Harris vs Trump;

[CharonY]

15 minutes ago, iNow said:

The "manosphere" seems to apply here, too. It's a prominent grouping mechanism in this current election with toxic tones.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manosphere

 

 

Yes that's it. Forgot how it was called for a second. There is of course also the tendency of traditional media to "sanewash" what is going on, just so that it fits traditional sensibilities. But as I said, I think we are somewhere else entirely already.

[StringJunky]

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

Yes that's it. Forgot how it was called for a second. There is of course also the tendency of traditional media to "sanewash" what is going on, just so that it fits traditional sensibilities. But as I said, I think we are somewhere else entirely already.

With Trump's words it's not sanewashing, it's total reconstruction and fairy tales. Even listening to Trump at the most basic level, his speeches are content-free, discombobulated word salad, consistent with a person whose cognition is falling apart. It is incredible that half the US population actually give this bloke a pass to be President of the United States and have access to it's nuclear codes. 

Edited October 28 by StringJunky

[geordief]

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

With Trump's words it's not sanewashing, it's total reconstruction and fairy tales. Even listening to Trump at the most basic level, his speeches are content-free, discombobulated word salad, consistent with a person whose cognition is falling apart. It is incredible that half the US population actually give this bloke a pass to be President of the United States and have access to it's nuclear codes. 

Not weaving but draining.

[John Cuthber]

I don't know who will win. I don't thinks anyone does.
But here's a hint about who I would like to win.
 

 

[dimreepr]

Trump will win, whatever the count and America could lose: they may have already lost bc the political pendulum 'will' find it's zenith due to mass + momentum - resistance; my fingers are crossed, bc this shit spreads like a plague, and we've got a special relationship, lots of touching 🙏

[iNow]

8 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

this shit spreads like a plague

There's significant construction work being done in our neighborhood. Lots of excavators and roads being dug up, new water drain lines buried, etc.

Got to speaking with a member of their crew yesterday. Tall muscular guy, mid-40s. Said he's a former Marine. Spent some time in a motorcycle gang. Did tattoo work, even corporate security before moving into large city funded construction projects.

Within a few minutes, he'd shared that racism isn't real and is just a media invented narrative, that Hitler didn't hate "the Jews" and was mostly just mad bc they tried taking his gold away from him, that Hitler even had black Nazis controlling things in Africa so "stop believing all the lies," he shared that "the largest slave owners were actually the native americans," and he even started scrolling through photos and social media posts on his phone to show me and prove all of this was real and relevant as he next moved into commenting that "Nixon moving away from the gold standard is what set all of our problems into motion."

It's not simple vaccinating against this. I could've knocked down each of those claims one by one, but he'd just Gish Gallop into 20 more that support his preconceptions. Critical thinking diseases in meme'd minds is an extremely real problem. 

[John Cuthber]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Trump will win, whatever the count

I think we should tell everyone that.
And then the Reps will get complacent and teh Dems will get determined.

Anyone remember how the UK's Brexit referendum played out?
We all knew that it would fail...

[TheVat]

4 hours ago, iNow said:

It's not simple vaccinating against this. I could've knocked down each of those claims one by one, but he'd just Gish Gallop into 20 more that support his preconceptions. Critical thinking diseases in meme'd minds is an extremely real problem. 

This fellow has more free time than a lot of the RW camp do.  What seems to me more threat than the Gish gallopers are the info-poor who will say they have little time to follow politics, so they assign one talking head at Faux News or one scribbler at The Daily Caller as their Information Gatekeeper.  They read Trump will evict freeloading illegal aliens and solve our housing shortage and that's it, they're ready to vote.  Who cares if some sawdust-coated lunatic named Joe Inow stops them on the street and talks some smack about Trump?  They've got their Trusted Source!

[Peterkin]

12 minutes ago, TheVat said:

They've got their Trusted Source!

And many of them have a very limited range of interests. He's against inflation? OK; done. You shouldn't kill babies! He's our boy. I don't want another war. Neither does Trump. Wimmins got too much power. Vote Repub. Dark people have more babies; whites will be a minority - in our own country!! Can't let that happen.

No perspective, no history, no bigger picture, no consideration of consequences. One issue, however inadequately addressed, and that's it.  

I'd love to see the post-life trial of broadcast media. 

Edited October 29 by Peterkin

[CharonY]

6 hours ago, iNow said:

There's significant construction work being done in our neighborhood. Lots of excavators and roads being dug up, new water drain lines buried, etc.

Got to speaking with a member of their crew yesterday. Tall muscular guy, mid-40s. Said he's a former Marine. Spent some time in a motorcycle gang. Did tattoo work, even corporate security before moving into large city funded construction projects.

