The gay former transportation secretary
What on earth does his sexuality have to do with this topic? Why bother mentioning it?
Advocate focuses on the LGBT community.
I get it, it's still jarring though. I get that an LGBTQI+ mag would want to promote his sexuality to prove visibility of senior civil servants or G-men or whatever the US calls them, but it just feels like a qualifier that shouldn't be necessary.
Happy to learn otherwise though, I'm open to opinions.
"federal agents" for future reference. But call them what they are, SA.
Not every single person involved with the government is SA.
Why are dems endlessly talking about what messaging they should do? Build a fucking messaging apparatus like Fox News and do it. We shouldn’t even hear about the strategizing, we should just hear the drum beat.
Why are dems endlessly talking about what messaging they should do?
Because it's all about the optics. They don't actually do any of those things, they just want people to think they are.
I get where you're coming from with this, but I'm not convinced that fighting fire with fire is a viable solution here. We need to put some bite back into journalistic integrity laws, not just create an opposing misinformation machine.
You make a good point. But the issue here is that, the leaders should be leading and not just talking about what leaders should do.
They always seem to get lost in their own noise.
Voices like Bernie, AOC, et al. will often start taking real action and garner positive national attention, but it regularly falls apart because the party as a whole seems uninterested in falling into line.
Nobody is supporting their good ideas because they keep waiting to get together on their perfect ideas, but spoiler that basically never happens. (They can be barely effective if they control the presidency and Congress, with Congress aligning to the president's agenda, but without that perfect environment they are effectively ineffective.)
The left can do what fox news does but only talk about the truth and still be just as effective the majority of the time.
Fox News is effective specifically because of their misinformation though.
They canceled Colbert
Trump rapes children.
How 'bout you just do something good for people. All this "he's a scumbag" noise is going to get nothing done, and isn't going to win the midterms. Everybody who doesn't already know he's a scumbag is not going to learn it now.
What specifically would you like Pete Buttigege, former Transportation secretary and former mayor of South Bend Indiana to do?
As far as I know Pete isn't even employed right now.
I didn't realize that HN is career had ended.
Seriously though, if he is up to chrping about Epstein, why not chirp about programs that help people, about restoring democratic institutions so that they help people again. As a former mayor and Transport minister, can he not talk about infra that helps people and describe escape making moralism the basis of his platform.
Actually he's really good at talking about those things. But you haven't heard it. Which I think proves his point because here you are, talking about this.
Never forget Buttigieg is a McKinsey guy. His folksy Howdy Doody shit is an act. He is not on the side of the people.
During a speech in 2019, Pete Buttigieg, then a presidential candidate, stated that he would have taken a pill to make him straight if it had been available when he was younger
He said this with his husband and newly adopted son in the audience.
Dude is just another Andrew Cuomo / Gavin Newsom waiting to happen.
I mean I think trying to say that him saying that is shitty is kinda disingenuous. The guy was born in 1982, grew up in South Bend, Indiana, and probably realized he was gay during the 90s, a time that we, the LGBT community, were still reeling from and dealing with the AIDS crisis. I have no doubt a ton of queer kids back then thought the same as him because they just wanted to be normal and not thought of as monsters.
Plus his parents worked at Notre Dame, a Catholic university. So he was probably around a whole lot of not very accepting Catholics during his childhood.
What the point of that story was at the time was that he had to accept who he was, and that it was okay to be gay. That's a thing a lot of queer people have to go through.
Yeah. Matthew Shepard was murdered when he was 15 or 16. There's a reason "Pride" is named "Pride", and it's not because pride and acceptance is the default state for homosexual youths.
My brother and his husband, both openly gay, stated to me just the other day that in their youth they prayed they were not gay and even shamed themselves for having homoerotic thoughts. What Pete is saying here probably reflects the way a large part of the LGBTQ+ community has felt as they came to grips with the way they feel and identify in contrast to societal expectations.
I don’t see how this somehow makes the guy a bad politician. If anything it shows he is human and normal.
My brother and his husband, both openly gay, stated to me just the other day that in their youth they prayed they were not gay and even shamed themselves for having homoerotic thoughts.
A public figure saying he's ashamed to be gay during a national debate definitely reinforces the sense of shame and thoughts of self-harm.
Ok guy.
Exactly. He doesn't "believe" anything per se. He's a cypher. Believes are fungible; having a belief is a transaction for him.
It's the fundamental difference between authentic politicians who have a belief and then seek the power to make that belief a reality, versus wanting power and then adopting whatever beliefs it takes to get you there.
Yeah, my distaste for Buttigieg stemmed not from him being a centrist, but because he doesn't seem to stand for anything. Like Harris he started the primary in a vague progressive lane and then realized that he wasn't going to complete with Bernie or Warren and decided Biden was weak in the moderate path and shifted there. If there was a communist revolution, Pete would speak the theory and throw his hat into the ring for Chairman.
He's the epitomy of the view that politics is mostly about finely crafting a message and winning the spin game, not policy or action. He may even be right, but I don't trust him to be anything more than a spokesman.
Yeah, gay men from more prosperous backgrounds have some fucked up coping skills, they get worse as they rise in the world.
It’s more about class sickness than anything about being gay. Being a sexual minority fucks you up in any scenario, it’s just how the fucked upedness plays out at that level.
As a good old fashioned working class male homo who can pass as prosperous due to education and natural perspicuity, I have broad experience seeing how class fucks up gay men specifically.
it can't be that Buttigeig is just an extreme corporatist who would say anything to get power?
Being a sexual minority fucks you up in any scenario, it’s just how the fucked upedness plays out at that level.
In my experience, the gay community (at least - the gay male community in Houston that I'm familiar with) is this incredibly tight knit and supportive group of sincere and loving people. The adversity brought this minority group together and bound them into a network of mutual aid and compassion for one another that's so far removed from anything I see among straight peers.
As a good old fashioned working class male homo who can pass as prosperous due to education and natural perspicuity, I have broad experience seeing how class fucks up gay men specifically.
It's one more wedge issue used by the ruling class to divide and conquer.
Never forget nobody@dbzero once bought items off Amazon. They are not on the side of the people.
I’d take Buttigieg over Trump, but I wouldn’t support him in the primary. McKinsey is a fucking terrifyingly militantly corporate entity. Buttigieg would have to distance himself from them to a high degree to deserve any trust moving forward as a candidate.
As an official seeking the release of the Epstein files, I support him and everyone else making the call 100%.
If they combine that with improving the lives of the working class, sure. Else gtfo
Prosecuting pedophiles would help. Make "holy people" mandatory reporters just as therapists and teachers are.
I hate the term "mandatory reporter". Like, that should be obvious. If a kid confides in you and you don't tell someone, you're just as guilty. You're basically an accomplice or co-conspirator at that point.
What if the kid specifically tells you because they think it's confidential and the thing they are seeking is counseling? Reporting wasn't made mandatory for social workers and counselors because they were thinking about the desires of the rapist, it's because they wanted kids to have someone they could trust.
Priests I'm not so sure, as the perpetrator is likely a member of their club.
As a Democrat Strategist that's a BAD Idea! Republicans OBVIOUSLY love Pedophiles like Jeffrey Epstein so we should INSTEAD tell people We ALSO had Sex with Children on Child Rape Island as to NOT Upset Republican voters who will NEVER vote Democrat!
Oh just crawl back into your snake hole already, James Carville...
We didn't know about cointelpro and other clandestine operations until civilians broke into the FBI office and stole files. We won't see the Epstein list unless something similar happens.
He's right but screw that mealy mouthed two faced establishment democrat
Not wrong, he’s just a smug McKinsey asshole.
Did Trump have issues with his bone spurs when he was raping 12 year old girls, or did the bone spurs only cause an issue when we was shitting his pants to afraid to fight for his country because he’s a cowardly pile of shit?
Lying his way out of Vietnam so he wouldn't have to rape and kill people was probably the most virtuous thing the man has ever done.
Don't think he got off easy, though. Managing his sex life in the 80s and avoiding STDs was his personal Vietnam, after all....
Why do you say was? Do you think he had a sudden change of heart the instant Epstein died? From that day to now he's been a straight arrow?
I bet he bought that headline from the buttigieg 2028 funds he's already started collecting on the sly.
He's a greedy grasping politician with burning ambition where his ideals should be.
Look, I dunno much about Buttigieg beyond being gay and former transport secretary. That being said, this a niche LGBTQ+ outlet. Of course they're gonna talk about the guy.
I like Pete and all, but maybe the politicians should stop hoping they should do something and, y'know, just DO something?
....so south bend chnged since i left...
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