Surviving in a “hard situation” resembles suffering much more closely than it does strength.

That flower is not surviving pinned under rubble for the sake of inspiring the flowers that are not, nor for the sake of “becoming stronger” - it is surviving because until someone bothers to remove the boulders that are crushing it, its options are to survive or to die. And plenty of flowers in that same situation would die, and its actually not out of the question that this flower’s eventual death will be due to these conditions that it is forced to endure.

Knowing that, would you still compliment the flower on its strength, on the fact that it has not yet been killed, before considering that maybe, just maybe, you and the other flowers might want to find a way to do something about those boulders that would have already killed any weaker flower?

One should not prioritize complimenting the systematically abused for surviving their undue suffering above working to prevent that undue suffering from continuing. Their suffering and tragedy should not be repurposed as inspiration porn.

A bit of a tangential question, but one I know a little about. Mostly correct, but I’d phrase it differently: up until the civil war, the Republicans were generally left-leaning and Democrats were generally right-leaning.

In terms of what lead to the switch, after the civil war, there weren’t a whole lot of politicians in the south from either party who supported abolition. A solid number of those politicians likely saw a need to work together if they wanted white supremacy to succeed in a nation that just rejected their racist bs so hard that they fought and won a war with them over it.

Initially, the Democratic party was to remain the bastion of right wing regressivism, but the lines weren’t firmly established until democrats started voicing their support for civil rights. Most majorly, Truman voicing his support for civil rights began the redrawing of the lines, and LBJ passing the civil rights act cemented the switch. All remaining Democrats who opposed civil rights switched to the Republican party, where they would cultivate and appeal to voters who shared their opinion on civil rights by developing and implementing the southern strategy.

This is the foundation of the modern Republican party - they were the party formed to oppose and undermine civil rights, a role they’ve maintained to this day.

I think the claims I’ve heard irl are something along the lines of “can’t trust Google search results, they’re censoring 'em!” I figure the things they’re mad Google “censors” are probably literal or borderline fascist content - and I also tend to assume they’re probably misusing the word censor. I think the tenuous connection here is just that yeah Google is probably doing some shady stuff with their search results.

Not directed exclusively at me, but I had a math teacher throw a temper tantrum directed at a classroom of 4th graders about how much of a personal injustice it was to her that our parents kept sending her complaints, and that has got to be the worst thing she did.

To give you a picture as to why she might’ve been getting so many, when my Mom sent in one of these “complaints,” she received a response in the form of a metaphor about how coal must be put under immense pressure in order to become a diamond… I think my Mom responded that something like a flower might serve as a better metaphor for a fucking 9 year old, though I doubt it did much to change that jerk’s mind.

Anyway, having her as an instructor set me back at least a year in math, and I’ve had other people who were in that class say that that’s where their issues with anxiety started.