Objection
@Objection@lemmy.ml
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 16 hours ago:
Profitable for the rich. Defense for the rich.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 16 hours ago:
- strong profitable defense contractors
Why the hell is this supposed to be a point in favor? I don’t support the military-industrial complex, because I’m not a right-winger or a hawk.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 17 hours ago:
I’m aware. I’ve never voted Republican in my life and don’t intend to.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
Yeah, if you just want to wallow in misery and jack off about how right you are.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
I’m not here to generate solutions, no idea why you keep asking for one.
Then your political position is worthless on it’s face.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
An example of how she could’ve distinguished herself successfully…
I already did. She could’ve said that the administration wanted to do more about inflation but was held back by Republicans in Congress. She could’ve also pointed a finger at the rich and say that she would do to confront them and stop price gouging.
I’m not trying to present a plan… God knows
Ok, well some of us actually do have ideas on how to win and haven’t resigned ourselves to this defeatist martyrdom nonsense. So, like, maybe we should toss out your ideas at least for a while and give mine a try, since they involve a practical, coherent strategy adapted to the present situation which you have no answer for.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
Should be easy, given that the US has a much stronger propaganda platform than Russia no? /s
Of course, the US government has a stronger propaganda platform in the US than Russia has in the US. Political parties are not the US government though, so it’s not really relevant to how a political party can promote a message.
It’s almost as if despite this being shown across all media, a massive amount of voters were still manipulated by foreign & right-wing propaganda into ignoring/dismissing it.
Or they just didn’t see it or pay attention or they didn’t believe Trump would do it based on their own reasoning. People can believe different things from you without the need to insert a malicious actor to explain the disagreement.
But ok, your position is that nobody has both the willingness or capability to counter foreign/right-wing propaganda. So, as I’ve asked several times now, what is your solution to this situation? Because it seems like your solution is just to whine about the situation.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
should be easy for you to give an actual example then.
An example of her… not doing that? I already did, when she was asked in an interview what she would do differently.
No, it was easy because people are dumbasses
Again, what’s you’re plan to account for people being dumbasses? If people are dumbasses, and you want politicians to keep running campaigns as if they weren’t, then the inevitable result of what you want is that you lose.
basic facts like how the economy is performing and covid caused global inflation is “complex economic explanations” now?
Yes. How “the economy” is performing doesn’t necessarily reflect on the average person’s lived experiences as they watch prices go up and don’t own enough stocks to really benefit from that. I don’t recall Kamala ever actually bringing up covid as the reason for global inflation, which was probably smart doing so probably would’ve just increased covid skepticism, it would’ve played right into their hands. It’s no surprise that the right was able to cut through that rhetoric by talking about the price of eggs and such.
I really feel like you’re underestimating the challenge of communicating ideas to a broad population. Any message you want to communicate, you should imagine someone acting in complete bad faith trying to present you in the worst possible light and shouting over everything you say, because that’s what cable news is, and it’s also what political content on platforms like Twitch and YouTube are like, except then they don’t even have to bring you on at all, they can go through clips and shit cherry-picking and taking things out of context. I can shout “YOU DON’T HAVE ANY MONEY BECAUSE THE BILLIONAIRES TOOK IT” and that’s a lot more likely to get through than like, “You don’t have any money, but you could have even less money, and actually if you compare our inflation levels to the global median you’ll see that it was actually unavoidable,” which can easily be distorted and shouted down.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
These distinctions completely change the meaning. “Being able to predict” vs “being able to prove to a broad population” are completely different things. Of course it could be predicted, I certainly did, but that doesn’t resolve the question of how you get the message out on a large scale and convince people of it. Even if you and I could see through it, he still had plausible deniability, making it not necessarily the most compelling angle to hit people with.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
If you’re suggesting that she should’ve thrown Biden under the bus in her response, then it’s not absurd at all.
As I explained, she wouldn’t have had to throw Biden under the bus, unless you consider “distinguishing herself from him in literally any way” to be “throwing him under the bus.”
