Emphasis on ‘potentially’. Don’t waste too much time on them, some of them get off on watching you uselessly spend your time and energy and sanity on them. Brainwashing doesn’t work like it does in comic books. These are people who were already willing to and capable of rationalizing putting kids into cages and the ‘brainwashing’ just gave them an easy explanation.

It’s like a person who has committed rape. Even if they come out later as an anti-rape activist and they’re publicly remorseful and they do a lot of work to make up for the harm they caused you still aren’t gonna leave them alone with your sister.

I like it, let’s try it. I’m sure there are pitfalls but they can’t be worse than what we have now.

This is bringing hope to millions of people and setting the precedent of democrats actually resisting. It’s changing what is normal and energizing others to do their own good work, to get into their own ‘good trouble’. It’s doing a lot of fucking good. What the fuck are you doing?

A good criminal justice system ought to have comprehensive mental health services as part of the goal of rehabilitation. Therefore, for his own good, he should be in prison and we should reform the prison system.

We don’t need back, we need forward, and a lot of us aren’t interested in giving into doomerism. It is still the time for peaceful resistance and that might still work. It might not, and if it doesn’t the time for widespread destruction of property and civil disobedience will come and that might work, and then soon after the time for armed resistance will come and that might work. If it all fails we can at least make them hurt and show the world that we don’t take fascism lying down. It’s dark times but we don’t get out of them by giving up.

Hell, there’s a chance we come out of this better than we were before, and not just because the bar is so fucking low. We (americans) might find our passion for liberty and justice again and we might find our courage and we might express our decades of resentment against the creeping in of inequality by swinging to the left with new and more inclusive rights and protections for working class people. That’d be nice but even if we can’t have a good ending it’s still the right thing to do to fight fascism with everything we have.