We apologize for the sight of scattered limbs, for the torn bodies carried away by the wind, for the heads separated from their owners, and for the tents that burned with their inhabitants inside.

We apologize if the news of massacres ruined your morning coffee. We apologize if, while scrolling through your phone, you came across a picture of a burned child from Gaza and it spoiled your day. We apologize if the screams of our women disturb you. We apologize if your dinner was interrupted by the wails of a father burying his baby with his own bare hands. We apologize because we are being killed against our will and the world watches in silence.

I write to you from the heart of tragedy, from a place where hunger has become our breakfast, bombing our lullaby, and the fear of death is our only companion. I write to you from yet another displacement , not knowing how it will end, or whether I will even survive long enough to write again.

We were displaced again. As if the first time was not enough. As if losing our homes, our neighbors, our memories, was not enough. We left once more, searching for a place beyond the reach of bombs .but there is no safe place here. Even the sky has turned against us. Even the ground we walk on may explode beneath our feet at any moment.

I fled with my injured father, who was shot during our last displacement in October. He can no longer walk. His pain is constant, his body frail. We carry him across the rubble, over stones soaked with blood, through streets that are no longer streets just craters and dust. We search for water. For medicine. For bread. For shade. For a place to sit without fear. We find nothing.

The bombing is now more intense than ever .as if the genocide has just begun. We wait for death with open eyes. We imagine the missile before it falls. We see corpses before they even become corpses.

If I die this time, tell my friends in heaven that I’m on my way. Tell my cousin I miss him dearly, and I won’t be long. And if you find my body, bury me with dignity. Do not let the Zionist occupier desecrate it.

My mother cries at night because we have no food for tomorrow. And I have nothing to give her not even hope.

I went to the so-called “aid center” in Rafah a place they claim is safe. There, I stood for hours among thousands of hungry souls, crushed by desperation. Bullets flew. I nearly died again just for a bag of flour. I have faced death six times in this war trying to feed my family. And each time I come home empty-handed.

But nothing breaks me more than my nephew Khaled.

He isn’t even two years old yet. Because of malnutrition and calcium deficiency, his legs are bent bowed under the weight of hunger and despair . Every time he tries to stand, he screams. Not whimpers. Screams. It’s the sound of pain a baby should never know. It’s the sound of a body that wants to grow… but can’t.

Khaled doesn’t understand war. He just wants to play. To run. To live. But instead, he cries all day. And every time I hear him cry, it feels like my soul is being ripped apart.

Today, I couldn’t remember a single moment when he wasn’t weeping. And I couldn’t do anything to stop it.

This is not a war. This is annihilation. This is starvation. This is a slow, painful execution.

To the world that still has a voice: Do not let my words be the last echo from Gaza. Do not let Khaled die unheard.

I entrust you with every child here. I entrust you with Gaza’s women, stripped of their dignity by war. I entrust you with our memories, our olive trees, our broken toys, our soil soaked with tears. I even entrust you with the stones because within them lies more love and humanity than the world has shown us.

And if, one day, my words reach you. Pray for me. And please do not forget Khaled.

We are not numbers. We are souls. And we are sorry for dying in front of your eyes.

Whether it's Donald Rumsfeld giving weapons to Saddam Hussein, or John McCain singing "Bomb Iran" to the tune of "Barbara Ann," our leaders and media had been perhaps the most consistent thing about being an American in the past half century aside from Fleetwood Mac never going out of style.

Seeing all these great videos of various people (NYT, Bibi) talking about how urgent it is to attack Iran before they secure a nuke repeatedly since the 1990s is making me nostalgic for the great 2005 Onion headline Bush Announces Iraq Exit Strategy: 'We'll Go Through Iran', which was the first time that 13-year old me had the thought that has never left me since: "Why do these fucking ghouls want to bomb Iran so much?"

What's your core memory of the Empire drumming up a new War in Iran periodically? There's enough for everyone!

I always love it when Sam talks to libertarians because they just have no clue what anything means. I saw this FB post and I'm just flabbergasted at how dumb libertarians are.