Ah yes, all of a sudden voters are aware of the facts “oBviOusLy” lmao. Let’s just pretend that whatever real or imagined failures of the Biden campaign weren’t successfully thrown onto her. zzzzzzzzzz
It was very easy to associate her with the real or imagined failures of the Biden campaign because she did nothing at all to distinguish herself from them.
Too many Americans are just too dumb and misinformed, that much is clear.
Almost as if complex economic explanations either go over people’s heads, don’t reach them, or they don’t believe them. I wonder if there’s some kind of simpler, but also true narrative that would acknowledge people’s struggles while blaming them on people much more responsible for the situation than random minorities. Something like, blaming the rich. But no, can’t do that, because Bernie Sanders is too tankie for you.
Again, what is your actual strategy for addressing the problem of uninformed voters? I just gave you mine, yours seems to be “lose, but it’s ok so long as you were right.”
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
You said “nobody could’ve predicted that Trump would put project 2025 heads into government”. So shove your forgiveness up your ass you tankie clown. Don’t patronize me.
That’s a lie. Link the comment where you think I said that.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
This is just a dogshit tankie take.
I guess Bernie Sanders is a tankie now 🤣
Trump filled his cabinet with billionaires and was supported by the richest man on earth. Nobody cares about this “blame the rich” nonsense, evidently.
I already explained this. When the options are, “You are struggling, and the reason you’re struggling is minorities” vs “You’re not struggling, it’s all in your head, the economy’s doing fine actually,” people are inclined to listen to the narrative that tracks with their lived experience. If you want to actually compete with that narrative, you need another explanation of why people are struggling, ideally a simple one, and that’s where a leftist narrative is necessary.
Ah yes, I know that in your world of non-existent morality this would’ve had an easy counter. But shitting on your current boss by making up nonsense about how he actually did things poorly (when he didn’t) doesn’t come easily for people who are more genuine/honest than you
The idea of Kamala Harris being more genuine/honest than me is too absurd to even take offense at, it’s just hilarious.
I guess you got what you wanted then. Kamala chose to fall on her sword and “do the right thing” and now you can pat yourself on the back for being on the side of the good guys while the right takes power and fucks up all the stuff you claim to care about. If we keep getting such “noble” people, then the right’s dominance is assured for the foreseeable future. How important is stuff like Ukraine to you, really, if you’re fine with that result? Seems to me you’re fine with them being sacrificed as long as your side keeps it’s hands clean.
Not that it would even “dirty her hands” to simply offer some kind of policy. The Biden/Harris administration was constrained by a divided government, should could’ve said they wanted to go further with stuff but were held back. Is that not the truth?
Also, for the record, my position is not that morality doesn’t exist, just that you have to set it aside when assessing the world as it actually is.
Also, isn’t the obvious answer to anything Kamala could say “why didn’t you do/push for that policy as the vice president?”
Because the vice president doesn’t have much power? Obviously.
Engaging in and furthering the decay just to win isn’t the way to go. Clear out the trash so that democracy can actually function. Ridding ourselves of this dogshit disinformation environment and returning to normal politics isn’t “idealist”, we’ve been there not too long ago.
Yes, we were there not long ago. And then we proceeded from that state into this one. Even if we could somehow return to that state, the root causes that pushed us into this one would still remain.
But you don’t seem to have any actual plans for achieving the change you want in the first place. You just seem to want politicians to fall on their swords for no reason so they can be heroic martyrs and you can revel in your “correctness” about things. I guess I owe you an apology, when I tried to explain to you what could’ve been done differently in order to win, it was under the assumption that you actually wanted to. If you just want to whine about things not being the way you want them to, idk what to tell you, you do you ig.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
my class interests
spare me the tankie cringe
Lmao. Even just talking about class is tankie, apparently.
If I’m just comparing how shit the Russian gov is vs the US gov, your interests aren’t relevant in the first place.
I’m not, and that wasn’t what the conversation was about.
