Sometimes talking about Democrats feels like talking about the Tooth Fairy or the Easter Bunny.

"And then, kids, the Democratic House Majority signed a bill that made everyone equal, & they all lived happily ever after. That is why, on the first Tuesday of November, we fill our ballots out for them."

This is my personal takeaway from writing this thread.

I suspect we are all making the mistake of assuming that sure, the Democrats are corrupt, but they do understand the power Congress supposedly has, & they do have the agency & independence to do something with that.

What if that's not true?

What if they aren't mostly serious people making serious decisions? Why should we assume that they are serious & competent & aware that their job is at least *supposed* to be about representing people?

I am of course, using a bit of hyperbole here.

I haven't been told that we shouldn't be worried about them AT ALL, but it doesn't seem like everyone is acknowledging the size & ferocity of this apocalyptic death cult.

I think if you don't have contact with "conservative" groups & communities in the US, you don't understand how many fascists we are dealing with.

Some people seem to think it's just the Proud Boys & their ilk.

They don't realize that many of the nice church ladies are also *fascists*.

Not all the fascists march in the streets or put on demonstrations. That doesn't mean they aren't cheering for deportations & all manner of violence against the people they deem a threat to their "way of life."

Liberals always tell leftists we're getting in the way of their optics, but god, I hate having to fucking explain to right wingers that celebrating queerness does not mean I'm a fan of Joe Biden.

Doesn't matter if I say "I'm an anarchist. I want to build new things from the ground up. I have no love for the bureaucratic genocide-machine we call a government," they will always end up complaining about Joe Biden & the rest of the Democratic establishment as though they have someone to do with me.

My mom buys American Girl dolls & accessories at thrift stores & fixes them up really nice to give to her granddaughters.

The granddaughters really enjoy it, but I think part of the reason she does that is that those dolls were something my older sister & I coveted. We'd read the catalog & decide which doll had the best outfits & accessories & tell our parents how much we really wanted one for Christmas.

Watching the Brewers game last night was a good test of my baseball-watching abilities. Spouse was asleep, but I was able to follow almost (but not quite) everything going on.

Having the sound off helped a lot. Commentary can be very distracting.

Spouse stayed awake long enough to teach me how to read that little info bar with the balls & strikes & all that shit. That was all I needed.

I passed the exam! I have now completed the prerequisite to watching the World Series! 🤣

Perhaps I should feel a little sorry for my sister though, who relocated from Iowa to South Carolina.

Those Southern states often have a much stricter concept of who is allowed to belong vs. somewhere like Wisconsin where (in my experience) people seem significantly more willing to accept that if you want to claim it as your home & take pride in it, then it's your home.

Goddammit. I watched a sports game last night & felt emotionally invested in the outcome.

This can't be right.

It did help that Spouse had the sound off. I don't have any interest in listening to sports commentary.

Actually it was kind of funny, because he was exhausted & kept falling asleep, but *I* watched the entire game.

The Brewers are in the playoffs with a very good chance of beating the Dodgers (4 more games to go, I think), & I'm experiencing something very weird in my marriage.

It's happened more than once now that I have said "maybe tonight's a good night for sex" & Spouse has turned me down because the Brewers are playing.

I'm not mad. He's just never turned me down for *baseball* before.

Oh no! What if they make it to the World Series?

Jesus Christ. The midterms are going to be a true horror show.

These people are not playing the Democracy Game anymore.

It's hard to fuck with the actual votes. It's hard to convincingly, at large scale, fake the *actual* votes in these elections.

There are, however, lots of possible ways to disqualify votes. They could just declare that certain ballots don't count & certain votes are fake & refuse to count them. George W pulled that off. This Supreme Court would be happy to agree to that.

New thing I'm trying:

Letting people misunderstand me.

No, really. If I say something that is incomprehensible to them or they misinterpret, if I don't need them to understand me & it isn't important to anything, I just let them misunderstand.

Not when I'm trying to have genuine communication with a friend about something of weight or importance, but if it's a remark I made that someone didn't understand, that's fine. I don't have to put in extraordinary effort to make myself comprehensible.