How is that in any way contradictory ?

Another option is that voters are just very stupid and fail to see that which is "obvious", repeatedly, despite billions spent on trying to make them "see". Or perhaps their claims are not actually "obvious", and they ought to be... kinder to the other side.

Fox News. The folks who voted trump watch only Fox News, which has crafted an alternative and immersive world view that appears coherent if you only watch Fox News and reject conflicting information as lies.

However the issue is about the kind of information ecosystems that drive polarization and misinformation.

Disinfo and misinformation campaigns target right wing / conservative viewers more than they do left wing / liberals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07942-8

But I can point to research and articles till the cows come home. The fact is that people reject everything negative about Trump and fill in the blanks with whatever they want to believe.

We’re basically playing whose line is it anyway

Reality

> It would be easy to reframe such that the opposite can be just as “true, “ depending on your perspective.

No it isn't. Facts still matter.

> Trump turned out not to be working with Russia,

He was and still is. Not only has he privately talked to Putin while outside office breaking foreign law policy. But before his election multiple events happened, from his son admitting to Russian funding, to some of the initial findings of the Steele Dossier being proven to the findings of the Muller report which concluded without hesitation that there was coordination betwen Trump campagin officials and Russian officials and known spies for the Kremlin.

Reality does not stop existing because the Congress decided to not impeach someone who had inexcusable evidence against them

> Trump started zero wars, despite fear mongering that he would start World War 3

Trump exacerbated drone strikes in the middle east (with more in 2 years under him, until he stopped reporting the numbers) than in 8 years under Obama. He also gave Iran causus belli which no american goverment had done in decades to a foregin nation despite them not retaliating for Soulameni death. He allowed the expansion of Russian troops in the western front which later became the invasion of Ukraine and he moved the US embassy to Jerusalem one of the many reasons cited by Hamas in regards to their Oct 7th attack.

So all in all a pretty succesful military record of losing geopolitcal importance for america left and right and causing conflicts everywhere he touched.

> He ended the tensions with North Korea, despite pundits saying diplomacy doesn’t work with dictators.

He saluted their generals, thats not diplomacy its ass kissing. And no tensions where ended. They launched multiple missilies over Japan while he was president...

> Arguably all of that was misinformation

None of that is misinformation, you just deny reality

If you haven’t looked at the article - this is directly in the summary:

> sers who were pro-Trump/conservative also shared far more links to various sets of low-quality news sites—even when news quality was determined by politically balanced groups of laypeople, or groups of only Republican laypeople—and had higher estimated likelihoods of being bots

If you want more - The original fake news, the Romanian ad farm sites, had greater success and traction when they targeted conservative viewers.

To save us both trouble - this is not some cockamamie argument about crud like “he who defines it can be correct.”,or conflation of bad reporting and hyperbole.

This is straight up conservatives being the victims and consistent targets of mis and disinformation.

I also know that this will have 0 impact on changing minds. I know it wont.

That said, I do hope we can agree that people deserve respect for their efforts to understand a topic, subject or field of work. Do read the article, and when I say that conservative / republican information diets are more vulnerable and exposed to low quality information and conspiracy theories, I’d appreciate the honor of at least having your opinion on the abstract and matter of the paper.

My point wasn’t necessarily that conservatives aren’t exposed to more misinformation, but rather that misinformation is very difficult to define, since the general public lacks so much information. Very few people actually know the truth. Many people fill in the gaps with their biases and then believe they’ve consumed “the truth.” Without an objective view of all facts, it’s difficult to ascertain the truth, therefore it’s also difficult to ascertain what is misinformation.

My initial reaction is that this study seems to delegate the classification of misinformation to a set of fact checkers and journalists. It then uses this to classify links as being either misinformation or disinformation, based on a trustworthiness score. Unfortunately, I can’t open the table of exact fact checkers and journalists because none of the links work on my mobile browser, so I’ll have to just guess at the contents for now.

Delegating classification of truth to these third parties allows for significant bias in the results. Most conservatives consider main stream media and fact checkers to have a significant progressive bias. If correct, this would explain at least some of the results of this study. I haven’t done a thorough analysis myself, so I can’t say either way, but it would be worth investigating.

The study also mentions that many users could have been bots. I suspect this could also have skewed the results. This is mentioned in the abstract, so I suspect it’s addressed later in the paper.

