Kira Dault (she/her)

You can find me over where skies are blue. (Same name.)

Trump pardoned his criminal co conspirators. I’m 100% behind Biden pardoning his son.

TOMORROW: We're looking forward to seeing you all at our monthly call. Please invite your friends and family that would be interested in exploring this important topic. 🩶🗻 Here is the RSVP link: bit.ly/monthly-call-n…

Fantastic comments from Pete Buttiegeig today. Highlights: 1) Healthy introspection is starting to happen on how Dems get in our own way, especially on housing (& clean energy, transit, etc.) 2) In trying to prevent bad things, Dems have made it harder to deliver good things

this an essential tradeoff I don't see people wrestling with: the cessation of COVID relief absolutely hurt people AND ALSO it's extension almost certainly would have exacerbated precisely the problem (inflation) that people hated the most.

Like many of you, I was gutted by many of the results across the country on Tuesday night. As we look at the results though, we also see that the work we did here in Wisconsin made a real difference. 1/

Because they prioritize teachers. It really is that simple. The history of Kentucky is not hard to understand. It’s also why they shot down the abortion ban and public funds for private schools.

The fact that 60,000,000 people voted for rapist is precisely why women would rather be in the woods with a bear.

Okay so, I was walking home from work, and if someone puts a microphone in my face, I’m going to talk about abortion. If I ever get pregnant and can’t get an abortion, I will die. Birth control can fail. Disabled people have sex, and disabled people sometimes need abortions.

Disabled pregnant people broadly have an *11 times* greater risk of death from pregnancy complications than the non-disabled population. nih.gov/news-events/ne…

Since the election, some have noticed a change in the tone of my posts—perhaps one of anger or bitterness. There are so many reasons for this righteous anger, but I want to share the most personal. Those who voted a known rapist into power need to understand the pain and damage inflicted on people like me. I’ve spoken before about the horrific experience of being kidnapped and raped, but the reality is that this wasn’t an isolated incident. I have been raped multiple times by different men, and my history of sexual abuse began in childhood. As an adult, I’ve lost count of the instances of sexual harassment I’ve faced, each as angering as the last. Equally painful is the number of times I’ve been devalued simply because I’m a woman, or even the times I knew I was the smartest person in a room full of men, yet absolutely ignored. I had a painfully naive understanding of how the world views women until the first time I was raped. It happened after work, in a bar, where a man who had been stalking me drugged my drink. My next memory is waking up on a filthy mattress in his apartment across the street from the bar. I opened my eyes to find him, naked, pressing down on me. I immediately fought him, unaware I’d been drugged. About an hour in, he finally gave up. He removed his condom and seeing blood, expressed disgust, mocking me for being on my period. But I wasn’t. The blood came from the violence of his assault and the fact that, at the time, I was a virgin. For him, raping me wasn’t enough; he had to degrade me further, verbally mocking my body throughout the assault, finishing with a final insult to my womanhood. I wonder if the men who voted a rapist into office can even imagine the true horror of this experience. Do they really understand what it’s like to be raped, or have they sanitized it in their minds, maybe made it into something abstract? In my naivety, I assumed that when I called the police the next morning, he’d be arrested immediately and justice would be served. That didn’t happen; the case was never indicted. A couple of years later, I saw his friend—the one who’d been with him that night—wearing a police uniform in a coffee shop. Apparently, he had been a cop all along. He expressed faux concern about that night and then proceeded to hit on me. The blatant audacity. My experiences of sexual assault aren’t unusual. One in every three women has been physically or sexually abused. I’ll be 39 years old next week, and I have lived through so much—seen so many women suffer—and over and over, I have watched people turn a blind eye to women’s pain. The worst, by far, is what I feel when I think about my two girls. I know the legacy that persists when a nation chooses a rapist over a woman, the legacy of treating women as collateral damage when it elects a man with such power to make decisions about our lives. It’s unconscionable. So yes, conservatives may mock our grief in this election. But from the depths of my soul, I am angry, I am grieving, and I am devastated that this is the life my girls are inheriting. The people who voted for Trump may not all be rapists, but 60 million of them will not believe women—will not believe my girls—and they absolutely will not care enough to challenge the people and institutions they align with, even if it harms my daughters. This has been proven in their votes and in the silence of every person who refused to condemn this man. I hope that helps to clear up my tone.

Nevermind that queer people voted as a lock for Democrats (83% in the exit polling I saw). Because that is how scapegoating works: you feel safe when you have an enemy and blaming the innocent for something you are guilty for is a great way to feel safe and righteous. 7/

FWIW here is my take on the Dems (a minority of them thank God) who seem to be so ready to throw trans folks under the bus: 1. This is classic scapegoating. The Dems decided over the last 4 months that their path to victory required saying nothing on "identity issues". 1/

Jill Stein has been radio silent. I guess she’s done fighting for Palestine now. Shock surprise.

Democrats did not succeed in communicating some of their wins to low-info voters. It’s a major point to Stancil’s theory of media ecosystems.

Donald Trump’s winning message was: - level Gaza - the 2020 election was rigged - they’re eating the dogs and cats - kids go to school for gender reassignment surgery - deport immigrants I think it would be cool to talk about why people voted FOR that instead of shaming us.

Took a long walk with @kiradault this morning. We talked a lot about democracies — those that have existed, and those yet to come. I find my mind returns again and again today to the matter of status confessionis, and what it means to claim (or reject) the name “Christian” now.

A party headed by lawyers and that courts disaffected Republicans is never going to be a revolutionary party. Or, from all available data, a winning party.