why i say: fuck the parties 🐘🎖️ 🏳️‍🌈 ⛪️ 🇮🇱 🚔🕊️🔫 ☮️🏳️‍⚧️

aka: the two party brain-fuck

🧃

rude.
hilarious.
still true.

(blue-hair + pronouns + chronically online vibes)
🌹 ✊ 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ 🌍 🌱 ☮️ 📢 🕊️

v.

(maybe nazi + love guns + truly believe jesus = white)
🐘 💰 🔫 🎖️ ⛪️ 🇮🇱 🚔 🛑 🛡️

first off.
the whole
“team red vs. team blue” bullshit?
stupid as fuck.
always was.
never the fucking point.

america didn’t start
with two fucking parties
in the goddamn constitution —
the framers were
literally screaming
don’t do factions, dumbasses
and within like five minutes
they were like
“ok word—
federalists vs. anti-federalists,
let’s fucking go.”
pure fucking clownery
from the fucking jump.

so as per usual—
let’s run it the fuck back.

✶ "i am not a crook"
nixon (1969–74)

the plot twist king.
bro was a crook.
watergate, baby. 👀
tried to bug the dnc,
lied,
obstructed,
dragged
the whole fucking country
through scandal
until this fucker had to resign.
also started the “war on drugs”
basically as a tool
to criminalize white hippies +
black people.
straight from his aides’
motherfucking mouths.
big time slime.
but signed the fucking epa
into goddamn existence
and green-lit title ix
(big feminist/environment flex)—
objectively fucking huge.
then turned around
and laid the scaffolding
for the modern drug war
with the
controlled substances act
and the dea.
environment + women = up;
criminalization machine = also up.
welcome to the fucking contradictions.
clean air for your lungs,
prison time
for your neighbors.

✶ major “grandpa in cardigans” energy.
carter (1977–81)

lowkey the deregulator king.
totally fucked the iran hostage crisis
(444 days of fucking humiliation).
deregulated
trucking,
airlines,
banking —
which sounded efficient
until it gutted wages +
blew holes in fucking industries.
preached human rights
while arming fucking dictators.
fucking slime in a sweater.
bro—go deeper.
the airline deregulation act (1978)
ripped price/route controls off the industry —
cheaper fares + more flights for many—
also goodbye small-town airports +
hello “$35 carry-on fees.”
tradeoffs, baby.
that shit is fucking real.

✶ full roid rage level “law & order.”
reagan (1981–89)

this motherfucker.
mr. hollywood himself.
bro was a little weird.
run it back.
iran-contra: illegally sold
weapons to iran
to fund nicaraguan
fucking death squads.
then lied about it.
exploded homelessness
by slashing fucking
mental health + housing funding.
union-busting (see: PATCO strike).
built “morning in america”
on fucking mass incarceration +
exploding fucking inequality.
tough-on-crime
on fucking steroids.
anti-drug abuse acts (’86, ’88)
baked in the infamous
100:1 crack vs. powder
fucking sentencing gap =
decades of racialized
fucking damage
and
communities nuked.
simultaneously,
he signed IRCA (1986) —
employer sanctions +
border enforcement
and fucking amnesty
for ~3 million
undocumented people.
fucking contradictions,
again.

✶ the og bush
george h. w. bush (1989–93)

“read my lips”
guy who then…
raised taxes
lmfao.
willie horton ad:
racist fearmongering
that helped him fucking win.
doubled the fuck down
on drug war + mandatory minimums.
played the gulf war like a fucking
tv special —
ratings up, bodies downrange.
signed the
1990 budget deal
because
math > slogans.
also signed
the ada (1990) —
landmark civil-rights law
for disabled americans.
that’s real governance,
not vibes.
pretty much
he fumbled slogans
but left wheelchair ramps
fucking everywhere.

