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magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
11mo ago
· Edited 11mo ago
Purdue was involved in fake science, though, helping to spread the myth that less than 1% of people become addicted to prescription opioids. That fails to meet even the very low bar of "don't actively mislead people".
You have to simultaneously tear Trump down as a weakling and present yourself as a better vessel for their inchoate rage.
The Trump base might not be the most articulate but there are absolutely smart people in their orbit who understand their grievances and why they're so angry. You can win them over to someone who isn't Trump - but you need to understand why they went for him in the first place, and if you're going to claim that was because of vulgar social dominance you're going to fail each and every time. If you're interested in a good article that explains what attracted those voters to him, I recommend https://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-01-21/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-resentment/
hydroacetylene
11mo ago
Is that not just how the federal government operates?
campfireSmoresEaten
11mo ago
I'm talking about how lynka said the concentration camp thing.
There are reasons why someone would allow free speech in that scenario. Just like there are reasons why someone might follow the Geneva Convention in a war they might lose, and indeed many people and societies have.
For one thing, it would be foolish to try to persuade people and then prohibit them from trying to persuade you. And persuasion does work. People don't like persuasion because it doesn't fit with their worldview of the other side being Chaotic Evil Orcs, and for other reasons. But really, it does work on enough people that it's always worth it. A lot of people who hate persuasion are just really bad at it because they're too mired in their own ideology and all the nuance in their brain has fled.
Persuasion is too harsh a word. People get in the mindset of trying to trick people with weird arguments, and that never works in the long run. Usually not in the short run either.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
11mo ago
Can you tell me why you think she would've been awesome? This is a genuine question. I definitely preemptively disagree with you, but I'm not going to argue and your posts of the past make me think you're intelligent.
So, again, genuinely want to know.
hydroacetylene
11mo ago
There are genuinely smart people who genuinely love Trump above Desantis and Nikki Hailey. They point to his regulation cuts, relative isolationism, and that he says exactly what he’s going to do.
newport
11mo ago
I know it's a running meme here at this point that Gavin is an idiot, but is there any media documentation of that? I've never followed the guy closely so maybe I just haven't noticed. All I really know about him is he's a pretty standard California democrat and bears more than a passing resemblance to Patrick Bateman.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
If CNN, the NYT, and Time Magazine, and the rest had all held ranks and denied everything, this would probably have blown over. Most people didn't even watch the debate.
Even the maestros can't sweep something like this under the carpet. People saw it, those 30 second clips would've circulated around facebook and twitter, not to mention international news media. They can't exactly say it was Russian misinformation. They've tried to reframe it, 'oh it was a cold' 'oh it was because it was late in the day', 'Trump lied'... That's really only damage control. If they directly lied in such a blatant way it would be a major blow to their credibility.
Effective media work maximizes use of the truth. Take Russia Today: they mostly present true events that show them favourably or advance their favoured narratives: 'we dropped a big bomb on the Ukrainian town of New York' 'we blew up this drone' 'former colonial empires are doing stuff in Africa.'
Mottizen
11mo ago
I am very confident that Ashli Babitt (D) is a national martyr if roles are reversed. The endless op-eds about gunning down an unarmed woman for disobeying an instruction would be legion.
pigeonburger
11mo ago
Master and Commander was great
Honestly, the whole series is fun, and since you're already past the biggest obstacle (the nautical jargon) you should check it out
ThisIsSin
Cainanites and Abelists
11mo ago
12K car
That exists already; it’s called the Mitsubishi Mirage.
They don’t sell very well, to the point that Mitsubishi was giving up on them.
If Mitsubishi can’t move units, what hope do the even shittier Chinese cars have? Other than “ban all non-EVs”, that is, at which point there’ll be no choice and it’ll be more workable to just be careless. Which was the entire point all along, of course.
pigeonburger
11mo ago
I don't know how comfortable with small talk you are, but I recommend practicing it, some people assume if you don't engage or reciprocate small talk with them then you hate them or something.
