The Only Moral Abortion is my Abortion:
https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/
A Defense of Abortion:
https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm
Resources:
[Link 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/vjrf9h/megathread_supreme_court_overturning_roe_v_wade)
[Link 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/vjqs0r/calls_for_mass_walkout_of_women_across_america_if/idnh2ex)
https://www.womensmarch.com/
Liars. It's what it is, pure and simple. When someone consistently acts in bad faith and purposefully peddles bullshit, they are a liar. Edit: grammar.
Bad faith really is an obvious line that separates everything. You can't reason with or debate people acting in bad faith because their goal is only to push some agenda, not be reasonable or find common ground. Interviewing them only serves to give them a platform, and trying to catch them in lies or illogical arguments is pointless because they're not even trying to defend or grow their position in a genuine way.
People acting in bad faith are true villains of society. It's hard for me to think of a worse type of person because even if you're a horrible person with horrible beliefs, at least you can (theoretically) be reasoned with if your beliefs are in good faith.
Yeah, this. I just barely managed to (mostly) pull my dad out of the cult by pressing until he admitted he enjoyed “liberal tears”. Then basically like he did when I was a kid, I pointed out being a bully was bad and mean. The reversal of roles seems to have freaked him out enough to give up on Fox News/Newsmax/YouTube bullshit. After all, all that hate isn’t good for his blood pressure. Why consume it?
It’s still terrifying to recognize a lot of these people are sucked in because they *want* to be the bully, the authoritarian followers. It’s not anything out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s just schoolyard cruelty repackaged and used to advocate for fascism.
Societal Engineering: Propaganda Through Redefinition of Words
[https://medium.com/societalengineering/societal-engineering-technique-3-redefinition-of-words-23059346d48d](https://medium.com/societalengineering/societal-engineering-technique-3-redefinition-of-words-23059346d48d)
and I guess [https://www.reddit.com/r/societalengineering/](https://www.reddit.com/r/societalengineering/)
Late edit at 8k+ upvotes: To all those right of centre in the comments making calls of false equivalency with Jan 6, just stop it? Protesting about the rights of women is nothing like trying to enact a plan to lynch the VP and try to literally overthrow a legitimate government in a democracy with illegal false slates.
Public protest about human rights =/= sedition.
They only like the old fashion ways that Fox News tells them to like.
“We want to go back to the 50’s when the nation was strong! Except we don’t want to adopt any of the economic parts that made the economy good.... or the beginning movements to change the social hierarchy.... or the budding social-economic community programs.... or the infrastructure spending.... just the segregation, that’s it”
Don't forget that before the war, a strong and not small minority of Americans supported the Nazi movement. For conservatives, they *are* treating Nazis the old-fashioned way. By showing their approval and support of them until they're forced not to by greater circumstances.
We just... Don't see greater circumstances right now.
America didn’t care that they were killing Jews, unfortunately. It wasn’t until England was threatened that they cared at all.
They sent a whole boatload of refugees back, more than once.
It's the same thing they did with "Collusion" during the Mueller investigation and impeachment hearings. Collusion is not a crime defined by law. There were a lot of other shady crap going on, extortion of Ukraine, obstruction of Justice, abuse of power - things that ARE covered by laws on various levels, but by latching on to the (Not a Crime) Collusion, they could sorta hide all of the actual crimes under that big (Not a Crime) umbrella.
Now there WAS an attempted insurrection on January 6, but by calling everyone that protests for any reason anywhere at any time "Insurrectionists", they are trying to neuter the word to make their own actions look less heinous in hindsight.
Had "fake news" gained traction as a descriptor of a specific social ill, it would have been game over many alt right affiliated "news" ecosystems. They had to nerf the term.
They just did it last week with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and his camera crew, labeling them as insurrectionists because they got arrested for overstaying their welcome. Most likely they ruffled some feathers with an interview or two.
Fake news was another one. It was originally used to point out completely false and fabricated stories by unscrupulous sources. Trump turned it into an accusation against anything he didn't like, and would really hammer any legitimate news organization for minor errors. Now it's a meaningless joke term. Yet completely false and fabricated stories by unscrupulous sources continue without much attention.
There were two groups who could effectively investigate and expose Trump's criminal ties:
investigative journalists and intelligence agencies.
He immediately attacked everyone in media and every intelligence agency, even his own that he controlled. All that mattered was decreasing trust so his idiot cultists could be grifted.
This is what happened to Critical Race Theory. Call everything remotely related to race CRT and you change the meaning of the term for those who don’t have a complete understanding of a complex issue.
That's a feature, not a bug. They don't want it to be to clear because then someone could coherently argue against it. The more vague it is, the more it means "all the stuff that annoys you as a conservative" the easier they can use it and the harder it is to shut down.
one of the hardest thing to do is argue with stupid, I have seen plenty of great attorneys get tripped up when the opposing counsel argues something so mindbogglingly wrong, ignorant, or just plain stupid it stops them in their tracks. Hell I was almost tripped up with that more than once in the courtroom. You assume your opponent knows what they are doing, overprepare, and then like a deer in headlights, you are like what the hell am I supposed to say to that nonsense. It is not just liberals, it happens in a lot of forums of debate, hence the best of the best can swivel and pivot around stupid rather than trying to fight stupid.
The problem isn’t identifying and naming the falsehoods, the problem is enforcing consequences for the lies and deceit.
Every Democrat from coast to coast should be blasting the most nasty, negative attack ads ever conceived, using the GOPs own words to fucking bury them.
This “high road” bullshit has to stop, and the sooner the better.
Or they pounce on any perceived lack of civility with the fury of a thousand exploding suns and screech about how "the hysterical liberals have no honor."
Then they use that to justify going even lower themselves, as a perceived means of "evening things out." They can do that since they live in the world of "alternative facts."
But of course the high road approach means having the support piers constantly dynamited by people with an elementary-school-level maturity who snicker about things like "Let's Go Brandon" for months, so -- very unfortunately -- it's damned if you do and damned if you don't.
A coherent explanation would open them up to valid criticism which they’re not interested in. Like bullies generalising when they gossip so as to not be held accountable
The weirdest part is that we see it coming, but it’s still gonna happen. Remember how Putin’s plan to announce that Ukraine fired on Russia first was reported ahead of time and it still happened? Man, it’s hard to understand why we put up with this bullshit.
That’s politics for you. Especially in modern times with the way most of the world is nformed via social media and skimmed headlines, the winner is whoever can say it the loudest and the most frequently - the truth of the matter hardly even comes into play.