Within a few minutes, he'd shared that racism isn't real and is just a media invented narrative, that Hitler didn't hate "the Jews" and was mostly just mad bc they tried taking his gold away from him, that Hitler even had black Nazis controlling things in Africa so "stop believing all the lies," he shared that "the largest slave owners were actually the native americans," and he even started scrolling through photos and social media posts on his phone to show me and prove all of this was real and relevant as he next moved into commenting that "Nixon moving away from the gold standard is what set all of our problems into motion."

It's not simple vaccinating against this. I could've knocked down each of those claims one by one, but he'd just Gish Gallop into 20 more that support his preconceptions. Critical thinking diseases in meme'd minds is an extremely real problem. 

See, that is why I always found it funny if folks proclaim things like that racism, anti-semitism and sexism is functionally over and that the pendulum has swung too far.

Really what happened is that the only swing we had is more towards a more careful approach to proclaiming your ignorance and intolerance. But that movement was enough to make it swing all the way back. The main difference is that on top, ignorance is also on full display (and ignorance is the PC word here for the stuff people openly proclaim).

And it does seem that one political side is benefiting more from ignorance than the other. So much so, that fascism is getting acceptable again, and not only in the USA, for that matter.

 

[MSC]

On 10/28/2024 at 10:00 AM, iNow said:

Harris is clearly making a play for paleo-Republicans and Independent voters. Trump, however, is making a play for voters who normally don't vote, specifically males with misogynistic and racist tendencies.

I'm unsure (and uncomfortable) that the middle of the road never-Trumper numbers being sought after by Harris et.al will be enough to counterbalance the "let's burn the whole effing thing down" voters sought after by Trump et.al. 

The silver lining here being that a good portion of those males with misogynistic tendencies are disorganized and uneducated and are as likely to miss voting day due to being drunk, hungover, at work or unable to find the documents they need to register. In a close race, the few that are probabilistically likely to end up not voting, could make all the difference in some places. Not to mention the damage Trump's own election security rhetoric has done to the confidence of his own voters in the process. I wonder how many will be thinking "What's the point in voting when the Democrats are going to cheat anyway?"

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

And it does seem that one political side is benefiting more from ignorance than the other. So much so, that fascism is getting acceptable again, and not only in the USA, for that matter.

A good example being immigration; so many people believe falsehoods about immigration that the Democrats have no choice but to get tougher on it and propagate some of these falsehoods themselves or they will lose the election. Trumpism hasn't just caused the moral bar for Republicans to drop, but Democrats too. It scares me a little to think that if enough people start believing more of this nonsense, not just in terms of immigration, we'll see a fast moral decline across the candidates political spectrums as winning campaigns have to become more and more morally dubious.

[CharonY]

2 hours ago, MSC said:

Trumpism hasn't just caused the moral bar for Republicans to drop, but Democrats too. It scares me a little to think that if enough people start believing more of this nonsense, not just in terms of immigration, we'll see a fast moral decline across the candidates political spectrums as winning campaigns have to become more and more morally dubious.

The incentive is certainly there. It seems to be a winning strategy that is seemingly also easier to implement. I.e. you do not need any fact-based analysis of anything, you just need repeat your claim to make it so. Having a firm moral basis does not seem to provide much of a benefit nowadays.

[J.C.MacSwell]

10 hours ago, iNow said:

There's significant construction work being done in our neighborhood. Lots of excavators and roads being dug up, new water drain lines buried, etc.

Got to speaking with a member of their crew yesterday. Tall muscular guy, mid-40s. Said he's a former Marine. Spent some time in a motorcycle gang. Did tattoo work, even corporate security before moving into large city funded construction projects.

Within a few minutes, he'd shared that racism isn't real and is just a media invented narrative, that Hitler didn't hate "the Jews" and was mostly just mad bc they tried taking his gold away from him, that Hitler even had black Nazis controlling things in Africa so "stop believing all the lies," he shared that "the largest slave owners were actually the native americans," and he even started scrolling through photos and social media posts on his phone to show me and prove all of this was real and relevant as he next moved into commenting that "Nixon moving away from the gold standard is what set all of our problems into motion."

It's not simple vaccinating against this. I could've knocked down each of those claims one by one, but he'd just Gish Gallop into 20 more that support his preconceptions. Critical thinking diseases in meme'd minds is an extremely real problem. 

I've always encouraged everyone to vote regardless of who I thought they might vote for...but now I find myself hoping you told this guy "right on man, don't forget to get out next Wednesday on Nov 6th and vote...I hear they're tearing up the early ballots!"

[MSC]

3 hours ago, CharonY said:

The incentive is certainly there. It seems to be a winning strategy that is seemingly also easier to implement. I.e. you do not need any fact-based analysis of anything, you just need repeat your claim to make it so. Having a firm moral basis does not seem to provide much of a benefit nowadays.