Why stability/security in the West/World is vital for prosperity and won’t be possible unless Russia is defeated
“Defeating Russia” sounds extremely destabilizing. Do you genuinely want to eliminate the country through military force? That’s completely insane, they’re a nuclear power, you’ll end all life on earth. There will be no “security” “stability” or “prosperity” in a nuclear wasteland.
So possibility A is a nuclear wasteland, possibility B is just letting them have the country and going on with our lives. I’ll take option B, thanks.
Yet you think it was super difficult to predict Trumps relationship to Project 2025 lmao.
Never said this, you’re lying. What I said was that it was difficult to convince voters to connect Project 2025 to Trump.
I’ll forgive your lie because it seems like you’re genuinely incapable of distinguishing between those two proposition, but if you continue lying about what I said, I’m walking away. Lies are a pet peeve.
Tell me, how do you know that supporting Ukraine properly doesn’t result in Russia’s defeat in, say another year
Because of my assessment of the situation. It’s a stalemate, there’s no realistic possibility of them reclaiming all their lost territory in the next year.
or that surrendering them doesn’t result in death camps all over Ukraine for years?
How do I know Ukraine winning wouldn’t result in death camps all over Ukraine for years?
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
Yes, because they’re heavily brainwashed by foreign and right-wing propaganda. Just waiting for you to finally concede this basic fact.
Sure, some people are, but the broader trend is people following their perceived material interests.
The fact that the candidate outed himself as a senile removed should have the material impact of shifting votes to the opposition.
😑
I don’t know why I’m bothering. It’s always this “should” nonsense. It’s completely irrelevant to understanding voter behavior.
It did not have the impact you want it to have because people vote according to their material interests, and Trump’s various antics did not make them change their minds about which candidate was in line with their material interests. Because they were directly, materially affected by inflation, and not by “Trump dancing.”
And how exactly should Kamala distance herself realistically from the administration she herself was in? Do you think you can come up with some gem of an insight that all the top advisers failed to see? Cool
Of course I do. Those “top advisors” are the same incompetent morons that bungled the Clinton campaign.
You have to provide an alternative explanation to the right’s narrative. When things are bad, people look for who to blame, the right tells them to blame immigrants, while liberals tell them not to blame anyone because things are fine, actually. It’s no wonder people go with the narrative that actually tracks with their lives experience of material conditions. The solution, the way to answer the right’s narrative, is to blame the rich, the billionaires who are hoarding wealth and price gouging and who were (in part) actually responsible for inflation. The democrats don’t want to do that though because they would risk alienating their rich donors.
Even if they weren’t willing to do that, Kamala was directly asked what she would do differently than Biden on the economy and had *absolutely no answer," which was an extreme political fumble. Saying virtually anything would be better than that. She is a terrible politician with poor political instincts, which is why she bombed out of the 2020 primaries despite being the frontrunner.
YES I AM. I’m not sure why you insist on pretending the current state of US politics is a normal reality that people are meant to just conform to
The current state of US politics should be recognized for what it is. And it’s impossible to do that if you keep injecting your ideas about what should be into analysis of what is.
where you can still calculate what the right move is or isn’t according to any kind of rules that make sense.
Because you can. You just have to view things through a materialist lens rather than an idealist one.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
Not sure why you think this hyper-cynical teenage view is any less of an inane and immature lens than “saturday morning cartoons”
“People persue their own interests” is not a “hyper-cynical teenage view” lmao.
I never positioned the conversation as being about who is exploiting YOU more though. You keep inserting your own personal interests as if it should be the compass when comparing the US and Russia, idk why.
Again, it’s not about me, it’s about my class.
And it’s not a “compass for comparing the US and Russia.” Compare them all you like, it doesn’t concern me. What does concern me are, you know, my class interests. If you want to ask me to set aside my own interests in favor of your opinions about morality, then you have to make the case for why I should.
“We should abandon it because it’s going to be abandoned anyway” is circular logic nonsense.
