Not that specific example, but I have used that approach before. I think the first time was about 10 years ago. There were a couple queer people in my friend group who would throw around the f-slur, which was whatever, but one night when we were drinking one of my straight friends called me it, and that bothered me. So the next day I sent a group message talking about how it made me feel uncomfortable and I didn’t like it being normalized. It was a little awkward, but from then on everyone stopped using it and we all remained friends. In the long term, I think people actually respected me more for standing up for myself (since I was generally more of a pushover), and it stopped a behavior that had been making me uncomfortable and driving a bit of a wedge between us.

Most of the time, stuff like this don’t come from malice, but from people having different norms or expectations and not understanding each other. They might get defensive in the moment, but once they’re aware of it there’s a good chance they’ll stop. While people can be dicks, we are fundamentally social creatures and wired to avoid friction.

I will say it’s easier to confront people when you have a voluntary relationship with them, because if they’re dicks about it you can always just not hang out, but you can’t do that with coworkers. If they attack you for expressing how their behavior makes you feel, then you can probably bring it to HR and you’ll have a stronger case to say it’s malice.

I’m not going to discuss how I feel about you doubling down on “minority rights have always been handed down from above” because I don’t want to get banned, suffice to say I have no interest in discussing anything further with you.

That’s the “crabs-in-a-bucket” approach. We will never get anywhere if we’re willing to sell each other out and tear each other down to get ahead or protect ourselves. I’m never going to sacrifice solidarity with the oppressed in the hopes that our oppressors will be merciful. If I were that much of a coward, I wouldn’t have transitioned in the first place.

You say I will always lose with this path, but you don’t know that. What I do know is that I will always lose following your path. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the only thing that’s guaranteed to fail. Solidarity is the only viable strategy and the only one that makes any logical sense at all. As well as being the only moral position. You wanted to play that card of “look them in the face,” well I could never look a Palestinian in the face and explain why I’m selling them out just to save my own skin. They will level all their slings and arrows against us, but it is still better to stand against them together than to fracture and join them and fight against each other for a momentary respite until they inevitably turn on us.

Claiming that every victory every marginalized group has ever won was just handed down from above by appeasing the rich and powerful is absurd, ahistorical, and offensive.

Oh, I can say it to my own face, I’m trans. But I’ve also told all my trans friends that I’m not voting for Kamala, and have no difficulty doing so. There isn’t a single person in the world I wouldn’t look dead in the eye and say it to.

Your analogy fails to the account for the fact that you’re strengthening the very people who put you in that situation in the first place, so it is not a valid analogy (among many other reasons). You “accounted” for the cause in saying that the city council “failed to fix” the problem. In reality, they intentionally caused the problem, and doing your “triage” empowers them to cause it to happen more and more, neither of which you accounted for at all.

Today, Palestinians are the ones being “triaged.” Tomorrow, it could very well be us. By your calculus, if the democrats decide to throw us under the bus because they see us as too much of an electoral liability, you will still happily accept them as the “lesser evil” and all the arguments you’re using now to support killing Gazans, you will deploy then to support killing us. “The Democrats just want to sacrifice trans people, the Republicans want to go after trans people and gay people and…” Don’t try to pretend you wouldn’t, unless you’re prepared to explain why your “triage” analogy wouldn’t apply there too.

An injury to one is an injury to all. If we don’t stand up for Palestinians, if we allow minorities to be picked off one by one, then we are doomed because there will be no one left to stand up for us.

Meanwhile, you hand a couple more rounds to the sniper that caused the accident in the first place, who is actively and intentionally causing more accidents.

This website completely changed the way I thought about this stuff and I found it super helpful.

The line to walk, generally speaking, is, “When you do [specific behavior], it makes me feel [specific emotion].” So for example, “When you ask me if everything’s ok, it makes me feel pressured/put on the spot.”

Keeping it about your own feelings makes it less confrontational while still bringing attention to the problem - you don’t wanna get drawn into a whole debate about whether there’s anything wrong with asking if someone’s ok, but you want him to understand how you feel and (hopefully) take that into account in the future. If he does get defensive, repeat the message once to make it clear you’re standing your ground, but then drop it and move on. A lot of times it’s just a matter of the other person not realizing how it affects you.

Having said that, speaking as someone who’s very much had the same mentality in the past, there are a lot of advantages to having friends in the workplace. Something to understand about this approach is that it’s actually good for building relationships because it allows you to confront the behaviors that bother you while openly communicating your feelings, and people may even respect you more for standing up for yourself. Just remember to walk a middle ground, you don’t want to veer into aggression or passivity.

Could do worse tbh.

This is how they support people like Hitler

Citation really fucking needed.

The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. I have made no particular claims about how popular or unpopular immigration is.

Which polls show an “overwhelming majority” want stricter borders? Source please.

Tbh I expect that some people are more hawkish on the border now than before because the Democrats switched tacts, and not the other way around, but regardless I haven’t seen any evidence that shows what you’re claiming.

