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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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We've talked before about your theory that opposing all right-of-center candidates, even when one is running against a democracy-ending fascist, is something you think is justified and productive. I actually don't agree with some of your criticisms of Biden, but much more to the point, I think actively propagandizing against him in this particular election is foolish and dangerous.
If you were incessantly posting articles about productive ways to push the establishment Democrats to the left, and support for the rare handful of them that actually represent the people decently well, you and I would be very much on the same page, but just relentlessly shitting on Biden is something that I feel like giving a response to.
I'm not obligated to stop talking because you want me to. On my side, I could tell you to not post these things and move along, but, here we are.
A decent solution is that you could block me, so you won't be bothered by my comments, but I get to say my piece and everyone else can still see them as a counterpoint. Everyone's happy then, right?
You keep pivoting to this "oh isn't it a shame that Trump's doing well, I'm just a humble concerned citizen" stance, while actively doing what little you can in this little corner of the world to help Trump do better. Like I said, if you were actively promoting leftist ideals in government, it'd be a whole different conversation.
The DNC's not great. Biden's accomplishments though, as compared with a standard Democrat, are actually pretty significant. Actually the very first places I would put the blame for Trump doing as well as he is would be (a) establishment Democrats as a whole, for turning their back on the working class ever since Jimmy Carter (b) the US news media, especially the turgidly pro-corporate part of it that you keep posting links to.
This user is not interested in good faith debates about political ideologies and injecting some actual fucking leftism into the US. They post a variety of articles, mostly to dilute the anti-Biden posts. For every 1 post about a random topic, return2ozma has 3 anti-Biden posts. They post just enough random topics to claim they aren't a troll. Their goal is to spread just enough propaganda to discourage leftist and sway centrists on Lemmy (lol centrists on lemmy).
Yes, I know. I'm partly posting for other people to read. If posting a constant stream of "don't vote for Biden" on leftist parts of the internet has enough effectiveness for someone to prioritize it (which seems to be happening to at least some level), then conversely it must have some level of effectiveness to do the opposite. It's what I do with my time instead of volunteering with some effective organized leftist political organization. 🙂 Why that is my priority setup, I don't know.
I am a bit sincere in holding out hope that they're simply a confused leftist who thinks that posting a constant stream of anti-Biden stuff is helpful in some way, but my faith in that worldview has been challenged, it's true. It is a challenging time in US politics at present.
Sounds like Nancy Pelosi! Tell those fake dems to go back to China!
What is three times five please
Stay in school, you'll get there eventually.
Dude, you can't make a comment like that and then get offended when someone wonders whether you're a bot
Are you retarded? Lol
Just in case you didn't Get my reference
Literally no idea what you're talking about. If this is something Pelosi said, I already disliked her enough that I didn't see any reason to focus on this story for long enough to absorb the details, so I missed it.
Want to switch to another unrelated anti-Democrat talking point now? We could talk about oil extraction under Biden, that seems to be a popular one.
You don't follow the news much do you?
Jeeze, I wonder why people would be upset that their candidate continues to shatter records set by the previous Conservative administration in terms of climate fuckups? 🤔
They’re a textbook example of a concern troll. But unlike Reddit, Lemmy is too small for their M.O. to go unnoticed. It’ll be nice when they eventually tire of their tactics being called out and go back to Reddit.
They're also showing a pretty textbook example of Never Play Defense from the alt-right playbook. I'm honestly not sure why I engaged with them for the length of time I did, but I looked back at the flow of the conversation and it was something like:
Me: This article being repeated at the frequency it is, is propaganda
They: You're saying Biden's going to win the election, let me attack that viewpoint
Me: Biden's record is actually pretty good, whereas Trump is the end of the world, that seems relevant
They: You're saying CNN's reporting of Biden is factually wrong
Me: It's relevant that Trump is the end of the world
They: You're saying we should ban CNN
Actually typing it out in summary, I have no clue WTF I was thinking with continuing the conversation that long 🤣
We saw this same concerted effort to erode support for Biden in the last election by fake progressives lamenting how bad he is. They were bad faith actors propping up Trump then, and this guy is no different. Glad someone's around to call him out on his BS.
