How’s that short term thinking working out for you?

And yet, utilitarianism was the moral philosophy of the Nazis. After all, think of all the suffering that will be prevented long-term once we kill all the racial minorities! Sure, millions die today. But in the future, far more people will be spared racial conflict if we just kill all the non-Aryans right now. Eternal world racial peace for the cost of a bit of genocide today.

The greatest good for the greatest number requires we kill everyone that isn’t white.

This is why utilitarianisn is a philosophy of the damned. It’s the philosophy behind almost all of history’s greatest atrocities. If you can convince yourself that some crime is a net positive, well the ends justify the means.

There’s more than one kind of moral philosophy. Why do utilitarians always forget this?

But when it comes to the general, the most milquetoast corporatist democrat is better than right-wing outright fascism.

Only if you only care about the short term. And then short term thinking is what has got us to this point.

First, you can cut that shit right out with your leading question of “was she worse than Trump.” That isn’t how a large portion of the electorate acts, thinks, and believes. Some vote on utilitarian ethics. Some vote on respect for persons. You can’t just whine, stamp your feet, and pretend that utilitarianism is the only way to vote. You’re trying to hand waive away an branch of moral philosophy that has centuries of scholarly work behind it. If you view voting as simply an either/or choice, sure, Kamala was the only choice. If you view voting as an endorsement of candidate, then it’s perfectly valid to not vote for a candidate simply because you consider their actions to be morally abominable. The other guy being worse doesn’t change that.

She abandoned Palestinian Americans. The strongest defense of trans people she could offer “she would follow the law.” She cozied up with the Cheneys and offered no real policies that would move the needle on wealth inequality. And she couldn’t even offer a robust plan on how to protect abortion rights. And she gaslit everyone on the economy, telling people to believe the inflation figures and not their own lying eyes.

And before you claim that utilitarianism is the only valid voting philosophy, realize that is not how our own government behaves. We’ve literally vaporized millions of innocent civilians over the decades. The justification has always been, “well, they supported the evil regime and their evil actions.” Yet every dictator has come to power on the backs of people who thought they were the lesser evil. Hell, almost every Republican thinks Trump is a monster, but they vote for him because they consider him the lesser evil. I’m sure we incinerated thousands of Iraqis who voted for Saddam because he was the lesser evil on the ballot.

Vote how you want. If you view voting as a utilitarian exercise, so be it. But part of living in a democracy is recognizing that other people can have different belief systems and ways of life. Your way is not the only way. You believe that the ends always justify the means. Others recognize that as a road to Hell.

Being willing to throw an election is one of the only tools voters actually have to fight fascism. It’s the only way to prevent a bait-and-switch candidate. If you’re not willing to potentially lose an election when your candidate betrays you, future candidates will betray you every time. You’ve told them that you’re perfectly fine with being betrayed. You’ve proven yourself a spineless cuck that will let people walk all over you.

Actions have consequences. Voting has consequences. And Trump isn’t the worst possible leader out there. He’s a monster, but there are many gradations of monster. There are far worse monsters out there waiting to be elected. If you’re not ever willing to walk away from a traitor candidate in the general election, you guarantee that the Democrats will just keep sliding to the right forever. Nominating a corporate Dem in 2028 will almost certainly see another Republican win. But even on the thin chance they do win, electing a corporate Dem in 2028 guarantees someone even worse than Trump winning in 2032.

We’ve degenerated so far precisely because Democrats don’t take responsibility for their votes and will just blindly vote for whatever corporate tool is placed in front of them. It’s the political version of the “next quarter” thinking that plagues corporate America. All that matters is the election today. Don’t think about the long term consequences. Focus only on today, even if it hurts you in the long term. Trump is the result of decades of Dems kicking the can down the road, holding their nose, and voting for the lesser evil.

Notice, we’re only starting to see some progressives gain traction in the party after Democrats have suffered badly at the polls. There has been real change at the DNC. That and candidates like Mamdani would have been completely impossible if Trump hadn’t been elected. It’s only when the old guard loses horribly and has to run away in shame that the opportunity arises for new voices to take the reins of the party.

Kamala lost because she abandoned her voters. She told her own base to pound sand while fruitlessly trying to appease Republicans. The voters didn’t “not show up.” She simply made herself not their candidate anymore. It’s a fools’ errand to blame voters, as they’re not an individual you can actually hold accountable. Blaming voters for not voting for your terrible candidate is like blaming consumers for not buying shitty overpriced items at a store. You can whine, “well you have to buy something somewhere anyway!” But that’s just unproductive whining.

Democrats lost in 2016 and 2024. They would have lost in 2020 if it weren’t for covid.

Sure. History has proven that civil rights laws that are very specific and explicit are much more resilient to legal challenge than broad ones. They probably should have been a hell of a lot more specific in the Reconstruction amendments.

