Political Commentators From The United States

"People don't like being convinced that they're wrong. In fact, our brains are unmatched in their ability to self-justify, to make us feel that we are right and to shut out any information that contradicts that. On a purely logical level, most people aren't going to be moved on a incorrect belief they have by arguing with them about it."

"First and foremost, if you're dealing with somebody who cares about you in any capacity [...] the most valuable tool you have to convince them of any position is the empathy they hold for you."

"Step one is always seeing tomorrow. Step two is figuring out a solution."

"Could they really divide us that well? Could Trump or "The Powers That Be" commit that well to a doctrine of dismantling, not only our democracy, but all of the protections, all of the interconnectedness that queer people, people of different races, whatever, that all of them have managed to build? I don't think so."

"People aren't always rational, countries aren't always rational. Fascism is not rational."

"I do think there is a bit of a glimmer of hope. For one, as I have pointed out [...], there is a global tide of fascism that is creeping up, but if we look at comparable examples of this happening in other countries [...], there seems to be a very pronounced lack of sauce in a lot of these fascist movements -- an inability to fully collapse the liberal democracies they're built off of."

"I think that one of my biggest issues with, like, broader political discourse is that -- especially on the left -- people fixate, like, really, really hard on being a good advocate. God's honest truth is, the first step to winning is being a good person. And I don't just mean good in the sense of, like, being morally good. I mean being good at being a person. Being disciplined and effective. Saving your money when you need to. Being community-oriented. It's not just a matter of being morally correct, it's a matter of being in a position where, if you have the opportunity, you can most effectively advocate for your beliefs. Discipline matters. Community matters. Not just community with other people like you, community with people who you don't like as well. I'm sorry to say, but you gotta know your neighbors. Even if they're Trump supporters, you gotta know your neighbors."

"Doom and gloom doesn't solve our problems, stay strong and weaponize this anger and resentment we've been left with. We must always keep fighting for a better future."

""Every day I draw breath is a victory against fascism in my books." Mm-hm! If your life is intolerant to them, then live just to spite them."

"You can fuckin' support as much genocide as you want or disenfranchise as many people as you want. As long as people are getting cheap personal chauffeurs for their burritos from the local, like, Mexican joint, that's the-- That's their standard for who they're voting for."

"One of the most stunning censorship episodes I've ever seen occur in the entire West was just two years ago with respect to the Canadian truckers. Recall, before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the Canadian response to the trucker protest was the biggest story in the world. Prime minister Justin Trudeau invoked the never before used Emergencies Act in Canada. He outlawed freedom of association, authorized a full-blown crackdown on a lot of these protesters."

"That's her gimmick. Being "one of the good ones" and "a credit to her people" and assuring those in power that our group's struggle for proper treatment is a ridiculous and absurd concept. She tells transphobes that it's okay to make fun of trans women who don't "pass". That any social concessions we demand, to increase our physical safety or mental well-being, are selfish. That our desire for anything more than baseline survival is laughable and ought to be rejected outright."

"I don't do groups; I do Blair."

"I'll go on any leftist podcast. Young Turks, hit me up! [...] Left-wing podcats, have me on! It doesn't even have to be a debate; we can just have a conversation."

"I truly to my core, and anybody who knows me knows this, there is not one bit of my soul that cares who likes, dislikes, rejects, accepts, enjoys, hates the fact that I'm a transsexual. There is not one bit of me that cares who's okay with me or not. [...] Seeking external validation, which seems to be a huge part of the community these days [...], that is a fruitless endeavor that will lead you to a life of loneliness, emptiness, soullessness, Because you will never ever get everyone to like you."

"stop transing kids, because you're going to hell for that."

"Blaire White: I don't know how much you know about me, but I'm probably the most vocal anti-children transitioning person on the Internet. Lauren Witzke: Good! Blaire: Well, I— Lauren: Great! The best thing you can do for us is grow out your mustache and tell people not to live like you."

"I think that if we dropped the kids transitioning thing, which they would never do, but I think if they did, that would be a huge win for us. I also think that dropping the trans women in sports thing, huge win. The idea that not dating trans people makes you like bigoted... Like just stop fucking saying that."