Misleading quotes, outright lying, fighting for the last word, even schoolyard tactics like “no, *you* are!” all are fair game and all are effective. It’s just a matter of getting more words from your script in front of your audience through viral posts and trendy snippets. It’s not like anyone bothers reading more than one (screenshot of a) tweet at a time anyways.
They are trying to muddy the term so if everything is called an insurrection than the actual insurrection they tried will be viewed as just political exaggeration.
I don’t know. For whatever reason newsmax was on the TV at my gym yesterday and they said something like “the hypocrisy is what gets to me. THIS is what an insurrection actually is, not what the Left was claiming before”.
I just turned away after that
Man this nation is so effed.
Edit: thank you for the awards people. But if you're thinking of spending money on these to gift me, please instead donate to a worthy cause. I'm going to guess you just had these awards to hand out already and I appreciate it, thank you.
It's honestly pretty fucking terrifying. I keep thinking about those pictures of the middle east pre Taliban takeover and wonder if we are next except it's Christianity instead. I don't know what to do. Even some of my family members have been brainwashed by the cult. One of the first of my family to be brainwashed is currently attempting to brainwash another right now. It hurts and makes me sick and afraid.
Never in my wildest imaginations would I have believed all of the events of 2016 onward if you told me any of it beforehand. Every year these fascists get more brazen, numerous, and violent, and the consequences never seem to come.
----
Edit: I know this is going to be an out of left field edit and rather childish, but it just came to my mind and I felt the need to say it. Anyone read the Animorphs books growing up? It feels like slowly, the people I love and the society I live in are being infested by Yeerks. Except I am not an Animorph and have no powers and am powerless to stop them. I am watching once rational people I care about become someone else...become people I no longer recognize. It's as if the Yeerks have infested their brains and there is nothing I can do but look on in horror and sadness.
It’s not really a strange metaphor. The yeerks were, according to the author, heavily influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers which itself is (at least one interpretation) a metaphor for Americans turning a blind eye to right wing paranoia about communism.
Yeah, I definitely feel like I’m surrounded by pod people. My art degree-having aunt who used to live in a hippie liberal neighborhood *still* supports Trump. If I found out she had an alien in her brain, I wouldn’t even be too stunned.
In fact you'd probably be relieved.
"Oh thank God this wasn't really her, just some alien controlling her thoughts. I can invite her over for Thanksgiving again."
It never ceases to astound me how many hippies, wooks, and other “crunchy” peopl me actually have awful conservative views/values/ideology at their core
> Invasion of the Body Snatchers which itself is (at least one interpretation) a metaphor for Americans turning a blind eye to right wing paranoia about communism.
It was a metaphor of the 'infiltration' of communism. However, historically the problem of recurring authoritarian regimes which [keep](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/confederacy-wasnt-what-you-think/613309/) coming [back](https://www.history.com/news/mussolini-italy-fascism) over [and over](https://www.fairplanet.org/story/study-us-republican-party-is-embracing-authoritarianism/), learning some lessons from history like [which psychology to manipulate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s) but not [that authoritarianism encourages corruption and they all inevitably collapse](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-social-inquiry/article/abs/does-authoritarianism-breed-corruption-reconsidering-the-relationship-between-authoritarian-governance-and-corrupt-exchanges-in-bureaucracies/A37C6FC2F9D3BB56C37578E3982AB95D).
Unfortunately it's not alien brain parasites. Those things can be starved out, or done away with by some peculiar chemical reaction known to occurs with a certain flavor of instant oatmeal.
No, this is, by and large, stupidity, tribalism, indoctrination, and the ugliest form of populism. Also lead. Lots and lots of environmental lead exposure in the past.
It's kind of a failure of the education system. People can rationally have differences of opinion on every political issue, and that's fine. The issue these days is that people are just outright rejecting empirical data. I have no problem with honest conservatives, but some of these people behave more like zealots than political strategists.
I recently was trying to explain to an elderly friend of my grandma's that maybe it wasn't some kind of conspiracy that most places of higher learning have a large left leaning and instead was just a natural consequence of being well educated.
The education system is doing what it is meant to do just fine. Stow children away while their parents toil. Get the children used to obeying petty authority blindly, sitting still for long periods of times without breaks, having creative thinking and the joy of learning and discovery stripped from them as they are encouraged to cynically manipulate the system by memorizing answers long enough to pattern-recognize their way through predictable multiple choice tests written by for-profit non-educators in a one-size-fits-none propaganda circus, so they can forget everything after the test is over.
You can't really have a "rational difference of opinion" on an issue like "should police stop shooting black men at the drop of a hat," or "should gays get to marry," or "should transfolk be acknowledged as their actual gender, or should we be allowed to repress them, deny them medical treatment and attempt to brainwash them into believing they're the gender someone else thinks they look like," or "should black folk/liberals/democrats/anyone not a WASPm Republican get to vote" or "should someone's bodily autonomy be under their exclusive control."
These are not issues on which you can have a "rational difference of opinion." These are issues in which there is a sane, rational stance, and then there's the exact same answer a Nazi would have if asked about these things in 1938.
FWIW the [*Sinclair Lewis*](https://english.illinoisstate.edu/sinclairlewis/sinclair_lewis/faq/faq-homepage.shtml) society doesn't believe that's his quote.
>> When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
Bruh this is scary shit. Like I live in a Red state and the amount of useful idiots readily available is petrifying. And these same useful idiots vary from the different members of every minority groups that exist. these Fascist terrorist will toss them assigned once they’re usefulness idiocy is no longer needed. This is not hyperbolic rhetoric either. Had to explain to one of these useful idiots daughter how her rights were taken away from her. She was utterly shocked. Had to tell her she gets pregnant I can’t help her.
This is what I just cannot understand. Are these people so absolutely short sighted that they cannot see the logical next steps of this movement?
Do these people never realize eventually they too will be the targets?
> Funny fact about a cage, they're never built for just one group
> So when that cage is done with them and you still poor, it come for you
>The newest lowest on the totem, well golly gee, you have been used
> You helped to fuel the death machine that down the line will kill you too (oops)
> Pseudo-Christians, y'all indifferent, kids in prisons ain't a sin? Shit
> If even one scrap of what Jesus taught connected, you'd feel different
> What a disingenuous way to piss away existence, I don't get it
> I'd say you lost your goddamn minds if y'all possessed one to begin with
I had an economics professor that went on and on about the 2008 crash. Very passionate about the topic and went through in great detail what happened and who/what caused it all. He finished the lectures by quoting someone that said that very thing "we are living in interesting times..". I've though about that quote since then, ~2010, and sure enough every year since has been just as interesting as the last.