Sex discrimination is already fairly generic. The only way to get more generic is the Equal Protection Clause, and that’s proven completely toothless. Generally the less specific a protection is, the less real impact it has.

I cannot imagine what on Earth they’re thinking.

I can. They’re deathly afraid of another 2024. In 2024, they were reminded that you can’t take your base for granted. Kamala tried to appeal to moderate Republicans and through a lot of progressives under the bus. They’re afraid of a repeat.

And a lot of progressives are at risk of severe demoralization if Democrats backpedal on trans rights. First, there’s trans people themselves, who are about 1% of the population. But then you have supportive family and allies. And crucially, trans people are vastly overrepresented among Democratic party volunteers and nonprofit groups. Trans people often can’t help but be involved in politics, as their existence is a political issue. If Democrats throw trans folks under the bus, they’re at real risk of losing some of their most passionate and dedicated volunteers and donors.

This action is meant to speak to the progressive base. It says, “we hear you. We see you. We are not abandoning you to the wolves.”

Does it have any hope of passing now? No. Is it a performance? Quite possibly. But then again, all of politics is a performance.

Trans people were among the first victims of the Nazis. And here you are, continuing their legacy.

Over specificity in establishing rights and protections is how we end to with trans people being denied rights and how we have to argue semantics about who is actually protected by the law.

This isn’t true. It’s the vague generic protections that are easy for courts to warp. Discrimination against trans people is a plain violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause and is a form of illegal sex discrimination. Yet courts have found ways around those. You need to explicitly ban discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.

We can’t rely on generic civil rights laws. We already tried that with the Equal Protection Clause, which provides a blanket ban on all forms of government discrimination. We already tried what you propose. In practice, when you want to protect civil rights, you have to ban specific categories of discrimination. Generic bans are toothless.

General civil blanket rights protections don’t work. We already have laws against sex discrimination. By any objective measure, discriminating against trans people is sex discrimination. It is literally sex discrimination to ban hormone treatments for minors. Imagine a doctor that will prescribe a cis girl E is she has low E levels, but she won’t prescribe a trans girl E because of her perceived or actual sex. That is literally sex discrimination. Yet the courts are letting laws against trans medical care stand.

What is needed is explicit legal protections for gender identity and gender expression. These laws protect both cis and trans people from being discriminated against based on these factors. But you can’t just rely on generic sex-discrimination provisions, as conservative courts have found absurd interpretations of the law to find that plain sex discrimination is anything but. You need to give the slimy bastards zero wiggle room.

Or for another example:

Don’t make the rule that “you can’t deny someone food stamps due to their trans identity”; say people can’t be denied food stamps.

This statement is nonsensical. What do you mean, “people can’t be denied food stamps.” Of course people can be denied food stamps! Bill Gates doesn’t need to qualify for food stamps. When you want to ban a form of discrimination, you have to specifically define what form of discrimination is banned. You cannot just pass a blanket law that says, “don’t discriminate against anyone for any reason,” as there are countless valid reasons to discriminate against people. It’s just not valid to discriminate against people based on innate traits. If I’m a restaurant owner, it’s perfectly fine to throw someone out if they’re rude or a belligerent asshole. I’m discriminating against assholes.

You just can’t rely on vague legal language, as courts will always find a way to rule that marginalized groups for some reason don’t qualify under the generic protections. This is why we had to pass laws specifically banning race, gender, and religious discrimination. More generic protections had already failed. After all, the highest law of the land, the Constitution, already has the Equal Protection Clause, and minority groups have found its protection to be incredibly weak.

“[Nor shall any State] deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

According to the plain text of the Constitution, the Civil Rights, the Women’s Rights, and the Queer Rights movements should have been completely unnecessary. After all, Jim Crow laws plainly violated this provision. Yet because the language was weak and nonspecific, it was easy for courts to find that black people could be denied the right to vote.

As far as appealing to the manosphere? You’re trying to appeal to a carnival of liars and con men. The objective reality of your actions has little bearing on who they choose to target for their five minutes of hate.

This is what I’m going to do when I have a terminal diagnosis. Just go around mugging people. Point a gun at them. Demand they give over their purse or wallet. Then put a large amount of cash in it, hand it back to them, and walk away without a word.

Are you an illegal person? Has your existence been declared illegal yet?

I would add the ability to use a bidet. Travel bidets exist, but the ideal just feels gross and embarrassing.

I can tell you are not a serious person, as you pretend impeachment means anything.

Same with Musk. I was teaching engineering courses at the time of the first falcon heavy launch. I actually stopped my class so we could watch the launch. When those boosters landed in a perfect synchronous ballet, I told my class it was “engineering as poetry.”

Why couldn’t Musk just stay the fuck out of politics?