Criticism of the democratic party is not defacto support for trump. Biden is not above criticism.
Exactly this. It's the same party loyalists that wouldn't listen to us when we said Clinton would lose to Trump and literally told us they didn't need us.
You and @nudding are the same person. Nice responding to yourself there.
"There's no possible way that 2 different people can criticize dear leader"
Really starting to sound like a particular orange man's supporters 🤔
Vote for our genocide and climate apocalypse or Trump will take away our democracy >:(
What a fucking joke.
You're like the guy in the horror movie who says, "You want us to CLOSE the BEACH? On the FIRST DAY of tourist season? You must be joking, that's insane."
Yes, he really is going to make a credible effort at ending our democracy, and yes that really is much much worse than business-as-usual US foreign policy which is sometimes pretty bad. Saying it incredulously won't make it not a big deal.
Edit: It is also relevant also that the monsters that Trump supports are much worse than the monsters Biden supports. There's no guarantee that Trump won't support Netanyahu (he did move the embassy to Jerusalem), but unlike Biden, he will also support Putin, Xi, Orban, Duterte, and other modern day mini-Stalins who are in a position to do quite a bit more killing than what's happening right now in Gaza.
Right, so if it was me in your situation, I wouldn't be sucking Bidens dick trying to prove to everyone that he's not as bad as trump. I would be out protesting my shitty government.
You do you though.
I've noticed that the pattern of you and your ilk is pretty much never to respond directly to what was said, but just with each message to throw a few vaguely-related statements out, generally just vague anti-Biden statements without connection to the previous conversation. It's like a slow motion Gish Gallop.
Okay, sure. Lay out for me how Biden is as bad as Trump. Or, change the subject to another talking point non sequitur if you like, you do you.
Trump is worse than Biden. Biden is the current president. Did you hit your head and forget that? Because trump is worse than Biden, Biden is above criticism? Again, are you retarded?
He never said that. You go full retard on Biden whereas trump if you truly don't like him gets no criticism from you. Your bias is showing.
Everyone who's not mentally deficient knows trump is worse, why would I waste my time trying to convince his cultish followers that trump is bad?
Wouldn't my time be better spent criticizing the current president, who, unlike trump, has a chance to listen to reason? Your bias is making you blindly support a genocidal president, who literally pumped more oil than trump..
It is a key feature of propagandists that factual conversations tend to get sidelined in favor of emotional appeal or blatant hostility, often centered around quick one-liner arguments or he-said-she-said hostility (often with the positions mischaracterized or exaggerated to the point of caricature, as in this example).
The Card Says Moops lays out a lot of how it works. The hostility because both parties are the same has now transformed into hostility alongside the fact that they're not the same; the facts have morphed 180 degrees to suit what will "win" the current exchange, but the bitterness and hostility is the constant.
(Edit: Further more explicit example, I quickly looked back in this person's history and found "As a Canadian, yeah both of your right wing parties are essentially the same.")
I could point out that I literally criticized Biden in a couple different ways during my message #1, but it won't change the flow of the conversation. My guess is we'll now shift to a new non sequitur attack.
Observe:
Nobody said Biden is as bad as trump my guy.
In a normal conversation, you'd just openly clarify what you actually believe and we could move past it. I literally quoted you two different ways in the very message you're responding to, seeming to say that Biden is as bad as Trump.
If I've gotten you wrong or I'm missing context to the statements I quoted, then you can just say hey, here's what I actually think, and after the clarification we can have a productive factual conversation, whether we ultimately agree or disagree. But it seems like you're not into that.
This is why I linked to "The Card Says Moops."
This has been far from a normal conversation, my friend. You jump to conclusions too fast. I think Trump is fucking ridiculous. Why would I waste my time trying to convince his cult to change policy, when Joe Biden (the current president FYI) has some chance to listen to reason.
I'll say it again, and I'm sure I'll get downvoted for it here, but criticism of the democratic party or Joe Biden is not de facto support for trump.
If you have to silence valid critics, your country is lost and you should start again.
