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I'll be more impressed when critics target the aggregators, platforms.
How does the counter information strategy work? Anti Limbaugh people have tried fact checking, mocking, discrediting, etc. The only thing that seems to have tempered his show is attacking his advertisers.
Imagine you really oppose Rachel Maddow or Alex Jones. How would you negate their influence?
I don't know any popular new style influencers on the left. So let's say Ben Shapiro and Carlos Masa (because I have no better idea). How would you bounce them?
The only angle of attack I can think of is a smear campaign.
The only successful campaign I know of is Milo. My take is the Mercers got sick of his schtick. So maybe attacking patrons, which are a different kind of advertisers, works too.
I note also that you know nothing about me; that sort of insult is normally used by those without much actual life experience.
This is because those who know the world is complicated and full of many types of people tend not to assume the background of those they disagree with, and certainly aren't normally arrogant enough to make claims about how hard life is on the other side, excepting perhaps, when they themselves are projecting somewhat.
The point is that we aught to trust our institutions to keep that from happening without acting like the people who we are supposedly saving society from.
The Nazis who had just started a genocide of millions or the Soviets, who had just finished their third genocide of millions?
>Side? I am on nobody's side, because nobody is on my side, little orc.
Back to the larger argument. Declaring "they're both corrupt" is appropriate if, in fact, they are both corrupt.
Are they both corrupt? As both mellosouls and throwaway9980 pointed out, the Democrats did their absolute best to cancel the results of the 2016 election. Can we say that both of those are bad? If not, why not?
And if you say that the Republicans are worse because, first, it's now, and second, because they're using more extreme methods, I would agree with you on both grounds. But are you against trying to overturn elections? Or are you against Republicans? Which is it?
Yes, I remember that Clinton conceded quickly. Trump should have done so as well, at the latest three days after the election. It's over, it's been over, and it's going to stay over.
But Trump is absolutely making a fool of himself by continuing to fight, and in the process he is damaging the norms that keep this creaking democracy functioning. So far, he hasn't gotten anywhere because people (who nominally should be on his side) haven't gone along with his BS - from the governor of Georgia, to the Supreme Court justices he appointed.
I worry, though, that next time it will be worse - that people will be willing to go along. And I worry about that for the left, not just for the right. In fact, I worry about it somewhat more for the left. The right has (some) people who believe in the rule of law, and things like "originalism". The left has (some) people who believe in the "living" constitution, and judicial activism. I worry that if, say, President Harris tries to follow this same playbook in 2024, some on the left in positions of power will be more willing to go along than some on the right have been in 2020.
On the other hand, there are far too many people who are still following what I can only call a cult of personality around Trump. They worry me on the right. If they haven't come to their senses by 2024, and Trump runs again...
So, yeah. Trump is at the moment worse. I oppose his attempt to remain in power, and I am delighted at how others have refused to play along. But I worry about both the right and the left in the future. Within the next 20 years, I think it's likely that someone will try this again.
Biden has the chance, maybe, to strengthen our institutions and repair some of the damage. Or he has the chance to continue to try to make them more partisan, but in the opposite direction of the last four years. Will he be wise, or just political?
Impeachment was on the grounds of national security, not partisan poltics. At least one Republican Senator agreed. You can beg to differ.
Originalism is exclusively a fantasy based in the observer's desires and perceptions of what they think the Framer's would have wanted. It would be better if we prioritized the actual values of liberty, justice, etc, and the real outcomes of government policy we can all observe, instead of what we would like to believe people who have been dead for centuries may have believed. Wouldn't they likewise have worried more about solving the problems they faced in the present?
The Constitution is a living document whether we'd like to accept that or not. It is fundamentally not the same as it was in the beginning, and it is a changeable document. Originalism from, my perspective, is almost always leveraged to maintain institutional control in the hands of a small, wealthy, and white group. We'd only have white landowners voting, after all, if the Constitution never changed.
I'm curious if you think that letting the Senate stand as an unchanged institution, for example, without ever adding more states as we have in the past to resolve political impasses, will lead to less of a partisan divide or more. What will happen in 20 years, when government has continued to be paralyzed by an Upper House that will fundamentally not accept the legitimacy of its opposition, as I have seen personally under Mitch McConnell (let's be clear, they cannot be seen to negotiate with a black man, otherwise they will be primaried)?
You keep suggesting that Democrats are somehow going to turn into a different party than they are, while not producing evidence, all the while the GOP continues its slide into rank despotism. The House Minority leader himself signed onto the absurd Texas lawsuit. I have seen no evidence that voters who participate in the Democratic primary will tolerate any degree of the election disruption that GOP leadership repeatedly rams down our throats (again, to save their skins in their gerrymandered districts).
https://newrepublic.com/article/159946/blue-states-suppress-...
