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[-] nul9o9@lemmy.world 180 points 3 months ago

Or, we can hold the fucking media accountable for telling blatant lies about the impacts of tariffs.

[-] j4k3@lemmy.world 57 points 3 months ago

Ignorance is not an excuse. Fire all MAGAs for taxifs.

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 48 points 3 months ago

Fox News got around that by claiming they're entertainment, not news.

[-] JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml 27 points 3 months ago

Per their own arguments in court, no reasonable person would consider Fox News to be factual.

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[-] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 115 points 3 months ago

The OP is battling against what Faux Newz, Dipshit Donnie, and other right-wing propagandist shitrags are telling his employee, all which the employee takes as indesputable truth. If he can override that much brainwashing he can convince anyone of anything.

[-] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 48 points 3 months ago

"The Big Lie" is what Sanders is calling it.

[-] jabeez@lemmy.today 18 points 3 months ago

How many "big lies" are we up to now?

[-] Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works 17 points 3 months ago

But the guys in OP, they don't turn on daddy Trump. It can't be that they were lied to, then they'd have to do something alien to them like introspection. No, it must be...an honest mistake? Honestly have no idea how they'd justify it internally.

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[-] pyre@lemmy.world 84 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

didn't understand why he was told the other countries pay the tariffs

that's easy: you were willing to vote for a guy who lied over 30 thousand times in his first term so he realized you're a fucking idiot and he could say anything without you thinking even half a second about it.

WHAT'S THE POINT OF EXPORTING SHIT YOU IDIOT WHY WOULD A COUNTRY DO IT IF THEY HAD TO PAY FOR IT

[-] qarbone@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

They willing pay the extra funbucks tariff monies for the privilege and honor of shipping it to America (at cost) on a chance some red-hatted half-wit will waste it.

[-] ameancow@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The real Russian plot we've all missed completely has far, far less to do with paying Trump to sell them documents. That's the 2-dimensional public face of a cold-war that never ended and has been devastatingly effective against the USA.

The real Russian attack that we may never fully comprehend is exactly what they've done in other countries that they've subsequently annexed, which is making the general population stop caring about what's true or not. It's frighteningly easy to poison the well of public knowledge. You simply pour funding into efforts to boost BOTH SIDES of every social issue. When social debates and your nation's interests are ramped up and the rhetoric gets more and more extreme on both sides of an issue, when every story on both sides becomes suspect, people simply tune out or stop caring about what's true or not, and this is exactly where we are. Most people are more willing to just throw their arms up and go find a distraction than try to sift through what's real or not.

It was even easier to pull off in the USA than anywhere else because we have a built-in policy of fierce independence and individuality. We don't have communities around us, we don't have social circles that will make us want to step up our game, we don't have groups of people we care about telling us we're wrong, we don't have help from anywhere but inside our own heads. And if you've never been taught how your own thoughts can be wrong, if you've been fed the "special birthday boy" narrative for so long that you think highly of yourself, truth will seem toxic and poison because it will tell you things about yourself that will hurt. We don't seek out pain as a species, we use pain a signal to avoid a thing.

You can google "KGB tactics for destabilizing nations" and spend weeks reading about what's being done to us right now. But most people who read my message here will immediately feel that sneaking doubt or words of caution because "how do we even know what's real anymore."

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[-] adarza@lemmy.ca 78 points 3 months ago

and every one of the millions who ~~were~~are just as dumb, will forget the lessons learned well before the next election and vote for it all over again.

[-] obinice@lemmy.world 48 points 3 months ago
[-] GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 3 months ago

You know, the one Trump wins with 106% of the totaled votes.

[-] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 3 months ago

nice of you to assume there's gonna be a NEXT election.

[-] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 69 points 3 months ago

Delete Elon and Trump from existence and nothing will get better.

Why?

Because Americans are dumb as fuck and they'll still be dumb as fuck when and if those two are gone.

I'm old enough to have seen the same pattern multiple times. Republican leadership fails spectacularly, even pissing off many conservatives in the process. But as soon as the next cycle begins, those conservatives are back onboard voting for the absolute shittiest candidates.

Because to them an actual, literal dictator is better than a Democrat as president.

Our society is circling the toilet and it almost certainly won't get better within our lifetimes. Prepare yourselves for that.

[-] phx@lemmy.ca 22 points 2 months ago

I actually don't consider this an issue of being dumb. It IS an issue with being under-educated (often deliberately in R states) and fed a ton of propaganda

[-] ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

There's ignorance and there's stupidity. Stupidity will stubbornly resist any attempt to correct its ignorance.

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease.

Against stupidity we are defenseless.

Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable, they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.

For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

...

If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature. This much is certain, that it is in essence not an intellectual defect but a human one. There are human beings who are of remarkably agile intellect yet stupid, and others who are intellectually quite dull yet anything but stupid.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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[-] aceshigh@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It took Rome 1000 years to collapse. I expect instability in the us for the rest of my lifetime. I’m struggling to balance that reality and also living my life.