Either way, continuing to read… very interesting study.

As for your objection and concern - the study deals with that issue by letting participants decide themselves, what counts as high quality and low quality.

This holds if you look at outright conspiracy theories. Globally, conservative users are the most susceptible to such campaigns.

I will add "at this moment in time". I expect that sufficiently virulent disinfo which targets the left will evolve eventually.

For additional reading, not directly related to lib / con disinfo efficacy - The spreading of misinformation online. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517441113

This is one of the first papers on this topic I ever read, and will help in the consideration of misinfo / disinfo traffic patterns in a network.

uhh - not that you asked for additional reading.

Trump tends to talk in word-salad. It makes it very possible for two reasonable individuals to reach different conclusions about what was communicated.

Even Snopes, fucking Snopes, confirmed the "fine people" thing is false.

Obama, Kamala, and Joe Biden all pushed "Trump said Nazis were fine people" with complete confidence, this is the literal definition of a hoax.

The original video credited with "drinking bleach", was Trump openly speculating on disinfection approaches. And, the approach he verbalized out loud, disinfecting lungs with UV light, was at the time a relatively new and completely valid medical treatment. Trump was ahead of the curve on that one.

Anyone who interprets his open questions about the UV light treatment as "drink bleach" is either a victim of a hoax (and an irresponsible moron) or has no qualms pushing hoaxes.

""" Editors' Note: Some readers have raised the objection that this fact check appears to assume Trump was correct in stating that there were "very fine people on both sides" of the Charlottesville incident. That is not the case. This fact check aimed to confirm what Trump actually said, not whether what he said was true or false. For the record, virtually every source that covered the Unite the Right debacle concluded that it was conceived of, led by and attended by white supremacists, and that therefore Trump's characterization was wrong. """

Given that the Unite the Right rally was organized by overt white supremacists, white-supremacist-adjacent organizations, and people comfortable with rallying with those groups, it is an understandable inference a person could draw that when Trump claims a set of people is "fine people" and the set is as above described, there is no daylight between what he said and a claim that white supremacists are "fine people" (because excluding the people he overtly says he isn't talking about leaves the empty set... i.e. he either meant to say Nazis were fine people or he made a statement that is a logical contradiction, so if one's benefit of the doubt comes down on the side of "he isn't a befuddled man who contradicts himself with three sentences," one assumes the non-illogical statement supporting Nazis as fine people).

This train of thought is predicated upon how much one buys into the old saw that "everyone sitting comfortably at a table with one Nazi is called Nazis." But if you wish to understand the train of thought that leads to an alternate interpretation of his words, that is the train of thought.

(Similar logic applies to the "drink bleach" comment. He didn't literally suggest people drink bleach. In addition to his comments on UV therapy, he also opined on how effective bleach is as a cleansing agent and whether it would be possible to somehow apply it inside the human body... Which anyone who knows basic chemistry knows is mad. He just says things, which are open to being interpreted in the worst possible light.)

With respect, you seem to be trying to tell people that words aren't open to interpretation when they do not share your interpretation of the literal words they heard, and that's probably a non-starter argument. It is probably not an optimal way to "converse curiously."

Correct, yes.

Short list: Trump has been adjudicated in court as having sexually assaulted a woman, and has admitted to doing more. Nearly every person who has worked with him has described him in the worst possible terms. Stories of him celebrating Nazis [1], sexually fixating on his own daughter[2], horrifying things like that.

The man is a convicted felon, and has only escaped punishment for various other crime by virtue of his own appointees in the court system.

If a reader accepts these well-supported items as facts, what should they think about somebody who votes for that?

Should they lie and say "a reasonable person would support this"?

Or should they tell the truth even when it is "divisive"?

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-said-hitler-did-...

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/trumps-lewd-talk-a...

We can't call a failed businessman what he is? Or correctly point out that he idolizes dictators and Hitler specifically? Or that he is so fucking stupid he said he wanted Hitler's generals even though they were 1) Not very good 2) several tried to assassinate him and 3) fought like middle school girls?

Why do we have to abandon reality? Why do we have to treat conservatives with kid gloves?

I seem to remember something along the lines of "Facts don't care about your feelings" and "Fragile Snowflakes"

> rapist

Source?

https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/donald-trump...

