The reason Joy Reid said most GOP voters vote based racial resentment and fear is bc it's true. What problem do they NOT blame racial/ethnic minorities for? Literally every single one. Follow along....🧵 2/ Crime? Black & Latino folks, in their mind. Kid didn't get into the college of their choice? Affirmative action, naturally. Plane doors falling off? DEI efforts at Boeing. Taxes too high? Must be welfare for "those people..."

While it's true that Trumpism has given the green light to overt expressions of bigotry (racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, etc.), perhaps an even bigger horror is how it has bred a deep cynicism about democracy itself. One intended to pave the way for an authoritarian future... 🧵 2/By attacking the press as fake whenever it doesn't parrot MAGA talking points, questioning election outcomes (even when they win, bc they didn't win by enough!), by attacking higher ed and scientific expertise, Trumpism seeks to cast doubt on every guardrail of democracy...

1/ If you believe aviation accidents (which are down over the past several years and reached a high in 1994) are the fault of DEI, as Elon "Apartheid Boy" Musk believes, you're a racist and an idiot. Elon's rockets literally blow up regularly. No DEI policy to be found... 2/ Hell, forget aviation: Elon's cars wreck on autopilot and it's not the fault of DEI. Tesla has a history of racial discrimination against Black and brown folks, not DEI on their behalf. Perhaps Elon's companies NEED more diversity. The white boys he relies on suck.

1/ I'm amazed at the ignorance of the pro-Palestinian protesters who think blocking entries to airports (happening at JFK apparently) is a good move. And as someone who opposes Israel's actions in Gaza, it sickens me because it makes our side look ridiculous... 2/ I know, I know...they'll say, "your inconvenience means nothing, it's a genocide!" But that amounts to little more than shaming people for not already being in the streets with you...

1/ How ignorant must protesters be to think spray painting Free Gaza w/a hammer & sickle on a Lincoln statue in NY will help Palestinians? The fact that they're all standing around recording their work tells you It's about their narcissism. "Look at ME!" Performative bullshit... 2/ The people of Gaza deserve better than a bunch of self-absorbed pseudo-revolutionaries in their hastily-purchased keffiyehs who think spray painting slogans on totally unrelated shit will liberate anyone...

A few thoughts on the Claudine Gay plagiarism “scandal.” This seems a case where multiple things can be true, but folks are so committed to using the case as a weapon against the academy (which they hate for its supposed leftism) that they ignore all nuance and logic. A 🧵... 2/ First, let’s remember how we got here, because it helps us understand why. The attack on Gay only began when mostly right wing Israel apologists decided to go after her for supposedly not taking antisemitism seriously enough...

The craziest thing about the "Great Replacement Theory," is that it gets completely backward how most of us on the left think about immigration. Not that facts will matter to most, but it's worth spelling this out for reasonable people to consider. A 🧵... 2/ So, according to replacement theory, the left broadly speaking (at the behest of Jews in the most hateful versions) is hoping to replace white people with brown folks from the global south, bc, as Tucker Carlson puts it they are "more compliant" or docile or something...

A few thoughts about anti-Semitism, as someone who has experienced it.

First, some background...

A 🧵 2/ I come from a family (my father's father's side) that was run out of Russia by pogroms and systematized anti-Jewish bigotry. THAT was anti-Semitism: hate and bigotry aimed at them because they were Jews...

1/ It seems like older Jewish folks are having a hard time understanding the outburst of young Jewish criticism of Israel in the wake of the current war. But it's not that hard to understand why so many younger Jews feel (rightly) the way they do. A brief 🧵.. 2/ For most older Jews, surely 65 and above, they still live in a mental world where Jews are perpetual underdogs. They experienced systemic mistreatment, including restrictive covenants in housing, professional positions off limits to them, etc...

1/ This so-called "Nashville Shooter Manifesto" story is total bullshit. First off, it's not a manifesto at all. It's some scribbles in a journal. There is no political analysis, ideological through-line or cohesion to any of it. A 🧵... 2/ Second, what was leaked was 3 pages of a longer journal by a cop who thought it was politically explosive. The fact that the cop didn't leak all of it (despite having access) tells you the rest was likely just random brain farts of a deeply ill person...

