Notices by A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck ? (juliusgoat@mastodon.social), page 7

I didn't participate a lot in the VP discourse because I've proved myself wrong about winning electoral strategy, but I know I personally like Walz a lot, particularly the way he frames things and communications clear points of differentiation. It seems good to me.

Up against the Walz motherfuckers.

Journalistic rules of neutrality:

If a Republican says / does something shocking / bigoted / dangerous, ask yourself:

1) *did* they?

if yes:

2) but really, *did* they?

if yes:

3) *was* it shocking / bigoted / dangerous?

if yes:

4) but really, *was* it?

if yes:

5) but what if something else?

and:

6) what about that thing that Democrat did that time?

Journalistic rules of neutrality:

• If news is good for Democrats or bad for Republicans, it is biased against Republicans, and should be diminished.

• If news is bad for Democrats or good for Republicans, it is not biased against Republicans, and should be enhanced.

Increasingly, normal people celebrate difference, diversity, and uniqueness. Being called "weird" doesn't bother normal people, because their worldviews can handle weirdness.

But "weird" is a massive problem for The Normal Ones. They *can't* be weird.

Full Essay https://www.the-reframe.com/the-normal-ones/

This adherence to status quo means that until the status quo is changed, the order of the day will include not only defense of the progress made, but also more empire building, and more money for military and cops, and more bombs to bomb civilians in Gaza and elsewhere, and so on.

3) The other choice will head a party that is all too often capitulant to fascism, because they are a status quo party, and while our status quo includes centuries of significant progress, it is also an historically corporatized and capitalized and supremacist status quo.

2) One choice will be an open fascist, at the head of a party that intends to control our bodies and our lives, and is eager to harm and kill in order to do it. This choice will almost certainly be Donald Trump.

6) A lot of people will ignore the real differences between the choices in order to proclaim the false equivalence that both choices are exactly the same. Some will do this because they’d like to support the worst choice and would rather seem neutral than bad.

5) The media will test out these narratives of false equivalency, utilizing their practiced neutrality on matters of truth and fiction, and when they find a simple recipe that low-information voters like, they will ride it all the way to November.

All attacks will center exactly where the fascists themselves are weakest. Maybe they’ll create some lurid and slanderous fictional version of Harris’ sexual history, for example. Maybe they’ll say she’s unfit for office and benefitted from unnatural advantages.

The choice for that party now looks likely to be Kamala Harris.

4) Once that choice is made, the openly fascist party will create the most outlandish and bigoted narratives about the status quo choice, presented in the worst possible faith.

We’ll see the sabotage of safeguards for human health and thriving, and the deliberate demolition of what safeguards have been put in place to combat catastrophic climate change And this will impart upon us a moral imperative to fight them, if we are people of awareness.

We may truly see the end of democracy, the end of bodily autonomy, mass deportation, a quickly-dropping curtain of theocratic autocracy—particularly if it turns out our corrupted Supreme Court has succeeded in knocking down the final guard rails to full autocracy.

7) If the openly fascist party succeeds, we are going to see horrible changes to the status quo in this country, and, as usual, already marginalized people will pay the highest costs.

Some will decide both choices are exactly the same this for the understandable if distressing reason that the choices do have real serious problems and so they'd rather not participate. (Others will ignore those same real and serious problems with the better choice.)

9) Our media will create narratives of equivalence for all of this, too.

And if they overcome all that, they will almost certainly still defend the great abuses present in our unsustainable status quo, which will, as usual, make marginalized people pay the highest costs. And this will impart upon us a moral imperative to fight them, if we are people of conviction.

If our status quo party can overcome the fascists who have seized our highest courts, there is a very strong probability it will have to overcome an armed resistance of white supremacists who would rather see the country burn than share it.

8) If the status quo party wins, it will have to overcome attempts by the fascist party to overturn the results in the courts on some absolutely ridiculous grounds that the corrupt extremist far-right majority in the Supreme Court may well rule in favor of.