They absolutely care about losing subscribers and advertisers. Evil follows money. Lets stop this doomerish attitude that nothing matters and nothing can be done. They WANT us to be cynical and nihilistic.

I disagree on this one, this would be a good time to send messages/tweets to SiriusXM, the more public the better. Make posts on facebook, make tweets of her repeating this heinous shit, tag SiriusXM with it, attack SiriusXM for enabling child sex crimes, and so on. Blow this up.

I don’t actually believe republicans care about kids at all, they hate you and want you dead or exploited, but a lot of the conservative base are simple folk who can be swayed with stupid emotional appeals and anything that makes them feel directly connected to the issue, so make sure your comments and posts include language like “Does this make you feel like they are protecting YOUR kids?”

It’s going to be more like “Those 15-year-old girls knew what they were getting into/needed the money/were asking for it because they were promiscuous anyway/and somehow were able to make adult decisions of consent when a 15-year-old kid can’t even legally drive.”

The republican party has been leveraging people’s misunderstanding of how the world works for decades.

An 8-year-old child can experience early-onset puberty, but that doesn’t make them capable of making adult choices, much less make it remotely okay for someone to use them as cattle for old men to rape.

All any of this is, is more of the “well define the line” bullshit and distraction that they use to fight abortion rights and nearly every other social issue that allows women in particular to not be treated like cattle. They hate you, they hate your kids, they hate you existing and want only the worst outcomes for each of us.

using corporate social media

If you can reach enough people, do what you will, but it’s ridiculous to be performative about it, millions of conservatives use social media, they trust social media, social media is what got trump fucking elected to begin with.

There is much of what you describe in these communities, and a lot of it is even simpler and sadder than that, which is people desperately scared of death and clinging to religion to provide some level of comfort.

One of my favorite documentaries of all time is Dan Olsen’s In Search of a Flat Earth, it’s a sublime journey that starts with a beautiful and pleasant journey into measuring the humbling scope and scale of our world, and in the second act, delves deep into conspiracy theorists and their motivations.

I wish I could say my family member was my only exposure to conspiracy derangement, but I’ve know a handful of them.

And it’s ABSOLUTELY what you said. These are people who don’t understand things. They don’t have a grasp of scale of things, they don’t know math and numbers and don’t get how populations work and how systems work, from city infrastructure to political institutions. They get severely insecure or anxious when something comes up that makes them feel that insecurity… like almost any news story or political scandal.

So they write their own story using magic and mysticism and ideas they pulled from grifters online basically telling children’s stories and fairy tales about flat worlds and goblins who steal children.

Having a “secret” story makes them feel knowledgeable, like they have something they can teach others, a way to be relevant and respected. Even if it’s just by other delusional people.

Q-anon was never about children.

It was always about the fantasy headline: “Uneducated Everyman Uncovers Massive, World-Altering Secrets and Becomes Huge Hero by Decoding Publicly Published Materials for Unique Connections and Number Puzzles”

They are entirely damaged or dumb or religiously brainwashed people who are so deeply insecure about their lack of factual understanding of the world, that Q-anon became their “gateway” to some kind of real way to impact the world and be recognized for something good.

When a family member of mine fell down this pitcher-plant of mental illness and delusion, I went deep and hard into learning everything I could about the movement and conspiracy culture. Sadly my family member could not be pulled out and was at one point arrested for trying to… abduct girls. Seriously. He rationalized that he was trying to “save” them.

I want every single, sheltered Lemmy progressive to use this opportunity to SPAM every message board, every subreddit, every facebook group, with this clip, this story, Megan Kelly’s warp-distorted face rationalizing the abuse of children.

THIS is the shit we need to be doing and putting all our energy into instead of infighting about what words are problematic.

These people would literally in every sense of the word, drag our entire civilization back to a dark age of brutality and horror and despair and abuse of innocence just to preserve their own twisted self-delusion of being the “good guys.”

Remember people: this is the REAL face of evil, it’s when normal humans make excuses for harm to others. It’s when someone like you or me makes the choice to tell themselves a story for why they aren’t bad. This is how every atrocity has ever been facilitated.

