If ONLY there was SOME WAY to Know this would Happen BEFORE the Election!
-Republicans who Do Their Own Research!
The time to come together in unity and compassion was the election. That’s long since passed now. He showed everyone exactly who he was while campaigning for his first presidency, and every single second since then.
If you were still unsure about his leadership qualities, his first presidency was filled with him throwing others under the bus, telling blatant, significant lies with every speech, betraying our allies for political gain, bungling the pandemic response and needlessly destroying hundreds of thousands of lives, spending more time golfing than doing his job, and concluded with him attempting to overturn the election by pressuring states, participating in an illegal scheme that involved fake electors, and inciting an insurrection at the nation’s capitol. Oh, and he was impeached twice.
But if racism is the final straw for you to stop supporting this draft-dodging, ableist, lying, rapist, 34-count convicted felon, great; but that was on display, too. He called places with brown and black populations “shithole countries”, issued a ban on immigration from Muslim countries, criticized Puerto Rico and dragged his feet on helping them after a devastating hurricane, pardoned Arizona racist Joe Arpaio, convicted for his illegal “worst pattern of racial profiling in US history” (DoJ), harshly cracked down on peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors, including tear-gassing them at a church to disperse them and use the location as a photo-op.
I won’t go through all the examples, but the end result is if you voted for him in 2024, you either ignored or approved of his racism. Unfortunately, it’s now affecting many innocent people, some of whom you know…
Can anyone explain how people with undocumented immigrants in their family were tricked into voting for trump? Makes zero sense to me.
Morons, they are morons.
I wouldn’t rule that out, but I also wouldn’t jump straight to that conclusion. Spanish news media in this country is beyond screwed, it skews even more right-wing as a rule than English mainstream media, in my opinion. During the 2020 election, I would watch the news on Univision with my mother-in-law sometimes, and would see them just not translate something a democrat said in English that didn’t fit their agenda, misrepresent what they said in the translation, or selectively omit things they said to make their remarks sound much more sinister and authoritarian than what they actually said. They were also constantly pushing right-wing conspiracies that had been debunked weeks or months prior, with no mention of their having been disproven.
I would constantly have my mother-in-law coming to me asking about these old ass conspiracies, because with her only knowing Spanish, that would be the first time she heard of them, and she was shocked we weren’t freaking out about it.
More leaning to the morons side, despite how Fox likes to portray immigrants as a monolithic group of rabid socialist and commies backing the Dems so they can destroy the constitution and get gulags up and running, a lot of immigrants from Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean have been fairly conservative, in my experience. A lot of them grew up heavily propagandized by right wing regimes in their home countries, many are much more religious than your average American by birth, and others have had negative experiences with nominally left-wing regimes in their home country that they can’t get over. The last one can be kind of understandable, but the other two drive me crazy.
My parents escaped Communist Yugoslavia to Australia. Even I started off right wing until about age 30. Therein I voted Greens (not like the dodgy US Greens BTW) and after a while convinced my parents too.
I am still aware of how the extreme left can become authoritarian as happened in Yugoslavia. Tankies are oblivious. Need to be vigilant whichever party you side with.
i take issue with calling tankies left, them saying they’re leftists doesn’t make it true. “nazi” comes from “national socialist”, but that’s obviously not what they actually were.
Am not sure that any label can really work perfectly anyhow. I posed to an Australian Greens Senator in the pub the following:
If Greens ever become one of the two major parties then the ruthless power seekers will gravitate towards your party instead of the current major parties. How will the party be able to spot the wolves in sheep’s clothing?
His answer was “I don’t know. We discuss that often.”
Which struck me as the response of an honest and genuine person.
Seems like we need some left leaning Spanish outlets
This is harsh but it definitely seems like a fundamental lack of critical thinking. I genuinely have trouble understanding this behavior otherwise.
I read somewhere that none of Trump’s talk of mass, indiscriminate deportation was translated, like in their Spanish language ads. All of the Spanish language ads were supposedly geared towards “nooooo lmao we’re only going to deport violent criminals and drug lords!”