> Kaplan had already outlined why it was not defamation for Carroll to say Trump raped her.

> “As the court explained in its recent decision denying Mr Trump’s motion for a new trial on damages and other relief [in the New York case] … based on all of the evidence at trial and the jury’s verdict as a whole, the jury’s finding that Mr Trump ‘sexually abused’ Ms Carroll implicitly determined that he forcibly penetrated her digitally – in other words, that Mr Trump in fact did ‘rape’ Ms Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York penal law.”

So not a criminal case than? Trump didn’t even attend.

The article says the jury did not find enough evidence of the rape claim even at the lower requirement of the civil court.

> Carroll “cannot produce any objective evidence to back up her claim because it didn’t happen,” he told jurors.

I'm pretty sure OJ's lawyer also said he didn't do it.

But I’m not here to be trumps lawyer. I’m here to tell you that you that this scapegoating and conspiring is giving you nothing but anger and not helping you understand the events this week.

Trump supporters blaming liberals' rhetoric for their decisions is a troll tactic: It's a way of trying to bait liberals into paying more positive lip service to Trump. And it works, all up and down the media organizations are terrified to say things that offend trump supporters. All for some vague belief that if they coddle his supporters enough they get some "centrist credibility" or something.

There's a lot of people around me who are actively against education, or attack facts because they don't believe them, or vomit opinions as "facts".

It's practically impossible to persuade people like that.

Are you suggesting that the USA should have a single political party? Anyone that cares for democracy would be against that, regardless of their other political views.

And not quit as in leave only a single party, but quit as in leave a vacuum for another party/candidate/etc to step in.

Note these aren't necessarily my personal views, just trying to help clarify what I believe the commentator meant.

I'm sorry, but I have to be blunt. That is an extremely narrow view, and a single second of critical thinking should present a million other possibilities. The former is obviously untrue, considering Trump's long list of vices. The latter is a complete non sequitur. Power is power; the electorate's morals only matter insofar as they're willing to check the box next to my name.

Trump can be reprehensible and irredemable, and still win if he's more believable on the issues Americans care the most about. He could be a fraud, a cheat, even a traitor, so long as he's persuasive. That's how democracy works, how it should work.

I think this is the correct options.

I mean, look at the people who worked for him in the last administration:

> So how do we explain this near-universal rejection of Trump by the people who worked with him most closely? I guess one explanation is that they’ve all been infected with the dreaded Woke Mind Virus. But it’s unclear why working for Donald Trump would cause almost everyone to be exposed to the Woke Mind Virus, when working for, say, JD Vance, or Ron DeSantis, or any other prominent right-wing figure does not seem to produce such an infection.

> Of course, not everyone who worked for Trump has abandoned and denounced him. Rudy Giuliani, who is now under indictment in several different states, is still among the faithful. Michael Flynn, who was fired by Obama for insubordination and then removed by Trump for improper personal dealings with the Russian government, is still on board, and is now threatening to unleash the “gates of Hell” on Trump’s political enemies. Peter Navarro, the economist1 who served four months in prison for defying a Congressional subpoena, is still a Trump fan. And so on.

> You may perhaps notice a pattern among the relatively few people who are still on board the Trump Train from his first term. They are all very shady people. I don’t think this is a coincidence; I think it’s something systematic about Donald Trump’s personality and his method of rule.

* https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/trumpism-is-kakistocracy

The GOP party has changed:

> As many people have noted, Trump’s movement is a cult of personality. Since Trump took over the Republican party in 2016, essentially every tenet of modern conservatism has been replaced with belief in a single leader. Trump appointed the judges that killed Roe v. Wade, but he constantly goes back and forth on the topic of abortion rights. Trump didn’t cut entitlement spending, but whether he wants to do that in his second term or not depends on which day you ask him. Trump has flip-flopped on the TikTok bill, on marijuana legalization, on the filibuster, on SALT caps, and so on.

> But these flip-flops do not matter to his support at all. His supporters are sure that whichever decision Trump makes, it will be the right one, and if he changes it the following week, that will be the right decision as well. If tomorrow Trump declared that tariffs are terrible and illegal immigration is great, this would immediately become the essence of Trumpism. Trump’s followers put their trust not in principled ideas, but in a man — or, to be more accurate, in the idea of a man. That is what Trumpism requires of its adherents.

* Idid.