No, it’s seeing the writing on the wall. I don’t control public opinion, I can’t change the fact that people are losing and will continue to lose interest in Ukraine, that’s just a fact of life. And given that that’s going to happen, the best thing to do is to cut losses as soon as possible.
The point should be people realizing that it’s best, even just for their own self-interest, for Ukraine to win.
Then make the case, because you haven’t. All you’ve done is talk about how they’re the bad guys and pulled out an unrelated example from 80 years ago that’s resulted in disaster every time it’s been used as an example.
You have no idea if supporting or surrendering would result in more or less deaths.
Of course I do. I mean, to the extent that it’s possible to predict any events. It’s the deaths from surrendering versus the deaths from surrendering plus the deaths from however long the war keeps going.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
The moral fiber of politicians for example, is and should be a concern because it does have an impact in pHysiCaL rEaLiTy.
Even that statement is missing the point. “Is and should be a concern.” You can be concerned about it all you want, but we’re talking about how voters will and have behaved, and their behavior has clearly demonstrated that an insufficient number of people care about such things for it to be decisive. Should they care? I don’t care whether they should care.
Oh really? was it Kamala that ranted about Haitians eating pets? danced for 40 min onstage to ave maria and ymca like a senile kook?
Did those things have a direct, material impact on broad segments of the population? Maybe some Hatians faced more discrimination and were alienated, but that’s a hell of a lot fewer people than were affected by inflation, so the impact it had on the outcome of the election was probably negligible.
She shouldn’t have to distance herself from the Biden administration because the administration objectively did a good job.
And there you go again. Whether she should or shouldn’t have to is irrelevant, you’re drifting off into “ought’s” again. Regardless of whether she should have had to, she did have to.
It’s really hard for you to admit that people are just uninformed
I already said that they were ages ago. In fact, I was the one who first pointed out that “a wave of global inflation caused incumbent parties in many countries to lose elections.” You only assume I can’t “admit” it, despite me explicitly telling you it, because you can’t wrap your head around the fact that *even though they were uninformed, Kamala still failed to make the case to them." Again, unless you can wave a magic wand and cause uninformed voters to become informed, you’re just complaining about how reality works.
This is also another opportunity for you to realise that morality actually exists and is something to account for.
I never said it didn’t. What I said is that we have to be able to look at reality rationally and objectively without our preconceptions of what “should” be true getting in the way of things.
Also, I’m very confused about what you even mean by this or how it’s in any way a response to what I said.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
The reason you assumed I was trying to carry water for Russia is that you assume I think in the same nonsense terms that you do, viewing geopolitics through this inane lens of “good guys” and “bad guys” like it’s a Saturday morning cartoon. In reality, they’re all ruthlessly self-interested and neither Russia nor the US has any interest in improving the lives of ordinary people (as I already told you, when I said Russian billionaires don’t exploit me only because they lack the power to do so). The correct way to view such conflicts is through the lens of realpolitik.
To give a historical example, in the American Revolution, the revolutionaries were supported by the French monarchy. France’s absolute monarchy was less democratic than Britain’s, and obviously the French king did not support the revolution because he supported it’s ideals. The French only wanted the revolution to succeed in order to weaken Britain. The British colonists lobbied for and happily accepted the French support, realizing that, even if the French king was just as bad as the British king, the British government was the one exploiting them, while they had a common enemy with the French government.
In the same way, I have no illusions about Russian capitalists or the Russian government being in some way “morally superior” or “the good guys,” but I also recognize that the American billionaires and government are the ones exploiting me, and are therefore my most direct and primary enemy.
If you want to persuade me from that position, then you need to be able to make the case that supporting the American capitalists/government against the Russians is somehow in line with my material class interests. Preferably without relying on a single historical example from 80 years ago which has been cited over and over again to justify disasterous wars that made things worse for everyone.
And if you can’t make that case to me, then you won’t be able to make it to a broad audience. And if you can’t make it to a broad audience, eventually, you will be unable to get elected on a platform that includes support for it, and Ukraine will be abandoned. And if Ukraine is going to be abandoned anyway, then it’s better to avoid prolonging the war for no reason, because it just means more people will die.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
You keep repeating this meaningless slogan as if we live in a world where morality doesn’t exist or matter.
