Shahid Buttar

Immigrant, constitutional lawyer, DJ, MC & poet. Politics: @ShahidForChange

[Shahid Buttar @Sheeyahshee]

Militarism has expanded since King’s era. Racism remains equally violent, and has become more widely unapologetic and even more deeply institutionalized. Finally, the centers of both major political parties support corporate capitalism and runaway resource extraction. /8

[MatchMap @MatchMap]

@ShahidForChange @ryangrim @akela_lacy @theintercept Her story source just got fired today after the NAACP expressed racism concerns for a culture of calling Black people tokens in meetings.

[Shahid Buttar (find me on Substack and BlueSky) @ShahidForChange]

@MatchMap @ryangrim @akela_lacy It’s almost as if @ryangrim and @theintercept were unwilling to observe the results of their own investigations. Was that decision made to protect Akela Lacy and shield her from public observations of the Islamophobia pervading her inaccurate reporting? https://t.co/3QUHGjR3Us

[Shahid Buttar (find me on Substack and BlueSky) @ShahidForChange]

@Pichi71930712 @SenecaSpeaks21 Worse yet, at least one of the architects of the racism pervading disgraced former mayor Thao’s office had a documented previous history of embracing white supremacy. Every white “journalist” in the Bay ignored—and enabled—it. https://t.co/3yMTxbhyvD

[Shahid Buttar (find me on Substack and BlueSky) @ShahidForChange]

@ChrisLynnHedges They fucked around and found out—but now the rest of us will pay the price. https://t.co/j2POM50umx

[Nick Cruse 🥋 @SocialistMMA]

In Missouri, a deep red state, we voted to increase the minimum wage AGAIN and paid sick time

The American people support left populist economic ideas but the Democrats choose to lose because they embrace neoliberalism

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

The evil warmongering Zionist won. No not that one, the other one.

The Democratic Party has lost control of both the White House and the Senate. As of this writing it is still unclear which party will secure control of the House of Representatives. Turns out campaigning on the promise of continuing a genocide while courting endorsements from war criminals like Dick Cheney is not a great way to get progressives to vote for you.

One interesting point is that Donald Trump appears to have taken the battleground state of Michigan, where Kamala Harris was soundly rejected by the large Arab American population of Dearborn despite their voting overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020. Back in August, Harris famously shushed Muslim anti-genocide protesters at a campaign rally in Michigan by admonishing them with the words “I’m speaking”.

Well, who’s speaking now?

To be clear, this is not a good result. A good result was not possible this election. The warmongering Zionist genocide monster lost, which means the other warmongering Zionist genocide monster won.

Donald Trump is still bought and owned by Adelson cash, which means we can expect him to be just as much of a groveling simp for Israel as he was during his first term. The president elect has publicly admitted that when he was president the Zionist plutocrats Sheldon and Miriam Adelson were at the White House “probably almost more than anybody” asking him to do favors for Israel like moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and acknowledging Israel’s illegitimate claim to the Golan Heights, which he eagerly did.

Trump closed out his campaign tour alongside his former CIA director and secretary of state Mike Pompeo, which should be enough to dash the hopes of even the most naive Trump supporters that US foreign policy is headed in a positive direction in January. As CIA director, Pompeo led a plot to assassinate Julian Assange and cheerfully admitted that “we lied, we cheated, we stole” at the agency. This odious swamp creature has remained in Trump’s good graces for the last eight years, and is reportedly expected to have a position in Trump’s cabinet once again.

Speaking at a campaign event in Pittsburgh on Monday, Pompeo boasted that he has been called “the most loyal cabinet member to Donald J Trump” and said that when Trump is re-elected “we will take down the ring of fire; we will support our friends in Israel.” The “ring of fire” is think tank speak for Iran and the militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Palestine who oppose Israel.

So things are probably going to get uglier and uglier. But they were getting uglier and uglier under Biden, and they would have gotten uglier and uglier under Harris as well. That’s just what it looks like when you’ve got a dying empire fighting to retain planetary control like a cornered animal. You don’t get to be the US president unless you are willing and eager to do ugly things.