✶ slick willie =
the centrist fucking shitshow.
fucking clinton (1993–2001)

yo. this fucking guy.
bro,
my man
pisses me the fuck off, tbh.
most def likes minors.
crime bill: supercharged prison building.
welfare reform:
time limits + work rules
that left poor families fucked.
fucking NAFTA:
factories shuttered, towns gutted.
the monica fucking lewinsky scandal:
lied under motherfucking oath,
impeached for perjury + obstruction.
repealed glass-steagall = set the stage for 2008.
charm slime.
saxophone slime.
nafta implemented (1994):
integrated
north american
supply chains;
lowered prices;
messy sectoral winners/losers,
esp. manufacturing.
1994 crime bill:
$$$ for cops/prisons +
violence against women act +
“tough” incentives states chased;
big carceral tailwinds.
welfare reform (PRWORA, 1996):
time limits/work requirements;
safety-net holes widened
when the boom faded.
telecom act (1996):
rewired media/telecom competition
(and consolidation).
gramm-leach-bliley (1999):
tore down big chunks
of new deal bank walls;
also birthed modern
financial-privacy rules.
deregulatory + privacy weirdness
in one package.
legacy?
set the stage for the ’08 crash.
but yeah,
he played saxophone
(lmfao),
so libs
got fucking wet.
fucking yikes.

✶ the frat bro presidency.
george w. bush (2001–09)

lol.
bro is kinda funny.
be real.
but also—
the whiplash era.
yo—this dude
got a fucking shoe
thrown at him
mid-fucking press conference.
lmfao. what?
also: patriot act +
surveillance state expansion
after 9/11.
civil liberties went all:
“hold up—be right back.”
bro. iraq AUMF (2002) → iraq war (2003).
you know the rest. shit was not good.
”weapons of mass destruction”
but actually,
nah. not really.
lowkey
destabilized
the whole goddamn region
+ killed fucking hundreds of thousands.
yet—
medicare part d (2003):
added drug coverage for seniors —
enormous domestic policy.
pepfar (2003): arguably the most
successful global health program
of our lifetimes —
millions of lives saved
from hiv/aids.
yes,
from a republican admin.
torture program:
“enhanced interrogation”
a.k.a. fucking war crimes.
big time fucking fumbled katrina
response so bad new orleans
drowned fucking twice.
(please see kanye’s official statement)
tax cuts for the rich + dereg =
deficit fucking exploded.
the frat bro who
crashed america’s fucking car.
so:
big,
deadly,
dumb war
and
smart health policy.
fucking weird-ass chaos.

✶ hope & change…
and fucking deportations.
obama (2009–17)

deporter-in-chief:
record fucking removals.
let wall street execs fuckoff
after 2008 crash —
no handcuffs, just bailouts.
expanded fucking drone strikes,
including on american citizens abroad.
syria “red line” bullshit collapsed.
smooth-ass slime.
inspiring slime-lite.
but fucking slime.
aca (2010): coverage expansion,
pre-existing condition protections;
medicaid expansion
where states fucking
allowed it.
the floor got sturdier,
i fucking guess.
dodd-frank (2010):
post-crash guardrails;
created fsoc and the
office of financial research
to watch systemic risk.
enforcement reality check:
deportations hit
record highs early
(2012 peak);
the machine grew
under both parties.
was lowkey kinda a pussy
about the supreme court shit.
like bro—
what the fuck?
but, bro did try.
daca (2012): limited protection
for dreamers via executive action —
powerful,
but vulnerable as fuck and
non-permanent.
don’t ask, don’t tell
repealed. aka: gays in uniform,
i mean duh.

✶ the orange fucking felon-guy.
trump (2017–21)

bro is a twat.
let’s be real.
my man is a fucking dickwad.
tcja (2017):
big corporate tax cut;
~$1.5T 10-yr revenue loss projected;
many individual cuts sunset in 2025.
first step act (2018):
bipartisan justice reform —
risk/needs assessment,
earned time credits,
some sentencing fixes.
yes, that happened.
usmca (2020): nafta reboot
with tougher labor/digital rules.
racist-ass travel ban upheld
in trump v. hawaii (2018) —
courts blessed broad exec power
on entry restrictions.
bro. fucking yikes.
this dude does everything
for goddamn attention.
also, let’s be fucking real,
most definitely
dabbled in some fucking
goddamn sexual assault.
family separation at the border.
kids in fucking cages,
goddamn receipts.
endless fucking conflicts
of fucking interest
(hotels, golf courses, foreign govts).
nepotism bullshit everything.
and do they look like elite fucks?
nah, looks imbred.
this joker is:
impeached…twice:
ukraine shakedown +
jan 6 fucking coup.
pandemic disaster:
bleach, fucking chaos, bodies.
absolutely fucked
the entire
fucking supreme court. lol.
no big deal, am i right?
xenophobia
and twat-ass
haters / racists—
got their legal stamp.
bro is a big baby.
slime, but make it
neon fucking orange.
also a felon.
like a lot.

