Hearing how many ordinary people believe some version of a Qanon conspiracy theory regarding Epstein is a depressing example of how mainstream conspiracy theories have become. Let’s be clear: Epstein killed himself because he, like many lifelong abusers, was a coward who couldn’t handle finally facing consequences. This isn’t uncommon. As a modern day Satanic Panic movement, Pizzagate-then-QAnon was convinced their political enemies (Democrats) were all pedophiles connected to Epstein and being shielded by shady, wealthy, powerful people running a global cabal (any “there’s secretly a powerful group of people pulling the strings of society” conspiracy is actually just a code for “Jews are controlling everything”, too, which is why Tucker Carlson is currently saying Israel was involved with Epstein).
When the facts of the case came forward, there WERE no Democrats involved—no Clintons, no Obamas, no George Soros. When victims testified against Ghislaine Maxwell, who got 20 years in prison, they named hedge fund guys who no one knew about. But people didn’t want the truth. QAnon explained away the fact that no victim testimony included their political enemies by saying Dems and the cabal (again, Jews) were actually hiding secret files that implicated them. That is the entire origin of “the Epstein files.” It’s nothing but copium. ANY post that says “lulz yeah of course this person is in the files” is inherently buying into a QAnon conspiracy theory, because the secret files do not exist. There is no secret list of pedophiles. That's fan fiction created by the modern Satanic Panic movement. Even saying Trump is in the files is conspiracy-brained not simply because these files don’t exist, but because the truth is much simpler: it has been public knowledge for years that Trump is a serial rapist, and millions of people voted for him anyway. His friendship with Epstein and 2 dozen sexual assault allegations have been public knowledge for years, and that’s the ugly truth which the soothing nature of conspiracy theories hides; it’s a lot more comforting for people to believe there’s a powerful, secret group of predators running society than to face that millions of people knowingly voted for a known serial rapist 3 times.
It has been, frankly, isolating to see how many everyday people are buying into this, to the point where it’s casually on people’s instagram Explore pages. Societies need a shared truth to function, and a large part of the dysfunction in American society we’re seeing now is the complete normalization of crackpot conspiracy theories, aided and abetted by social media. The fact that I’m pre-emptively muting this post because I have a feeling some conspiracist will leave nonsense on it tells you how common this brain rot has become. This shit is not innocuous. Remember, the original Pizzagate incident involved a freak shooting up a pizza place, and it’s really just luck that no one got killed.
every time someone is asked to describe what they consider to be positive masculinity (hardworking, protective, whatever) they are at a loss when the follow up question is "okay but what makes these positive characteristic masculine? women have them too"... it's almost as if it's all patriarchal bullshit lol
it's even more cringe when they come up with this pseudo chivalry (lol) revival like DEFEND those who cannot defend themselves SWEAR by your honor... you are not lohengrin you are 27 and on reddit
- good behaviors and values an adult man should emulate
but what good behaviors or values should an adult man emulate that an adult woman should not?
- i never said these were EXCLUSIVE to men
then why do you call them masculine values if they are not gendered
- because they are associated with men
and why is that
- testosterone
i have noticed that the qualities you call masculine are high prestige and associated with authority while the qualities you call feminine are low prestige and associated with submission and caretaking. are you sure there are no social and cultural forces at play here?
Why the hell are you asking people to "describe what they consider to be positive masculinity" if your immediate follow-up is to break the frame and blame them for being at a loss how to respond? That's not a path toward mutual understanding, that's a jerk move dressed up in progressivism.
I would absolutely agree that a lot of what people consider "masculine virtues" are distinctly downstream of patriarchal bullshit, but if you're asking about positive masculinity in the first place, you are implicitly assuming that there *is* such a thing as masculine and feminine values! You are bringing that baggage along with you, so you can discard it mid-conversation and make the other person seem like a fool for trying to answer in good faith! And then you're going on tumblr to score social points off this endeavor!
This is not how hearts and minds get changed. If you actually care about dismantling patriarchal bullshit, I would strongly suggest trying to open genuine dialogue rather than playing conversational jiujitsu on random dudes.
You are the one not responding in good faith. This ignores that there is currently a huge conversation being had right now about the “masculinity crisis” and how we need more “positive masculinity” and positive masculine role models in order to reduce misogyny and the influence of the likes of Andrew Tate. People who say we need more positive masculinity to reduce misogyny and male issues (thus promoting bioessentialism indirectly) are who OP is asking this too. Framing this as if OP woke up one day and went up to random dudes who never said a word on this to play “conversational jiujitsu” is what’s actually bad faith here.