If we allow these narratives to stand, we are going to experience an age of modern atrocity.

I hope a lot of people wake up after this is all over and realize that their ideas that there is such thing as “law” have been woefully misguided and naive.

There is no such thing as law, at least not “blind” law, it’s just a way they make poor people feel okay because law applies to other poor people as well. But it’s always been like this, people in positions of power are almost always immune to the laws that they write and control. We are not a better species, we are not evolved.

I think if more people understood this, we might choose our leadership with more care.

It will happen, but it will go one of three ways:

1. The “files” released are another butchered, redacted version of shit we already know, not directly naming Trump or anyone of note from any reputable, ironclad source, and when Dems pathetically go “Hey man, not fair!” it will get snarled in gridlock for another three years of “will they or won’t they” or until Trump keels over dead.

2. The files have been disappeared during the 70 days the government was shut down. Sorry, we can’t find them, we looked everywhere. Welp, whattaya gonna do? lawl lets go back to sending brown people into the ocean and stuff.

3. The files are released, have damning evidence, written testimony from credible eyewitnesses and a mountain of evidence linking Trump directly to Epstein… and wait, I’m being told we already have all that. So we get more and still nothing happens? Yah, that also sounds about right.

They needed time to destroy not just the evidence in storage, but records in the storage and secure hush payments for anyone who has ever read or seen the most damning evidence.

I fukkin wanna go back.

Gentlemen. We got 'em.

Now to just put our feet up, kick back and watch all the sweet, sweet consequence unfold. I’m sure we’ll finally all get to see justice and law prevail. Surely this time.

It is true a lot of crime statistics across the US are skewed horribly by a minority of chronic, repeat offenders.

He absolutely orchestrated it, the reason he is the minority leader in senate is because he has the connections and political capital to influence or even order the votes of his party. I am only somewhat curious if they knew he was going to back out and vote no to try to wash his hands of his own capitulation. It’s wild because it signals he still thinks he has a future.

Schumer represents a weird kind of old-school political capital. Whereas Trump’s power comes from a literal horde of orcs carrying weapons and flags, arguably an even older kind of power to wield, Schumer carries the Elder Conclave of Ancient Liberal Liches who delight in social parties and ritual and systems. If you’ve ever listened to the old-guard dems talking among each other it sounds like a Victorian-era socialite gathering, like aliens from another dimension. While wildly out-of-touch, the reason he has power is because this kind of thing appeals to older institutional bankers, elder community leaders, and people with old money.

Old money is the reason he still stands as the “head” of the Democratic party and I am actually unsure if efforts to unseat him will be successful for the same reasons that Trump and his warband face no consequences because their own political capital. Nobody wants to challenge the base. If you go against Trump you get people breaking into your house and shooting you, if you go against Schumer, you lose your 7-figure retirement and your vacation house on the beach. For many people with a lot to lose, either of these outcomes is equally terrifying.

Wrong way to look at it.

Democrats and republicans share the same donors. They may individually have different goals in mind, but their donors appeal to both sides to preserve a guaranteed outcome and to preserve the image of choice and opposition.

Really though what we have is anyone who wants to make a fast dime and has the gift of gab throwing themselves into the ring to try to get some of that sweet, sweet donor bribery.

Many state and local seats in government run unopposed or have puppet candidates installed and funded by Republican donors, people who have no real capability to do politics and just rely on having a lot of money for posters, but would wither if debated about actual issues.

We just saw in New York you don’t need any of that shit, you just need be social and reassuring and have a message that you stick to and don’t let yourself get distracted.

My god so many candidates get distracted and ruin their own potential careers.

Welfare generally means something to keep you alive.

2k is one month mortgage or rent. It’s a bribe to make people think he’s doing something, even if he does it, we will never see another dime and his policies and attacks on our institutions will have resulted in financial catastrophe for the US and worldwide death tolls in the millions with the cutting of aid programs and vaccine/medical research and mandates.

There is no amount of our own money he could give to anyone which will make up for the long-term harm he’s done to the world.