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6 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
What most third parties want is the kind of policies Democrats support, but without all nastiness & caricatures & fighting that comes along with being a Dem. What is very obvious but they don't seem to realize ...
... is that the second they stick their heads up, Republicans will attack & caricature them too & then they too will be stuck in frustrating endless fights against gaslighting pricks.

Then what? A fourth party? You won't get politics without politics.
There is no polite, civil, grown-up, Very Serious way to advocate for humane policy of the sort that is taken for granted in other wealthy democracies. That's not because Dems are doing it wrong, it's because the right slimes *anyone* who does that.
In short, if you think the right couldn't render the "forward party" toxic to half the country in about five seconds, you have woefully misdiagnosed the nature of US political problems.

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More from @drvolts

David Roberts Profile picture
7 Oct
At least in my personal experience, "doomism" is similar to "degrowth" in that I encounter people criticizing it FAR more often than I encounter the actual thing. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
Pieces like this could just say, "doomism annoys me, it's wrong." But that doesn't feel grand enough. So it asserts that doomism "threatens to derail" all our progress on climate. Yeah? How? What evidence is there for that assertion?
Examples of doomism in the piece include a 3yo Jonathan Franzen article and a tweet. If it was a resurgent force that literally threatened to derail climate progress, you'd think examples would be easier to come by.
Read 8 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
5 Oct
Republicans delight in cruelty toward marginalized groups. It's not that they're willing to *accept* it as a side effect or unavoidable price of achieving other goals, like "collateral damage" or whatever. They positively delight in it, in & of itself.
missouriindependent.com/2021/10/04/mis…
I keep thinking about the interview w/ the conservative woman in PA who says her *top political priority* is "shutting down the southern border." Needless to say, unlike shitty health care, lack of decent wages, and lack of paid sick or family leave ...
... immigrants coming over the southern border have *zero* impact on this woman's life. None. But the prospect of weak brown asylum-seeking refugees being turned away brings her such psychic satisfaction that she prioritizes it over her *own community's welfare*.
Read 4 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
5 Oct
One of the most depressing aspects of climate change is that it's slowly reducing the world's diversity & complexity ... and most of that is taking place outside our view/attention. We won't notice most of it going or remember it when it's gone.
nytimes.com/2021/10/04/cli…
If I say to my grandchild, 20 years from now, "the world's oceans used to have 500% more coral reefs -- they were everywhere, gorgeous & teeming with biodiversity" ... what will that mean to them? Will they even experience it as loss? Will anyone mourn?
50 years from now, when my great-grandchild is preoccupied with the loss of most of the world's megafauna or species of wild fish, will they even remember coral reefs? How much tragedy can any generation even take in or acknowledge?
Read 4 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
5 Oct
For the record, I'm against following people into the bathroom & filming them. But let's be serious: this is the best thing that could happen to Sinema. Is she now or was she ever in any physical danger from progressives? No. They stood at a distance & asked Qs about policy.
Anybody not demagoguing knows that nerdy progressive activists asking Sinema policy questions are not a real danger. But they're enough to prompt a tidal wave of garment-rending about Civility on Both Sides. They're enough to make her just the beleaguered heroine she wants to be.
There's nothing Sinema wants more, & nothing that would be better for her politically at this very moment, than being seen as a brave independent holdout, beset by deranged activists but unmovable in her principles (whatever they are, she won't say).
Read 13 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
3 Oct
Hyping up (or just inventing) danger from leftist radicals is how fascists aligned with government power create a permission structure for greater repression. "We have to do it, we're just reacting to antifa!" Putin, Orban, Erdoğan -- always the same.
opb.org/article/2021/1…
This is why RW media spins its audience up on ACORN, New Black Panthers, Antifa, or whatever it will be next week. They know the mob needs some excuse, some kind of permission to indulge its hatred & violence, so it says: look at our evil opponents! We HAVE to be like this.
I don't even think it's a Machiavellian thing. I think when Glenn Beck connected all his various enemies & Others on that chalkboard into one grand conspiracy of Them, he believed it! It's something reactionaries need, psychologically. So they project it.
Read 5 tweets
David Roberts Profile picture
3 Oct
Imagine being an adult human being, a member of the US Congress, and writing these words.
All right, for ages I've been meaning to do thread on the War on Christmas. I suppose this is as good/bad a time as any.

So here's a thread on the WoC, its underlying structure, and what it reveals about [waves hands] all the other difficulties the US is facing.
I've always thought it's worth examining the WoC more closely, not because it's particularly important, but almost the opposite: because it's so obviously silly & the stakes are so low, it's easier to see the underlying dynamics clearly, w/out strong priors getting in the way.
Read 24 tweets

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