The “haha deployed US soldiers should all have their wives fucked” memes are really gross to me… you all see those women as objects just as much as their meathead military husbands do. You think women are possessions that can be stolen from men and that by “taking” them you’re epically owning the military as a system. The whole thing has rapey vibes too like are you even considering if the wives want that? Or is the political dunk more important than consent
I’m sorry but I can’t even get on board with anti “both sides” posts when they still tell some kind of lie. I just saw one that started by alluding to election rigging in 2024, and stop. I’m sorry, but more people voted for Trump than Harris. That’s just it. Musk influenced the election by pouring millions into Trump's campaign and running a gigantic social media site that pushed anti-Dem/pro-MAGA content, but there is currently no evidence that actual votes were tampered with. We cannot become conspiracy theorists like the right. If Musk could actually change votes, then he would've done so with the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat that the Democrat won, despite Musk's support and campaigning for the Republican. Then the post was like "we probably still would've gone to war with Iran but--" stop. This not only ignores Harris' statements and platform, but Biden's actions, because Biden did actually try to prevent a wider war from breaking out in the Middle East and told Israel not to attack Iran, but this goes against the mainstream narrative of the internet, so no one cares. And then the post said immigration would still be horrible but at least ICE wouldn't be acting the way it is now. That's a hell of an understatement. There will always be issues with immigration because the average person is xenophobic as fuck, but hundreds of thousands of people are now vulnerable to deportation while litigation plays out about the termination of TPS because Biden granted them that legal status, and one of the last things Biden did in office regarding immigration was to try to create a pathway for citizenship for undocumented spouses of immigrants. But again, this goes against the radikewl narrative, so no one cares.
I am tired of the relentless, dedicated distortions, lies, ignoring reality, and the constant need to place one's edgelord radikewl identity above all else even when far-right fascists are destroying society. I am tired of people acting like rhetoric has no impact, and that a solid decade of "Dems still suck shit tho" in the face of blatant fascism isn't part of what got us here (perhaps that's why these people comfort themselves with election conspiracy theories, because that's easier for them to process than the possibility that they enabled Trump's rise). I do not care if your statement ends with "but I guess Republicans suck more" when you still feel the childish need to signal you're still part of the internet cool kids clique with "fuck the Democrats" at the beginning of your post that is fundamentally about Republicans ruining people's lives. I don't care if you reluctantly admit Republicans are worse when you're still lying about Democrats. Dems aren't just "not as bad", they actually do good things while they're in power, but 2021-2024 proved that these people will do nothing but ignore those things at best and lie about them at worst. It doesn't matter how bad things get; these people will never stop acting 12 years-old, so we should treat them like children and exclude them from adult conversations about politics.
@fanchonmoreau Even if we WERE in this exact situation in a Harris admin (unlikely bc of your point about Biden--Israel attacked in part bc Bibi knew he could rely on a Trump admin for support), Harris admin would be more likely to make sure all diplomatic possibilities were exhausted and that the people in Congress who needed to be briefed were briefed from all parties. She'd have people around her who lay out Iranian retaliation possibilities and work with her to navigate the consequences for everything from our military to our economy. She probably wouldn't go into this as Trump has, thinking he could do a few spectacular strikes and leave a hero. She'd be a steadier hand and that MATTERS.
Right, I agree. Even if it would have had to get to this point eventually, which again, I'm skeptical not simply because of Biden's actions but because of what you said about Netanyahu doing this because he knew Trump would support him, I do think Harris would have done this as a last resort. As I said, this goes against the mainstream narrative on the internet so people don't care, but the Biden admin did a lot of quiet diplomacy in the Middle East that held back a wider regional war, and there's no reason to think Harris wouldn't have done the same. Like you said, even if Harris had decided airstrikes were necessary, yeah I think she would've briefed both parties in Congress first
@blaserables I don't want to hear any complaints about Democrats from anyone other than actual Democrats anymore. Most people don't know what the hell they're talking about, and their heart isn't in the right place either, so I don't want to listen to them.
That sums it up! Like why the hell should we listen to people who relentlessly fought to make Democrats lose against the far-right fascists for the past 10 years, either by actively voting against them or by spreading voter suppression sentiment via anti-Democratic rhetoric and lies? There just isn't a reason to listen to people operating in bad faith who have a horrendous track record of sabotaging the anti-fascist party at every turn, screaming when anyone actually points out Dems are the anti-fascists, and who have never actually won any national election themselves lol
"We expect women to deal with sexual frustration appropriately. We expect men to kill unless their demands are met. It’s that expectation, not the lack of willing partners, that is causing misogynistic violence.
(...)
Hatred is not desire. Cruelty is not a come-on. That little boy is not pulling your pigtails because he likes you — he’s doing it because it hurts. You cannot nurture or love someone out of their freely chosen bigotry; you cannot turn a killer into a kind man by sleeping with him. That is a hard and painful realization, but it has a correlative: You cannot turn a kind man into a killer by refusing to go on a date."
