They’re making her in to a saint for adopting poor black children from the country where Donald Trump thinks everyone has AIDS. It appears she’ll willingly accept the adoration
I think that’s gross
Adopting isn’t an act or decision. It’s a lifelong set of moral ambiguities /2
Every adoption is tangled up in sadness & loss. If you do everything right & you’re lucky it can be OK. Different, but OK. But adopting infants or toddlers w whom you have no preexisting connection isn’t something that makes you a wonderful person. It’s something you do…/3
…so you can raise children. Maybe it’s something to do to raise children in addition to your own bio children. But people need to stop thinking about it as some saintly act that saved one from a sea of millions of children awaiting adoption. There aren’t millions of children /4
…awaiting adoption. In fact, there are very few infants or toddlers awaiting adoption. Even when you include foster systems there are many, many more childless couples desperate to adopt than there are children to adopt. It’s no more noble to adopt than it is to…/5
…be a good parent of ones own bio children. (Except for adopting special needs kids; those people aren’t necessarily saints, but they have voluntarily chosen to nurture kids sometimes difficult to raise but still in need of love. It is a virtuous choice of how to live…/6
…ones life.)
We don’t adopt because we’re good. We adopt because we wanted to raise children, and if we’re not assholes, we know upon entering an adoption that it can be difficult, it comes w special obligations, & that there are more relationships to seek/nurture/sustain…7
…than just the relationship between the adopted child & the adoptive family. You have obligations in multiple directions, especially if it’s a transracial &/or international adoption, including an obligation, when appropriate & wanted, to keep a relationship w the child’s…/8
…birth family/family of origin (an obligation to that family but also to the child), you have obligations to keep the child connected w the culture in to ewhuch she was born, contact w her nation’s community where you live, you need to be hyper aware that your child will…/9
…never experience the world as easy & accepting as what you as a white person experience, you need to consider whether you should adopt a black or Asian child if you live in North Dakota or rural Appalachia…adoption comes w many obligations _in addition to_ the obligations…/10
…everyone take on if they become a parent
It’s hard. And it requires humility (which is probably especially difficult for people who didn’t adopt bc otherwise they wouldn’t be parents)
This stuff isn’t entirely selfless. If you do everything right, & you understand…/11
…adoption, you know you’re not indespensible, that there are ten couples in line behind you willing to adopt that child, most of whom will do as good or better than you think you’ll do. Ultimately, while many aspects of adoption are hard, there’s also a bit of selfishness…/12
…You are taking possession of a child Robben yours the rest of her life, a child who probably had some family, & who could have been raised by someone else
This stuff is hard. It’s complicated. It’s never completed. And I can’t put myself in the emotional place where…/13
…I’d accept shallow, uninformed adulation for adopting. As hard as it is to adopt, it’s infinitely harder to place a child for adoption. To accept adulation for getting what you wanted wipes away that it’s tangled in loss & sadness.
Anyway, I’m open to compliments for…/14
…being a good parent should someone who knows me thinks that I am & feels the need to express it. But don’t laud me or any other adoptive parents for the act of adopting. Recognize there aren’t infants & toddlers going un-adopted, its not a substitution for ameliorating…/15
…poverty, for providing healthcare and childcare, or for allowing women control over their bodies. You’re not saving a child nobody else would adopt. It’s something you do so you can parent that child. /16
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
When my son was little & we lived in the city my son would hear a garbage truck & sprint through our flat & out of the building so he could stand in the parking area & watch the sanitation workers. The recycling people weren’t friendly & were occasionally a bit jerky…/1
…but the people who emptied the residential trash cans were very friendly & would always talk to my son. I made it clear to my kids that those workers did hard work that was important for all of us & I don’t think it ever occurred to them to not respect those workers…/2
But my son’s favorites were the trucks that emptied the big buildings’ dumpsters. This was the first summer of the pandemic & my kids had little contact w other people & we seldom went anywhere so the garbage trucks were a highlight of his week.
First, a little context. Those three R counties are growing like crazy, all over 10% just since 2020. That may account for some of the increase. But also important, Forsyth & Cherokee have huge Dem trend lines. Here are the Repub margins in each county…/2
Both counties are on the northern edge of the Atlanta metro area. Much of their growth has come from upscale ppl w college degrees, many of them Asian, or white ppl born outside the South… /3
Few more thoughts about this
*A close election helps Trump (& potentially SCOTUS) steal it. If it’s a big win it’s harder
*Election night matters; Trump will allege Dems are dumping a bunch of fake votes. But if we win marginal Repub areas it could speed the process…/1
…of the networks calling places like Michigan & Wisconsin, and it also limits Trump’s lead (& possibly prevents one) when we’re looking at 13% or 42% of the vote counted & reported.
*Which Dem states aren’t close & have surprisingly quick calls, & which Repub states…/2
…are surprisingly close, & aren’t called early matters to Trump’s ability to claim fraud. I have no idea why Walz is going to Kentucky, but it just occurred to me that KY is typically one of the first states called on Election Night. Maybe Walz going there is to juice…/3
Read this article closely, esp what Plouffe says. My take:
*They think she’s ahead
*They don’t believe public polls that have the battlegrounds all within 2 points; suggests they believe some are in the bag
*They don’t need Repub votes to win
*Going after Repubs /1
…& doing a bunch of outreach in unorthodox places isn’t as much to squeak out a win as it is to run up the score
*They trust their data more than their polling
*Their internal presentations of where the campaign is & where it’s headed must be really good if…/2
…big donors feel good (since they’re usually freaked out).
To me it reads not that they know they’ve got it won, but that they know that if they execute that they will win, maybe big. /3
These are the first NYT/Siena polls that have had Trump trailing. But like all the NYT/Siena polls, Trump does MUCH better bc of the respondents who didn’t vote in 2020
Now, it’s normal for there to be a not insignificant % of the electorate who didn’t vote in the previous…/2
…election. But 2020 was the highest turnout since women could vote. In most battleground states turnout of the voting eligible population was over 70%. How much of the population didn’t vote in the highest turnout election ever but will this time? And why do the 2020…/3
1/ Democrats cannot nominate anyone except Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. It's impossible.
If the Biden candidacy ends, so does the Biden campaign. It's not transferable. Anyone else other than possibly Kamala Harris would have to start from nothing. That's can't be done.
2/It's possible I'm missing something, but I don't think so. Here's why the Democrats can nominate Joe Biden, or possibly Kamala Harris, but nobody else.
There's only one candidate with a 2024 presidential campaign committee registered with the Federal Election Commission
3/Some of the "stuff" of the Biden campaign can probably be transferred to the DNC (and maybe state parties), but most of it can't. Another candidate can't just take over Biden's campaign.
So, think about it.
A new nominee would not have a campaign. Like, not a tax ID...