These people always have an excuse for why they're allowed to treat everyone else abhorrently, but at the end of the day it always collapses back to "because everyone else lets it happen and I can get away with it."

"Disagreeing with someone" is not the same as "directing abuse their way." I quote-post a lot because it's easier than repeating myself 100 times. But my followers are not flooding in by the hundreds to attack anyone I disagree with. Your followers are, by comparison, total psychos.

Okay I take it back, let 'em have it

I was agreeing with him!

I would not engage with this person, who is an absolutely deranged troll whose ability to evade a ban is baffling

The solution here is to replace old, tired Democrats who do not want to fight with new, fresh Democrats who do want to fight. Everything else is a distraction at this moment.

Likewise: anyone who says "Time to kick moderates out! Their day is over!"

Plenty of more moderate voters and politicians hate the Surrender Caucus nonsense. It's not a left-center thing and people who try to turn it into to one are trying to exploit the moment to win a factional battle.

It's DARVO nonsense - you've whipping people up into saying I should have been aborted and whatnot, but I'm the one harassing folks?? What? I've never said anything like that in my entire life. And it works because Bluesky is small enough that your nasty little clique has real social cachet.

And frankly, it's just true that people will mostly avoid pointing this out, for the exact same reason kids side with the bullies in middle school - because they're afraid of themselves being made into the target. Nothing I have said about economic data actually merits the way you guys talk about me

Everybody hates inflation and thinks they would prefer deflation (they do *not* actually want to see deflation).

Hi Christa, will you concede that the average standard of living in terms of goods and services being consumed is noticeably higher for the median American than, say, 20 years ago? That it is close to the highest it’s ever been?

I’m long past the point of caring

One of my favorite explanations for a while was “rich people are mad they can’t buy labor for cheap anymore,” but I don’t think that’s held up in retrospect either.

It feels much more like a pure animal spirits thing: people are gloomy because other people are gloomy.

Also, frankly, there’s not a lot of indication that economic and cost dissatisfaction is coming from lower incomes rather than middle and higher incomes. There’s this weird assumption that if people are unhappy it must be the working class. But poor sentiment is shared across the income spectrum.

Yes, what I have been told is that after Reid retired, Schumer went to senators and said “Remember how he’d always try to push you towards hard votes? How much you hated it? I won’t do that, I’ll let you do what you want.” And that’s how he became majority leader and how he’s governed ever since.

The takeaway is “he’s an idiot and we know he’s an idiot because his claim kinda-sorta sounds like this other infamous thing we all mock, don’t think any harder about it.” It’s just mindless dunking from someone who has no higher aspiration than to be a bully online