Hmpf; propa mother fucking ganda style.
/ed:your comment is actually really insightful.
They’re lying. They weren’t tricked. Trump openly and repeatedly showed how he felt about immigrants of all kinds. Everyone knew it, everyone knows it, everyone will always know it.
What actually happened is that these people decided to focus on other things. They told themselves a story about how bad the Democrats are, perhaps, which isn’t that hard because there are so many dirty politicians in Washington.
Also, even immigrants can be racist. It’s easy enough for someone to think that the other group of “bad” minorities will be targeted, not their own, because they too want someone to spit on. The same thing is true for many poor white MAGA voters too, right? Trump’s policies are devastating for rural America, but if you’d rather have hate than healthcare, you’re getting what you voted for.
They’re lying. They weren’t tricked. Trump openly and repeatedly showed how he felt about immigrants of all kinds. Everyone knew it, everyone knows it, everyone will always know it.
This is a cruel delusion you tell yourself, obviously the people you are referring to exist and there are lots of them and they should be shamed the way you are shaming them but there are far more scared, desperate people who feel as total strangers in a crowd of faces that stare at them as if they don’t fit in that you casually throw under the bus along with the genuine fascists… and make that mistake at our peril my friend.
Plenty of people were tricked, no not everybody knew it, heck tons of people didn’t even know Biden had dropped out of the presidential race when they went into vote, and no matter how you feel about it I simply will not let you make negative conclusions about immigrants and other minorities that were tricked into voting against their interests without any actual evidence to back it up.
Cite your sources, or stop claiming that immigrants and others weren’t tricked. This is a toxic narrative and it must be stopped in its tracks.
It is our job as leftists to speak to these people who are afraid and say “don’t take my word for it, see how these people who claim to support you are trying to kill, maim and destroy you and your families”, and NOT our job to lambast these people for entering into a cruel battle royale for reasons we could only really ever judge if we were in their shoes and doing badly.
Plenty of people were tricked, no not everybody knew it, heck tons of people didn’t even know Biden had dropped out of the presidential race when they went into vote
Yoive set a really really low bar there for personal responsibility. At some stage adults have to take responsibility for their actions.
If you are so disengaged from US Politics you wern’t even aware BEFORE voting that Biden wasn’t on the ticket, then yes, YOU are to blame for that complete disengagement from democracy. I’m not saying you have to be up to speed with the minutiae of wording across the policy space but to not even be aware of the candidates ?.. come on, they shouldn’t even be let out of the house, let alone voting ffs.
Same as many other trump voters, pure disillusion and desperation with the status quo. They buy the lie instead.
Not sure about this woman, but my naturalized citizen mother is not used to English so she just constantly watch anti-Democrat propaganda from WeChat. 🤷♂️
Edit: I mean we are all legal, but my dad is still a PRC citizen. My grandmother (mother’s mother) is still a PRC citizen too.
I guess people seem to just expect the rule of law to be upheld… 🤦♂️
There’s anti-democrat ads even on Chinese social apps?
In China, probably no.
But these ads/propaganda targeted at Chinese-Americans. The “Migrant Crisis” is one of the big things they push. Although, I’m not sure if that’s CCP doing it, or if its just a conservative dickhead in the US posting those shit, and WeChat merely amplifying it. My mom keep telling me about how "Democrats in NYC is letting too much ‘mentally ill’ homeless people live near Asian-American communities and about that prison they plan to build near NYC Chinatown.
Like why blame “Democrats”, thats more of a “politician” thing. A MAGAt would in power would build something worse, a MAGAt would just wall-in every non-white in a ghetto.
And there’s this rhetoric about “illegal immigrant stealing benefits”, like just tax the fucking rich already.
Yup; in general China stands to benefit most in the long-term with a second Trump administration. Economic projections are that they will take over the US as the world’s largest economy, and when that happens - it will shift global spheres of influence, especially with the US digging itself so far into debt and isolationism.
We’ve hosted a bunch of European exchange kids over the years, and they tell us that it already feels like the EU is realigning with China away from the US.