Also- I think COVID is to blame too. More people started living from the survival mindset and actually getting sick impacted their brain. Dictatorships help people feel safe.

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[-] JOMusic@lemmy.ml 65 points 3 months ago

I wrote a comment explaining Tariffs on a Fox News YouTube video a few weeks back, and the entire reply chain was people arguing with eachother about how tariffs work because "Trump said it's a tax on other countries, so that's how they work"

[-] Jaderick@lemmy.world 25 points 3 months ago

You’re doing god’s work in the hellish trenches

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[-] rayyy@lemmy.world 47 points 3 months ago

"He was told the other countries pay the tariffs", by a bunch of liars and he believed the liars.

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[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 46 points 3 months ago

Man, this isn't even "doing your research" it's just knowing what very basic words mean.

[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 47 points 3 months ago

I bet a coworker $20 that "tariff" and "tax" were synonyms. Motherfucker refused to pay up, calling merriam-webster.com, thesauraus.com, wikipedia etc. "fake news".

[-] towerful@programming.dev 26 points 3 months ago

Your mistake was referencing a woketionary.

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[-] zephorah@lemm.ee 41 points 3 months ago

To be fair, economics is not intuitive. Half of it is built out of unicorn dust and human imagination. How else would bitcoin even exist? For those of you who are economists and love the money side, vs the behavioral side, that’s great, we need people like you to explain it to the rest of us.

I work with a real system that will still exist no matter what happens with politics or money, so it takes work, for me. That said, tariffs and inflation are not difficult concepts provided you simply take the time to learn.

I know someone who lost their job in December due to tariffs anticipation, and they were not alone in that group of layoffs. The effects are there even if you fail to learn the reasons.

[-] some_dude@lemm.ee 19 points 3 months ago

I'm of average intelligence so if I can understand it, so can they.

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[-] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 41 points 3 months ago

Real answer is in the last line there. If 60% of people we're capable of doing their own research (and arriving at the correct answer) then we wouldn't have anti-vaxers, flat-earthers and non-billionaire/non-bigot/non-christian nationalist republicans.

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[-] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 40 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

If you're Republican it's simple:

  1. A tariff is Trump's special magic that saves you from foreigners and wokeness, and MexiCanada pays for it.
  2. Stuff costs more at the store because the Biden Crime Family hurt the economy so bad, not even Trump can fix it right away. In fact it might even take more than 4 years, so we better keep him in office forever.
[-] arrow74@lemm.ee 13 points 3 months ago

I don't think he'll live more than 4 years anyway. Hopefully the movement collapses when he does

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[-] It_Is1_24PM@lemmy.world 39 points 3 months ago

I would like to ask them what happens when taffis are increased to 100%? Does that mean producers are giving stuff for free?

And then what happen when the tarris are at 200%? Do they have to send stuff for free and pay on top of that?

One more thing - don't tell them they are wrong. Tell them they were lied to

[-] Realitaetsverlust@lemmy.zip 37 points 2 months ago

After brexit, the searches of "What is the European union" skyrocketed in Britain.

Most people are morons who don't think for themselves.

[-] Snowpix@lemmy.ca 26 points 3 months ago

"Doing your own research" means watching one or two YouTube videos or Facebook posts as far as these people are concerned. No thought for themselves, just parrot what you hear.

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[-] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 22 points 3 months ago

Isn't this the same debate as to how one country can (or cannot) force another country to pay for a random construction project that isn't in anyones interest (that wall)?

It's not like the concept is beyond (basically, 99.9+%) anyones cognitive abilities. It's just how ads (the science behind it is plentiful, it's a giant business sector) work on human brains.

[-] rekabis@programming.dev 20 points 2 months ago

Why else do Republicans love to defund education? Conservatism requires people to be ignorant about reality in order to have any chance at succeeding.

[-] General_Effort@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago

This may be "unpopular opinion" stuff, but I frequently see highly upvoted populist pitches on Lemmy that are just the same; a supposed way of sticking it to the man that will quite obviously be borne by the little guy.

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[-] Etterra@discuss.online 18 points 3 months ago

Some people are just dumb. It doesn't help that our education system is designed to produce worker bees and not educated citizens.

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[-] Kichae@lemmy.ca 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Of course the employee is wrong, but the OOP isn't tackling the argument in a really productive way. There's an opportunity to meet the employee where they are.

People caught in the right wing noise machine always seem to understand that businesses pass on business taxes to the consumer. So, if other countries were paying the tariffs, why wouldn't they pass those costs on?

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[-] Goun@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 months ago

I don't understand how they think this works

[-] Delphia@lemmy.world 34 points 3 months ago

A lot of them think that the country with the tarrifs levied against them needs to pay the country they are exporting to to sell the goods there like a "If you want to do business here" tax on the country exporting.

But in all honesty even if it did work that way, the exporting country would just jack the prices up to cover it. The end result for US citizens would be the same.

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this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face

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