Democrats exaggerate how destructive Trump is relative to their own bloodthirsty psychopath candidates. While we can expect Trump to inflict tyranny and abuse upon Americans, it will be nothing compared to the tyranny and abuse he’s going to inflict on people in other countries, and it will be nothing compared to the tyranny and abuse his predecessor has been inflicting on people in other countries. All the histrionic shrieking we see from US liberals about Trump only works inside a western supremacist worldview that does not see the victims of US warmongering as fully human, and therefore sees scorched earth genocidal atrocities as less significant than comparatively minor abuses concerning US domestic policy.

Abandon hope that any positive changes will come from this election result.

Abandon hope that Trump will do good things.

Abandon hope that Democrats will learn any lessons from this loss.

Abandon hope that liberals will suddenly remember that genocide is bad and start protesting against the US-backed slaughter in Gaza.

Abandon hope in US election results, period.

US elections do not yield positive results. They are not designed to benefit ordinary human beings.

Nothing changes for those of us who are dedicated to fighting against the abuses of the US empire. It will be the same fight after January 20 as it was on January 19. We fight on.

[Chris Hedges @ChrisLynnHedges]

Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, along with the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which allied itself with Harris, live in their own non-reality-based belief system. Harris, who was anointed by party elites and never received a single primary vote, proudly trumpeted her endorsement by Dick Cheney, a politician who left office with a 13 percent approval rating. The smug, self-righteous “moral” crusade against Trump stokes the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. It reduces a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It refuses to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. It allows Democratic politicians to blithely ignore their base -  77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents support an arms embargo against Israel. The open collusion with corporate oppression and refusal to heed the desires and needs of the electorate neuters the press and Trump  critics. These corporate puppets stand for nothing, other than their own advancement. The lies they tell to working men and women, especially with programs such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), do far more damage than any of the lies uttered by Trump.

[AshleyStevens @The_Acumen]

I’mma say the hard thing. Kamala Harris did not lose the election because of racism and misogyny. That was a negligible reason at best. Rashida Talib, Ilhan Omar, and Summer Lee all won their seats in swing states VP Harris lost. Sit with the real reasons why she lost.

[Shahid Buttar (find me on Substack and BlueSky) @ShahidForChange]

@peterdaou Indeed. Democrats claim to fear fascism but the finger points back at themselves

[Tiberius @tiberiusfiles]

I’m sorry but it’s actually fucking hilarious that people think Democracy is at stake in the US election. First off, the US isn’t a democracy, it’s an oligarchy masquerading as one; and second, it has to keep masquerading as one because the oligarchy fundamentally requires this.

[Branko Marcetic @BMarchetich]

Many things explain the last year of Biden & the Democrats' monstrous Gaza policy. An underdiscussed one is Morning Joe, the political show of choice for DC elites, Joe Biden first among them, as well as VP Harris & WH aides. I watched the first 6 months of its Gaza coverage:🧵

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

My only take on how Americans should vote is that they should do whatever lets them feel nice, since that's all US elections are: an emotional pacifier to let the masses feel like they have some meaningful control over their country. It's about feelings and nothing else.

If voting for Kamala Harris makes you feel nice because it lets you pretend you're stopping fascism or protecting women and minorities or helping to secure a ceasefire in Gaza or whatever, then go right ahead. That's what your vote is there for.

If voting for Donald Trump makes you feel nice because it lets you pretend you're sticking it to the establishment or punishing the Democrats for their misdeeds or ending the wars or whatever, then by all means do so. This whole spectacle is exclusively about feelings.

If voting for a third party makes you feel nice because it lets you pretend there might be some answer in electoral politics or that the empire will ever allow anyone who truly opposes the abuses of capitalism, militarism and imperialism anywhere near power, then get in there and cast that vote. Whatever makes your feely bits feel nice.

Just don't make the mistake of thinking you're doing anything other than sucking on an emotional pacifier, because you're not.