First time maybe, second term there is absolutely no excuse
Immigrant here. No english means same info from the internet. Usual thought process goes :
“Right are working class farmers so left must be the CEOs. Like in my country except they are switched. Makes sense.”
Some people (~30%) can’t separate reality from fiction.
Colonialism cannot simply subjugate minorities with violent force alone, it isn’t enough to turn people against their homes.
Colonialism must divide people with fear and make them pick sides against their heart so that the oppression of Colonialism is distracted from by the oppression of people hurting each other as they try to claw their way up through brutal racist, classist conditions all the while being lectured by white people.
It doesn’t have to make sense to you why people would vote against their interests, you must simply understand that it is essential for authoritarian control and thus rich people have gotten very good at convincing people to do it in the US.
You can only have a class based system where certain groups are excluded from enjoying decent lives if there is always a sales pitch being made to a minority group that if they betray their own interests to help white people come out on top again then they will be let into the white club. Whiteness dies without that and yet whiteness can never really let anybody in who isn’t white without dying itself.
Focus your anger on the immense incongrituities of this situation not the fact that it hurts people so bad they can’t see clearly with their heart anymore.
Fascists aren’t people. Logic and self interest does not apply.
It’s all libidnal desire to not think, a rejection of a world that demands they grow and change. A rejection of complexity, of knowledge, of responsibility.
Critical thinking does not apply. Their whole way of being runs counter to that. There is no self awareness, no imagination¹, not even self preservation.
Even what you and i think of as communication serves a different purpose for them. It’s like the husks from ‘mass effect’ but more so.
¹older versions of fascism actually had imagination. It was a thing. Filtered out; creates too much complexity.
Careful here… while I agree with your anger, you’re using the same language used to dehumanize vulnerable populations. Everyone, including horrible people like Steven Miller, deserve basic human dignity. They deserve fairness, due process, and every human right. But unrepentant fascists don’t deserve our attention, our sympathy, forgiveness, or reprieve from justice (repentant ones are more complex and not addressed here).
To treat them as less than human is to risk becoming like them. When you fight monsters, you must take extra care to avoid becoming a monster yourself, after all.
There’s this thing they do. Basic schoolyard bully shit. Accusing someone else of the thing you’re gonna do, so when you do it, the victim sounds like theyre just copying you.
I’ve read neitzsche, by the way. There’s a lot of nuance to what that part actually means. Just quoting it to excuse the libshit you already believed (or think you do) is kind of missing the entire point of that philosophy.
Fully agree with you, and touché on the glib use of the quote. I wasn’t trying to invoke the full depth of Nietzsche. I’m merely cautioning against crossing the line between condemning disgusting actions and labeling the people themselves as disgusting. I’m appealing to humility and humanity: a recognition that we aren’t inherently “better” than the worst of them. In order to be different from them, we have to act differently.
We don’t have to agree, we don’t have to sympathize, but failing to see their humanity no matter how unconscionable their actions blurs the line between us and them, and that’s a line I prefer to keep as clear as possible.
I am curious what you see in my comment that is “libshit”, though. I don’t personally see how the invocation of human rights and dignity is liberalism by any reading.
Sorry for the wall of text, but so often your position is espoused by reactionary bigots who think being born the right species is inherently virtuous, that there’s a fundamental mystical essential ‘humanness’ to give us some baseline value, and that nothing else could ever deserve those considerations, and call me a monster for considering fucking nuance, or the ways i am, as a human, capable of sucking. It’s uncannily close to fascism and i can get somewhat emotional about it.
Have you actually read fascist thinkers? Autodehumanization is often a conscious aspiration.
And as someone who gives a shit about animals who arent human, who read too many sci novels as a kid:
Human and person ate not synonyms. ‘Human’ is dtrictly a biological thing. Useful for medicine, organ compatibility, etc. There’s some fundamental psychology you can assume, and be mostly right most of the time, but since humans are so fucking versatile/volatile/plastic, odds are it will almost never be 100% accurate.