Democrats do something very similar to January 6, and I think Republican rhetoric is virtually the same (insurrection, overthrow the government, terrorism, etc.) as what the Democrats have been using. Democrats would probably riot over the death of their version of Ashli Babbitt.
BLM protests are difficult because I have a lot of trouble imagining what similar conservative kinetic actions would look like. Maybe it's a massive blind spot, but I just can't picture a realistic scenario. The closest I can think of are small groups or individuals attacking abortion clinics, which are very much affiliated. Or the Murrah building, but again, that was very specifically targeted.
Now, the next take would be that the protesters did very little rioting, but opportunists were attacking random private businesses. So what does a right-wing protest with violent opportunists look like? Probably the right-wingers would try to actively help the police stop the looting.
zoink
11mo ago
I do not miss Hlynka as a mod, but I kind of miss him as a poster. I'm a wannabee tough guy and he's start start to wax Soldier of Fortune and I couldn't wait for a take from that perspective and then it was just meandering and the point was really bad.
campfireSmoresEaten
11mo ago
The point is not to imagine a realistic similar scenario that could happen. The point is to imagine what a similar scenario would be, realistic or not. If there is no realistic equivalent, that reflects well on the people who would not realistically do the bad thing.
sliders1234
11mo ago
I got no problem with persuasion. But if it’s going to lose I would rather pick a different strategy that can win.
If I were a Cuban pre-Castro I would move to a strategy that can win and not a debating society. With perfect foresight I would have chopped off the heads of all the communists before they started winning.
Rov_Scam
11mo ago
No, it doesn't seem like it. There's a mountain biking YouTube channel I watch where the guy is relatively unknown among the general public but who is a celebrity among mountain bikers, and he did a video where he was at a mountain bike festival and had to basically disguise himself while walking down the midway just to have a somewhat typical festival experience. He said it was kind of stressful, and this is just for dealing with normal people who want to say hi and tell him how much they enjoy his work, and maybe get a picture with him. Now imagine that plus it being everywhere you go, every day, and while most people are benign there are a few who absolutely despise you and send hate mail and others who are convinced that you're their one true love and won't stop stalking you. Any sense of a normal life is completely gone. If there's a restaurant you want to try you can't just go there; you have to have your people make sure they can provide special accommodations for you and the handlers that will be necessary to keep the public at bay. Any public place — a bar, a movie theater, a grocery store, whatever — is effectively off-limits.
I've had my own experience of being at the extreme bottom levels of the fame ladder. When I was in high school I was the captain of the academic team and we went on the local CBS affiliate's Saturday morning quiz-bowl show (hosted by a popular news anchor) and won the championship. This meant that I was on TV for several weeks over a period of a few months. At the time I was working as a cashier at a grocery store, and practically every customer recognized me from a local TV show that I was only somewhat aware of before I was on it. It's obviously nowhere near what being even internet famous is like, but people congratulating you and asking the same questions every five minutes does start to wear on you after a while, even though they're good people who just want to express their appreciation that you proved one of the worst schools in the state could hang academically with the best (our road to the championship included defeating a well-known prep school and a suburban public school that is consistently ranked among the best in the state [coincidentally located where I live now]).
If you make a mistake at work you might hear about it from your boss or a coworker but it's no big deal and you move on. If you release a horrible album or act poorly in a movie you have to deal with public criticism. Think of how hard your last breakup was and imagine if people were publicly speculating on what happened and hounding your ex for interviews. Imagine having to screen your own calls. Imagine the insecurity of not knowing if your last date actually liked you or was enthralled by your fame. Imagine dealing with yes-men who tell you you're the best and want a piece of you only to stop returning your calls at the first sign you might not be as profitable as it seemed. Imagine being functionally unable to make new friends who weren't also celebrities. Imagine everyone you ever met suddenly texting you to hang out. Imagine actual friends asking if you can put in word for them with the right people. Awfully stressful is an understatement.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
11mo ago
People coming up to you in public is a bit stressful. People sucking up to you is awkward. And you have to deal with journalists.