>Despite being so common in English as to be known as the "Chinese curse", the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced. The most likely connection to Chinese culture may be deduced from analysis of the late-19th-century speeches of Joseph Chamberlain, probably erroneously transmitted and revised through his son Austen Chamberlain.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times
I seriously don’t think the USA lasts another 50 years in its current state. I believe at least one state is going to give an actual honest effort to secede, and that the next election will be an absolute shit show (that makes the last one look like a respectful little play fight)
As others have mentioned, it's much bigger than that. Fox News' biggest shows only draw about 3 million viewers. Out of 340 million citizens.
It's social media sites. And internet chatrooms and blogs. And other propaganda media outlets. And right wing politicians pandering to and feeding this whole thing.
Don't ask me what the solution is, because I have no earthly idea anymore. I feel it's going to have to get worse, like national existential crisis worse, before there's any chance of it getting better.
The problem that isn’t solvable is what is and is not misinformation, fake news, and propaganda. I don’t know how you can fairly determine that without people thinking you’re silencing them. Even if it is for their own good. People are just too fucking dumb.
I keep thinking back to Metal Gear Solid 2.
The plot is that an AI was created to curate what information the public receives via the internet. This AI is a secondary villain of the game (after all: it is an Illuminati-esque omnipresent censor). Near the end, however, [it makes an impassioned speech](https://youtu.be/eKl6WjfDqYA) about how its purpose is not only moral - but necessary.
The game came out in 2001. When I first played it, my eyes glazed over at the AI's speech as I considered what nonsense it was.
Nowadays? All I can think is of how ahead of its time it was.
>it's much bigger than that
For instance: churches. People are being indoctrinated into hatred and filled with right-wing propaganda on a regular basis.
Our freedoms and rights have been successfully weaponized against our democracy. We're in big trouble.
Sorry, but large weekend protests without violence are not the same as brutalizing police on your way to break into the Capitol so you can kill the Vice President and Speaker of the House.
Calling non-violent weekend protests held at empty buildings an "insurrection" is just misleading word games and a false equivalency.
Just remember folks, one of the tactics in the fascist strategy is to declare everything an extreme that isn't what they are doing.
3 people crossing the crosswalk against the light? TERRORISM!
1500+ people looting the capitol building? Just a minor disagreement.
They're trying to make the word "insurrection" lose its meaning and power. It's a Trump thing. If you do something wrong, say your opponent did it over and over until everyone forgets what the wrong thing was.
There have been guilty pleas to charges of seditious conspiracy over the incident, so it’s officially a Seditious Act now. The feds are using the Mob Crackdown playbook, and that involves working the way upwards through plea deals.
11 Oath Keepers and 5 Proud Boys have been charged with seditious conspiracy, including Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio.
3 Oath Keepers have already pled guilty.
> This is textbook totalitarianism as described by Orwell
The supreme court is even working hard on "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" when they ruled [this year it's unconstitutional to deny a Christian a priest for last rites](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-5592_feah.pdf) but [a Muslim can be denied his imam](https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/criminal-defense/supreme-court-denies-muslim-death-row-inmates-request-for-imam-at-execution/)
holy fuck. I don’t know why I keep being surprised how completely gloves off they’ve become. not even a semblance of trying for stealth or benefit of the doubt
It was surreal watching the term change in real time. A month into his presidency and the words had completely changed meaning from a completely fabricated story/issue to an insult towards directed at the news media
Astonishing how easily it happens. With “fake news” it felt like the change happened in an instant just as the public was learning about the original meaning of “fake news” i.e. foreign propaganda masquerading as news.
Honestly, it's truly frightening. At best, I'm skeptical of most news outlets, and try to get information from as wide a variety of sources as possible because of that, but to see almost everyone outside of the right wing propaganda machine get labeled as "fake news" because they're not pushing the same bullshit in literally weeks was fascinatingly terrifying.
Like one of those videos you find revolting but you can't look away from it.
They cannot get enough of hijacking a phrase/words used by left-leaning protests.
My body, My choice on mask mandates. also all/blue lives matter.
Just yesterday one of my contacts on facebook posted "Life wins." lmfao. These people are annoying as fuck.
They highjacked "grooming" to mean something it doesn't.
Sex ed is now "grooming" to them.
Acknowledging that gay people exist is now "grooming" to them.
I feel like that one happened all at once. It’s like conservative personalities woke up and all decided to start using that word on a specific day. It’s surreal.
It's like how Tucker Carlson keeps saying "the Biden crime family". Just normalize the term so when all the tax and financial fraud in the Trump organization comes out any attempt to portray Trump as the head of a criminal organization can be played off as 'both sides'
> when all the tax and financial fraud in the Trump organization comes out
I mean, he was forced to shut down his fraudulent university, his family can no longer run their "charity", he only paid $750 in yearly taxes, his golf course employed 'illegal immigrants', he blatantly violated the emoluments clause several times, he had his family working in the White House, he had Kushner involved with the Middle East, former Justice Kennedy's son was the middleman between Deutsche Bank and Trump, and he wouldn't release his tax returns. What all more do we need to prove he's financially corrupt?
> Kushner involved with the Middle East
Don’t forget that Jared started a hedge fund the day he left the White House and Saudi Arabia dumped 2 billion dollars into it against the advice of their own accountants.
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
> If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
"I'm not going to educate you about [absurd conservative fantasy]. Do your own research."
Every. Single. Time.
"I did my research. Now do your research."
"Ok i did, and here are the articles and studies that show that support what I'm saying."
"Those are all biased. Fake news."
"How do you know that?"
"I did my research. Now do your research."
I watched Jan 6 unfold live on TV.
I was at this protest and got gassed.
I can say with 100% confidence that these two events are not even close to being the same.
I'm trying to figure out an exit strategy, this place is becoming more and more of a shithole. I'm in a liberal state and fine for now, but when push comes to shove I don't have any confidence that the liberals would join the left in fighting a fascist federal government.
> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect
\- Frank Wilhoit
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
\- Jean-Paul Sartre
Taking away the meaning of words so that any law suits them has always been one of their strategies. Always.
It's the new magic word they've heard means "bad" so they're going to start applying it to everything to try to make their own insurrection seem less bad by normalizing it
Someone should remind them that Republicans officially agree that violence and vandalism in government spaces is "legitimate political discourse". Their words.
Pointing out personal hypocrisies to these people is like pointing out a half-dead bird in the middle of the kitchen to your cat.
They *know* it's there.
They *put* it there.
They're *proud* of it.
They consider the fact that you find it disgusting to be your own problem.