"[About Call of Duty displaying the rainbow flag in Western versions of the game but not in the Middle East:] They only support LGBT people based on profitability. How people don't see through that is amazing to me. How about, Call of Duty, if you actually gave a singular shit about LGBT people, stand on that where it counts. [...] Guess what we don't need in America, is more shoving of the pride flag down everyone's throats. Guess where we might need a little bit of pride flag showing up. The Middle East."

"I personally believe that the best possible thing that could happen for the LGBT community in acceptance in general right now is for everyone to shut the fuck up for a while. To stop showing their asses, figuratively and literally."

"[A visit to Manhattan’s Chinatown during the 2016 presidential election] He kicks off the segment by asking two women if he needs to bow to them, following that up by asking a street vendor if the watches he's selling are stolen. If that's not enough, he then asks an elderly Chinese man and woman questions in English, when it's clear they don't understand him, and decides to throw in random references to karate and taekwondo – non-Chinese martial arts – for good measure. All of this is interspersed with clips of Mr Miyagi from Karate Kid (who is Japanese, if that needed to be said), Bruce Lee and giggling Asian schoolgirls from an Austin Powers movie, set to a backdrop of what I like to call chopstick music. It's so over the top that it reads almost as a parody of itself."

"She's going to get paralyzed in the situation room while the generals have their way with her."

"I don't see why any man would vote Democrat, it's not the party of virtue, security, it's not the party of strength, it's definitely not the party of family."

"And I heard the scientists say the other day when a man votes for a woman he actually transitions into a woman."

"[Using an ambush interview with Dr Anthony Fauci to create a viral moment] Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn’t see it coming."

"[On White Dudes for Harris male-created Zoom call] It was basically saying "If you want to be accepted by women you should vote for a woman"."

"To be a man and then vote for a woman just because she's a woman is either childish, that person has mommy issues or they’re just trying to be accepted by other women."

"There is no more profound human bias than the expectation that tomorrow will be like today. It is a powerful heuristic tool because it is almost always correct."

"I have called the Republican Party an engine for turning social resentment into tax cuts."

"What you’ve seen in this latest slate of picks is a lot of emphasis on the identity of the individuals picked, a lot of firsts in the group. And even folks with less — or less, shall we say, more attenuated relationships to traditional identity characters have gone as far as to talk about the struggles of their stepfather’s family, right? And I think that’s very intentional, because substantively several of these individuals have real problems, and none of them truly represents a progressive in the mindset of most Americans, especially those who identified with Bernie Sanders. And Neera Tanden is someone, in particular, who was very notorious for being openly antagonistic of Senator Sanders, who, again, represented the largest coalition of progressive voters in this country"

"It's hard to define "progressive" but it seems to me you shouldn't label yourself as such if you don't think that decent housing and healthcare and food etc are human rights."

"If you spend your time saying "it can never happen" while occupying a position to make it more likely to happen, you're part of the problem."

"All of the emphasis on the firsts, of the diversity of this crew, but less emphasis on whether or not these individuals represent the interests of the group that they are assumed to represent because of what they look like, right?"

"There has been an implication, online at the very least, that the people who have raised concerns about Kamala Harris and her record are not the base, are not Black people, are white leftists. The “Bernie bro” mythology has been raised as a specter again, when the reality is there’s a lot of grassroots frustration with the fact that this, again, unprecedented political movement is basically being ignored, or at very least a nose is being thumbed at what’s going on in the streets right now."

"Joe Biden has articulated very clearly that he is the candidate who promises that nothing will fundamentally change."

"With respect to the Democratic National Convention, you know, I think the party is sending a very clear signal about whose votes they are reaching for and whose they aren’t. They have John Kasich, who is a Republican and who has attempted to pass some of the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the state of Ohio, in a prime spot, when there was news for a while that suggested that they weren’t even going to allow AOC to speak. Of course, they now have. But they have made gestures like barring The Young Turks, one of the preeminent lefty news organizations, from having a press pass to a digital event. Why you would do that, other than to send a kind of signal to progressives that you’re not interested in their vote, I don’t know. So, it’s a really curious choice. It feels again like it’s 2016, and there is a dynamic being set up where there is a kind of wanton disregard for the values and interests of what is coming up to be the new base, the insurgent left wing of the party, the part of the party that just celebrated the victory of Cori Bush last week and Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones. And it is telling that the only people under the age of 40 — under the age of 50, rather, who are speaking at this event are AOC and Pete Buttigieg."