Personhood is another matter altogether. I think the most depressing thing about llmbros and the last decade’s acute rise of fascism is looking at all the things i treasure and see as special about people, then looking for them in my fellow humans, and so often just finding nothing. Being unable to build/revive/attach any.
If you’re not going to flesh out and define your idea past ‘vibes’, do not ask me to respect it. That is lib shit.
you aren’t better than the worst piece of shit.
Yes i am. I worked for this. I sacrificed a pretty substantial inheritance for a shot at being a good person. More than an inheritance. And i worked for it, too.
I don’t know if i exactly hit the mark. But i spent a looooong time trying to figure out how to do that. I spent a long time trying to figure out how to figure out how to do that. I got a better than average humanities education as a kid, but i gave myself an exceptional one, and learned practical skills besides, as i came into adulthood. I applied that. I applied that to myself and to the world around me, and I’ve allowed those i loved or respected to do the same. I have never stopped growing never stopped learning. I suffered and risked for this knowledge, for these aspirations. I patched and reinforced by bones with it-literally, in some cases.
How fucking dare you tell me some fascist piece of shit that’s spent its entire life trying to be a mindless object, trying to erase all capacity and knowledge from itself until it’s nothing but obedience and reflex, is as good as me. That fucking lib shit is an insult to both its efforts and my own. I worked for my dignity, the hypothetical fascist cast its dignity off. We are not alike, fuck you for saying so.
I wont eat octopus. That was a person, a person was killed for that meal. Not necessarily a kind of person i have much understanding of. It’s an alien mind, but it was almost certainly a person in ways that matter, and eating them by choice when you have other options is vile, even if their capture/farming/death was free of suffering, which it almost certainly was not. I’ll think less of you if you would.
If you’ll eat octopus by choice, then tell me a fascist is a person, your opinion is not worth hearing; you’re just some human-chauvanist piece of shit who’s never looked in a mirror.
So the guy who has been stiffing contractors for the last 50 YEARS, the guy who calls our servicemen “suckers and losers” the guy who openly bragged about just how hard he was going to fark us all over, the guy who shits in a GOLD TOILET doesn’t care about YOU?
That must have come as quite a shock.
Isn’t undocumented another word for illegal immigrant? (It’s not really a term we have over here so apologies if I got that wrong)
I have nothing whatsoever against people based on their country of origin or skin colour etc, but if you’re (or a close loved one is) flagrantly breaking the law and hiding from the authorities by illegally residing in a country, surely you shouldn’t be surprised when you vote for the guy that promised to root these criminals out and deport them?
To me, the big news is people who are legally residing in the USA are being gulag’d, not that they’re catching illegal immigrants. But yes, this woman was a fool, sadly.
She may be intelligent and capable of learning better, but such is the power of propaganda and brainwashing that it can get us all. None of us are immune.
It’s a strong reminder that people can be tricked into working against their own interests, no matter how smart we are. The only thing that will give us a fighting chance are strong Critical Thinking skills. Even then, it’s so easy to be fooled and not realise it.
Oh save your fucking tears. Your daddy wouldn’t be dying in ICE custody if it wasn’t for you.
Selfish people. Its still a me me me attitude, but now she wants everyone else to come and do what she wants to get what she wants.
I’d put money on the fact that if put in a situation where she was asked to help someone else’s family first she would say “But what about MY father!?”
Its still a me me me attitude
I don’t know why I read that in Italian accent.
Now I’m reading his entire post as Mario
I feel like the solution to this is more Luigi, tbh.
People would be less selfish if they didn’t feel so hopeless.
Totally non sequitur question:
Does an apathy tree… grow, or exude apathy?
… or is it too uninterested to grow at all in the first place?
It’s-a me 🤌 me🤌 me 🤌
“All his plans were public but I refused to review them. I thought Project 2025 was a joke because I only subscribe to rightwing media.”
I’m upset that people are being harmed. I’m not upset that you feel betrayed.
