gwydionmisha:

inkspot-fox:

vaspider:

prismatic-bell:

vaspider:

paradisezero:

vaspider:

Listen.

Most of us didn’t expect this to be anything but stopping the slide into the abyss.

Don’t kid yourself.

I don’t think any of us are naive, or so idealistic that they can’t see what’s happening around them. Today was simply about giving us time to have a Plan B.

And we’ve achieved that. Control of the House by the Dems is a big deal, or COULD be a big deal. Some of the people who have been elected today – Halland, Davids, Omar and Ocasio-Cortez, for example, though there are many examples – are canaries in the coal mine for some of the fossils in Congress, or they should be, if Pelosi wants to fucking listen to what people are telling her and the other Dems.

So now we have time. What next?

You don’t have to know right this second, but tomorrow, when you wake up and shit still stinks, what’s our Plan B? What do we do tomorrow?

Congratulations. We’ve hit a mile marker on the marathon.

Tomorrow, we wake up, and we keep going.

We said the exact same thing in 2016. What did we get in return?

– Muslim Immigration and Travel Ban
– War on Immigrants
– War on Sexual Abuse Survivors, Women’s Health, and Reproductive Health Rights
– War on LGBTQ+
– War on Healthcare
– A massive infidelity scandal
– The degradation of American values (just look at how conveniently lawmakers threw basic human decency out of the window in the Kavanaugh confirmation!)
– Mass shooting on a synagogue
– Mass shooting in Parkland
– Mass shooting in a yoga studio
– Vehicular murder in Charlottesville
– Fire bombing of mosques and synagogues
– Vandalism in many religious and societal institutions
– Bombs being sent in the mail
– A strengthened NRA
– Fox News still going strong
– A WORSENING racist cops crisis
– Permit Patty, Cornerstone Candice, BBQ Becky, and an increasing number of open racists

When will it stop? When we become desensitized? When all of this becomes normal? Because we’ve basically made that choice this time the same way we did last year…

Cool, so, what’s your plan? Is your plan to just say ‘look at everything we’ve lost’? Because a) that’s not a plan and b) you think any of us have forgotten any of the above and c) that’s not a plan?

If you want to make a post saying ‘all is lost,’ or whatever the point of this was, you’re always free to make your own post. Sometimes it’s really okay to let someone say ‘this is a marathon, get up tomorrow and get to work’. 

Because here’s the thing: we did get to work, and it mattered. Voter turnout was historic. We saw the House shift control, which gives subpoena power to Democrats, and takes vital House leadership positions away from Trump’s yes-men. That matters. What else did we see? The first two NA women, the first two Muslim women, the first Palestinian-American, the first Somali-American, the first, the first, the first: we, as leftists, got to work, and it made a fucking difference. A rank-and-file Democrat was unseated during the primaries, and then the challenger was elected in the general election, and if the calcified creatures of perpetual compromise in charge of the vaguely left-leaning part of this two-party mess are paying any attention, they’re on notice. (I do not expect them to be paying attention.)

I mean if you just want to wring you hands and despair, there’s room for that, but for fuck’s sake, don’t come in here and suck the air out of a me saying ‘it’s okay, we made a difference, we can keep going, don’t give up, we got what we really expected out of this, and that’s okay.’

Anyway, for everyone else: the work you put in made a difference. Thanks for helping stave off the apocalypse for people like my family. 

(Also, idk about y’all, but this was NOT my message after 2016. That was the most emotionally crushing election I ever lived through, and I voted in 2000.)

ALSO:

Imagine you are halfway up a cliff.

Below you is a spiky pit full of poisonous snakes.

You’re slipping.

Someone throws you a rope. (They do not swear on the grave of your father to not kill you until you’ve reached the top.)

This is great, except that the rope is strong enough to support your weight–not to climb.

Would you rather fall, or hang on the rope in one spot until you’ve gotten enough strength back to keep climbing???

I don’t know about you, but this should be a pretty obvious fucking metaphor, and I would rather take the fucking rope, thank you.

Staying where we are is still better than where we could have gone.

Fucking thank you.

… Also we HAVEN’T stayed where we were, Dems won control of the fucking House and ousted a bunch of rep governors. What kind of cracked walnut doesn’t understand how big of a victory that is?? How fucking DARE anyone compare this to 2016??? That rhetoric smells as bad as Russian troll shit.

And things like Governor’s races MATTER.  Remember that time the Governor of Michigan overthrew the elected government of Flint specifically so he could POISON everyone at great expense, then blocked all attempts to help them for over a year and they still don’t have safe water because the Republicans refuse to pay to fix things they break?

That guy just got voted the hell out.

Are you seriously arguing that having a Governor who won’t literally poison children for fun is better than having a Governor who WON’T do that and might actually fix things?  Because those two things look wildly different to me!

Is the battle over?  NO.  We are going to have to keep fighting tooth and nail over the next couple of years, but IT IS PROGRESS. 

Mitch McConnel promised out right to steal everybody’s health care if they won the election.  Winning the House STOPS that.  I literally become HOMELESS and die if the promised cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (Medicaid cpvers part of my Medicare premium) go through.  A whole lot of people die if they repeal the ACA and the protections for pre-existing conditions go through.  That won’t happen because we took the House.

If y’all came out in 2016, we wouldn’t be where we are now.  Those of us who had the most to lose if basic civil rights were repealed begged you all to vote Democrat to stop this from happening.

Now we have to all pull together to fight our way back up to where we were two years ago.

Mourn if you have to, but Do Not Give the Fuck Up! That’s what they want you to do.  They want you to lie down so they can rollover you!  Fuck that! 

We fight!  We have each other’s backs!  We leave no one behind this time! we keep the fuck going because they alternative is neo-feudal facist dystopia and people likee me rounded up into camps to die and I’m not going without a damned fight!