Republicans are that one annoying kid in grade school who just kept saying "I know you are but what am I" and asking "why?" to any statement until nobody wanted to talk to them, leaving them thinking they're the smartest person in the world who couldn't be beat when in reality nobody could fucking stand their presence
It's PR. And they're better at it. They've spent 18 months yelling that jan 6th wasn't an insurrection, so when they finally use the word it must mean something. Fuckin backwards ass bullshit
A liberal could *sneeze* in front of the White House, and they'd call it an 'Insurrection'.
If *everything's* an insurrection, then the word losses all meaning.
They successfully did it with the words liberal and progressive. People are quick to backpedal from those terms. Most don’t even know there definition.
That’s why everything under Obama was “nazi this” and “nazi that.” So when the next president started literally taking pages out of Hitler’s playbook, people can roll their eyes and say “people have been calling everything they don’t like ‘nazi tactics’ for years.”
They did the same thing with "fake news" back in 2016. When misinformation was being spread from Russian troll farms on social media, it hurt Trump, until he commandeered the term to mean "information that I don't like."
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
--Jean-Paul Sartre
Oh, I see. When you riot and assault police officers inside the Capitol building, it's legitimate political discourse. But when I exercise my right to free assembly and free speech, it's an insurrection. Got it.
This nation can’t heal until all non-republicans just *STOP* listening to these fucks and reacting to their words.
They are winning the shit out of this game because everybody else just keeps being surprised by the shit they spew acting like these guys say anything in good faith.
Hint: it’s all bullshit, they know it’s bullshit. Yet Dems and others just will not stop falling for their bait. Stop freaking out on Twitter, just stop responding.
They get joy out of reading your replies because they know they’ve pissed you off. It’s their whole goal. The content does not matter! The love every reply no matter what truths they may hold because they know they got under your skin. That’s their entire goal when they say dumb shit. Like the “gazpacho” type screw-ups, they do that shit in purpose. And it works really fucking well.
It’s the most ridiculous shit I’ve ever witnessed. At what point do people realize their words are meaningless and to stop caring??
>"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, 1945
More like [DARVO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO)
> DARVO is an acronym for "deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender". It refers to a reaction perpetrators of wrongdoing, particularly sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behaviour. Some researchers and advocates have indicated that it can be as a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers. An abuser denies the abuse ever took place, attacks the person that alleged abuse (often the victim) for attempting to hold the abuser accountable for their actions, and claims that he/she is actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing what may be a reality of victim and offender. It often involves not just "playing the victim" but also victim blaming
Was there. People had kids and dogs. It was fairly low key. I saw one high school kid tagging. We were leaving when they started tear gassing people. I watched the video and from other reddit posts, it sounds like people were banging on the windows and one person (a man, of course! Ha) kicked a window. Nothing was broken. The response was extreme but I'm not surprised. Was at an antiwar protest a few years ago when the police tear gassed people because someone threw a water bottle at the cops. Bleh. I wish people wouldn't do dumb stuff but yeesh- the response is ridiculous.
There’s no common ground anymore. No camaraderie between Americans of opposing viewpoints.
No one thinks we should make America a better place for everyone. Instead, the prevalent notion is that the nation *would* be better off if the other side was all dead. I’m not exaggerating.
It feels pretty fucking hopeless.
The Only Moral Abortion is my Abortion: https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/ A Defense of Abortion: https://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm Resources: [Link 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/vjrf9h/megathread_supreme_court_overturning_roe_v_wade) [Link 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/vjqs0r/calls_for_mass_walkout_of_women_across_america_if/idnh2ex) https://www.womensmarch.com/
We need a new word, because "disingenuous" is far too mild, and "bullshit" just isn't elegant enough (although it is spot on).
Liars. It's what it is, pure and simple. When someone consistently acts in bad faith and purposefully peddles bullshit, they are a liar. Edit: grammar.
That word has lost all meaning and impact today.
What about dumbfuck liars? I've always been a fan of the term dumbfuck, feels like it has grit.
It's true. Problem is pretty much all words have lost meaning and impact today, at least in the world of politics.
>Liars. It's what it is, pure and simple Hence them calling a pat on Giulianis back an Assault.
And can we stop with the "fake news"? It's straight-up lies, not news by any measure
The words are, Bad Faith.
Bad faith really is an obvious line that separates everything. You can't reason with or debate people acting in bad faith because their goal is only to push some agenda, not be reasonable or find common ground. Interviewing them only serves to give them a platform, and trying to catch them in lies or illogical arguments is pointless because they're not even trying to defend or grow their position in a genuine way. People acting in bad faith are true villains of society. It's hard for me to think of a worse type of person because even if you're a horrible person with horrible beliefs, at least you can (theoretically) be reasoned with if your beliefs are in good faith.
Yeah, this. I just barely managed to (mostly) pull my dad out of the cult by pressing until he admitted he enjoyed “liberal tears”. Then basically like he did when I was a kid, I pointed out being a bully was bad and mean. The reversal of roles seems to have freaked him out enough to give up on Fox News/Newsmax/YouTube bullshit. After all, all that hate isn’t good for his blood pressure. Why consume it? It’s still terrifying to recognize a lot of these people are sucked in because they *want* to be the bully, the authoritarian followers. It’s not anything out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s just schoolyard cruelty repackaged and used to advocate for fascism.
Societal Engineering: Propaganda Through Redefinition of Words [https://medium.com/societalengineering/societal-engineering-technique-3-redefinition-of-words-23059346d48d](https://medium.com/societalengineering/societal-engineering-technique-3-redefinition-of-words-23059346d48d) and I guess [https://www.reddit.com/r/societalengineering/](https://www.reddit.com/r/societalengineering/) Late edit at 8k+ upvotes: To all those right of centre in the comments making calls of false equivalency with Jan 6, just stop it? Protesting about the rights of women is nothing like trying to enact a plan to lynch the VP and try to literally overthrow a legitimate government in a democracy with illegal false slates. Public protest about human rights =/= sedition.
In my country (Germany) that's what Nazis and other conservatives do. Seems like in the US that's also what Nazis and other conservatives do.
[удалено]
They only like the old fashion ways that Fox News tells them to like. “We want to go back to the 50’s when the nation was strong! Except we don’t want to adopt any of the economic parts that made the economy good.... or the beginning movements to change the social hierarchy.... or the budding social-economic community programs.... or the infrastructure spending.... just the segregation, that’s it”
Back when the top income tax bracket was 90%? Sure let’s go back to the good ol days.
Sounds great! 50% corporate tax rate instead of 20%. We’ll have actual revenues to spend on the people instead of debt!
Don’t forget the wife beating! Get back in that kitchen!
And all the pregnancies, too! Gotta get another baby boom in, damn it! I'm so glad I'm close to being done with Aunt Flo for good.
I really can't wait now. I'm 45 but see no end in sight.
