across Canada is helping him cover up his #antiGay#antiVax#antiScience views. Bell Media fired him in 2023 for his discriminatory comments.
➡️ Jivani is also a former adviser to Premier Ford
Haaretz Editorial: "The freedom from arbitrary arrest marks a line between real, freedom-seeking democracies and 'pseudo democracies.' The police under Ben Gvir’s shadow cannot be relied to give freedom of expression the importance it warrants"
"Haaretz is widely considered Israel's leading liberal news source, but it has published and promoted some of the most harmful propaganda in support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza."