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[-] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

Cause non-millionaire president is socialism!!

[-] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago

Fully agree.

[-] Xerxos@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 day ago

We have a openly homosexual and a openly lesbian politician here in Germany. He is corrupt as hell and she is the worst possible person you could imagine.

Having a hard life doesn't automatically make you a good person.

[-] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 3 points 17 hours ago

..and Alice is a racist sack of shit, but her partner is from Bangladesh.

It definitely doesn't, but at the same time experiencing hardships doesn't automatically make you have empathy. Look at our vice president. Look at the billionaire that got him elected.

Empathy is what this letter is all about. I want someone who knows how it feels. And, instead of rising to the top to enjoy the view or talk about bootstraps, they become the arm that reaches back and pulls others up with them.

[-] hexagon@lemmy.ml 2 points 18 hours ago

If I understood lgbt voters enough that won’t be an issue, politicians could burn the world to the ground if that would mean that they get their policies

[-] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

There is also a group of right-wingers that fight against gay men and trans women with the rhetoric "they will take away womens' rights."

If people were just slightly more kind so many problems would be fixed.

[-] MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip 2 points 17 hours ago

It would be helpful if it weren't so profitable for media organizations to spend so much time convincing people that other people aren't kind, so why bother.

[-] Sergio@piefed.social 91 points 2 days ago
[-] lena@gregtech.eu 8 points 2 days ago

Why is "and an attitude" and "and that nasty" crossed out?

[-] apftwb@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

I think it just doesn't flow with the rest of the poem. We currently have a president with an attitude and its not great. Also "that nasty hospital food" tonally just don't feel like it fits IMO.

[-] Eh_I@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

I think it suggests that all black women have attitudes and all hospital food is nasty.

And only one of those is true.

[-] prole 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I thought maybe (given the date) that they thought about the "attitude" the current president displayed, and realized they didn't want that anymore.

Edit: Nevermind, it was written in 1992 apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_want_a_president

[-] lena@gregtech.eu 6 points 2 days ago

Doesnt it more so suggest people with bad teeth have an attitude?

[-] Eh_I@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

We can figure this out. We just need a white-board and markers, maybe some lab coats and stethoscopes!

[-] lena@gregtech.eu 6 points 2 days ago

Pins and red string are also essential

[-] perishthethought@piefed.social 12 points 2 days ago

Oh wow, good find

[-] pennomi@lemmy.world 94 points 2 days ago

I want that too, but maybe not all of those things at the same time. I’d feel really bad for them.

[-] mitch@piefed.mitch.science 45 points 2 days ago

no, no. we MUST create this sacrifice-person to lead us. this is our shot.

[-] MummysLittleBloodSlut 7 points 2 days ago

I think you invented Jesus

[-] Hideakikarate@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago

It didn't turn out so well the first time.

[-] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 79 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Text:

I want a dyke for president. I want a person with aids for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn't have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn't the lesser of. two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to aids, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no air conditioning, a president who has stood on line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and layed off and sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported.

I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth ~~and an attitude~~, someone who has eaten ~~that nasty~~ hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn't possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief and never caught.

Thematically and stylistically it’s very Ginsburg

[-] Psythik@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago

You forgot to cross out ~~and an attitude~~ and ~~that nasty~~, but great transcript otherwise.

[-] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Thanks for the proofread, edited

[-] hazl 3 points 2 days ago

I really appreciate those edits, too. I can hear that thought process.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a poet?