Yeah I wonder why I wouldn't wanna talk to somebody who doesn't address my criticism, and just tries to psychoanalyze my apparent political leaning 🙄
Quoting myself from earlier in the thread: "If you were incessantly posting articles about productive ways to push the establishment Democrats to the left, and support for the rare handful of them that actually represent the people decently well, you and I would be very much on the same page, but just relentlessly shitting on Biden is something that I feel like giving a response to."
(And, for what it's worth, I feel almost as irritated at articles relentlessly shitting on Trump for some trivial thing; he slurred his words for 2 seconds or he dropped a water bottle or something. It's just not relevant and it takes bandwidth away from talking about things that are extremely relevant.)
Quoting myself from very very recently: "I could point out that I literally criticized Biden in a couple different ways during my message #1, but it won't change the flow of the conversation."
(And, indeed, it hasn't. You didn't say anything along the lines of "Oh, I get it, you are open to criticizing Biden for his Israel policy or his friendship with the corporate-apocalypse world in general, and have done it yourself, let me absorb that and we can start to converse along different lines even if we still disagree on some significant issues." Nope, just more telling me what I believe even when I'm explicitly telling you otherwise, and then calling me "retard" and beating up on the imaginary belief you've assigned to me.)
Me disagreeing with you is in no way shape or form "silencing" you. That equivalence is another standard propaganda technique. If you feel slighted when I "psychoanalyze" you, stop using conservative propagandistic strawmen that are so well-known they're a cliché at this point.
I was more so referring to the general downvotes of basic facts about the administration. It makes the dems look like the rabid cult followers of trump and fox news.
I don't feel slighted, I feel like I'm talking to someone with very little understanding of basic social interaction.
Can't wait for your next wall of text.
Lemmy, in general, is cultishly anti-establishment-Democrat more than pro. They rightly got very up in arms about Biden's recent support for Israel, for example, almost unanimously.
We're talking to one another under the fourth article some guy posted in 24 hours re-emphasizing that Biden forgot something or misspoke in some minor way, though. "A nightmare." "His most potent political weakness." Et cetera. Lemmy's hivemind, for all its flaws, I think is actually pretty on point about identifying this type of clickbaity journalistic malpractice and downvoting it. Saying bias is clearly the reason they must be doing it, when if you take a step back and analyze for the claimed bias, it's actually in the opposite direction, is... I feel like I'm repeating myself... another standard conservative propaganda trope.
Lack of substantive response noted
🙄 Have a nice day.
Go on, have another go. I do this for a living; I love it.
Meh, I don't block anyone. Carry-on your rebuttals of the articles I post if you'd like then. Be Biden's champion. Maybe write to CNN, NBC News, ABC News, and other liberal news orgs to tell them how they're all wrong on the reporting they do about Biden? 🤔
Says "I'm far left"
Dares me to disgree with CNN or other "liberal news orgs"
Curiouser and curiouser
So you don't disagree with what they're reporting? Notice I'm simply posting articles from them 99% of the time.
I disagree with what they do and don't present, and with the emphasis they place on different things.
To me, it's relevant that Trump wants to end democracy in the United States and weaponize federal law enforcement against his enemies, and that he reacts with approval when his supporters want to kill his enemies. To me, if I ran a news organization, any coverage of the presidential race would be informed in some way by that context. I definitely wouldn't inflate a maybe-has-some-legitimacy story about (this week) Biden's age (when next week it'll be something else) in the way that you and CNN like to do.
I think CNN, and you, are basically running stories about how Hindenburg is old and out of touch with today's youth who want vigor and change in their politics, and how Hitler's going to clean him up in the general election, and different mistakes that his opponents have made in the past. In that sense, yes, I would disagree with what they're reporting.
Should we move CNN to the banned news source list like Fox News now? If they're going to criticize the sitting president I mean...
This type of "oh I guess you think X should be banned" strawman reaction to any criticism of a news outlet is, itself, anti-free-speech. Of course I can say CNN often reports harmful half-truths and explain what I mean by that. Are you suggesting I shouldn't say that? Is there a reason you're strawmanning that into me somehow saying they should be banned?
Lol what a shit troll. Do better.