At least for once one of them actually seems to regret their vote. Fuck her anyway though, they only care when it personally affects them directly. You voted for this to happen to everyone else, turns out that includes you and your family too, so:
It’s really sad that we practically have to forgive them if we want to progress as a society. Because I agree with your sentiment…
But
We can’t exterminate them. They are gonna live here on the other side of this, whatever that looks like. Those who have a genuine change and see not just that trump was wrong, but that they were either wrong or very very gullible should be forgiven and accepted as allies. We’re gonna need all the people we can get on our side through what’s coming.
“We tried to warn you. Welcome to the resistance.”
Scrolled down 2 pages to find and upvote this.
Empathy is a ‘weakness’ until they want some for themselves.
Empathy for me, not for thee.
This entire comm is about having no empathy.
I feel sorry for the leopards.
No. We said the same thing for the last 8 years, and people like you thumbed your nose at us like little children. Consequences of your actions.
tbf these people have been misled by tons of lies and propaganda by the republican party
That’s fair.
But it’s also fair to call them what they are. Fucking idiots.
All the knowledge in the world is at everyone’s fingertips now. It’s a choice to be stupid as hell.
I got a typical public education. I’m not dumb enough to vote for Republicans.
I said this exact same thing a couple weeks ago when someone was whining about “working class solidarity”. “Oh boo hoo they were conned and manipulated” How come I can consume the exact same media as them and see through the bullshit? I’m really supposed to feel sorry for them? We’ve been telling them for decades they’re being lied to; they enjoy it.
I think the point of propaganda is that it works, so they don’t realize they’re stupid and need to look elsewhere.
They shove it down their throats that the other sources are all lies so they think they’re being smart, and it’s been happening their entire lives.
So while they’re idiots, I’m not sure how much of a choice it is for a lot of them. They were manufactured that way.
The point they have with the propaganda is they hate people. “Ban all muslims” followed by a cheering crowd “build a wall” followed by cheering people. “I didnt lose the election they cheated–get them!” followed by a mob of thugs assaulting cops.
Its really not that nuanced. They just hate people. That’s all their is to it. If they don’t have hate in their hearts they wouldn’t vote for trump. He’s not even good for the economy for anyone who pays attention.
But when their parents were fed propaganda all their life and then they get born and it’s just passed on as if it’s normal, perpetuated by the ever increasing propaganda.
There’s a lot of hate out there, and some people would probably end up that way regardless, but even that is being intentionally bred through the generations. The level of hate is way beyond what it should be nowadays though if people weren’t spoon fed it all the time.
hate is not passed on like genetics.
I’ve known people who become spiteful/hate-filled over time because they like to have a punching bag, someone underneath them if they have sorry lives. Some of them just plain ol like to hate people. This is not nuanced. Some people are just terrible, awful human beings. We don’t have to cross examine their upbringing to understand this.
One of my best friends growing up around berkeley had hippy parents, he is now a racist trumper. Parents had nothing to do with it. And his half sibling is part african american. You can’t reason with shit people, and theres no point in trying to. He loudly claims that white people need their own country. He can go fuck himself without nuance.
Not by genetics no, but taught by parents and the circle they’re brought up in who are also hateful, and hateful news they’re told is the only news to watch.
Some people are terrible regardless absolutely, but the sheer amount of it were seeing right now is being generated by bad actors.
You need to have some intelligence to know how dumb you really are. The real criminals are the churches who back the grift thinking it will unleash some Christian utopia instead of the feudal system we left way back in the past when we decided Kings have got to go.
Sure, and they enjoyed participating in the hateful rhetoric and the discrimination of the outgroup that entire time, made them feel superior, until they found out they were part of the outgroup themselves.
It’s interesting that they’re still unable to see the connection between minority groups. For MAGA there is no difference between trans, Muslim, immigrant. They use the racism minority groups have against each other… and that’s how we got here today.
I think that there’s been more than enough time for these people to look into the man they’re supporting, definitely more than enough to sift through ‘fake news’.
See how that seems completely fucking unrealistic to expect from any MAGAt? Lies and propaganda work because the people absorbing it are actually too stupid to determine the truth and need someone to think for them.