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

That sounds a lot like my favorite poster.
Excerpt:

Data
will help us remember, but will it let us forget? It will help politicians get elected, but will it help them lead? It will help companies make products addictive, but will it help us get free once we're hooked? It will help advertisers see people as statistics, but will it help us remember those statistics are people? It will help banks prevent credit card fraud, but will it help us stay out of debt? It will help credit card companies predict the impending collapse of a marriage, but will it keep our marriages from falling apart? It will help parents make kids genetically perfect, but will it help us love them regardless? It will help high-frequency traders sell stocks in nanoseconds, but will it help protect markets from feedback loops in their programs? It will help meteorologists predict storms and tornadoes, but will it help us rebuild the homes of survivors? It will help biologists map the migration of fish, but will it keep us from overfishing the oceans?
(...)
It will help us keep count of everything in our lives, but will it help us understand that not everything that counts in our lives can be counted? It will help us see the world as it is, but will it help us see the world as it could be?

[-] Wytch@lemmy.zip 30 points 2 days ago

Strong The New Colossus energy:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
[-] prole 6 points 2 days ago

That poem legit brings tears to my eyes every time I read it.

Even more so now than before.

[-] pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 2 days ago

I think mr orange rapist wants to get rid of that plaque

[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 7 points 2 days ago

In 2019, during the first Trump administration, Ken Cuccinelli, whom Trump appointed as acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, revised a line from the poem in support of the administration's "public charge rule", which would have rejected would-be immigrants who lacked adequate income and education to support themselves. Cuccinelli would have rewritten the caveat as, "Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge". He later suggested that the "huddled masses" should be European, and he downplayed the poem as "not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty."

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 13 points 2 days ago

Man, that's a long list of requirements.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 14 points 2 days ago

Well, let’s include this, with the following message to whoever originally wrote it: We hope you’ll get in touch with Barbara Burgower at Straight Arrow Books in order that we may properly credit this piece of writing and carry the customary copyright of permissions and acknowledgments in future editions of this book.

senator mcgovern had hinged his l~~xxxx~~cxx whole campaign on oppostion to the vietnam war, ~~xxxxxxxxxxxx~~ hoping to pursuade americans of its immorality and awakenong in them a sense of outrage and shame, he tried to demonstrate that the continuing american presnece in vietnam, the bombing and the ~~xxxxxx~~ suport of what he denounced as a corrupt dictatorship was an indication of ~~xxx~~ a ~~xxxxx~~ moral collapse in the ~~x~~ united states. He did not balme the people but the nixon administration / but the people did not ~~xxxxx~~ respond to his appeals, ironically yesterday morning he voted here in support of a local ~~xxxxx~~ proposition to outlwa the killing of a small bird known as the @mourning dove@ last night, as the nixon landslide gathered momentum that is precisely what heorge mcgovern became—a mourning dove.

i ~~xxxxx~~ asked him if the worst happened whether he would run again and he said: @emphantically: no i will not. i shall stay in the senate but xxx someone else will have to carry on what I began.@

frewuently in the last two weeks, senator mcgovern had spoken of a young p black man who ~~xxxxxx~~ predicted that the election was going to break his heart because he was going to g find out that the american people were not as high minded as he thought they were/typically, mr. mcgovern challenged this view, ~~x~~ saying that he believed in the goodness and decency of the people and that they would respond to their own consciences.

but the election did break his heart after all. he thought he saw ~~xxx~~ faces glowing with hope xx that the country would aim for higher standards, yearing for peace and an edn to the domestic anguish. but the voters turned their backs on him.

[-] tpyo@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I'd appreciate that quote more if you could link the original context. It's very hard to parse

This is how I see the comments:

[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 6 points 2 days ago

I was intentionally being a little bit cryptic, but it's from "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72," from the November chapter. It is one of the absolutely crucial books to read if you want to know about the American political process, at least the 20th century form of it.

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[-] magnetosphere@fedia.io 11 points 2 days ago

This is magnificent.

[-] tanisnikana@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

This is beautiful and necessary.

[-] SanctimoniousApe@piefed.social 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I want someone who has... ... been sexually harassed...

DAMN! I just barely missed being a qualified candidate! And they told me I didn't have to be attractive to get anywhere in life...

[-] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

Being sexually harassed isn’t about being attractive, it’s about being vulnerable.

[-] kelpie_returns@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

CAUTION: this shit rh some 🔥

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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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