1/ Some folks are all “fuck Biden he supports genocide,” as if whichever Republican beats him (bc it won’t be Cornel West who does) will be an ally to Palestinians. Some of y’all are so narcissistic you place feeling good about your vote over the impact of your actions… 2/ but at least you’ll feel pure even as your decision not to vote or vote 3rd party leads to an administration that would gladly wipe out not just Palestinians but civil rights in the US too. But I guess you think the worse things get the better for revolution or some shit…

1/ For those insisting that we as Jews have a claim to the "land of Israel" stretching back millennia, I have some questions. Please follow along and answer them, seriously. A 🧵... 2/ First off, what follows is not meant to justify the slaughter of innocent people on 10/7. Nor is it meant to suggest Jews have no right to live in Palestine. Of course they do. I'm just curious about this millennia-old indigeneity thing, so stick with me...

1/ Stop falling for the lie that anti-Zionism = antisemitism. Anti-Zionism was common among Jews until the Shoah. If you think it's naive given that tragedy, OK, we can discuss that. But it doesn't suddenly become bigoted. If it wasn't anti-semitic in 1920 it isn't now. A🧵... 2/ Do many who critique Zionism also hate Jews? Oh absolutely. And those should be condemned by everyone. But others of us simply reject ethnic and/or religious nationalism on principle...

1/ Before folks insist Palestinians are irrational and hateful for rejecting Israel and Zionism, perhaps it's worth quoting David Ben-Gurion -- Israel's first PM -- who clearly understood why they wouldn't (and shouldn't be expected to) accept either. Here's what he said... 2/ As he explained to Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann

“Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel...We have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?...

1/ For those who can't understand the "dysfunction" of the House GOP, you don't get it. This isn't dysfunction in the minds of the far-right MAGA members: it's their goal. Discredit government/governing altogether bc they never believed in it really...🧵 2/ The far right believes government should be shut down bc they don't believe in public service, the public interest, or probably 95% of what government does (from environmental protection to education funding to anything other than tanks, guns & weapons)...

1/ Serious question for people who are convinced they KNOW FOR SURE who bombed the hospital and that it was the evil side they oppose: if absolute proof came out that it was the side you support, would you apologize for being wrong? No, right? That's cult shit, either way... 2/ It could definitely have been Israel, and it could have been Hamas. And whoever did it is guilty of yet more war crimes. And Israel is guilty of horrific, genocidal collective punishment and state terrorism, and Hamas is guilty of vile anti-Jewish bigotry and terrorism too...

1/ Israel's premise was that it would be a refuge where Jews would be safe. Yet today it is far less safe for us than anywhere on Earth. Who could have known that taking other people's land, discriminating against them and treating them all like terrorists might not work out?... 2/ This is not to justify what Hamas just did; not in the least. It is simply to say that even if something is not morally justified it can be practically predictable. People will often do destructive things, even self-destructive things, to gain freedom and opportunity...

White America has never thought racial oppression was real. Most whites rationalized enslavement, lynching & segregation. Dr Samuel Cartwright (a respected physician) said it was "drapetomania" that caused enslaved persons to seek escape. Because slavery was, ya know, benign 🧵 2/ At no point in history has White America writ large opposed racial discrimination and oppression when it was happening. Oh sure, 100 years after enslavement, everyone would say how bad it was. Most said the same about segregation by the 80s or 90s. But at the time, crickets...

If you actually believe the reason your taxes are too high is because of "welfare" cheats eating fudge rounds on your dime, you are clearly in need of a Google machine. Not that songwriters are expected to be social scientists, but this is just plain ignorance. I mean, just as one data point, there are only 464,000 adult recipients of cash "welfare" in the entire country. Most families receiving any cash receive it only for the child(ren) in the home (average of 2 btw, contrary to popular belief)...

The @tnhousegop priorities prove that these people are trolls whose only goal is to "own the libs" and rile the base. A 🧵

1. They punished Nashville for being a Blue dot in a red ocean, dissecting our congressional district so a 60/40 Dem city can't have a Dem in Congress... 2. They punished us again for not wanting their stupid MAGA/GOP convention in 2024, by pushing thru a bill slashing the size of OUR council and proposing an end to Mayoral runoffs so a Republican could win in a 4-person race with as little as 30% of the vote...

1/ People trying to make the Covenant School shooting into proof of trans mental illness are vile and ignorant. The shooter may well have been mentally deranged. But gender dysphoria was not the "illness" that prompted mass murder. There is NO link between that and violence... 2/ And it's interesting that the very people who normally talk about how we need to do more to address mental illness after shootings like this are offering NO real solution now that they think the illness in question was gender dysphoria...