Clematis

I hate when the internet eats a classic clip. Hopefully this tangentially related episode of Next Time on Lonny helps?

Mood. There was a time I was standing in line at the post office and some haggard looking mother was doing her best to calmly reign in her child who was busy running away from her, screeching and pulling over every display he could reach, and having zero regard for anyone else in the vicinity. I could see her exhaustion and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I usually just grit my teeth and try to ignore it until I can escape, but this time I cut off the kids path when he got close, said “Stop” in the harshest tone I could muster, and ngl was pretty pleased with myself when he went crying to his mom. I did realize in that moment, tho, that I probably shouldn’t have kids.

I didn’t interpret their use of the word individualistic as an assertion that those who choose to be child-free are selfish. Selfish has a negative connotation to it that I don’t feel they were going for. I think they were just contrasting that while being a parent requires putting yourself aside and focusing on a different human, being child-free allows a person to focus on their individual goals, whims, what have you.

I also agree with you that there is nothing wrong with a person choosing not to have kids, and there’s a lot of reasons to pick from. For me, those are:

•I have never yearned for motherhood

•I find pregnancy impressive from a biological perspective but at the same time horrific and something I never want to go through

•I am prone to depression which makes it hard for me to care for myself on a consistent basis so I am not going to bring another life into this world only to be too swamped in self-loathing to take care of them

•I detest humanity, we have spent our entire existence as a species ravaging the earth as well as each other and I see no end to it. I hate that realistically I will have to watch people be cruel to each other for the rest of my life and have decided not to create another human who has to trudge through this hellscape which undoubtedly will only be worse off in their future

All came outta nowhere lightning fast and they kicked Chuck Norris in his cowboy ass

I’m probably not the best person to explain the party’s structure because I am just some degen who finally got mad enough at the world to pull out of my depression doomscrolling, but my understanding is that it’s not a party specifically owned/run by unions. Rather, the people running for office must run with the endorsement of at least one labor union, if not more. It was founded sometime in November by 3 people but they are currently working on registering the party and filling out structure, and plan to flesh out platform and policies post-holidays. FWIW, when I popped into the discord to see what was going on, it was like 580 people there, now a couple weeks later it’s at 717. Their goal is to start getting people on ballots at the local levels as soon as possible, ideally challenging unopposed Rep/Dem candidates, and only later after there are many Labor Party candidates in offices nationwide will they try for a presidential nominee. Until then, there are channels for every state so people can organize with their state peers. I recognize that it is a young party and it’s hard to say how things will go, but it feels better to work with them on what the workers in this nation need instead of melting further into my couch while reading yet another headline about Dems not following through and Repubs being sadistic pedophilic billie-sucking fucks.

It’s fledgling, but check out https://www.votelabor.org/ It’s a small but growing group of Americans who want to start a party that advocates for the working class. I jumped in yesterday and am gonna try to do my part. There’s channels for every state to organize amongst their state peers, national channels for overall organization, policy discussions currently under debate, and desire to start getting people on ballots and in seats as soon as possible