Sure, but I’m not talking about anything related to morality. I’m talking about the way the world is and does work, not how the world ought to work. I’d be happy to discuss morality some other time, but when we’re trying to understand physical reality, we need to be able to set it aside. But you refuse to do that. You aren’t capable of looking at things objectively because you’re always immediately trying to inject you opinions about how it ought to be.
Let me know in what way did Trump do a better job of addressing economic concerns given his already shit economic policies during his first term and his inability to communicate any meaningful plans.
He didn’t do much, beyond positioning himself as an “outsider” as he does. Mainly, it was less than Trump did it right and more that Kamala did it horribly wrong. Inflation had had a direct, negative material impact on everyone in the country, and Kamala failed to distance herself from the Biden administration, which people assumed was responsible because that’s when it happened.
And this is where you inject, “But Biden wasn’t responsible,” even though that’s already been established and it doesn’t really matter. People still made the connection and prioritized the issue, in both cases, because of how brains work.
But they don’t genuinely care, because if they did they’d try to be minimally informed. It’s all just based on emoting and slogans, It’s all morons falling for braindead propaganda by bad actors.
Ok then, great, should be easy then. Just be a bad actor and get the morons to fall for your propaganda. Then you can get elected and address whatever concerns you like.
You can complain that voters don’t care or aren’t informed enough, but unless you have an actual plan to change psychology on a mass scale, you’re just whining that the laws of physics don’t work the way you want them to.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
Well it seemed like you were very much willing to carrying water for the actions of the Russian state by saying that the US does the same things, if not even worse. Suddenly you have no interest in comparing them? Try having the ability to follow a conversation before engaging in one.
You telling me to “try having the ability to follow a conversation” is pretty rich considering how you’re constantly losing the plot and getting distracted by moralizing, like you’re doing here. You assumed that my goal was to “carry water for” the Russian state by talking about the bad things the US does. No, not really. I don’t particularly care which is worse between the two, at no point have I ever attempted to make that case. You assumed that was my angle, because that’s how you see the world, but that’s not how I see the world and I’ve told you that over and over again.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
How is that relevant?
Because you’re trying to argue that it’s something that has a direct material impact on the average person. Again, as always, you’re getting distracted by moralizing, “This should be an issue” but that’s not what we’re discussing. The fact is, regardless of what people should or shouldn’t care about, regardless of how bad a given event is or isn’t, the fact is that people care the most about things that materially impact them or people they know personally. Inflation, therefore, is more important to the average person than January 6th, and if you go on and on about Jan 6 while failing to address their economic concerns, you will lose. Again, like what happened.
If you don’t already think the damage done to American democracy on Jan 6th doesn’t, by definition, have an impact on the average American then you have some other grave issue in your “philosophy”. If you just don’t care about democracy because you’re some kind of brainlet tankie then RIP, waste of time.
Again, it’s not about what is important or what I think is important, you’re getting distracted by moralizing. It’s about understanding reality as it is. And reality as it is is that people care about things that affect them in direct, material ways more than things that don’t, and January 6th had no direct, material impact on the vast majority of people.
You can whine all you want about how people “should” be more concerned about it, but all you’re doing is railing against the realities of human psychology. It is what it is, not everyone cares about the stuff you care about, even if the stuff you care about is really important. You might as well complain about the laws of physics, maybe the universe would be better if the second law of thermodynamics didn’t exist, but that doesn’t really matter, because you can’t change it, and, similarly, you can’t wave a wand and get people to stop prioritizing their direct, material interests.
Understanding and adapting to what voters actually care about is what allows you to win elections which is what allows you to take power and address the concerns you have and keep the other side out of power.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
I don’t remember you citing anything that falls into the criteria,
COVID misinformation in the Philippines? The rampant lies leading up to the Iraq War? Those things fit your criteria.