Voter suppression is a two party problem and needs a two party solution.
Yes, NY should update its voting codes. So should nearly every red state (and blue states should get ahead of the curve and implement RCV or other similar measures)
That’s tyranny too but liberals didn’t make as much noise as they do about Orange Hitler who’s led a pretty typical Republican presidency and managed to continuously piss off the war industry.
The same industry that’s kept us in a constant state of war for near 20 years because of their enormous sway over “respectable” presidents the liberal managerial class fawns over.
Are we talking Mussolini? Cause I think invoking fascism is debatable - at best it should be qualified. But the way you’re expressing it is sensational, as though you’re unable to critique your own viewpoint and leave the possibility that you’re wrong.
Trump also allowed the Saudis to murder and dismember a US journalist with zero consequences.
I mean the Saudis are linked to 9/11 and Bush chose to launch into forever war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s a fundamental element of the populist scepticism that “respectable” politicians are competent at anything.
And something like one murder is precisely the type of sickening academic response about decency that somehow is supposed to shield the decades of foreign policy mishaps, atrocities and incompetence.
This election fraud nonsense is payback. It’s awful that the right can’t see that this is terrible for everyone. It’s terrible that the left can’t admit that the same passions existed on their side after the 2016 election.
I don’t want to argue about which side is worse. I’m not trying to highlight hypocrisy. I’m simply saying that the eye for an eye mentality has us all stuck.
I’m hopeful that Biden does understand all of this. His demeanor throughout all of this inspires some hope. We need more people on both sides to follow his lead.
I'm a leftist fwiw, so please don't condescend to me about being honest with myself - today's problem is from my wing of the political spectrum. It's shameful.
One of the "sides" here has been trying to "cancel" the votes of 80 million Americans to install a permanent autocratic government.
And the other side has spent 4 years trying to cancel a President they don't like elected by people they don't like.
See how we can both do that?
I think that's a red herring attempt to drag the topic away from the original point of social and cultural persecution.
It's extraordinary the way some people will do everything they can to deny the obvious - that the worst representatives of the left today are doing exactly the same as the right wing McCarthyites of yore.
It's long past time for those of us on the left who genuinely claim liberal values to own it.
They're literal Nazis, don'tcha know.
Don'tcha know.
Without playing the enlightened centrist card too strongly I don't see anything particularly more disturbing about the proud boys than I have from antifa. Of course antifa can't be accused of being fascistic since their name is literally "anti-fascism" and if you call yourself anti facist then obviously it is impossible to be a fascist.
So no, the violence is not equal on both sides. One side is, objectively, worse. White supremacy and neofascism are the biggest threats to the country right now. It's not Muslims and it's not immigrants. If letting Antifa have their music-festival autonomous zones is the price we must pay to stop nazis from running amok in America's streets, so be it.
Also, I hope Biden restructures the Supreme Court and they overturn Brandenburg v. Ohio, paving the way for criminalizing hate speech in America so law enforcement can finally crack down on these groups.
There are many who would like to criminalize speech they don't like. What they don't realize is that the results likely wouldn't be what they were hoping for.
Brandenburg overturned cases like U.S. v. Schenck which involved whether Schenck could be convicted under the Espionage Act for the crime of writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft. That is the dangerous idea that sent a person to prison.
White supremacist fascist terrorism in the U.S. is real hard to deal with, mostly because it is very well hidden and decentralized. Communications are primarily through private end-to-end encrypted messaging apps. Organizations are more like alliances of isolated autonomous cells rather than one unified structure. Symbols, names and logos are often changed to avoid any association with genocide or fascism. The people who actually commit terrorist acts, such as Patrick Crusius who killed 20 people in an El Paso Walmart, are not publicly associated with any specific group, despite being radicalized through public communication channels appropriated by such groups. The cryptic nature of white supremacist groups also grants them considerable immunity to information war. "Antifa" and "Black Lives Matter" are recognizable brands with icons, logos, flags, colors; anyone can download those symbols and use them to misrepresent and discredit the movement. This in my opinion was the greatest mistake that Black Lives Matter and Antifa made. They underestimated and continue to underestimate the power of the media misinformation machine which is currently targeting them. They still haven't accepted that we are post-truth, post-reality, operating on a purely emotional level. They will find great success when they learn how to use their messaging to connect with Americans on the heart level rather than trying to use shocking slogans to communicate complex high-level intellectual concepts to literal primates. For example, "DEFUND THE POLICE" was a terrible slogan almost perfectly designed to fail, despite the fact that I would not mind defunding the police if it meant we could offer better education to the 40% of American children currently failing school under social distancing.
The world now revolves around memes and emotions, not facts and science. Activism can only succeed if it is adapted to this new era of humanity.
McCarthyism has little bearing on current political realities other than a passing resemblance.