They probably think they are getting the truth so they don’t think they need to look any further into it.
I have seen enough that I know I don’t like and I don’t agree in general with JD Vance, for instance, so I’m not going out to find redeeming qualities about him. I’m also not really watching things from him or trump for that matter. But, my brother who ended up going the opposite way of me politically, said the other day that Vance is “down to earth” and will likely go for president after trump. I see clips all the time of him speaking that show me he’s not down to earth, but I’m also not seeing clips of him tailored to show me that it is true.
I can imagine that if you’re only being fed the positive narratives of your side and only negative things about the “other” side you’re likely to think you already know what’s going on. We also know that both media and the almighty algorithms (like YouTube) will send you down these rabbit holes in the interest of views. If i don’t search, most of what I get about Vance from algorithm based social media are the memes with his distorted face. If that’s all you see, you’re probably coming away with the impression that this guy is a joke. So if you tell me he’s competent and down to earth, my initial reaction is that’s nonsense. Is he? Maybe. It’s not what I see and I’ve felt no need to look for it.
I have always been a nerd on the internet, so i have always been on these kinds of sites like Lemmy, reddit, imgur, old forums, where I can talk to people from all over the world. They have their echo chambers and little bubbles but it’s still a more diverse group of opinions than what you’re fed on sites like Facebook. But the usage on these sites is much lower, most people are not here. They’re either not using social media at all, or they’re on Facebook, tiktok, whatever. They’re only seeing the cropped images, edited clips, news that caters to what they want to believe. If everything’s telling you one thing, including things your friends and family are sharing online, why would you question it.
I understand the reality of what you’re saying.
However, and this will seem harsh, it is stupid not to question the things you’re being told. It takes a stupid person to allow themselves to be convinced to vote against their basic interests for the low, low, price of getting to be racist. It doesn’t matter if your entire world tells you otherwise.
I agree. I don’t know if I got lucky in that i have consistently been told to question things through my life by teachers, by my parents (who don’t question things anymore), by people online.
I also think it’s just how people work. What is it, every dictatorship has used propaganda to convince people they want these things? People heard trump say he needed to be a dictator for a day and they were happy about it. The only difference is it’s easier to do now i would think.
I do consider myself lucky in that regard, as well.
Unfortunately, yes — I agree. It has never been easier to convince people of ‘the truth’ than it has today. There’s an argument to be made that it’s never been easier to debunk bullshit as well, however Brandolini’s Law is still very relevant.
I’m sorry about your brother, and your parents. My mom is the only sane one in my family left, the rest are Trumpers or centrist liberals.
If this were the first time Trump was president, then fine, but it fucking ain’t.
Did someone try to mislead them? Yes. Are they idiots for believing them? Also yes. Did they turn a blind eye when it was happening to other people? Yes. Are they sad now that it affects them? Oh yes. Am I sad that they are seeing the consequences of their actions? Hell no.
Other people have been paying for their stupidity for too long. About time they do some “finding out” given how they’ve been all too happy to do some “fucking around”
This is so unnecessary. All she has to do is quit being such a cheapskate, and buy a pardon for a few million bucks. It’s really as simple as that. For $5 million he can even have a special gold HitlerPig citizenship card.
We needed that 8 months ago when you knowingly voted against it.
Now YOU want it.
Enjoy those tears, you earned them.
At the same time, extending that hand is what will help. If a person is able to go “omg NOW I get it” and then the door is shut in their face, that will foster even more resentment.
Some people wont change, but those that are willing should be accepted.
Ugh but they suck so bad…
Jokes aside, how can we trust people that have already displayed such selfishness? How can we trust they won’t continue to work against the group interest the second their goal is no longer aligned with ours?
Maybe we need to start treating lack of empathy like more of an intellectual / educational problem, rather than a moral failing in like your “soul”? If only just so we can forgive people enough to actually work with them.
I’m spitballin, but I can work with ignorance or even feeblemindedness - you just focus on education or harm reduction. Like maybe they’ll never never be able to see outgroups as fully human, but with the right kind of external validations and incentives, maybe they could simulate it.