Also, don’t try to pretend that you’re only excluding historical examples, you’re also excluding recent examples, because “Trump isn’t representative of America.” Who knows what you’ll exclude next, maybe Bush isn’t representative either because he lied and that contradicts your worldview.
Then stop saying stupid shit if you’re not making any substantive points? What’s the point of saying they don’t do shit to you because they’re not in a position to do so? wow, thanks for the enlightening insight.
If you were able to shut down the hyper-partisan moralistic urge to constantly opine on who the “good guys” and “bad guys” are long enough to actually listen to anything I’m saying and look at reality as it is, then you’d understand my point. As it is, you’ve missed it completely.
I’m not interested in discussing, like, who’s more likely to get into fucking heaven. Christ. It’s completely and totally irrelevant to the conversation.
If one person has a gun pressed against my head, and another person doesn’t, then I’m more concerned about the guy with the gun against my head than the other guy. Maybe the other guy is a worse person, maybe the guy with a gun to my head volunteers at the soup kitchen every day and the other guy kicks puppies, but my concern is removing the gun from my head.
What I’m saying is that American billionaires have a gun to the head of the American people in a way that Russian billionaires don’t. And your response is to talk about how the Russian billionaires are bad people. Completely irrelevant to the conversation.
Bro, this isn’t about YOU
Yeah, it’s not about me specifically. It’s about my class, which has the same material interests as me. If you want to write off my class because it’s “not about us” then good luck in the next election.
If you want to objectively compare how each government treats their own population
I don’t, thanks. Why would I? I’m interested in pursuing political objectives that help me and my class. I’m not interested in “”“objective”“” moralistic goals.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
People even died to this shit.
Yeah? What percentage of the population?
Oh wow, I’m so glad that the serial liar “disavowed” it and then proceeded to install the minds behind project 2025 into government and speed-run the implementation of its policies.
Again, this incessent need for partisan moralizing. There was no way to prove to the American people that he was going to give government positions to the people behind it. I don’t like Trump, I didn’t vote for him, you can stop constantly trying to convince me he’s a Bad Man.
What we’re talking about is not morality, it’s the factual question of why Trump won. For that purpose, his character is only relevant insofar as it affects public opinion of him.
Dems/Kamala highlighted various points of the project
Which parts? I need specifics since you just tried to claim that January 6th was an issue that had a direct, material impact on the average American (lmao!) so I don’t trust you to make that evaluation.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
January 6th is not distinguishing on policy, it’s another example of focusing on character in a way that doesn’t have any direct, material impact on people’s lives.
Project 2025, Trump disavowed, and I don’t recall democrats really focusing on specific points from it that would materially impact people’s lives. Telling people to read a 900 page document that Trump claims not to support is not enough, no.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
That’s not what I said. I said that the things you mentioned about him don’t affect the average person’s life in any tangible way, not that his actions in general don’t affect them.
Perhaps, if the democrats spent more time focusing on those tangible things and distinguishing themselves on policy and less time focusing on his personal character, they might have had a chance.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
No, you’re just asking dumb shit for the sake of asking it. The West just isn’t shitting out propaganda on its population the way Russia is, it’s not hard to understand.
A KGB agent visits America and meets a CIA agent, and says, “I’m so excited to learn from the American methods of propaganda!” The CIA agent responds, “What? But in America, we have no propaganda!” KGB agent says, “Yes! Exactly like that!”
I already cited numerous examples of US propaganda and dinsinformation which included ones that fit your arbitrary criteria of neither too recent nor too old. There’s also shit like this recruitment ad that’s pretty open and explicit about manipulating public opinion. It’s also just a completely absurd idea, we don’t do propaganda because, what, we’re “the good guys?” Not how the world works lol.
They don’t because they’re not in charge of your fucking country.
Please stop telling me things I just told you.
But they do all that shit and worse to their own population.
But I’m not part of that population.
Again, you’re misunderstanding me. I’m in no way claiming a moral difference between Russian and American billionaires, I’m merely pointing out that the more direct enemy of the American people are the set of billionaires with the means and motive to exploit us, namely, American billionaires.
