monoamine
1yr ago
There's (in my view, as a progressive anti-authoritarian liberal) a lot of truth to what the parent poster said, but certainly a lot of truth in what you and Scott said. I think the better way of thinking about it is that the "social conservatism, big government" quadrant is a necessary but not sufficient condition for fascism. When taken to its extreme it becomes fascism or akin to it, just as socialism can range from social democrat to libertarian socialist to democratic socialist to authoritarian socialist to Marxist-Leninist to Stalinist to Juchist, but calling all socialists Stalinists/Juchists is silly.
monoamine
1yr ago
The cover-up certainly was bad, but it seems like the news media, social media, Blinken, and the former intelligence officials mostly or entirely sincerely believed it had a good chance of being Russian disinformation. When more evidence came out that it was real, most serious outlets reversed their stance, and Twitter and Facebook stopped censoring it.
monoamine
1yr ago
You're right, but it's still absurd to threaten to leave NATO over it, regardless of how serious the threat is. Other kinds of pressure should be exerted to make NATO members spend more on their military. Combined with his lax at best or friendly at worst attitude towards Putin, it's not reassuring.
monoamine
1yr ago
I think the unprecedented part isn't that Trump took and kept documents but that he and his team explicitly lied to law enforcement/DoJ when politely asked to report and return classified documents.
monoamine
1yr ago
I think that in reality if elected Trump would probably just spend all day tweeting and failing to implement his promises. However, to many Democrats it is almost as if Trump is a Lovecraftian god the mere mention of whom leads to insanity. Such Democrats view him as some sort of annihilating force the very presence of which in the universe warps and endangers the sane, wholesome building blocks of existence itself. Meanwhile I just see a fat old huckster sociopath who talks a lot of shit but is effectively restrained by checks and balances. Not a savory person, maybe even a rapist, pretty certainly a bad guy, but not some sort of fundamental essential threat to the entire being of American democracy or to sanity.
As a Democrat, I hold both views simultaneously. An actually more accurate way to put it for me is: I think he'll probably directly be a threat to democracy if he loses, and probably won't directly be a threat to democracy over the next four years if he wins, but might have already tipped the first domino in a progression that leads to an erosion of democracy and might be able to nudge the next domino (or have his allies do so) based on some of his actions during his next term.
monoamine
1yr ago
I know many left-leaning accounts that got pretty big payouts. Though given I'm a left-leaning tech person and that's my bubble, the "tech-adjacent influencers and intellectuals" part might still be true.
monoamine
1yr ago
Lilith is an extremely common name for trans women, for whatever reason. (I'm very supportive of trans people and have several trans friends, and "Lilith" is a common joke/punchline in trans communities when discussing names due to how common yet silly it is.)
I think for most of them the name is a reference to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
monoamine
1yr ago
but after extensive experience with 4chan I suspect that the greentext, at bottom, is just the common 4chan theme of "I wish I could just use force to get women to have sex with me", but dressed up in an intellectual argument.
I think you're close but it's not quite that far. To be sure, a lot of 4channers definitely hold that sentiment, but most probably hold a sentiment more like "I wish women would have sex with me, they won't, and as a result I think they deserve to suffer as punishment". They don't typically have a desire to rape anyone, but they feel a general bitterness and vengefulness.
monoamine
1yr ago
I do think democracies are a proxy for civil unrest, even if that wasn’t the express purpose of democracy originally (cf etymology fallacy). Democracy is an outlet for political rage and catharsis. Radicals become political influencers and their danger to civil order is diminished as a result.
Exactly. This is why what Trump did with the 2020 election is so dangerous and corrosive. January 6 was a natural outpouring of what he set in motion, even if he didn't literally tell his supporters to breach the Capitol building. We should expect to see more serious civil unrest if he loses the 2024 election, since he will very likely claim it was rigged no matter what.
monoamine
1yr ago
Yeah, to be clear, that's definitely what I would do if I were to share it. I was just kind of being hyperbolic so that it wouldn't seem like I'd be tiptoeing around the fact that it's partly an attempt to grow the user count. I would not try to share it in an actual shill-y or marketing-y way at all.
monoamine
1yr ago
According to this, anything besides depicting relationships that aren't cisgender and heterosexual: https://x.com/KarlMaxxer/status/1823753493783699901
(This isn't necessarily due to those prompts being blocked for traditionalist cultural reasons, of course. But it's interesting.)
monoamine
1yr ago
So I just don't get the anti-retaliation side at all. I just don't. Do you apply this logic to other aspects of your lives?
I'm on the left and I find the "retaliation" angle here somewhat odd. If done solely or primarily out of retaliation or spite - like Cernovich with Sam Seder - where you do not think someone did something bad for real but you just want to give them a taste of their own medicine, then it feels like stupid, emotional, warmongering bullshit to me and I agree with all of the criticisms of the "right wing cancel squads" that I've seen in the past few days.