✶ bro that was clearly too fucking old.
biden (2021–2025)

yo, why?
go fucking home.
still approving new oil +
gas projects while
waving fucking climate flags.
backed fucking israel
through bullshit + bombardments
that turned into
a goddamn full-scale
fucking genocide with
a shit-ton of
murdered fucking children
(!!!!!!!)
bro—fucking fuck.
also,
student debt relief fucking
watered the fuck down + delayed
while interest restarted.
friendly old man slime.
nap-time slime.
infrastructure law (2021):
roads/bridges, broadband, grid, water —
the boring shit that actually
keeps civilization fucking running.
inflation reduction act (2022):
climate industrial policy +
medicare drug price negotiation +
extended aca subsidies.
fucking huge.
chips & science (2022):
$ for domestic semis + r&d
+ tech hubs.
industrial policy is fucking back.
bipartisan safer communities (2022):
first federal gun law in decades
(u-21 checks, trafficking,
“boyfriend loophole” fixes).
dumpster-fire-ass
afghanistan withdrawal (2021):
state’s after-action review documents
how trump’s doha deal +
biden’s execution
boxed a messy,
deadly fucking exit.
pain all a-fucking-round.
grandpa joe
mixing fucking naps
with industrial policy.
bro, retire.

💀 the moral of the slime report:
every president is a mixtape
of “hey that was kinda…good”
and “wtf how was that even fucking legal.”
america doesn’t do goddamn saints.
it does slime with fucking slogans.

✶ ✶ ✶
motherfucking reality checks
(aka why your brain hurts)

1) the carceral state wasn’t one party.
reagan-era drug laws (100:1 crack-powder) +
clinton’s ’94 bill = bipartisan accelerant.
the fair sentencing act (2010) cut it to 18:1,
and the first step act (2018) made some relief retroactive —
but decades of damage don’t evaporate.

2) mass incarceration grew for decades.
from the 1970s to early 2000s,
prison populations exploded;
by 2001, over 1.3m people were in state/federal prison.
the curve finally bent (a little) in the late 2010s,
but the scale remains fucking huge.

3) deregulation waves weren’t just republican.
carter’s airline deregulation;
clinton’s telecom +
finance moves; reagan/bush tax reforms.
both parties put fucking sandpaper
to old-ass regulatory walls —
sometimes good, sometimes shitty.

4) “law and order” is bipartisan branding; surveillance, too.
patriot act powers survived
multiple
fucking
admins.
later reforms
cut some shit—
but the post-9/11 security state
never went back in the fucking box.

5) also bipartisan: big civil-rights/health wins.
ada (1990) under bush sr.; pepfar (2003) under bush jr.;
aca (2010) under obama; ira (2022) under biden.
it’s never pure-ass politics
if you follow outcomes,
not fucking hashtags.

✶ ✶ ✶
okay, but what should liberals
actually know (and probably hate-read)?

✘ clinton didn’t just play sax on arsenio —
he was a highkey fucking douchebag,
that got his d sucked in the motherfucking
oval fucking office by a
borderline fucking child/adult
oh yeah, and—
he fucking supercharged “tough on crime,”
signed welfare reform,
and dereg’d finance/telecom
while doing VAWA and EITC expansions.
paradox shitshow.

✘ both bushes did some grown-up shit
liberals actually like
(ada, pepfar, part d, even tax honesty in ’90),
alongside wars and surveillance libs
(and many fucking conservs) hate.
humans are messy;
presidencies more so.

✘ obama expanded coverage
and financial guardrails
and ran the most muscular interior
fucking immigration enforcement
early on,
then pivoted.
multiple truths can sit in one seat.

✘ trump did the fucking expected
(tcja, travel ban), the dumpster fire chaotic,
and a reform many progressives wanted
(first step act). it’s goddamn whiplash
all the fucking way down.

✘ biden’s era is industrial policy +
climate + boring-but-big infrastructure…
and the fucking afghanistan exit
we’ll be dissecting
for a motherfucking decade.

✶ ✶ ✶
the rude, but fucking useful.

every
modern
president
did some shit
your side loves
and some shit
your side pretends
didn’t fucking happen.
policy is a cosmic fuckery
of goddamn tradeoffs.
slogans are trash
that rot your teeth.

think harder.
look deeper.
decide for yourself.

🕊️🔫