Bear religion probably fucking rocks. You're a fucking bear, you're the deadliest thing on earth, once a year an endless supply of salmon just flings itself up the river to gorge on and then you nap for 3 months.
The most delicious food in the world is protected by tiny demons who can defend it from everyone except you. Your natural armor is thick enough that you can just eat the damn hive while they buzz around you. God's chosen animals right there
Regular bears tell stories of angel bears sent by the Bear God, pure white and twice as strong as any normal bear could be, who rule the summit of the Earth and kill all who stand in their path.
And they are right, those bears exist and totally do that. Humans just have fake angels as a cope.
love the idea of bears being the chosen species actually. having a near death experience and glimpsing heaven and realising it's just full of bears, no humans at all, humans not ensouled actually, humans an accidental byproduct of God's plan for bears
Last week, White House Deputy Chief of Staff and xenophobic racist Stephen Miller attacked Democratic Texas US Senate candidate James Talarico with the level of class and dignity typical of MAGA.
Responding to a boilerplate Talarico campaign announcement posted by the Democrats’ account on X, Miller responded, “The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate.” Miller later doubled down on Fox News, claiming that Talarico was “transitioning into a female.”
Miller is lying; Talarico is cis, not trans. It’s also grotesquely bigoted; Miller is attempting to smear Talarico by suggesting that being trans should be disqualifying from participating in public life.
But this ugly attack is very much in line with the GOP strategy in Texas which has centered obsessively, and repulsively, on attempting to feminize and misgender Talarico. Rather than talk about issues, records, or even personalities, Republicans have simply started bellowing “WE ARE MEN! THEY NOT MEN! MEN GOOD! NOT MEN BAD!” over and over again in a toxic masculine fugue of bile and sweat.
It’s a repulsive spectacle. But it’s also a clarifying one. Republicans could not make it much clearer that their party is entirely given over to bigotry, rage, and bullying. There are no issues to compromise on, no middle ground to occupy. The only question is whether women, queer people, non-white people, and indeed Democrats as a whole are human beings with a stake in democracy, or if non-Republicans are all simply vermin to be subjugated.
Faced with that stark choice, the Talarico campaign, and Democrats in general, have responded by standing firm rather than folding. That’s a welcome change from early in Trump’s term — and it’s also a hopeful sign that Democrats are starting belatedly to realize that the only way forward is fighting back.
Everything is gender
Last week, Republicans held their run-off primary election. Incumbent John Cornyn lost; the GOP’s candidate is instead the disgustingly corrupt state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is so obviously unfit his own party tried to impeach him.
Talarico, a member of the Texas House, is, by contrast, a talented communicator who has made his progressive Christian faith a center of his campaign.
[...]
Paxton and the entire GOP have responded to this tough electoral situation by turning hard right and spiraling into semi-incomprehensible smears and conspiracy theories centered on the fantasy that Talarico is not a man or is doing manhood wrong.
The big Republicans scandal moment of the campaign so far came a couple weeks ago when Talarico ordered a potato, egg, and cheese taco.
An innocuous moment, you say? Well, yes. But every Republican with access to a keyboard rushed over to X to declaim that ordering an egg taco meant that Talarico was a vegetarian (he is not) and/or a vegan (vegans don’t eat eggs!).
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said that Talarico “was not beating the vegetarian allegations” (why are they allegations?!). Donald Trump said, “You can’t get elected as a vegan in Texas.” Ken Paxton called his opponent “Tofu Talerico.” And on and on.
Other similar nonsense followed. Dan Weldon, a Florida congressional candidate, popped up to say that Talarico didn’t look like he could name “a single obscure wide receiver from the early 2000s.” And in his first general election add, Paxton claimed that Talarico was “low-T.” This is a common insult on the manosphere right, where testosterone is conflated with strength, resolve, and virtue.
Not coincidentally, Democratic representatives, and Democratic voters, are often not straight men. LGBT voters and women both disproportionately support Democrats, which of course is the party that broadly supports abortion rights and LGBT rights. In contrast, Republicans are viciously opposed to both — and are even flirting with the idea of trying to disenfranchise women altogether.