If you genuinely think it's really bad to support the attempted assassination of any major political figure, then while there can certainly be a retaliation motive, you're still broadly acting in good faith by trying to get people cancelled. If there's some sort of "I have a principle of supporting freedom of speech and opposing cancel culture but the desire for just deserts is temporarily overriding that at the moment" going on as well - sure, whatever. But if you actually are disgusted and outraged by people endorsing assassination attempts, I really see zero issue with any of these cancellations, because 1) that part of the motive seems "pure", and 2) I personally agree that it's bad to endorse assassinating politicians (including Trump, who I detest) so I feel fine with it.
I'm assuming most of these pro-cancellers on the right aren't just looking for some excuse to cancel annoying leftoids and gleefully jumping on the opportunity. As Scott points out, such behavior is bad and dumb for many reasons, including that one has no evidence any of these assassination-supporters endorse the sorts of cancellations the canceller despises, even if it could be likely. I figure most of the pro-cancellers in this situation just share the logic of most pro-cancellers on the left: they see something they find sickening and corrosive to society and antithetical to morality, and they're doing something about it.
(There's some wiggle room here: a liberal making a joke about the shooting does not necessarily genuinely think the shooting is good or desirable. For the sake of argument I'm speaking about the people who clearly sincerely are saying and believing "I wish the shooter hadn't missed".)
monoamine
2yr ago
I'm staunchly on the left, virulently anti-Trump, and am completely okay with people being cancelled for these comments. I would be a hypocrite if I weren't. I think there's a lot of crocodile tears from the left on this: if Obama were almost killed and people were saying the same things, how many would protest those people being fired?
monoamine
2yr ago
Sorry for the ad hominem, but I really can't understand the sorts of people who think this way. It's very strange to me. My assumption is that you probably believe there's a high likelihood for many other conspiracy theories. Can you please prove me right or wrong and tell me your opinions on the JFK assassination, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Seth Rich, and the 2020 election?
Off-topic, but as someone who tries to never have a take on something without seeing the full context and who also hates viewing photos or videos that involve (real) violence, these are rough for me. (I'm indeed a lib, if it wasn't obvious.) I've never seen any of the George Floyd or Rittenhouse footage, for example.
monoamine
2yr ago
but I'd bet for real blue-teamers, in their mind she would have won anyway so why bother with the formalities? In fact why even think about that! We've got an election to win!
As a blue-teamer myself, that is definitely my view. And everyone else I know's view. Though there's also the notion that if you have a president and vice-president - or presidential and vice-presidential candidate - who are voted for, and the president/presidential candidate steps down, people expect the second-up to take their place.
monoamine
2yr ago
That's fair due to his statements about Israel. (That Wikipedia article shows even more divisive examples than just saying Israel should wipe out Hamas.) I think if he were just a random Jew who hadn't commented on Israel or was somewhat more critical, they mostly would be fine with voting for him.
Muslims can certainly be antisemitic, but - and I could be wrong - I think most Muslims in the US don't really have an issue with Jews who aren't known to be supportive of Israel. For some that may require active condemnation of Israel, but for others I think lack of explicit, vocal support is sufficient.
Because it's just random feel-good nonsense slogans. (Several prominent liberals on Twitter like Yglesias have also pointed out the inconsistency.) I'm referring to what's stated in that thread - people should scroll down and read it if they haven't. I'm not saying they're great slogans. I'm saying it isn't literally-Satanic-literal-communism.
monoamine
2yr ago
Why are people replying to this like "oh, that's interesting"? It's paranoid delusion.
monoamine
2yr ago
If the candidate doesn't signal support for Israel or preferably explicitly signals disapproval, I don't think many Michigan Muslims would care about the mere fact they're Jewish. At least not enough for it to make them not vote.
monoamine
2yr ago
To the extent that "normie" voters are even aware of the "online right" as an entity, it's from what they occasionally hear filtered through the opinions of "official" channels, where they are/will be portrayed as a bunch of neo-nazi white supremist weirdo ghouls regardless.
I remember scoffing at "Twitter is full of Nazis" for years, until it eventually became true.
Actually trying to peer into his mind and speculate exactly what he wants is difficult. I think he likes power and I think it's reasonably probable that if he thought he could do it pretty easily, he'd appoint himself president-for-life. If he does want to do that, I don't think he will try to do it, because he knows he couldn't get away with it. But the thought that he might want it is concerning. (But I only think it's "reasonably probable" he does. I'm definitely not certain.)
What I do know is that if Kamala wins, the following will happen, with the following likelihoods, whether or not there are any credible widespread fraud allegations:
That is not good for democracy. The fact that we all know that Trump will declare victory no matter what happens is not good for democracy.
If there's no substantive evidence to support his claims, we all know that Trump is going to say he won when he lost. This is an absurd state of affairs.
I'm just going to repeat this for emphasis. Everyone reading this knows that Trump is going to say "I won" on November 5/6/7, no matter the circumstances. We all know he's going to do this.
People in the intellectual dark web regularly talk about "sense-making", but they seem to (from what I can tell) avoid the fact that if there can no longer be any common agreement on who won an election, democracy is in jeopardy.
I don't think Republicans, or even Trump, necessarily want to suppress the legitimate vote, per se. I do know that Trump is going to say he won if he lost. Basically everyone knows it. That is an erosion of democracy.
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