Which might explain why you’re so blissfully ignorant of the Russian scourge.
More importantly, it would explain why Americans were always bound to lose interest in the conflict and give up on it, we just had to waste a bunch of blood and treasure on the conflict pretending otherwise first.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
Yes, because being an “oragutan rapist criminal coup attempter” doesn’t actual affect the average person’s life in any tangible way. Inflation does. Not hard to understand why he won, as they say, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
God, you really can’t stop injecting this hyper-partisan moralizing. Every point you raised here is about morality which I wasn’t talking about at all.
Even under clowns like Trump, the US press is more free than Russia’s.
Which again raises the question of why Russian propaganda is so much more effective in the Western media environment where they can’t censor things or control shit than Western propaganda is. See, you’re distracted by saying, “Russia is the bad guy” that you’re losing sight of the actual question.
I wouldn’t use the trash that Trump pulls as valid examples of how the West acts
Other than that, try not to fetch US examples from the cold war
No present or historical examples then, got it.
When did the US reform and change it’s ways? Did a president stand up to the CIA and tell them to cut it out? Which one, when? Was anyone in the intelligence community held accountable for their actions and actually punished? Who, when?
Or did the US stop doing evil stuff right around the window of time where documents would not yet be declassified?
Putting aside all of that, even if I accepted your absurd constraints, I also raised points that fit your criteria, regarding the war in Iraq. Things that track with a consistent pattern of behavior before and after.
Russian kleptocracy aligns more with its population and doesn’t represent the interests of the rich?
I never said anything like that. What I said is that Russian kleptocracy is less directly opposed to the interests of the American people than the US kleptocracy is. The Russian oligarchs don’t suppress our wages, bust our unions, and gouge our prices, not because there’s any kind of moral difference but because they’re not in a position to do so. The American oligarchs are the ones with both the means and motive to hurt the American people, they are, therefore, the primary enemy of the people, moreso than Russian oligarchs are to us.
Because they’re destroying democracies in your region.
In “my region?” My region is about as far away from Ukraine as it’s possible to be on planet Earth.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
I’d estimate, maybe half a percent?
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
But the group of people we were talking about about being influenced was Americans, so it would be fairly natural to assume that I was talking about them influencing our own population, or that I was leaving it ambiguous. If you wanted to jump to the conclusion otherwise, you should’ve clarified.
I have no idea why were’re limiting “propaganda” to “bot farms” which aren’t a particularly effective form of it. Every US media outlet has a vested interest in falling in line behind what the president wants because otherwise they could be refused access to things like press briefings, something Trump is especially blatant about. The US media was fully supportive of the Iraq war and published countless lies promoting it, the NYT made up a story about “mass rapes” claimed to be conducted by Palestinians to justify the government’s support for the war, going back further, into periods where we have access to declassified stuff, the US government literally had a mind control program called MK Ultra specifically about trying to brainwash people.
Of course, it has also conducted misinformation campaigns in other countries. Recently, the US government was spreading COVID/vaccine disinformation in the Philippines. During the Iranian coup that ousted democratic leader Mohammad Mossadegh in favor of a right-wing dictator, the CIA admitted that it had taken control of virtually every newspaper and media outlet in the country, used to manufacture discontent. If they can stuff like overseas, then they can do it at home too.
Furthermore, these intelligence agencies have interests that are more directly contrary to the American people than the Russian government does. They represent the interests of the rich, and the US rich are the most direct and primary enemy of the US poor. And yet, I never hear any libs express even the slightest ounce of concern that the most well funded intelligence network in the world, with an atrocious historical record showing that they have both the means and motive to suppress democracy, might be something to be concerned about. We should only worry about a less well-funded, less connected intelligence community with less directly opposed interests.
- Comment on dear republicans, what's the point of alienating every single ally of the US? 1 day ago:
Wait, are we talking about a handful of people being swayed by Russian propaganda, or broad segments of the population?