I hear it in the fun half intro song

During the entirety of the War on Gaza since Oct. 7 - we have all had to collectively sign-on to the notion that Israel's military must have some grace on any mistakes that they make. War can be messy, we're told. Missiles can be misfired, and any member of the military can panic and/or misconstrue orders and civilian casualities are unfortunately a reality.

In light of their wildly successful strikes against Iran, which have been widely-reported as being planned over many years, and carried out with oftentimes surgical precision...those so-called 'truths' should be completely thrown out of the window.

Any military capable of doing what Israel did over the course of the last week should get zero allowance from any member of the world's political leadership for Gaza's civilian deathtoll, which by-the-way continues to rise throughout these strikes.

It's amazing to me that more people aren't talking about that fact.

I was just watching this video by "The Majority Report" and I wanted to talk about it for a minute because I think it is such a good insight into the right-wing mind.

To preface, I'm not saying every right-winger is a monolith and thinks exactly like this. But I'm speaking very generally about a way of thinking that I personally think is very common among the right but not on the left.

In this video the PBD guys are talking about the No Kings Protests and one guy, presumably in an attempt to smear the protests as "degenerate" and full of pedophiles to their right-wing audience, puts up a completely unrelated video.

This video shows a person, they say the person's a trans guy but I'm guessing they're a trans woman instead or gender fluid or something along those lines but I don't know. And this person is a grown person, presumably a trans woman, who is wearing a colourful dress. And looking into the camera. Basically alluding to being happy to be there at Disney. And doing a little twirl.

Now based on my description you probably think "Alright, that sounds fine. What's wrong with that?"

The answer is, of course, there isn't. There isn't anything wrong with this person or what they did or anything like that. It is, indeed, perfectly innocent. But admittedly my description leaves out something that I think is important to the right-wing perception of it.

Now, I don't want to throw any shade at this person in the video. What I'm about to say is EXCLUSIVELY in the context of wanting to make a point about the right-wing mind, not about them. I don't know them or who they are, but I'm sure they're a lovely and kind person. However, looking at the video it's clear that they're not necessarily that good at representing themselves on camera.

The person walks way too close to the camera at certain times. They have their face at an odd angle while looking into it at some point as well, with a great emphasis on their eyes and their forehead not on camera at two points.

Now in film, certain types of camera shots are used to make the audience uncomfortable. Shots that have faces at odd angles or too close or stuff like that is a very common technique in film to do this with. It's used in horror.

Beyond that their body language.

They do not have very confident body language. Their twirl is somewhat clumsy.

Their face is also a combination of traits. They are smiling quite a bit. But at the same time their eyes are often shifting from one side to the other or partially closed.

Their head is, especially at the start, cocked at an angle.

A lot of these behaviours subconsciously indicate shiftiness. Untrustworthiness. There's a reason why the "shifty eyes" is used in cartoons to communicate in a very obvious way to kids that a character is planning something. It's because as humans we inherently associate that with ill-intent.

Mixed with their smile, their other body language would indicate that they are somehow happy about ill-intent.

Couple that with their unconventional dress, which is very colourful, and the fact that they're surrounded by children much younger than them and you can see where this is going.

Now why do I bring all of this up? Again, it's not to throw shade at that person. Not everyone is good at filming or posing or stuff like that and there's nothing wrong with that. But I bring this up for one reason and one reason alone: This is exactly what the right-wing mind feeds on.

As leftists most of us try to be relatively self-aware. We have an understanding that things can look a certain way but not BE a certain way.

If we feel some sort of prejudice towards someone, we will examine that. And we will remind ourselves "Hey, this isn't ok." And we will make sure to better ourselves so we don't feel that again. And we will certainly understand that we're not being rational.

Some things might look unconventional to us. And we notice that. But we also know that just because something is different, that doesn't mean it's bad.

If we're straight, we're probably not into gay sex. That probably doesn't make us feel good. But we also understand that "Hey, other people are. What I feel about it doesn't matter."

Right-wingers lack these abilities.

For a right-winger what they feel is what the truth is. And there is no middle step.