On the other hand, people will just employ you if you're famous, you don't have to worry about Linkedin. You can just get a sinecure from a big company.
I think it's some people's ingrained nature to do things that make them famous, the pros and cons aren't relevant to them.
Tanista
11mo ago
I think people like the NYT have been pretty explicit about what happened: Biden's age was a known issue to voters, the media was happy to simply...give him the benefit of the doubt in a variety of ways with the expectation that he'd clean it up at some point. Enough to get over the finish line.
He utterly failed to do that. So the issue blew up beyond anyone's control.
The media can't actually suppress something like this, it's been consistent in the polling. They can delay. They can trim. They can buy the guy time to study and perform so they don't have to deal with it (which is what happened with the State of the Union). But they can't kill the topic.
Biden shitting the bed not only made it impossible for them to do their jobs, it likely triggered a "we were all rooting for you!" frustration. They did their parts, after all.
Rov_Scam
11mo ago
As a lawyer who has to review medical and scientific information regularly despite having absolutely no scientific or technical background, God no.
In my paranoid mind, if we wanted to believe in a conspiracy line of thinking, I think a theory for the surprisingly unified harsh open acknowledgement of the emperor's clothes would be:
a. In the mainstream media's supreme narcissism and entitlement to (attempt) socially engineer, they believe as a gestalt that only they could save the Republic and the Democratic party system (for most of the MSM it's one and the same) by setting the narrative for the Democrats to force them to swap out Biden. In their mind, because the media can shape the public's mind at whim, they can force people to abandon Biden by smearing him, and thus force a swap. So they got in their backroom group chats and all agreed "this is the talking points memo."
b. The American Deep State is genuinely concerned about Trump. Actual, important people, lives are on the line, because if he gets elected he might start putting allies of theirs in legit jail in vengeance. Perhaps he really is a rogue free agent from the usual bread and circuses show with its vetted actors, and that's always been a concern. Similar to point a, but this presumes most of the MSM basically takes marching orders from entrenched shadow elites from the likes of the CIA or whatever. An order was given out that "Biden really can't be the one to win against Trump. We tried our best with him with this performance and it's still not enough. Force a swap now before it's too late - or we are fucked."
As an addition to b. While I don't fully believe it myself, a predictive test of this theory might be that said elite influencers will go full gun blasts against Trump and do something really nutty. Like actually sentence him to prison this coming July criminal trial sentencing. Again I don't believe this will likely happen, I'm betting on a more level headed slap on the wrist since the real goal was the prestige of calling Trump a convicted criminal, but I want to get it in writing for a still "you heard it hear first" rights - just in case.
Either way it's astounding to me this event is what finally made people acknowledge Biden's obvious mental decline. So much so it's weird and suspicious.
Shrike
11mo ago
Hmm! Here's the full URL as it's supposed to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra#Revelation
I think it's most likely that Dems just don't have enough people to run every institution they've seized, and the old political office pipelines look unappealing relative to, say, chairing a billion-dollar NGO you can use as a personal slush fund.
See the "embattled" mayor of Oakland and all those others for examples of how poor their pool of low level politicians is; they can't even do the minimum effort to hide their embezzlement enough for Dem prosecutors to ignore it.
Whereas Republicans who didn't go the federalist society judge route are pretty much stuck with starting a political career as mayor of Cowpatsie, Idaho. They don't even get defense contractor work now; it all goes to regime-friendly guys like the motte's Netscape or whatever.
Like, a Democrat Thomas Massie would have gone a very different direction after MIT, and reached a much more profitable office than junior representative in charge of sponsoring DOA livestock bills.
But there's definitely a crab bucket effect too, made stronger by the party's power over the bureaucracy. Much easier to sabotage a potential competitor when you can literally order their subordinates to undermine them.
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