Reading

I admit, it was tricky for me, a white male swing-state voter, to decide who deserved my vote in this election. But in the end, I cast my ballot for Donald Trump along with over seventy million other Americans. And I promise you that decision has nothing to do with my hating women, or Black people, or even Black women. Just yesterday, a Black woman made me my Blonde Vanilla Latte, and I politely thanked her.

Kamala Harris was an okay candidate, I guess. She never said anything about wind turbines causing cancer, but even though Trump may have been wrong about that, at least he has the guts to express an opinion about it. Also, I never heard Harris talk about herself as the only person who could fix the economy, the borders, and all the wars, whereas Trump said he could do all those things. And Harris never attended a confused town hall where she swayed to the music for forty minutes instead of taking questions or pretended to fellate a microphone. She was a flawed candidate, for sure.

Be careful what you wish for, MAGA “Where do we go from here?” Digby asks this morning. She doesn’t know. Nor do I. Just as I don’t know how she had the emotional stamina to write it. All this time, I told friends last night, it seemed as if observers of the MAGA cult were studying the grotesque creatures of Looking Glass World. People such as Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and RFK Jr. Facing a second Donald Trump presidency, with J.D. Vance as heir apparent and a Supreme Court MAGAfied for the rest of my lifetime, it feels this morning as if Looking Glass World was, in fact, studying us. Except the image that came to mind wasn’t from Lewis Carroll, but Rod Serling. IMDB summarizes “Eye of the Beholder” from “The Twilight Zone”: Janet Tyler is in hospital having undergone treatment to make her look normal. It’s her 11th trip to the hospital for treatment and she is desperate to look like everyone else. Some of her earliest childhood memories are of people looking away, horrified by her appearance. Her bandages will soon come off and she can only hope that this, her last treatment, will have done the trick.

Jodie Whittaker's TARDIS from her time on Doctor Who will be up for auction as part of this year's BBC Children in Need charity event.

Far from any natural conservatism, ordinary people in the US have a history of bitter and explosive struggles against exploitation and racism, writes Jacob Starling

The post The US working class—a history of radicalism and resistance first appeared on Solidarity Online.

I don’t have any idea Donald Trump has once more won the presidency. It’s as shocking as it was the first time and even more terrifying. We should have seen this coming from all the polling which showed that the race was tied nationally and in the swing states. Of course it was possible. But I think a lot of us, myself included, once again fell for the illusion that America is too fundamentally decent to elect someone like Donald Trump. We were wrong. In 2016 that starry-eyed naivete led to the deep despair that we all felt when Trump eked out a win over Hillary Clinton. And in 2020 we believed that dream was vindicated when Joe Biden turned the tables and eked out a win over Trump. And here we are again, caught in a swirling vortex from which we can’t seem to escape. The funny thing is that until recently I had assumed that the contest was going to be political trench warfare again and the result would be very close. It has seemed to me for a while that we’re in an ongoing war between two coalitions that can be defined as pro-democracy and anti-democracy and they have roughly equal political strength.

On St Helena, the island famed for Napoleon’s tomb, burial sites for the transatlantic slave trade’s victims go unmarked

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Personal stories have the power to connect, entertain, persuade. Use a pro storyteller’s tips to pick and prepare a great one

- by Micaela Blei

Read at Psyche

As ever, don’t expect the Democratic Party to save us. Now is the time for grassroots action.

The post The Answer to Trump’s Victory Is Radical Action appeared first on The Intercept.

On climate, immigration, and Israel’s war on Gaza, Harris ran to the right — alienating voters.

The post Democrats Blow Their Chance to Block Trump’s Resurgence appeared first on The Intercept.

Campaigners hope a proposed new law could bring an end to a system that puts vulnerable people into even more danger

To be ‘analytical’ and ‘logical’ is something most people find recommendable. These words have a positive connotation. Scientists think more deeply than most other people because they use ‘logical’ and ‘analytical’ methods. In dictionaries, logic is often defined as “reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity” and ‘analysis’ as having to do […]

Well, as I write this late in the Kyoto afternoon, Donald Trump has just made a victory speech after an incredible day of election outcomes unfolding. As I wrote last week, the only moral and reasonable position for a progressive to take in this election would be to vote for Jill Stein and send a…

I just didn’t want to believe it Mea culpa, I got this one very wrong. As someone wrote on twitter earlier: He was the worst President in history. And when he got voted out, he tried to stage a coup. Then he stole national secrets and sold the ones he didn’t store in the bathroom. He was convicted of fraud, found liable of sexual assault and convicted of 34 felonies. He is half a billion dollars in debt, owned by God only knows who, and the biggest national security risk the nation has ever had. But at least he’s not a Black woman. That was a bridge too far. She ran a good campaign, they did everything they could. Half the country just wants what Trump is offering: a strongman sideshow. The world is a much more dangerous place today than it was yesterday. The bad guys won.

And it’s a big enough victory that we shouldn’t expect Lawfare to overturn it.

I thought Harris would pull it out based on abortion, but I was wrong. (I’m terrible at election prediction, as I warned.) What happened is that people voted for abortion at higher rates than for Harris. The numbers below aren’t final, but they’re indicative:

It seems that running on:

Missouri was the first state to officially outlaw abortion after the Dobbs decision. Voters said no more.

The post Missouri Voters Overturn Abortion Ban in Decisive Win for Reproductive Rights appeared first on The Intercept.

The governor waged an unprecedented campaign to block Amendment 4, which needed 60 percent support to pass.

The post Florida Abortion Amendment Falls Short Following Aggressive Opposition by Ron DeSantis appeared first on The Intercept.

Jon Meachum in the NY Times: I thought I knew what we were dealing with. When Donald Trump began his rise to power in 2015, he struck me as a dangerous but recognizable demagogue. As a biographer of presidents, I tend to think historically and seek analogies from the past to shed light on the present. And so, for years Mr. Trump’s marshaling of fear, prejudice, resentment, xenophobia and extremism put me in mind of grievance-driven figures ranging from Huey Long to Joseph McCarthy to George Wallace. To me, Mr. Trump was a difference not of kind (we had long contended with illiberalism in America) but of degree (since the Civil War, no figure with such illiberal views had ever actually won the White House). Then he proved me wrong. His concerted efforts to overthrow the November 2020 election very nearly succeeded — tangible proof that he is in fact willing to follow through on the authoritarian threats he so freely makes. I now see him as a genuine aberration in our history — a man whose contempt for constitutional democracy makes him a unique threat to the nation.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

That worksheet from Bolts is downloadable and printable here if you want to keep score tonight (and for the next few days.)