The whole piece is worth reading, but in summary^....yes.
this is genuinely so important. especially the last line. the other day i was working on a horror critique article of a thriller and ended up down a rabbit hole of the acts of violence committed by entitlement. especially to sex but you also see these young man killing over other types of perceived rejection and the word perceived is critical. because the sheer amount of creepy “nice guys” who have gone on to be violent and hateful towards a woman for rejecting him but at the same time never bothered to even ask her out in the first place is so unhinged to me. and i found it extremely indicative of the fact that the woman saying yes to him wasn’t going to change him choosing to commit violence. we’re fine with our countries going to war over not negotiating with terrorists but tell young girls to behave as if they’re in a constant lifelong hostage situation and should give the men what they want.
the guys who kill over their entitlement were always going to do it. they’ll shoot up an office for not getting a promotion, beat a stranger to death over an imaginary slight, kill a woman who does whatever he says bc that isn’t enough. no amount of proper parenting or sex from women or things being handed to him is going to change that so let’s stop acting like it.
it may be easier to blame the voiceless dead for being killed but it accomplishes nothing.
"i can't benefit from oppressive power structures, i'm literally nice :)" is a disturbingly common sentiment on here and if u express it then i can never trust u again
guys remember Before. things were so much Better Before. nothing was bad actually and it's definitely not just the flattening veneer of nostalgia degrading the integrity of my ability to understand even my own life. things used to be Great. Back when. Back in Before. we should Go Back and Make It Great Again.
to all my researchers, students and people in general who love learning: if you don't know this already, i'm about to give you a game changer
connectedpapers
the basic rundown is: you use the search bar to enter a topic, scientific paper name or DOI. the website then offers you a list of papers on the topic, and you choose the one you're looking for/most relevant one. from here, it makes a tree diagram of related papers that are clustered based on topic relatability and colour-coded by time they were produced!
for example: here i search "human B12"
i go ahead and choose the first paper, meaning my graph will be based around it and start from the topics of "b12 levels" and "fraility syndrome"
here is the graph output! you can scroll through all the papers included on the left, and clicking on each one shows you it's position on the chart + will pull up details on the paper on the right hand column (title, authors, citations, abstract/summary and links where the paper can be found)
you get a few free graphs a month before you have to sign up, and i think the free version gives you up to 5 a month. there are paid versions but it really depends how often you need to use this kinda thing.
Trump voters backed abortion, minimum wage, and family leave — and don't get that Project 2025 would take it away
In response, many progressives blamed Democrats. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Democrats "abandoned working class people," claiming that is why Harris lost. It's a tempting fiction because it allows progressives to feel a measure of control over the situation. We all would love to believe making different choices will lead to better outcomes. But Sanders knows it's not true. He himself worked closely with Biden to improve labor organizing and reduce healthcare costs. He shared Biden's disappointment that the Build Back Better plan that would have done even more was killed off by centrists who have since left the party. He knows that Democrats would have done more, if not hobbled by Republicans who control the House. And he knows that, if people were voting on policy, they would vote for Democrats. Trump, after all, will actively dismantle existing policies people like.
The problem wasn't Democratic policy or messaging. It's ignorance. As Heather "Digby" Parton wrote at Salon Wednesday, people backed Trump's "aesthetics and attitudes" but knew nothing about his policies. Before the election, Catherine Rampell and Youyou Zhou at the Washington Post polled voters about policies without revealing which candidate proposed them. Harris' were far more popular — even Trump voters generally liked her ideas more, as long as they knew they weren't hers.
When voters have factual information about the candidates, they prefer Democrats. Polls from earlier this year show that people who consume news from journalistic outlets — newspapers, network news programs, and news websites — overwhelmingly planned to vote for the Democratic candidate. Newspaper readers clocked in at 70% Democratic support, and network news viewers were 55% Democratic. News website readers were only less so because the survey didn't distinguish between legitimate sites like Salon and bunk outlets like Breitbart, but still: merely being a person who reads stuff makes you more liberal. In states where heavy ad spending helped educate voters a little more on Harris' plans, she lost less ground than in places where that money wasn't spent.
The problem is most people simply do not absorb quality information. Instead, increasing numbers of Americans have a media diet that is mostly a bunch of lies, conspiracy theories, irrelevant diatribes and other such bunkum that right-wing propagandists use to deceive people. A study released by Pew Research in September showed people were exponentially more likely to get "news" from social media detritus than legitimate news outlets. And those results almost certainly downplay the ratio of nonsense-to-real news, since most people taking the poll won't want to admit that they mostly scroll TikTok all day and haven't read an actual article in eons. Looking at newspaper sales and news site traffic, we can see that the consumption of reality-based news is plummeting.
As Angelo Carusone of Media Matters told MSNBC, "We have a country that is pickled in right-wing misinformation and rage." Political organizers and pundits don't want to face that, because it is such a massive, hard-to-wrangle problem. So they critique Democratic "messaging" that no one hears. They try to figure out if there are rational reasons people worry about immigration or fail to notice improvements in the economy. But what has changed profoundly in our society — and also explains the shift worldwide — is the explosion of social media and the dramatic shift towards an all-propaganda media diet for so many people.
this is probably the only sex gif i will every reblog, because for some reason i feel like it’s more than just sex. i don’t know if it’s how they’re actually looking at one another or the way they can’t get close enough. he’s actually looking at her like a person and not just a sex object.
but then again, it could be all in my head. i mean, this is how i would want it to be. but that’s just me.
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