@wdlindsy@toad.social
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

wdlindsy

@wdlindsy@toad.social

Interested in building a better world and standing in solidarity with others who share that goal.

For biographical information, please see https://toad.social/@wdlindsy/109539508828689842

"Writing is the way I fight." ~ James Cone

#solidarity #democracy #HumanRights #LGBTQ

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

wdlindsy, to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

Noting the ugly antisemitism his own family has dealt with, Robert Reich writes that he's glad that President Biden has confronted, antisemitism, but:

"I also worry that by speaking out against antisemitism without acknowledging what has sparked the student protests across America, he is conflating those protests with antisemitism.

By and large, the protests are not motivated by antisemitism."


/1

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/antisemitism

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"After many talks with demonstrators and faculty, it seems clear to me this protest movement is centered on moral outrage at the killings of tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza, most of them women and children.

Many of the demonstrators are themselves Jewish.

Jews have been involved in these protests for the same reason Jews were so involved in other social justice movements —"


/2

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"such as the struggles for women’s rights, worker’s rights, civil rights, voting rights, free speech, and LGBTQ+ rights. And against the Vietnam War, apartheid in South Africa, and the Iraq War.

The oppression that Jewish people have experienced for hundreds if not thousands of years has taught Jews the necessity of standing up to injustice — whatever its form and whenever it appears."


/3

wdlindsy, to Israel
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

“''If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, they should be ashamed of themselves.' That’s ex-President Trump this morning as he headed into the courtroom in New York City. This is worth everyone taking a close look at. When Trump feels cornered and scared one of his go-tos is to lash out at American Jews."

~ Josh Marshall

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-attacks-the-jews-and-bibi-attacks-biden

wdlindsy, to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

Don Harwood responds to New York Times editor Joseph Kahn, who says that the attack on democracy represented by Trump is not the premier campaign issue:

"Donald Trump is the first American presidential candidate to explicitly threaten the democratic system on which a free press depends. He could win. Considering the stakes for the country, that ought to be the campaign issue that dwarfs all others."


/1

https://zeteo.com/p/as-a-veteran-reporter-ive-always

wdlindsy, to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"In the minds of the average Republican voter, when a Democrat is in the White House, our border is a wide open highway where the most savage brown-skinned hordes from across the world are not just given open passage, but also gifted advance access to the American welfare state and apparently the right to vote."

~ Oliver Willis


/1

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/democrats-stop-repeating-the-gops

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"None of this is true, of course, but it is what the right believes and it is a major motivator behind their efforts to get out the vote.

It’s morally bankrupt and politically tone-deaf to reinforce this broken framing of events. …

If the right is going to make the same attacks no matter what you say and do, while still activating their voters and polluting the minds of the wider voting public, Democrats should give the country something different."


/2

wdlindsy, to Israel
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"A clear line of argument has emerged from many progressive commentators: First, the overwhelming majority of the protesters are peaceful and not anti-Semitic. Second, it undermines and mischaracterizes a vital movement to focus on a few bad actors who spout anti-Semitic vitriol, or to emphasize a few chants that glorify Hamas or call for the destruction of Israel."

~ Jill Filipovic


/1

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/israel-gaza-war-protest-movement/678303/

wdlindsy, to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"Yesterday, witnesses established that the paper trail of payments to Trump fixer Michael Cohen, who forwarded the money to Daniels, had been falsified. … A number of observers have suggested that the evidence presented through documents yesterday was not riveting, but historians would disagree."

~ Heather Cox Richardson


/1

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-7-2024

wdlindsy, to Russia
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

Jay Kuo in the "increasing evidence that the Russians are pulling the GOP’s puppet strings":

"Russia is now keenly aware of how easy it is to sow confusion, mistrust, and outright lies by managing to plant false stories, whether through the internet or through an intelligence source, with those willing to exploit them for their own political gain."

This works because many Americans are eager to gobble up disinformation.


/1

https://thinkbigpicture.substack.com/p/gop-russia-kompromat-putin-congress

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"In Applebaum's eyes, the deployment of propaganda by authoritarians — and authoritarian wannabes such as Trump — is one of the most profound issues of our time.

'I think it is at the center of one of the worst crises for American democracy this century, certainly in recent decades,' Applebaum told me by phone Tuesday."


/2

https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1715123658054d4b678ff3a62/raw

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"'"If we can't agree on what happened yesterday, then how do we write legislation about it? If we don't share the same reality in the democracy, then how do we debate how we should organize our world?' …

Applebaum explained that Vladimir Putin's Russia "pioneered" the "firehose of falsehoods," a tactic that Trump has employed in the U.S. and others have used across the world to seize and maintain power. "


/3

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"Republicans have been waging legal war on our democracy, using the courts to take away our reproductive, voting and other rights, and they have been waging a parallel information war that sets the stage for the reception of those legal arguments and decisions."