I don’t know. My sister is a psychopath. She cannot understand the feelings of the other people around her, no matter how clearly or explicitly or adamantly they are explained to her.
We have a lot of psychopaths out there running the government and in positions of power and in positions of authority and serving as megaphones for their interests.
No amount of explaining empathy or extending hands or teaching will ever get through to these people.
They are fundamentally broken in a way that cannot be fixed.
That’s what I was trying to get at with my talk of incentives and external validation - Stop trying to “fix” them and accept that they lack the capacities that we take for granted.
I’m through with caring about what’s in someone’s heart of hearts. Can we get them to behave, even if it’s out of fear of being ostracised? Fine. Good enough.
Then work on the conditions that make people maladaptive (or really just adaptive to a mal world) separately.
It does really seem like a societal issue. We incentivize this behavior, so it shouldn’t be surprising when people display it.
that’s basically the approach that all of popular culture had been taking since like 2008. like that was the attitude of the last 20 years. show these bigots that if they at least pretend to play nice we can all get along and be more prosperous for it.
they hated it. it’s the “woke mind virus” to them now. I genuinely don’t believe people like this will ever be ok in a kind and accepting world. I also don’t think that trying to get rid of them will solve this problem… i don’t know if there is a solution to some people being mentally incapable of empathy, but it certainly doesn’t help that it’s so baked into our culture now.
capitalism is highly compatible with a lack of empathy. it’s a system that inherently promotes those with no scruples. the less you feel bad about being a piece of shit for money, the more money you’ll be able to make. it’s a predatory system where those most willing and able to cannibalize everyone and everything around them for personal gain will gain the most. those that gain the most are then also in a position to manipulate both political votes and public opinion. they blatantly bribe our politicians and they own our media platforms. this is especially problematic on social media. if you were a young American on tiktok in the last u.s. election you probably saw numerous vague tiktoks about kamala starting WWIII. no quotes, no context, just “me and the boys after kamala starts wwiii” type shit. as I understand it nearly every major election around the world since then has seen tiktok flooded with “memes” like that supporting the right wing candidate. we’re certainly not going to make any progress on this issue while that’s the world we live in.
maybe a stable enough government with keen enough regulations can at least try to keep these people from completely raiding the hen house. we’ll have to see how things play out with Germany and the afd ban, but I’m not too hopeful on that playing out well in our current situation.
IDK, I’m half convinced that humanity is eternally doomed to repeat the same mistakes. with long periods of everything sucking because too few have or want too great a percentage of what humanity has claimed their own and the occasional period where things are accidentally not that bad.
we are currently leaving one of those brief periods of “not that bad”
There is an intellectual burden to behaving against your nature/wishes. It’s reasonable to expect them to not want to do that. We just need to show them the cost is more than just external, which certainly isn’t happening at an institutional level in the States right now. You’d think reminding someone who’s voting to kick out illegal immigrants that that group included members of their own family wouldn’t be harder than Homer remembering that Lisa needs braces, though.
We don’t need to. Anyone on our side even temporarily is useful.
FDR, Churchill, and Stalin made it work…
This fully grown legal adult didn’t have self awareness 8 months ago, I doubt they’re going to suddenly develop it. If you are nice or sympathetic to them, you just reinforce their beliefs that they are the victim and everyone should care about them the most.
I’m sympathetic to her father. She can kick rocks. I have no sympathy for her.
The right wing is using propaganda tactics that are known to brainwash and dupe many people, and you’re not going to treat those who got brainwashed and duped like victims too? Yes, they’re adults, and that means that they have to take responsibility for their vote. Once they do, admit they were conned, and express willingness to join the fight, it’s important we accept them with open arms so they know our side is better than the other side.
As long as they’re doubling down on fascism? Hard agree, they can kick rocks. Once they see what’s really going on and are willing to fight it? Welcome to the team, sorry about what happened to your dad, let’s see if we can get him back.
