Michael Strother ᴿᵉᵃᵈʸ ᶜˡᵉᵃʳ 🌄🛩🇺🇦

Software developer. Hang glider pilot. Former aikidoka. Windmill cancer survivor.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.
I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.
If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy.
If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.
If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.
It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.
Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”
And that’s the part that should chill us.
Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?
Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress.
Now the mask is off. Now we know.
And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand.
– Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.

[Eugene Eugenius @CrockerBoy]

The people who tried to save Anne Frank were breaking the law. The people who killed her were following it.
#Project2025

[Acyn @Acyn]

Crockett: 19 of the 26 Republicans on this committee voted against keeping FEMA funded and 9 are in states that were directly hit. I don’t understand why we pretend that we have all these issues with this agency when you don’t want to fund it.

[Michael Strother ᴿᵉᵃᵈʸ ᶜˡᵉᵃʳ 🌄🛩🇺🇦 @skyhopper]

@mmpadellan 👋🌊🌊🌊

[Seth Andrews @SethAndrewsTTA]

This gives me no pleasure, but given Elon Musk's history, claims, and behaviors, I can't let Richard's "welfare of the world at heart" line pass without comment.

While watching Elon's rise to greater power (and the fawning of his fans), I started keeping notes. Thread (1)

[Jo @JoJoFromJerz]

Ladies and gentlemen, your party of “law and order.”

[Republicans against Trump @RpsAgainstTrump]

BREAKING: Trump picked Fox News Host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.

WTF???

[Michael Strother ᴿᵉᵃᵈʸ ᶜˡᵉᵃʳ 🌄🛩🇺🇦 @skyhopper]

@TheWapplehouse Winning isn't as important as hate.

[Jo @JoJoFromJerz]

On the day of her baby shower, 18-year-old Texan Nevaeh Crain began miscarrying and after 3 ER visits, 2 ultrasounds and 20 hours of being denied the medical procedure she desperately needed… she died.
If only she had kept her “legs closed”, right @ksorbs?

[Sarah Larchmont @SarahLarchmont]

Good luck

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

Every word this woman said. 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥👇

[Michael Strother ᴿᵉᵃᵈʸ ᶜˡᵉᵃʳ 🌄🛩🇺🇦 @skyhopper]

@ProjectLincoln Mocking a disabled member of the press.

[Michael Strother ᴿᵉᵃᵈʸ ᶜˡᵉᵃʳ 🌄🛩🇺🇦 @skyhopper]

@AmyLynnStL Bizzaro world version of the Price is Right.

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

REMINDER: throw out rotting pumpkins now that it's November

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

Thank you @KingJames for using your voice to make clear what’s at stake.

Listen to LeBron, make sure you vote.

[Senator Bob Duff, Majority Leader, Connecticut @senatorduff]

It’s 1939 again at Madison Square Garden.

Same Sh*t Different Dictator

[sysengineer @_sysengineer]

Take my money

[💙It💙Is💙What💙It💙Is💙 @tyrion_gm]

@mmpadellan German here.

In Germany the argument "but Hitler did also good things" is frequently - and exclusively - used by Neo-Nazis and Holocaust-deniers, people on the ultra-right fringe of fascism. That's who Trump is associating himself with.

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

Dear Republicans,

Adolf Hitler killed 6 million Jews.

141,000 Americans died fighting him and his Nazi Generals.

Some of them were our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents.

It's totally OK to not agree that Hitler did some good things.

It's also OK to totally SHUN Hitler, and say he's a murderous, Nazi piece of shit.

Furthermore, anyone who praises, embraces, or emulates him and his Generals, through their words and actions, should be totally shunned as well.

You definitely shouldn't vote for those people either.

Signed,
This Shouldn't Have to be Said

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

THIS.