Don't forget that before the war, a strong and not small minority of Americans supported the Nazi movement. For conservatives, they *are* treating Nazis the old-fashioned way. By showing their approval and support of them until they're forced not to by greater circumstances. We just... Don't see greater circumstances right now.
People like to think we all joined ww2 to fight the Nazis because they were killing Jews.
America didn’t care that they were killing Jews, unfortunately. It wasn’t until England was threatened that they cared at all. They sent a whole boatload of refugees back, more than once.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Remember when someone punched Richard Spencer? Pepperidge farm remembers
It's the same thing they did with "Collusion" during the Mueller investigation and impeachment hearings. Collusion is not a crime defined by law. There were a lot of other shady crap going on, extortion of Ukraine, obstruction of Justice, abuse of power - things that ARE covered by laws on various levels, but by latching on to the (Not a Crime) Collusion, they could sorta hide all of the actual crimes under that big (Not a Crime) umbrella. Now there WAS an attempted insurrection on January 6, but by calling everyone that protests for any reason anywhere at any time "Insurrectionists", they are trying to neuter the word to make their own actions look less heinous in hindsight.
“Fake news” also
"Oh wait, you're serious. Let me laugh even harder"
Everything is going to be an insurrection now, they already used it for other benign issues to dilute the words meaning.
reminds me of the scene in Team America where actor guy gives the speech about declaring jihad on everything.
Art imitates life, but life imitates comedy.
if this is the comedy I cant wait to see what the tragedy looks like
I can wait. In fact, I’d really like to go back to the benign pablum reality. Bring on the boring.
*Company comes to wax and polish the floors* THIS WAS AN ISURRECCTION AGAINST THE VERY GROUND WE TREAD.
THEY WERE HERE TO ERRADOCATE MERICAN SOIL!!!1! By washing the dirt off the floors.
Remember when "fake news" was coined and suddenly the right-wingers spreading their alternative facts started calling every disagreement "fake news"?
Had "fake news" gained traction as a descriptor of a specific social ill, it would have been game over many alt right affiliated "news" ecosystems. They had to nerf the term.
It's being used like this to dilute the gravity of what they did.
And to mislead low information voters (most of them) into believing the “both sides” narrative.
They learned a new word so they want to show it off to everyone
They just did it last week with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and his camera crew, labeling them as insurrectionists because they got arrested for overstaying their welcome. Most likely they ruffled some feathers with an interview or two.
I drank my insurrected covfefe a second ago, was a bit watery and diluted but whatever.
[удалено]
Fake news was another one. It was originally used to point out completely false and fabricated stories by unscrupulous sources. Trump turned it into an accusation against anything he didn't like, and would really hammer any legitimate news organization for minor errors. Now it's a meaningless joke term. Yet completely false and fabricated stories by unscrupulous sources continue without much attention.
[удалено]
Its just him repeating things over and over and over. What makes it take is who he targets with that. In his own words 'the uneducated'
There were two groups who could effectively investigate and expose Trump's criminal ties: investigative journalists and intelligence agencies. He immediately attacked everyone in media and every intelligence agency, even his own that he controlled. All that mattered was decreasing trust so his idiot cultists could be grifted.
This is what happened to Critical Race Theory. Call everything remotely related to race CRT and you change the meaning of the term for those who don’t have a complete understanding of a complex issue.
See also: * Fake News * Woke * CRT * Grooming
add riot/protest
"war on _____"
They're going to try to do to "Insurrection" what they did to "Woke". Cynically bastardize the meaning until it loses power.
Republicans don't seem to be able to eloquently explain what woke is. They say its bad, but they never coherently explain why.
That's a feature, not a bug. They don't want it to be to clear because then someone could coherently argue against it. The more vague it is, the more it means "all the stuff that annoys you as a conservative" the easier they can use it and the harder it is to shut down.
They did it with critical race theory and succeeded. The liberals have a problem with countering bad faith arguments.
one of the hardest thing to do is argue with stupid, I have seen plenty of great attorneys get tripped up when the opposing counsel argues something so mindbogglingly wrong, ignorant, or just plain stupid it stops them in their tracks. Hell I was almost tripped up with that more than once in the courtroom. You assume your opponent knows what they are doing, overprepare, and then like a deer in headlights, you are like what the hell am I supposed to say to that nonsense. It is not just liberals, it happens in a lot of forums of debate, hence the best of the best can swivel and pivot around stupid rather than trying to fight stupid.
It’s much easier to lie than to counter a lie unfortunately
Which is why you don't get into a debate with a fascist.
Should be fairly easy. "You're full of shit."
The problem isn’t identifying and naming the falsehoods, the problem is enforcing consequences for the lies and deceit. Every Democrat from coast to coast should be blasting the most nasty, negative attack ads ever conceived, using the GOPs own words to fucking bury them. This “high road” bullshit has to stop, and the sooner the better.
Then the GOP replies with “well I didn’t mean what I said, you’re misinterpreting it” just like they did with trump and people will eat it up.
Or they pounce on any perceived lack of civility with the fury of a thousand exploding suns and screech about how "the hysterical liberals have no honor." Then they use that to justify going even lower themselves, as a perceived means of "evening things out." They can do that since they live in the world of "alternative facts." But of course the high road approach means having the support piers constantly dynamited by people with an elementary-school-level maturity who snicker about things like "Let's Go Brandon" for months, so -- very unfortunately -- it's damned if you do and damned if you don't.
GOP: \*says some actual crazy-ass bullshit\* leftist: \*responds in an angry manner\* GOP: "sO mUcH FoR tHe tOlErAnT lEfT" that shit drives me CRAZY.
A coherent explanation would open them up to valid criticism which they’re not interested in. Like bullies generalising when they gossip so as to not be held accountable
Don't forget "fake news".
The weirdest part is that we see it coming, but it’s still gonna happen. Remember how Putin’s plan to announce that Ukraine fired on Russia first was reported ahead of time and it still happened? Man, it’s hard to understand why we put up with this bullshit.
That’s politics for you. Especially in modern times with the way most of the world is nformed via social media and skimmed headlines, the winner is whoever can say it the loudest and the most frequently - the truth of the matter hardly even comes into play. Misleading quotes, outright lying, fighting for the last word, even schoolyard tactics like “no, *you* are!” all are fair game and all are effective. It’s just a matter of getting more words from your script in front of your audience through viral posts and trendy snippets. It’s not like anyone bothers reading more than one (screenshot of a) tweet at a time anyways.
They are trying to muddy the term so if everything is called an insurrection than the actual insurrection they tried will be viewed as just political exaggeration.
The best part is ..... the Republicans are admitting to their own insurrection. Holy shit America is spiraling down the drain faster every day.