"We are in the middle of the largest protest movement in American history. And it’s a protest movement that’s all about finding nonpunitive, noncarceral solutions to the kinds of economic problems that are plaguing disproportionately Black and Brown communities, but all Americans, especially right now in the middle of this additionally historic global pandemic."

"In a world where student loan debt, especially in the course of the primary, was still being characterized by the overwhelming bulk of Democratic Party candidates as something that was a far-left, inappropriate policy to pursue, and which, even in the context of Joe Biden, is still being framed as something that should be pushed in a very minimalist way — right? — he has the power to cancel all student debt on day one but is talking about canceling a maximum $10,000; Chuck Schumer, some others are pushing for more — I’m not overly optimistic that this policy, which is one of few that Biden has control over, is going to be dealt with in the maximalist way that the crisis compels."

"And so there’s a great deal of frustration that there is this choice not only to nominate a candidate who is known as the author of what is actually called the Joe Biden crime bill, but that he’s gone and also selected a running mate who is known for being the top cop from California, the state that has the second-highest number of incarcerated people in America. And moreover, Kamala Harris is someone who has had these criticisms leveraged at her throughout, very early on, at the start of her campaign, and, to many people in the activist community, has done very little to assuage people’s concerns about her previous stances or to demonstrate the level of growth that we would like to see."

"6 ppl hold > wealth than the bottom 50% of America. There's more wealth inequality today than any time since the gilded age. Biden accepted the most billionaire $ in the primary. They're paying him to reject MedicareForAll in a pandemic. Imagine not being mad at billionaires."

"Ed Schultz, the Reverend Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Hayes provided us with the very fair coverage we received on MSNBC."

"The economic impacts of slavery abolition in the mid-nineteenth century have some striking parallels with the impacts of radical emission reduction, as several historians and commentators have observed. Journalist and broadcaster Chris Hayes, in an award-winning 2014 essay titled "The New Abolitionism," pointed out "the climate justice movement is demanding that an existing set of political and economic interests be forced to say goodbye to trillions of dollars of wealth" and concluded that "it is impossible to point to any precedent other than abolition.""

"I absolutely would not be doing this if it weren't for her"

"I just refuse to accept that this -- this thing: Like, January 6th if Democrats win, fireside chat if Republicans win -- is the way things just are gonna work now. I don't accept the idea that there's one set of rules for him and another for everyone else. We can't accept a status quo in our elections where, if one side wins, they have to scratch and claw to withstand the lies and the legal challenges and the violent mobs. And if the other side is successful, and they're invited to measure the drapes and gather around the fireplace. I mean, yes, the nature of preserving democracy and institutions and norms is that you uphold them, even for people like Donald Trump who have tried to tear them down, I get that. But I'm just saying that this thing, this, is not a sustainable equilibrium. One side upholds liberal democratic norms, the other subverts and tries to destroy them. It's gonna break, one way or the other. I don't know how it ends up or who wins, but that central struggle didn't dissolve because the insurrectionist won more votes this time."

"In difficult times, we turn to our poets (Nov. 29, 2016) and MSNBC video"

"Ok @elonmusk & @joerogan. Since this is getting interesting I’ll throw my hat in the ring as well. I’ll mimic Lawrence O’Donnell ... minus the castration of course," Trump responded. "That’s a bridge too far.""

"If Donald Trump gets dementia, how will we know?"

"This is going to be an important time for him, but I thought about him as a very important player at MSNBC for a long time. He knows more about the Senate than almost anyone else on television."

"The desks are now an important part of the public health strategy in the schools"

"Our goal is to build a really united cohort of progressive lawmakers in Congress who can shift the national conversation and neutralize the false populism of the far right and push visionary legislation"