The attacks on Talarico are not, then, simply attacks on one politician. They are an attack on the Democratic coalition, and on the idea that women, queer people, or anyone who supports women and queer people should have any role in government or public life. Paxton’s campaign is saying that Democrats are illegitimate because they are not manly men, and that women and LGBT people are illegitimate because they are Democrats. Only manly Republican bullies are fit to rule.
[...]
Go further
Democrats have belatedly but thankfully concluded that the way to deal with bullies is to hit back harder. They’ve decided that the way to deal with vaunting toxic masculinity is to point out that it is ridiculous and repulsive, and to connect it to abuse and corruption.
This is all to the good. In addition, though, Democrats could take the Talarico campaign as a moment to recognize that there’s little point in trying to meet Republicans halfway, either on policy or on candidate selection.
Republicans are going all in on the James Talarico “isn’t a real man” smears to deride his manhood.
Imagine being the gays at a pride event in 2004 living their lives when someone grabs the microphone and announces to the room that Ronald Reagan was pronounced dead. Can you even imagine the hype, the celebration, the pure elation
"comparing apples and oranges" has always been funny to me as an expression because people's go to exampe of two things so radically different that they defy any useful comparison are apples. and oranges. like you would struggle to find a more comparable pair of objects than that. theyre literally sold right next to each other in most stores.
just be yourself and don’t care about what other people think! Why would you care about what other people think about you?
(DISCLAIMER: what other people think about you will determine every aspect of your support network, your ability to get housing and employment, the quality of your medical care, how you are treated by the legal system, and how likely people will be to sic the police on you for violating social norms.)
hey, listen, I get where you’re coming from but I don’t think this one is capitalism’s fault. I really don’t think capitalism is responsible for the general concept of social ostracism. We can’t just use capitalism to mean “bad thing-ism” we gotta remember that some words mean things
I feel like capitalism is at least partially responsible for how whether or not you're 'likeable' enough to be employed dictates whether or not you have a roof over your head or food in the fridge. Like, yeah social ostracism isn't new or unique to capitalism, but I do think modern capitalism in particular has simplified the line between 'how others perceive you' and 'how likely you are to be/become homeless/arrested/institutionalised/fired/killed 'in self defence'/deported/etc'
In David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years, he talks about a subgroup of Inuit people who lived in “primitive communism.” Everything was shared. If you asked someone for it, they gave it to you, no questions asked. They refused to even see it as ‘gifts’ or charity, it was just what you were supposed to do in your community, with one hunter famously saying “by gifts, you make dogs out of men.”
Then Graeber shared another story from the group - once there was a member of the group who got on everyone’s nerves by asking the hunters for all of their best cuts of meat every time they returned with their haul. So one day the hunters invited him along on a seal hunting trip and then abandoned him on a raft in the Arctic ocean to die of exposure.
Social ostracism has existed before capitalism and it will outlive capitalism. Sometimes capitalism has even gone against social ostracism, like the famous example of the Sears and Roebuck magazine - the massive company could offer uniform products with uniform prices, which was a godsend for rural Black people because they could finally buy things for once in their lives without ludicrous markups from the local shopkeepers in their community!
PEOPLE WHO ARE DISLIKED BY THE COMMUNITY HAVE ALWAYS STRUGGLED TO LIVE AND IT WAS NOT LESS OF A PROBLEM BACK WHEN SOCIETY WAS ORIENTED AROUND SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE BECAUSE OF FUCKING COURSE IT WASN’T!
to be clear you are fifteen thousand generations removed from the invention of stone tools. not from the end of stone tools. modern humans are still using stone tools.
list of mutuals that are FUNDAMENTAL for a healthy dashboard ecosystem (in no particular order): complainers, 30 year olds, emotionally stunted women, underachievers, people with a sedentary lifestyle, eastern europeans, workaholics and last but not least killjoy feminists
turnnoffyourmind
jacobvanloon
vaporwave
theartofmadeline
tangentwithtanner
dededos
kianamaiart
baratheonpilled