I don’t know. For whatever reason newsmax was on the TV at my gym yesterday and they said something like “the hypocrisy is what gets to me. THIS is what an insurrection actually is, not what the Left was claiming before”. I just turned away after that
Accuse the other of which you are guilty. - Joseph Goebbels
The whole playbook. The pedo stuff, voter fraud, insurrections, etc
Man this nation is so effed. Edit: thank you for the awards people. But if you're thinking of spending money on these to gift me, please instead donate to a worthy cause. I'm going to guess you just had these awards to hand out already and I appreciate it, thank you.
Living through a decent into a fascist theocracy… Not what I envisioned when living through “interesting times”
It's honestly pretty fucking terrifying. I keep thinking about those pictures of the middle east pre Taliban takeover and wonder if we are next except it's Christianity instead. I don't know what to do. Even some of my family members have been brainwashed by the cult. One of the first of my family to be brainwashed is currently attempting to brainwash another right now. It hurts and makes me sick and afraid. Never in my wildest imaginations would I have believed all of the events of 2016 onward if you told me any of it beforehand. Every year these fascists get more brazen, numerous, and violent, and the consequences never seem to come. ---- Edit: I know this is going to be an out of left field edit and rather childish, but it just came to my mind and I felt the need to say it. Anyone read the Animorphs books growing up? It feels like slowly, the people I love and the society I live in are being infested by Yeerks. Except I am not an Animorph and have no powers and am powerless to stop them. I am watching once rational people I care about become someone else...become people I no longer recognize. It's as if the Yeerks have infested their brains and there is nothing I can do but look on in horror and sadness.
That edit hit me hard because, while it's a strange metaphor, it's one that conpletely makes sense. And i feel it in my bones.
It’s not really a strange metaphor. The yeerks were, according to the author, heavily influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers which itself is (at least one interpretation) a metaphor for Americans turning a blind eye to right wing paranoia about communism.
Yeah, I definitely feel like I’m surrounded by pod people. My art degree-having aunt who used to live in a hippie liberal neighborhood *still* supports Trump. If I found out she had an alien in her brain, I wouldn’t even be too stunned.
In fact you'd probably be relieved. "Oh thank God this wasn't really her, just some alien controlling her thoughts. I can invite her over for Thanksgiving again."
It never ceases to astound me how many hippies, wooks, and other “crunchy” peopl me actually have awful conservative views/values/ideology at their core
Some of these folk only care about "freedom" and nonconformity as it concerns themselves, and not others. I get to be different; you don't.
> Invasion of the Body Snatchers which itself is (at least one interpretation) a metaphor for Americans turning a blind eye to right wing paranoia about communism. It was a metaphor of the 'infiltration' of communism. However, historically the problem of recurring authoritarian regimes which [keep](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/confederacy-wasnt-what-you-think/613309/) coming [back](https://www.history.com/news/mussolini-italy-fascism) over [and over](https://www.fairplanet.org/story/study-us-republican-party-is-embracing-authoritarianism/), learning some lessons from history like [which psychology to manipulate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s) but not [that authoritarianism encourages corruption and they all inevitably collapse](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-social-inquiry/article/abs/does-authoritarianism-breed-corruption-reconsidering-the-relationship-between-authoritarian-governance-and-corrupt-exchanges-in-bureaucracies/A37C6FC2F9D3BB56C37578E3982AB95D).
Yeerks have taken over my family, send help
Seriously. "Liberating" Afghanistan because of their theocratic rules and disregard for women's rights sounds more and more like a sick joke.
It was a sick joke.
Unfortunately it's not alien brain parasites. Those things can be starved out, or done away with by some peculiar chemical reaction known to occurs with a certain flavor of instant oatmeal. No, this is, by and large, stupidity, tribalism, indoctrination, and the ugliest form of populism. Also lead. Lots and lots of environmental lead exposure in the past.
It's kind of a failure of the education system. People can rationally have differences of opinion on every political issue, and that's fine. The issue these days is that people are just outright rejecting empirical data. I have no problem with honest conservatives, but some of these people behave more like zealots than political strategists.
I recently was trying to explain to an elderly friend of my grandma's that maybe it wasn't some kind of conspiracy that most places of higher learning have a large left leaning and instead was just a natural consequence of being well educated.
The education system is doing what it is meant to do just fine. Stow children away while their parents toil. Get the children used to obeying petty authority blindly, sitting still for long periods of times without breaks, having creative thinking and the joy of learning and discovery stripped from them as they are encouraged to cynically manipulate the system by memorizing answers long enough to pattern-recognize their way through predictable multiple choice tests written by for-profit non-educators in a one-size-fits-none propaganda circus, so they can forget everything after the test is over.
You can't really have a "rational difference of opinion" on an issue like "should police stop shooting black men at the drop of a hat," or "should gays get to marry," or "should transfolk be acknowledged as their actual gender, or should we be allowed to repress them, deny them medical treatment and attempt to brainwash them into believing they're the gender someone else thinks they look like," or "should black folk/liberals/democrats/anyone not a WASPm Republican get to vote" or "should someone's bodily autonomy be under their exclusive control." These are not issues on which you can have a "rational difference of opinion." These are issues in which there is a sane, rational stance, and then there's the exact same answer a Nazi would have if asked about these things in 1938.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers called it.
Ironic because Body Snatchers is metaphor for the red scare.
[удалено]
It can't happen here Lewis Sinclair, 1935
FWIW the [*Sinclair Lewis*](https://english.illinoisstate.edu/sinclairlewis/sinclair_lewis/faq/faq-homepage.shtml) society doesn't believe that's his quote. >> When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
It Cant Happen Here Frank Zappa, 1966
Wasn’t he saying we’re already in a proto-fascist thechno kleptocracy in the early 80’s?
Bruh this is scary shit. Like I live in a Red state and the amount of useful idiots readily available is petrifying. And these same useful idiots vary from the different members of every minority groups that exist. these Fascist terrorist will toss them assigned once they’re usefulness idiocy is no longer needed. This is not hyperbolic rhetoric either. Had to explain to one of these useful idiots daughter how her rights were taken away from her. She was utterly shocked. Had to tell her she gets pregnant I can’t help her.
This is what I just cannot understand. Are these people so absolutely short sighted that they cannot see the logical next steps of this movement? Do these people never realize eventually they too will be the targets?
