Vaush Quotes

The problem with leftists is that they don't have an example to point to, right? What are you going to point to? China? The Soviet Union? No, no. If you're going to make an argument for anything leftist, you're kind of throwing darts at the wall. Not necessarily a bad dart or a bad wall, but you're having to work from first principles a little bit. This is why a lot of lefties struggle with electoralism, because electoralism is the bridge that exists right now that gets us from A to B and bridge-building is tough, but imagining the other side of the river is easy. In fact, you can see it from here, it's in your head.

First and foremost, if you're dealing with somebody who cares about you in any capacity [...] the most valuable tool you have to convince them of any position is the empathy they hold for you.

Step one is always seeing tomorrow. Step two is figuring out a solution.

I think that one of my biggest issues with, like, broader political discourse is that -- especially on the left -- people fixate, like, really, really hard on being a good advocate. God's honest truth is, the first step to winning is being a good person. And I don't just mean good in the sense of, like, being morally good. I mean being good at being a person. Being disciplined and effective. Saving your money when you need to. Being community-oriented. It's not just a matter of being morally correct, it's a matter of being in a position where, if you have the opportunity, you can most effectively advocate for your beliefs. Discipline matters. Community matters. Not just community with other people like you, community with people who you don't like as well. I'm sorry to say, but you gotta know your neighbors. Even if they're Trump supporters, you gotta know your neighbors.

People who were born in time to serve for World War I died after the moon landing. You've got a lot of time ahead of you.

I think that if you ask me right now, why it went down this way? Ballpark answer: Misogyny, weakened rhetoric on immigration -- that is to say, Democrats stopped pushing back against anti-immigrant sentiment and started kind of adopting it themselves -- and a lack of economic populism. They are fighting for procedural institutionalist rhetoric in a world that is populist.

Could they really divide us that well? Could Trump or "The Powers That Be" commit that well to a doctrine of dismantling, not only our democracy, but all of the protections, all of the interconnectedness that queer people, people of different races, whatever, that all of them have managed to build? I don't think so.

There are lots of people all around the world who endure worse circumstances than you have up to this point, and what you will endure over the next four or however many years. I'm not saying you got it easy; you don't. I'm not saying that you should be "Oh, y'know, because kids in Africa are starving" or whatever. I'm just saying, they do make it work in a lot of cases.

The main thing you want, if you want to survive difficult times, is know your neighbor. You can get more done as a group than you ever can as an individual, and the last thing that you want during socially difficult times is to not have your neighbor's number.

Social media platforms are terrible at acknowledging context and power relations when it comes to harassment, this is why so many trans people on Twitter get banned for calling their harassers TERFs, which is categorically not a slur. Hasan’s flagrant use of the word forced them to commit to a position. They committed harder than I expected, considering my ban.

You're gonna have to be smart when, in a better world, in a better time, you could've gotten away with being more frivolous. You're going to have to be withdrawn in times when maybe being more open would've been better. It's going to ask a lot-- the world's going to ask a lot of you, and none of it's going to be fair, but you can do it. And like everything else, this will pass. And things will get better. On a long enough time-scale, the "It's So Over" is always followed by the "We're So Fucking Back". It's just math.

I do think there is a bit of a glimmer of hope. For one, as I have pointed out [...], there is a global tide of fascism that is creeping up, but if we look at comparable examples of this happening in other countries [...], there seems to be a very pronounced lack of sauce in a lot of these fascist movements -- an inability to fully collapse the liberal democracies they're built off of.

People used to be a lot more willing to wish death on others because people used to be a lot less human to each other. I think it's a little bit easier to sympathize with people in an environment where you can pop open Twitter and just see 'The Enemy' be normal.

People don't like being convinced that they're wrong. In fact, our brains are unmatched in their ability to self-justify, to make us feel that we are right and to shut out any information that contradicts that. On a purely logical level, most people aren't going to be moved on a incorrect belief they have by arguing with them about it.

Sorry that the memory of you being told that you're loved has to be tainted by the moment it was associated with.