It's really a problem if rhetoric and rhetorical style. It's hard to boil down all scientific facts to something simple and punchy enough that the common man responds positively to. Also that Democrats are more in the way of trying to gain votes of independents and Republicans by convincing them that the candidates have the right values, rather than intelligently appealing to the values those voters already possess. 

[MigL]

6 hours ago, CharonY said:

it does seem that one political side is benefiting more from ignorance

That's in the standard playbook of dictators and despots.
Keep your citizens ignorant, and withhold balanced impartial news, so that they can be easily controlled.

D Trump has learned from the 'best' of them.
But it doesn't say much for about 70 million American voters either.

[iNow]

2 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

I've always encouraged everyone to vote regardless of who I thought they might vote for...but now I find myself hoping you told this guy "right on man, don't forget to get out next Wednesday on Nov 6th and vote...I hear they're tearing up the early ballots!"

Lol 😂 

[dimreepr]

18 hours ago, CharonY said:

Having a firm moral basis does not seem to provide much of a benefit nowadays.

It seldom does, when it's much more comfortable over here...

[CharonY]

14 hours ago, MigL said:

That's in the standard playbook of dictators and despots.
Keep your citizens ignorant, and withhold balanced impartial news, so that they can be easily controlled.

D Trump has learned from the 'best' of them.
But it doesn't say much for about 70 million American voters either.

True on both accounts. What is worrying (to me) is that it seems that the US is an indicator for the the rest of the world, the way things are going.

14 hours ago, MSC said:

It's really a problem if rhetoric and rhetorical style. It's hard to boil down all scientific facts to something simple and punchy enough that the common man responds positively to.

This is a long-standing problem especially in communicating science. The conventional wisdom was that you have to simplify as much as possible, but also make it punchy so to not bore folks. I am not so sure that this works in the age of clickbaits anymore. The challenge is that if things are simplified, some folks will invariably find some issues in the reporting. It could be a minor inaccuracy but can also be real concerns that weren't covered. These gaps are then frequently exploited to question all the other (valid) claims.

It has become fairly serious and it is something that I find myself increasingly (and reluctantly) working on, as it severely impacts public health and there is a kind of amnesia setting in on every level, that might endanger our ability to respond to future threats.

 

[Luc Turpin]

Why does Trump even have a following? Because emotions and fear drive human behaviour. No one understands this better than Trump.

 

I want Elon to pull 2 trillion out of the U.S. economy and see how that goes.

And a cell phone is a too powerful tool for most of us.

Edited October 30 by Luc Turpin

[CharonY]

I think what worries me most about the political situation is not only that Trump could become president, but that the situation is rife for another, more intelligent fascist to take control of the US at some point in the future.

Folks like Orban and moreso Meloni are normalizing authoritarianism and for once I do think we are looking at a real slippery slope here.

[Luc Turpin]

My pet worry is not a future smarter dictator, but more immediately, Trump starting a war with China, and Russia being pulled into it. You see, the politics of fear also has its grip on me.

[Peterkin]

4 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

My pet worry is not a future smarter dictator, but more immediately, Trump starting a war with China, and Russia being pulled into it. You see, the politics of fear also has its grip on me.

Never mind China, he'll start a war within the USA. Win or lose, he's hell-bent on igniting a civil war.

[iNow]

[CharonY]

43 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

Never mind China, he'll start a war within the USA. Win or lose, he's hell-bent on igniting a civil war.

Also, why would he wage war against folks he admires in the first place? He will hand Putin whatever he wants and Xi just needs to say one or two nice things (plus perhaps some underhanded deals) and I would not be surprised if the US policy with Taiwan suddenly changes.

As Trump said, he sees the enemy within. Well and perhaps he is going to randomly bomb Mexico.

[MSC]

9 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Why does Trump even have a following? Because emotions and fear drive human behaviour. No one understands this better than Trump.

 

I want Elon to pull 2 trillion out of the U.S. economy and see how that goes.

And a cell phone is a too powerful tool for most of us.

I've been saying this for years. I'm all for freedom of speech but since when does freedom of speech imply you have a right to a megaphone with the potential to reach millions to billions of people. Can you imagine what life would be like today if Stalin or Hitler had access to a communication device so powerful they could speak directly to people at the push of a button wherever they are? Right now the only upside is that it is an even playing field in that most of us with access to a phone and a stable Internet connection have this power, but that really just adds to the chaos and forums such as ours are very lonely islands of reason, rationality and objective concern. 

1 hour ago, iNow said:

At first I was thinking "oh shouldn't this be in the political humor thread." Until I realized it's not funny, it's terrifying. 

 

Ian Brown might be a total shithead now but this song speaks to me a lot because of all this and election day being so near.