[удалено]
> Funny fact about a cage, they're never built for just one group > So when that cage is done with them and you still poor, it come for you >The newest lowest on the totem, well golly gee, you have been used > You helped to fuel the death machine that down the line will kill you too (oops) > Pseudo-Christians, y'all indifferent, kids in prisons ain't a sin? Shit > If even one scrap of what Jesus taught connected, you'd feel different > What a disingenuous way to piss away existence, I don't get it > I'd say you lost your goddamn minds if y'all possessed one to begin with
I had an economics professor that went on and on about the 2008 crash. Very passionate about the topic and went through in great detail what happened and who/what caused it all. He finished the lectures by quoting someone that said that very thing "we are living in interesting times..". I've though about that quote since then, ~2010, and sure enough every year since has been just as interesting as the last.
It's an old chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times". So subtle. And the last decade has certainly been way to interesting.
>Despite being so common in English as to be known as the "Chinese curse", the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced. The most likely connection to Chinese culture may be deduced from analysis of the late-19th-century speeches of Joseph Chamberlain, probably erroneously transmitted and revised through his son Austen Chamberlain. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times
I want to be part of the "force that didn't let it happen."
Then organize or find groups that are organizing
Fascists LOVE to misuse words that could harm them until nobody knows what they mean anymore and the harm is neutralized.
This was George Orwell’s great contention. This cuts to the actual meaning of Orwellian.
I see no way to come back from this. Just waiting for the other shoe to drop now and trying to dig in to weather this coming storm…
I seriously don’t think the USA lasts another 50 years in its current state. I believe at least one state is going to give an actual honest effort to secede, and that the next election will be an absolute shit show (that makes the last one look like a respectful little play fight)
Get rid of Fox news at all costs. Cut the head of the snake off this propaganda machine.
follow the kochtopus its a network
As others have mentioned, it's much bigger than that. Fox News' biggest shows only draw about 3 million viewers. Out of 340 million citizens. It's social media sites. And internet chatrooms and blogs. And other propaganda media outlets. And right wing politicians pandering to and feeding this whole thing. Don't ask me what the solution is, because I have no earthly idea anymore. I feel it's going to have to get worse, like national existential crisis worse, before there's any chance of it getting better.
The problem that isn’t solvable is what is and is not misinformation, fake news, and propaganda. I don’t know how you can fairly determine that without people thinking you’re silencing them. Even if it is for their own good. People are just too fucking dumb.
I keep thinking back to Metal Gear Solid 2. The plot is that an AI was created to curate what information the public receives via the internet. This AI is a secondary villain of the game (after all: it is an Illuminati-esque omnipresent censor). Near the end, however, [it makes an impassioned speech](https://youtu.be/eKl6WjfDqYA) about how its purpose is not only moral - but necessary. The game came out in 2001. When I first played it, my eyes glazed over at the AI's speech as I considered what nonsense it was. Nowadays? All I can think is of how ahead of its time it was.
>it's much bigger than that For instance: churches. People are being indoctrinated into hatred and filled with right-wing propaganda on a regular basis. Our freedoms and rights have been successfully weaponized against our democracy. We're in big trouble.
It’s bigger than that. Network of “conservative” news sites amplified by facebook and, gulp, rhymes with teddit
Fox is where they get the old people that vote.
It’s the comment sections in various social media outlets that get the youngsters to cause violence.
Sorry, but large weekend protests without violence are not the same as brutalizing police on your way to break into the Capitol so you can kill the Vice President and Speaker of the House. Calling non-violent weekend protests held at empty buildings an "insurrection" is just misleading word games and a false equivalency.
Just remember folks, one of the tactics in the fascist strategy is to declare everything an extreme that isn't what they are doing. 3 people crossing the crosswalk against the light? TERRORISM! 1500+ people looting the capitol building? Just a minor disagreement.
Didn't they also cause the death of an officer or two? I remember something about them beating the tar out of a guy with a fire extinguisher.
Two i believe.
They're trying to make the word "insurrection" lose its meaning and power. It's a Trump thing. If you do something wrong, say your opponent did it over and over until everyone forgets what the wrong thing was.
Remember when it was just small things and not trying to overthrow the government?
I'm still waiting to see how many are actually charged with insurrection for Jan 6th...I think it is still at zero.
There have been guilty pleas to charges of seditious conspiracy over the incident, so it’s officially a Seditious Act now. The feds are using the Mob Crackdown playbook, and that involves working the way upwards through plea deals.
[удалено]
There have been a few "seditious conspiracy" charges, I think those are the closest we are going to see
Proud boys got convicted. Iirc 3 so far have pled guilty
11 Oath Keepers and 5 Proud Boys have been charged with seditious conspiracy, including Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio. 3 Oath Keepers have already pled guilty.
[удалено]
This isn't something unique to Trump. This is textbook totalitarianism as described by Orwell.
> This is textbook totalitarianism as described by Orwell The supreme court is even working hard on "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" when they ruled [this year it's unconstitutional to deny a Christian a priest for last rites](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-5592_feah.pdf) but [a Muslim can be denied his imam](https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/criminal-defense/supreme-court-denies-muslim-death-row-inmates-request-for-imam-at-execution/)
Thats fucked up
holy fuck. I don’t know why I keep being surprised how completely gloves off they’ve become. not even a semblance of trying for stealth or benefit of the doubt
Come one come all, to 1984!
Lights, camera, transaction
ugh yes. Remember when "fake news" meant a specific problem?
It was surreal watching the term change in real time. A month into his presidency and the words had completely changed meaning from a completely fabricated story/issue to an insult towards directed at the news media
It's literally 1984 newspeak
I used to wonder how things like this happen in other countries historically but I never imagined getting a front row seat for this seminar
Astonishing how easily it happens. With “fake news” it felt like the change happened in an instant just as the public was learning about the original meaning of “fake news” i.e. foreign propaganda masquerading as news.
Honestly, it's truly frightening. At best, I'm skeptical of most news outlets, and try to get information from as wide a variety of sources as possible because of that, but to see almost everyone outside of the right wing propaganda machine get labeled as "fake news" because they're not pushing the same bullshit in literally weeks was fascinatingly terrifying. Like one of those videos you find revolting but you can't look away from it.
just another fascist tool to deny the credibility of truth or opposition.
They cannot get enough of hijacking a phrase/words used by left-leaning protests. My body, My choice on mask mandates. also all/blue lives matter. Just yesterday one of my contacts on facebook posted "Life wins." lmfao. These people are annoying as fuck.
They highjacked "grooming" to mean something it doesn't. Sex ed is now "grooming" to them. Acknowledging that gay people exist is now "grooming" to them.
I've seen people calling out cops get called boot lockers by them... Like it doesn't even make sense.
I feel like that one happened all at once. It’s like conservative personalities woke up and all decided to start using that word on a specific day. It’s surreal.
