started / going

Core to playing this down is pretending that "Young Republicans" aren't 40 years old with top positions in both the party and government. One's a state senator.

...wait, have we ever seen Brianna and Bethany Mandel in the same room together?!?!

Every time you see Mike Davis do Mike Davis things, think about Gorsuch reportedly helping land Davis a job at DOJ, then choosing him as a clerk when he was on the 10th Circuit, then choosing him as a clerk when he was on the Supreme Court.

conversation in the friend group about, "So... your dad's pretty racist, huh." At best, it was just unspoken. I mean, maybe it was talked about among her closer friends, but when I heard the story, it felt sorta casually dropped about "Unfortunate shitty fact about my dad whom I still love". 🙃

previously had dated a fellow theater kid who was Black. And, despite ticking all the (also racist) markers of "upstanding Black kid" (dressed in button down shirts and slacks, "sounded white", skipped a whole grade), her dad still basically made her stop dating him.

But there was never a

Yes, it's good that many of us have managed to learn in spite of the environment that tried to hide it. (See also: LGBTQIA+ folks and my conservative Christian upbringing wheeeeeeeee.)

But yeah, even in my circles, blatant racism got shrugged off a little bit. Like, my Sr. prom date was a girl who

Hell hath no fury like a cat with an empty food bowl 5 minutes before his scheduled feeding time.

I mean, there's definitely reasons I lied to my last job about why I was leaving, and it was about 95% not wanting to sound rude.

"Thank you for the offer, but" and then everything you said might be as polite as you can get.

We could have tended the garden of Tron into a fascinating franchise that pushed interesting commentary, or games, or visual effects.

Instead we got Captain Sexual Assault and the Elon Musk Wet Dream Collab.

What's wild is I could see someone left of Reagan making that flag as an attempt at protest/commentary, but from the right it's a point of pride.

Which is a reason not to proudly and consistently display swastikas even as an attempt at protest or commentary (coughpfpcough) cuz it's HARD TO TELL.

"Welcome our new coach Condaleezza Rice!"

Quite a few of these kids are also somehow occupying adult positions of import within the Republican Party.

Like. As a white kid in a fully white neighborhood and fairly white schools, I suspect some of it was "hidden" because there wasn't as much opportunity for direct, obvious racism in my day to day from adults. But as an adult hearing my mom talk about black people moving in near grandma... 😬

Yeah, I wonder if some of the "hiding" was 1) children not understanding/seeing and 2) it being more hidden for *other white people*.

Cuz I think there's an argument for that, where the Nazism is so blatant and open now but before was less obvious "in polite [read: white] company". But... eh.

Politicians who seem to have normal to semi-passionate sports opinions also seem to be consistently better humans than the low bars that are folks like Cuomo and Adams in NYC trying to "All Teams Matter" shit or Pence, Vance, or Trump going to a football game solely to get personal attention.

I'm a bit of a dissent apologist for this reason

I understand the kinda nihilist dunks on them as meaningless, but i've seen too many dissents become majority opinions to think they don't have value--as doctrinal roadmaps, as mobilizing tools, as records of the truth when the majority lies, etc.

you fucked around and now the Episcopalians are doing memes. are you happy now. are you

You love to see it, folks

Racism as a system is more invisible, perhaps more nefarious and insidious, and more something the common person rejects as an idea because "You're saying America is evil!" or whatnot. And yet it leads to the more public and obvious and personal racism... which we're seeing boil over in a big way.

We also have, societally, a horrific comprehension of racism (due in no small part to the efforts of racists to obfuscate the issue). For some folks, it can't be racism unless it's crosses burning in the lawns, hooded men in the streets, etc. But things like sentencing minimums? Gerrymandering? Nah.

this is today's Supreme Court oral argument on the Voting Rights Act in a nutshell