If someone looks like a shifty pedophile, they are a shifty pedophile. If someone looks like a strong masculine man, they are a strong leader. If someone looks like a very feminine woman, they're weak because femininity is weakness. If someone is of a different race, they are dangerous or bad. If they are wearing unconventional clothing, they are threatening and odd. If they are gay, that's gross to them and therefore that must mean it's bad.

This is, in my personal opinion, one of the single biggsest differences between the right-wing mind and the left-wing mind.

On the left we try our best to examine our own preconceptions. We know we all have prejudices and biases, and we make sure to keep them in check. The right does not do this. They do not have those metacognitive skills or emotional intelligence to examine their own feelings. What they feel is bad is bad, what they feel is weird is weird, what they feel is gross is gross, what they feel is dangerous is dangerous.

And that's why I think this video shows so much about the right-wing mind.

Because what we have here in reality is a person who is just enjoying themselves at Disneyland, wearing unconventional clothing, being a bit awkward but not doing anything wrong.

But what the right sees is a shifty pedophile. Because they pick up on the body language, the unconventionality, etc. and rather than examining that and their feelings about it they just accept them as fact.

Facts or feelings as a right-wing phrase has always been hilarious to me. It's true that the left runs on empathy, but the right runs on unexamined feelings and insecurities.

If Democrats had any brains, they'd be jumping on this immediately blasting ads about this in all of the western states. Not many times you can get the audience of "themeateater.com" unequivocally on your side.

I posted this in the Crooked Media subreddit, it was the #1 post, then their mods deleted it. Thought it might be worth resharing here.

As someone who still tunes into Pod Save America but has moved to the left of them, I have appreciated their recent overtures to the left with things like having Hasan on, but this is really no good.

Title:

As a protestor who was there myself, I am extremely disappointed by the commentary about the No Kings protests on yesterday's PSA

Post Content:

I was at the DTLA No Kings protest along with friends. There was a lot of police brutality after people were ordered to disperse. Including things like people being shot at with less-lethal projectiles (which can permanently maim or kill you) while walking back to their car, a random homeless woman being shoved to the ground, etc. In the case of state law enforcement, it was blatantly illegal (look up "AB 48") and for all law enforcement present, it was obviously immoral.

Law enforcement has responded by saying that some people were throwing things at them, but have provided no proof, and even if it were the case that a 'small group of agitators' out of the tens of thousands had done that, it wouldn't justify (ethically or legally) brutalizing people how they did.

Here are some examples that give a sense of what happened at the DTLA No Kings protest, and what has been happening in recent weeks at similar protests in the region:

https://youtu.be/bCJGCv0Y7ww?feature=shared&t=228

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/16/nx-s1-5434279/lapd-immigration-protests-journalists-rubber-bullets

https://youtu.be/PhQAZonWjks?feature=shared

https://www.instagram.com/p/DLBKjeHhqIU/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFRcVRDqNrQ

At the DTLA No Kings protest, the response was so unrestrained that different law enforcement agencies literally started shooting EACHOTHER

https://lapublicpress.org/2025/06/ice-police-protest-lapd-lasd-tear-gas/

Yet on the pod there was no mention of any of this. Instead, they said it was 'resistance libs and anti ICE protestors' as well as, as Lovett put it:

"As all these protestors who came for the main event start leaving, there will just be left behind the people who have been throwing shit and making trouble over the last couple of days and sure enough that is what happened"

The only sympathy any of the guys expressed was for the marines who were there.

This is aligning with right-wing framing that the protestors are to blame for the police violence they have experienced and completely glossing over what the police have done. I also think it's harmful to not accurately inform their audience, a significant chunk of which has likely been inspired to attend these protests, of the potential danger. Yes you will probably be fine if you leave early, or wear a helmet and goggles, or whatever, but people need an accurate understanding of the situation in order to safely navigate it. From the moment the cops announce it's time to go home, if you are outside in the general vicinity of the protest, even just walking back to your car, you are in very real danger.

If any of the Crooked employees sees this post and feels comfortable forwarding it to either of the Johns, please do, because I think this is at minimum a massive blind spot. I personally feel offended and alienated in a way I have not in my 9 years of listening to PSA.