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Why aren’t Democrats physically occupying government buildings?
I’ve been reading and watching a lot of left-wing content lately. A big topic of conversation is what exactly Democrats could do to slow down or stop Trump. The “mainstream” opinion is that Democrats can’t really do anything except sue, since they control zero branches of federal government. I disagree.
DC voted 90% for Kamala. Pretty much every federal employee is in danger of losing their job if Trump successfully consolidates power. They could collectively decide to simply not comply with Trump’s orders. He would have to blow all of his political capital on calling in the national guard while his allegedly illegal orders get litigated.
Look at this video from the other week purporting to show Congressional Democrats being “physically blocked” from entering the Department of Education. They aren’t even really trying to get inside. They could totally storm in if they wanted!
Has anyone chained themselves to their desk? Or better yet, to one of these mystical “servers” containing so much sensitive personal data? We saw more effective civil disobedience over Gaza than we are seeing over our own government.
I have two theories for this incompetence, but am eager to hear more:
All of the organizations and groups that typically organize and support these types of protests blew their entire budget on the presidential campaign. Then, money dried up as rich donors feared getting on Trump’s bad side.
After January 6, the Democrats focused their self-image around the idea of “procedure” and “doing things the right way”. This calcified to such an extent that anyone in a position of leadership is now incapable of forming and executing plans which do not conform with the collective PMC understanding of what is allowed or “proper”.
I think this is part of it, but I also think there is just a lack of physical courage among most people on the left (and people on the right, to be fair.)
I am genuinely not trying to caricature or strawman the left, but they do tend to attract a more effeminate, intellectual type of person as of late. Note that this CERTAINLY isn't true of the left historically, but seems to be the tendency today. Young men are at historic lows for the Democratic party, the group who tends to have the most physical aggression and willingness to go occupy a building or storm a castle. Combine this with the fact that physical courage seems to be dropping across the board, and you have people who simply aren't willing to put themselves at risk or take bold physical action in this way.
"Lying flat" is a type of strike/collective bargaining. It's not generally recognized as such because the people in power and the people who are thought to be on the side of collective bargaining are the same people, which is why China tries to suppress it.
Young men need to have an incentive to do that. They haven't had such a thing for 2 generations now- things have gone downhill for them since the '80s due mostly to enclosure by the old (through various justifications- environmentalism and safetyism being the most popular). In places that have less enclosure, people are doing better- TFRs are higher, wages are higher/costs of living are lower, the police force actually functions, military recruitment remains very high, R&D budgets are high, etc.
Now, young women generally benefit from that because young men will generally compete and distinguish themselves more for access to young women. But they've just discovered that the reward they offer to do those things- that being themselves- is insufficient. Their social credit card has been declined, and if you've spent the last 20-50 years forming your entire identity around having limitless social credit (and men fighting for the privilege to pick up your tab)?
Yeah, I can see how that could be existentially demoralizing. The lies stop being fun to tell when people stop believing in them.
The old also actively punish young men for exercising this virtue. If you remove them and create institutions that reward this it'll come back, but that's going to take some time and require investment.
My social credit card has been declined? That’s news to me. Do you have evidence that young men compete and distinguish themselves for access to me?
No disrespect intended, but this is common knowledge to the point that it defies belief that anyone would not know this (kind of like if you asked someone to provide evidence that people die if they stop breathing). If you're young enough you may not have realized it yet, I suppose. But young men spend vast quantities of effort to try to get attention (and especially sex) from women. It's the #1 thing on their minds, and a lot of things they do can be traced back to "showing off for the girls".
Or, as Chris Rock memorably put it: "Women are offered dick every day. Every [woman] gets offered dick at least three times a week. Three times a day, shit! That’s right, every time a man’s being nice to you … all he’s doing is offering dick. That’s all it is. ‘Can I get that for you? – How about some dick?’ ‘Could I help you with that? – Could I help you to some dick? – Do you need some dick?’" Yes he's a comedian and he's playing it for laughs, but it works because both he and the audience know how true it is.
My impression is that she's a trans woman. Things like putting "and no I am not a man" in her bio, and talking explicitly online about her UTI, and the proportion of posts about gender vs everything else.
On the other hand, no, being offered "dick" three times a day isn't exactly a positive experience, even if accompanied by some other performances.
Funny, my reading was just that she was a troll, especially because her bio has "[...] you can call me a troll until your throat hurts." My money would be on "cis male troll" before it would be on "good faith trans woman", but only because a username like "just a woman" feels like something neither a cis nor trans woman would make, and certainly not in this space.
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I also clocked that. Normally, I don't think it matters what your identify is, only the content of your thought.
But if you're going to make your whole thing about gender, I do think it matters a lot whether you are trans or not. Especially if you're going to ask for "sources" that men want sex from women. The experience of a trans woman is not the same as a biological woman. It's just not.
Who knew my biggest struggle on this site wasn’t debating hobby horses it was convincing people I’m a biological woman. I even put it in my name to make it easy. If you want a picture of my tampon stash all you gotta do is ask.
Strangely, those are the sorts of details that suggested trans to me.
(I have given birth to three children, could probably have another, and have no tampon stash)
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I want to make a Yaniv joke, but it's probably against the rules somehow -- so let's just say that on the modern internet, not only does nobody know that you're a dog, but nobody can be sure that you aren't a dog either.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Internet_dog.jpg
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There are a surprising number of corners of the internet now where P('biological woman' | 'explicitly and visibly states is a woman') is lower than P('biological woman' | 'NOT(explicitly and visibly states is a woman)').
(Alas, it is essentially impossible to gather proper statistics on this.)
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I’ve been called a lot of things, but being trans has gotta be a first. That was a good giggle for me.
Edit: Also hey you try going five days in a row with barely any sleep from feeling like you gotta spend a penny 24/7 and NOT talk about it.
It wasn't based on much, so I'm willing to believe I'm just wrong about that.
I can assure you I have 100% organic home-grown cage-free open-field breasts.
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I mean, I didn't say it was. Just saying everyone i know (women included) is well aware that young men spend crazy amounts of effort on catching the eye of young women. Whether it's sexual or not (it isn't always), young men are thirsty for female attention and chase it very, very hard.
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