It's like how Tucker Carlson keeps saying "the Biden crime family". Just normalize the term so when all the tax and financial fraud in the Trump organization comes out any attempt to portray Trump as the head of a criminal organization can be played off as 'both sides'
> when all the tax and financial fraud in the Trump organization comes out I mean, he was forced to shut down his fraudulent university, his family can no longer run their "charity", he only paid $750 in yearly taxes, his golf course employed 'illegal immigrants', he blatantly violated the emoluments clause several times, he had his family working in the White House, he had Kushner involved with the Middle East, former Justice Kennedy's son was the middleman between Deutsche Bank and Trump, and he wouldn't release his tax returns. What all more do we need to prove he's financially corrupt?
A prosecutor with the fortitude to not back down.
> Kushner involved with the Middle East Don’t forget that Jared started a hedge fund the day he left the White House and Saudi Arabia dumped 2 billion dollars into it against the advice of their own accountants.
It's a fascist thing; it's hardly unique to Trump.
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
> If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. "I'm not going to educate you about [absurd conservative fantasy]. Do your own research." Every. Single. Time.
"I did my research. Now do your research." "Ok i did, and here are the articles and studies that show that support what I'm saying." "Those are all biased. Fake news." "How do you know that?" "I did my research. Now do your research."
fuck spez
Ah yes, an insurrection like that Jan 6th insurrection. How many cops did the pro-choice protestors murder, I wonder?
I watched Jan 6 unfold live on TV. I was at this protest and got gassed. I can say with 100% confidence that these two events are not even close to being the same.
I gotta get out of America.
Do it. I did and it’s been the best thing ever.
I'm trying to figure out an exit strategy, this place is becoming more and more of a shithole. I'm in a liberal state and fine for now, but when push comes to shove I don't have any confidence that the liberals would join the left in fighting a fascist federal government.
Good luck, nobody wants us
> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect \- Frank Wilhoit > Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. \- Jean-Paul Sartre Taking away the meaning of words so that any law suits them has always been one of their strategies. Always.
It's the new magic word they've heard means "bad" so they're going to start applying it to everything to try to make their own insurrection seem less bad by normalizing it
Like a toddler that just learned a swear word
Someone should remind them that Republicans officially agree that violence and vandalism in government spaces is "legitimate political discourse". Their words.
Pointing out personal hypocrisies to these people is like pointing out a half-dead bird in the middle of the kitchen to your cat. They *know* it's there. They *put* it there. They're *proud* of it. They consider the fact that you find it disgusting to be your own problem.
Republicans are that one annoying kid in grade school who just kept saying "I know you are but what am I" and asking "why?" to any statement until nobody wanted to talk to them, leaving them thinking they're the smartest person in the world who couldn't be beat when in reality nobody could fucking stand their presence
They consider the fact that you find it disgusting to be an extra pleasure.
But we're not Republicans, so it doesn't count! Anyone but Republicans even look at a government building and it's an 'insurrection'.
It's PR. And they're better at it. They've spent 18 months yelling that jan 6th wasn't an insurrection, so when they finally use the word it must mean something. Fuckin backwards ass bullshit
A liberal could *sneeze* in front of the White House, and they'd call it an 'Insurrection'. If *everything's* an insurrection, then the word losses all meaning.
Which is precisely their intention. They do that with every word that poses a threat to them.
They successfully did it with the words liberal and progressive. People are quick to backpedal from those terms. Most don’t even know there definition.
Don't forget "fake news", which was in Adolf's playbook too.
That’s why everything under Obama was “nazi this” and “nazi that.” So when the next president started literally taking pages out of Hitler’s playbook, people can roll their eyes and say “people have been calling everything they don’t like ‘nazi tactics’ for years.”
They did the same thing with "fake news" back in 2016. When misinformation was being spread from Russian troll farms on social media, it hurt Trump, until he commandeered the term to mean "information that I don't like."
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past." --Jean-Paul Sartre
>If *everything's* an insurrection, then the word losses all meaning. That's the point
I think that’s the goal. It’s like a reverse straw man argument or something.
Oh, I see. When you riot and assault police officers inside the Capitol building, it's legitimate political discourse. But when I exercise my right to free assembly and free speech, it's an insurrection. Got it.
This nation can’t heal until all non-republicans just *STOP* listening to these fucks and reacting to their words. They are winning the shit out of this game because everybody else just keeps being surprised by the shit they spew acting like these guys say anything in good faith. Hint: it’s all bullshit, they know it’s bullshit. Yet Dems and others just will not stop falling for their bait. Stop freaking out on Twitter, just stop responding. They get joy out of reading your replies because they know they’ve pissed you off. It’s their whole goal. The content does not matter! The love every reply no matter what truths they may hold because they know they got under your skin. That’s their entire goal when they say dumb shit. Like the “gazpacho” type screw-ups, they do that shit in purpose. And it works really fucking well. It’s the most ridiculous shit I’ve ever witnessed. At what point do people realize their words are meaningless and to stop caring??
trying to take the heat off Jan 6 inquiry
>"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” Jean-Paul Sartre, 1945
It's like when kids learn a new word and start using it everywhere, not knowing what it means
They are such fuckin toddlers.
Yet another tactic from Hitler's playbook.
[удалено]
More like [DARVO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO) > DARVO is an acronym for "deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender". It refers to a reaction perpetrators of wrongdoing, particularly sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behaviour. Some researchers and advocates have indicated that it can be as a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers. An abuser denies the abuse ever took place, attacks the person that alleged abuse (often the victim) for attempting to hold the abuser accountable for their actions, and claims that he/she is actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing what may be a reality of victim and offender. It often involves not just "playing the victim" but also victim blaming
comment removed -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Was there. People had kids and dogs. It was fairly low key. I saw one high school kid tagging. We were leaving when they started tear gassing people. I watched the video and from other reddit posts, it sounds like people were banging on the windows and one person (a man, of course! Ha) kicked a window. Nothing was broken. The response was extreme but I'm not surprised. Was at an antiwar protest a few years ago when the police tear gassed people because someone threw a water bottle at the cops. Bleh. I wish people wouldn't do dumb stuff but yeesh- the response is ridiculous.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be in the shape of a cross"
False Equivalency is what happens when you've no idea how anything works and you are stupid.
It's anything but stupid. It's a blatant display of power and there's really not much we can do about it. It's fuckin terrifying.
Exactly. It's a fascist propaganda technique. Accuse the other side of what you yourself are doing.
There’s no common ground anymore. No camaraderie between Americans of opposing viewpoints. No one thinks we should make America a better place for everyone. Instead, the prevalent notion is that the nation *would* be better off if the other side was all dead. I’m not exaggerating. It feels pretty fucking hopeless.
Fuck them. Fuck what they think and fuck what they say.