doctordevice

As a matter of fact, don't let nothin' hold you back. If the Scat Man can do it, brother, so can you!

The effort you put into this is so impressive! What a lovely post to read.

Never underestimate stupidity. Though I do think it's at least not normally people trying to connect two strands that are themselves already live. It's normally people who are connecting several strands together and started at the end not plugged in with the male end poking out, not realizing that this means when they're done stringing and go to plug in they've got the female end and no way to plug it in.

Left facing the daunting task of completely undoing all the work they just did, they try to look for something to bridge the gap without thinking through to the danger.

I appreciate a good "um actually" but this really is about Christmas lights. People really are stupid enough for this to be something posted specifically around December.

As far as I can tell from a reverse image search this is the original. (Not linking to the other place, DM me if you want the link for some reason).

I'm gonna guess winter, hanging Christmas lights. People string up their lights and then realize far too late that they put two strands with female ends facing each other and instead of restringing they look for a male-to-male cord to bridge the gap.

A little live wire shouldn't stand in the way of holiday cheer, after all.

I quite agree with what you're talking about with local elections.

But you've misinterpreted what I'm mad about. I'm not mad that they don't support progressives. I'm mad that the Democratic Party (the DNC, not your local party chairs) spends more time and effort demonizing and sidelining progressives than learning to work with us. That has effects all the way down to local primary elections where voters who have been fed anti-progressive propaganda are voting against progressive candidates.

What I'm mad about is not the lack of support, I'm mad about the absolutely ridiculous hypocrisy of a party clearly working against progressives at every turn and then blaming us when they don't get their way.

As a side note, I'm also mad that the progressive movement has a lot of real shitty candidates in local elections. Many of them are clearly just absolute weirdos who shouldn't be anywhere near an elected office. But a small movement isn't going to have the reach everywhere. My House rep is progressive, and I get to watch as the person that represents me gets hamstrung by their own party time after time after time. And then the very same Party blames us for Donald Trump. It's absolutely infuriating.

I am left of the Democrats, and do not feel represented by what they do (regardless of what they say). I vote in Democratic primaries to try to move the party left. I vote D in the general. But you continue to dismiss what I'm saying. You seem to agree that the Republicans trained their party to move to the right but act like it's some crazy idea that the Democrats are doing the same thing? The wrong side is winning within the Democratic Party, and we're all going to lose everything because of it.

I'm not saying they're a shadowy cabal. They're very openly anti-progressive, no shadows necessary. They spend so much of primary time shitting on progressives and then complain when progressives don't want to vote for their neoliberal hacks in the general.

If you're taking the "progressives are irrelevant" position, please make sure to never blame progressives for the losses of the Democrats. Not even nonvoters. If we're not important enough to justify catering to, then we're not important enough to blame. You don't get to eat our cake and shit in it too.

Gonna continue to call bullshit here. The grassroots movement failing to gather momentum in the face of propaganda at the cost of the nation's future is not the same as the Democrats blaming a minority for their own failures. Not even a little bit, can you please reflect a little on how absurd that claim is?

You're also not comparing apples to apples here. First: the Tea Party was an unknown element, there hadn't been a growing fringe movement like that within a major party for a century. The Democrats had the benefit of seeing that happen on the right. Second, the Republicans were willing to embrace the crazy of the Tea Party for the sake of their continuing victory. Very much in contrast, the Democrats are very clearly willing to sacrifice national victory in order to keep progressives down. Three elections in a row they've insisted on running the most centrist candidate possible, resulting two very predictable losses and one surprising victory.

Democrats insist on siding with money and corporations every time, their failures are their own fault, and very much also the fault of their supporters.

See the part about the Democratic Party actively working against progressives, to the point of funding propaganda against them. The Dems saw the Tea Party and care more about avoiding that with progressives than they do about running candidates that can either beat the Republicans or serve the people.

And from what you just said: you'd better have never once blamed progressives for losing the Democrats an election if you're taking the "progressives are too weak" position.

Some of us have been trying. The masses tend to bully and tell us it's all our fault, somehow. According to the Democrats and their base, progressives are simultaneously too weak and unimportant to listen to, and so powerful that we can swing entire elections. I'm still waiting to hear how that one makes sense.

I've got bad news for you. Clockwise/counterclockwise depends on which way you're looking at the screw.

Turns out either way you need to make assumptions about perspective.

Kinda horseshit. The Democratic Party needs to stop racing to the bottom and running candidates that are so bad they can only win against garbage like Trump. Because sometimes they're even wrong about that. Apparently 2/3 of the time.