~ Ruth Ben-Ghiat

#Republicans #disinformation #authoritarianism #democracy
/4

https://lucid.substack.com/p/information-warfare-and-the-supreme

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"The decision of the Supreme Court to hear arguments about the need for Trump to have total immunity from prosecution is a victory in itself for far-right information warfare, because it prepares public opinion to consider dictatorship as a possibility for America.

To normalize extreme ideas, you get them circulating through institutions and the public sphere, aiming for prestigious platforms that offer maximum legitimacy. Enter the Supreme Court …."


/5

wdlindsy, to uk
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

When I ask myself how my British cousins, who once seemed so sensible and humane, can be so agitated at shifts in gender roles including the emergence of transgender people in the public limelight, I remind myself that the UK still has – even today – exclusive clubs that do not permit women to join.

J.K. Rowling; the claim that transgender people dishonor and threaten women; the furor for gender-tagged washrooms; male-only clubs:

These are all of a piece.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/may/07/men-only-garrick-club-vote-admitting-women-members

wdlindsy, to Israel
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"Israel is supposed to be the leading example of democracy in the Middle East, but the country has moved forward with some wildly anti-democratic behavior. Not only did the Benjamin Netanyahu-led country over the weekend ban Al Jazeera from broadcasting for 45 days, but its authorities confiscated the Qatari-funded outlet's broadcast equipment, shut down its offices, and blocked its website in the country —"

~ Oliver Darcy


/1

https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1715049242290a6b04d78879e/raw

wdlindsy, to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"Judge Merchan has been more than deferential to Trump's status as a former president and candidate. If Judge Merchan fails to punish future violations with confinement, Trump will have established that he is above the law. That is an exception our democracy cannot abide. However difficult and unsettling imprisoning a former president will be, the alternative would be far worse."

~ Robert B. Hubbell


/1

https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/biden-searches-for-a-pathway-to-peace

wdlindsy, to Israel
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

“Why is the simplest explanation of campus protests so hard to accept?
Young people were sympathetic to Palestinians even before the war began. Why is that ignored?”

~ Philip Bump

And the claim that the protests are "all about" antisemitism is a red herring that does not serve the best interests of the Jewish community, as it tries to stifle necessary conversation about Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/06/campus-protests-explanation-nypd/

wdlindsy, to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

As Greg Olear notes, many of us may look at the blastocyst in the test tube and have trouble seeing the baby in the test tube — looking at you, Alabama Supremes. But that does not stop Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and Robert P. George, a hard-right Catholic closely aligned with Leo, from their determination to impose on all of us by force of law the assertion that a blastocyst is a person.


/1

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/blastocysts-are-people-too

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

And:

"Donald Trump’s new 'let the states decide' position on abortion rights is a ploy. The real plan being cooked up by the Leonard Leo crew is to have the Supreme Court rule 'that a fetus qualifies as a "person" under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment,' which would make federal law the rightwing fairy tale that any abortion is equivalent to murder."

Since Leo owns the Supreme Court….


/2

wdlindsy, to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

Peter Wehner on how Trump and his supporters have "a deep investment in promoting fear" — e.g., in lying about a non-existent crime wave under Biden.

But "for many Trump supporters, then, fear is not so much the cause of their support for the former president as a justification for it. They use fear to rationalize their backing for Trump."

This is, Wehner says, particularly true for Trump's white evangelical supporters.


/1

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/politics-fear-itself-trump-maga/678311/

wdlindsy, to random
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

Jess Piper reports – from the ground in rural Missouri and Arkansas – about how, since it knows it cannot win fair and square, the Republican party is resorting to tricks, subterfuge, and outright lies to try to impose its minority position on abortion on the majority who believe that abortion should not be made illegal.

She recently went to a Democratic rally in Arkansas, and encountered a woman handing out cards with QR code.

#abortion #Republicans
/1

https://jesspiper.substack.com/p/if-the-gop-cant-keep-voters-from

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

The woman was positioned at the entrance to the drive to the rally as if she were an official checking people in. A man with her was sitting in his car watching.

The woman smiled and asked Piper if she wanted information on the petition to put abortion on the ballot in Arkansas. Piper said she'd like it.

But when Piper scanned the code on the card and it took her to Google drive, she became suspicious.


/2

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

Her suspicion increased as she began reading folders on the Google drive including one labeled, "Decline to Sign." They were full of packs of lies about the initiatve to put abortion on the ballot. They were designed to discourage people from signing this initiative.

Piper concludes,

“'Decline to Sign' is a coordinated movement and we saw it in Missouri as well."


/3

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

"It is well-funded and not at all grassroots. They have signs, sites, and lawmakers who are bought and paid for to do their dirty work."

And its goal is to confuse voters and discourage them from signing petitions to place abortion on the ballot — because Republicans know they cannot win this fight fairly. So they intend to cheat and lie to try to win it and to impose their minority position about abortion on the majority by those means.


/4

wdlindsy,
@wdlindsy@toad.social avatar

@boulder Yes, Piper mentions that point, and is confident that people will see through the ruses and make their voices heard. I wish I had the same confidence about Arkansas as an Arkansan, but we'll see….

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