This has so completely disappeared from discourse over the past four years. I remember when it used to be that “building the wall” was stupid at best and bigoted at worst. But now, it’s all, “Of course we agree that we need a strong border, but we’re the ones who will actually do it, Trump’s all talk.”

It’s always the Republicans that get to set which values and goals the country persues, while the Democrats just run on pragmatism and efficiency. It’s like they’re allergic to making moral claims.

There’s a difference between the government’s interests and the interests of individual politicians. Politicians don’t have access to public funds, in the same way they have access to the money in their bank accounts, so public funds must be transferred into the private sector. The easiest way to do this is through military contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. There’s a rampant and widespread conflict of interest where politicians give those companies lucrative contracts and the companies have various ways of giving them kickbacks. All the politicians have to do then is to sell the public on spending more on the military.

As long as the companies are paid, it doesn’t matter whether the money is coming from domestic taxpayers or from other countries. In the case of Israel, there are also various lobbying groups focused on that issue who can also reward politicians from doing what they want. So yes the US government may be giving the weapons away for free, but the individual politicians are getting paid, so what do they care?

Before the 90’s, it was easy to do that because they could just point to the Soviet Union as a threat (even though we massively outspent them even then). During the 90’s, there was a period of relative peace, which was a crisis for the shareholders, and there was some expectation that the bloated military budget could be cut, since the primary threat is was supposedly there to counter disappeared. But with 9/11, they found a new threat to justify it. Once those wars wound down, then it became China, Russia, and Hamas. If if weren’t them, it would be something else, and if they couldn’t find something else they’d simply create it. There must always be some existential threat to justify the spending, or else the war profiteers stand to lose a lot of money.

The US needs to vote third party in order to fix the voting system.

Then let me provide some context. Trump and Harris are both hawks who fully and unconditionally support arming Israel and slaughtering people in the Middle East. The same was true in 2020, when it Biden v Trump, in 2016, when it was Clinton v Trump, in 2012 when it was Obama v Romney, in 2008 when it was Obama v McCain, in 2004 when it was Kerry v Bush, and arguably even in 2000 when it was Gore v Bush

Those of us who are doves have been waiting for over 20 years for a candidate who isn’t an extremist hawk who wants to commit mass slaughter on the other side of the world, where it can safely be kept out of sight and out of mind. Neither party has ever delivered on that. The military-industrial complex is extremely large and extremely lucrative for politicians, and it has only gotten larger and more influential under Biden - as well as being much more deadly than ever, with what’s happening in Gaza.

We’ll never just be handed a choice to get in the way of that system, but it absolutely must end. The only ways of accomplishing that are 1) forcing politicians to oppose it by making our votes conditional on that issue, or 2) building our own party from the ground up that’s committed to opposing it. Otherwise we will keep seeking out new conflicts until we end up kicking off WWIII, and ofc in the meantime it will be impossible to fix the numerous crippling domestic issues we’re facing because so much of our money is tied up in bombs.

Americans are extremely dangerous because we are so coddled and isolated from the consequences of our actions. War is purely something that we see in video games and in movies. The news rarely covers the actual human cost or humanizes anyone outside of the imperial core. They dumped Malala real quick the moment she turned a critical eye to US policy.

These people were more than happy to support the unprovoked invasion and decades-long occupation of countries in the Middle East so long as it was “their guy” doing it “the right way.” Hundreds of thousands were killed and we were never allowed a choice in about it in any election, every democratic nominee, Kerry, Obama, Clinton, and Biden are all hawks. Liberals don’t see any problem with this and most are actually upset with Biden for pulling out of Afghanistan. Liberals pretend to care about these things but they don’t understand or respect the severity of them at all. It comes back to be so sheltered from the consequences of actions.

But I can’t believe that that shelter is going to last forever. Systems either adapt or die and the US is proving that it’s incapable of adapting to the shifting conditions of the present day. More and more non-aligned countries are getting fed up with us and that isn’t felt immediately but it is shifting the balance of power and reducing the effectiveness of American soft power. The day will come that Americans wake up and realize that we can’t keep throwing our weight around and ignoring everyone else’s concerns and perspectives, that we either have to play by the rules or fade into irrelevance. I just hope we don’t start WWIII to avoid facing that reality.

Until then, I’m sorry that our people keep pushing these election brainworms onto everyone in every English language space.

What does that have to with anything? No one’s claiming that Trump would be good on Palestine or that you should vote for him, it’s a whataboutism.

In case anyone doubts my comment about how liberals will apply the same logic to trans rights as they do to Palestinian rights, look no further.

There aren’t enough of us to be worth considering on our own. That means our only hope of security is through a voting bloc that rejects the ideology of lesser-evilism and stands up for everyone on principle. Otherwise they’ll sell us out the very moment that defending us becomes an electoral liability. Take note.

Correct! That’s a great reason not to vote for either of them.

What people say about Palestinians today, they will just as quickly say about trans people tomorrow. As long as some minority is in the crosshairs, none of us are safe. The only viable strategy to ensure survival is solidarity, to recognize that our struggles are united and that an offense against one is an offense against all. Otherwise, you might as well be a pick-me.