Every person like this is an opportunity to gain an ally. It’s an opportunity to find out if this person was conned or is selfish. We lose that opportunity if we mock them instead of offering a hand in solidarity.
The right wing is using propaganda tactics that are known to brainwash and dupe many people…
No one is forcing people to consume that content. It’s weak propaganda at best, easily seen through, and there is no shortage of well-sourced refutations of their lies. Have you tried talking to any trump supporters? When given direct evidence that they are wrong, and have been mislead by right wing media, they simply double down.
… you’re not going to treat those who got brainwashed and duped like victims too.
Absolutely not. They are not children who are sharing the opinions of their parents, they are full-grown voting adults in a society where all of human knowledge is available in their fucking pockets. I can understand making the trump mistake once in 2016, but at this point, he has a proven track record of racist, authoritarian and incompetent management of the country.
Not everyone has the luxury of the free time and effort to pay enough attention, and those people vote. I’m not suggesting absolving them of their individual responsibility. They contributed and they have to reckon with that. I’m suggesting that we recognise the role that the system they exist in plays, too. And that they’re human which means they have all the failings that come along with that.
Do we hold Oppenheimer responsible for all the deaths the Manhatten Project caused? I argue we shouldn’t, but he still had to personally reckon with the moral weight of it.
Two things can both be true: someone can have been part of the cause of injustice and join the fight for justice. We can both hold them accountable; and encourage their growth, offer them grace, and welcome them to the right side of history. We don’t have to forgive, but mocking (at first) doesn’t help IMO.
(As I’ve said elsewhere, no reservations about mocking the unrepentant)
We don’t have to forgive, but mocking (at first) doesn’t help IMO…
Yeah, but we’re on round 3 for people listening to trump’s campaigns.
Also in case you missed it…
I can understand making the trump mistake once in 2016.
Honestly, it’s gone so badly the last 3 rounds that I really think we ought to have a basic “in touch with reality test” and then weight votes based on whether people can answer objective true/false questions like… “The earth is a flat disc being accellerating upwards through space” and “Bacteria and Viruses are real, and can cause diseases.”
We don’t have to forgive, but mocking (at first) doesn’t help IMO…
Yeah, but we’re on round 3 for people listening to trump’s campaigns.
Brainwashing is effective. Capital control of mass-media is effective. I would prefer we focused our attention there rather than on the victims of that propaganda.
Honestly, it’s gone so badly the last 3 rounds
But if someone genuinely sees the light after the third round, and their first interaction as they’re coming to this realization is to be told that the tragedy that has befallen their family is their own fault… not a great feeling.
There’s going to be a round 4, 5, 6, etc. of this shit in the US. There will be other versions of this in other countries, too. The more ppl we successfully deprogram after each round of fascist betrayal, the fewer ppl will be vulnerable to the propaganda the next time. It’s a never ending job because we keep making new people and the fascists will always be doing propaganda.
I really think we ought to have a basic “in touch with reality test”
I’m frustrated with the incompetence of many people, too. It would be awesome if we could construct some kind of system that would ensure people are well informed before voting.
I fear any such system wouldn’t pass the “would I let the fascists do this” test. There is no system involving a test that we can create that they couldn’t co-opt to e.g. make a test requiring Christian Nationalist answers. Societal systems need to be made robust against corruption and constantly defended against the same. We can’t rely on good people always being in charge, but if we build our systems well, we can get good people in charge more often and weather the storm when we don’t.
In the absense of four prior years and quite specific intentions stated clearly of enacting these very policies I’d agree with you. The only revelation here is them finding the scorpion would sting them like they said they would. I’ve no compassion left for those that gleefully voted for this cruelty and were deliberately ignorant that they too were targets.
This one doesn’t get it, though.
“don’t shoot yourself in the foot”
“Shoot yourself in the foot to Make America Great Again!”
“I’m telling you man, you shouldn’t shoot yourself in the foot”
Shoots themself in the foot
“WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH”
“Told you so”
So now that she’s personally affected by it she wants change lol. But trans people are illegal now so deep down it was still worth it to her.