No matter how you vote, Democrats will continue to win approximately half the time, and Republicans will win the other half.

No matter how you vote, the ever-expanding abuses of capitalism and plutocracy will continue making life worse for ordinary Americans.

No matter how you vote, the US war machine will continue inflicting nightmarish mass military violence on people in other countries in order to maintain its globe-spanning empire.

No matter how you vote, the profit-driven systems which rule our world will continue exterminating our biosphere at an alarmingly rapid rate.

No matter how you vote, the empire's looming confrontations with Russia and China guarantee more world-threatening nuclear brinkmanship in the near future.

No matter how you vote, people in the global south will continue to be robbed and exploited to give the western citizenry of the imperial core enough cheap stuff to keep them pacified and compliant.

No matter how you vote, the US will continue using starvation sanctions, blockades and economic warfare to bully weaker nations into obedience.

Your rulers will never give you the tools to end any of these abuses, because too much power rides on their continuation. They will only give you the tools to mollify your own frustrations and placate your discontentment by giving you a phony ritual to participate in every four years that lets you feel some degree of control.

You're never voting your way out of this. The oligarchs and empire managers who rule you are never going to let you overthrow them by ticking a box. These sociopaths are never going to give their power to you voluntarily out of the kindness of their hearts.

Their rule will end when the project of the US empire ends — either because of outside forces beyond its control, because of inside forces beyond its control, or some combination of these two factors. It will not come about because of how anyone voted in any November. It will only happen because it was forced to happen.

You can help force this to happen by working to foment a revolutionary zeitgeist within your country. You can do this by helping to wake up as many of your countrymen as possible to the fact that their government and media are lying to them constantly, that everything they've been taught about their nation and their world is a lie, and that a better world is possible.

Lies and propaganda play an enormous role in holding the imperial power structure together, so the most effective way to help bring it down is by spreading truth and awareness. Show people how they're being lied to, abused and stolen from. Teach them the truth about the wars, about their government, about their media, about their nation, about the people their government has designated as enemies, and about the abusive systems they all live under.

That's real action. That kind of work matters. Your vote doesn't matter beyond its ability to help you feel a certain way. So do whatever you need to do to feel how you want to feel on election day, and then go do some real work.

[Shahid Buttar (find me on Substack and BlueSky) @ShahidForChange]

Far from the board rooms in which execs plunder irreplaceable natural resources, and committee chambers where policymakers enable predatory industries to undermine our future, indigenous communities work in unseen ways to preserve “the Lungs of the Earth.” https://t.co/8oOvwEvwsg

[Cenk Uygur @cenkuygur]

Kamala Harris is losing in last six polls out of Michigan, a state she has to win. If she said she'd do a weapons embargo on Israel - a moral position she should have anyway - she would pick up five points at least and win the election. But she would rather lose than defy Israel.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Israel can't ban journalists from going into Lebanon like they can in Gaza, so when Israel claimed there was a bunker under a hospital in Beirut the press just sent a bunch of reporters to investigate and they immediately saw Israel was lying. That's why they ban press from Gaza.

[Tiberius @tiberiusfiles]

There it is

[Shahid Buttar (find me on Substack and BlueSky) @ShahidForChange]

@anthonyzenkus I wrote on that theme just a week ago, and the party’s racism and Islamophobia go way, way deeper than kicking people out of events

[Peter Daou @peterdaou]

Liberals - you don't f*cking scare Jill Stein voters (like me) when you accuse us of "helping Trump." You're helping a candidate who is responsible for one of the worst child massacres in history. You're in no position to dictate morality to anyone.

[Nazia Kazi @NaziaKaziTweets]

THREAD: Exhausted from constantly replying angrily to dead-eyed phone/text bankers for the Democrats, I finally responded “yes” when they asked if I wanted to make some money getting out the vote for Harris/Walz. What happened next was beyond absurd.

[Nick Cruse 🥋 @SocialistMMA]

I would happily pay 25 more cents for a burger so my neighbors can make a $20 minimum wage and live a better life

What the hell is wrong with you bootlicking Americans?