Well, to make this non political.

Look at how many sports players have a history of domestic abuse; the character of a player is secondary to their ability to play the sport.

You dont need to go that far. You just need to create an information environment that is beyond the ability of the average person to navigate.

At that point, the other side is just evil, and your team, even if they are convicted for crimes, have ties to Epstein or anything - doesn’t matter.

——

I mean, you can have privatized thought policing, there aren’t any laws or regulations to prevent. Everyone reads about Big Brother and worries about government control.

So you can create enough of FUD shared till it’s believed.

Don’t forget - we had to deal with Creationism, and that was wildly successful for a completely unscientific argument.

If they can't convince voters to vote for them given how bad the other side looks then they must be really incompetent.

What's the point of having all the feel good rallies in cities with famous people if you can't reach people in rural areas.

The democratic party is too elitist, too far from regular people.

Maybe you could leave the Poop Cafe and have something that's food instead lmao

Or in meme form:

https://i.redd.it/g0r0x1ldi0e71.jpg

Making an objective statement about subjectivity is kind of silly in the first place. Then losing shows it to be stupid.

Hopefully, subjective preferences are based on objective facts and reality. But who can really know.

because not being any of notorious lair, repeatedly make comments you normally only would expect from fascist, having systematically undermined various check and balances in their last term, having lost sexual assault cases, shamelessly abusing the reach of a president for deformation etc. seem to no longer matter even through any of this points where believed to be reliable carrier killers

now "reprehensible" that is a much more personal non objective judgement so arguing around that is pointless

Irredeemable seems obvious, but if the things you need redemption from don't matter anymore it really doesn't matter either.

I think the main problem here is that politics in the US are fundamental broken due to way to much polarization in a 2 party system and no good way to fix it.

If Tump wins I personalty think it's hardly avoidable that in the next 20 year there will be a point where you won't be able to call the US democratic anymore at all (based on a objective standard) and the question is if the US will then realize they fuck up and fix it or not (if not autocracy will mass spread even more and likely also take over the EU and given past history of how autocrats tend to cooperate while fighting democracy but then turn onto each other quite reliable the moment their power stabilized we probably should expect WW4).

Naturally I would love to be proven wrong, I really would.

And I think it's best to always stay polite.

But I can understand why someone gets angry with a lot of people voting for someone who comes with such a risk. Especially if a deep dive analyses into their positions show that 1) he lacks concrete (public) plans for most of his positions and 2) they likely will end up making live worse for many potentially the majority of the people voting for him.

But then people voting more based on "feeling" and "popular"/"populist" believe always has been very common. It's also kinda funny how close the words "popular" and "populist" is, sometimes just a change of perspective apart.

Kamala's rhetoric, especially around the military and border security, seemed almost specifically designed to be "1% less fascist." Some of the lines wouldn't have been out of place in Starship Troopers.

If you triangulate yourself into 98% fascism, it's hardly surprising that people who don't like fascism aren't excited to go out and vote for you.

I don’t and you shouldn’t. Mocking others intelligence only shows that you lack enough to understand them. As I understand it, this is precisely the point of GP

I read a statistic that 50% of grown up Americans have only 6th grade education. Which means that what? 60%-65% may have 9th grade?

The vast majority of people is uneducated and only responds to simple thoughts: as someone said: they see their wallet shrinking, and they decide to voté for the alternative. Other more complex issues don't matter, they don't care about them.

The same thing happened in my country (Mexico) where we have also tons of uneducated people. The people voté for the sound snippet, for the demagogue who told them what they wanted to hear.

And similarly, the other parties in their smugness didn't understand why people didn't vote for more complex issues.

It's sad, but most of us (highly educated people) live in a bubble.

You're right it's unfair but if you're not American and thus stuck in the political media stew then you can see it clearly.

Covid was a great example, anyone who disagreed with the main narrative or even just wanted bodily choice was blasted by many liberals, including the president, with all kinds of hateful speech.

Since 2016 many liberals also have used hateful speech to describe anyone willing to vote for Trump. I personally didn't like either candidate the political machine offered us, but in many of my discussions with anyone liberal Trump voters were often held as something like a second class citizen, that's pretty damn hateful in my book to consider anyone "lesser than."

It does, both sides got about the same amount of votes as you can see.

> It feels much more like the Democrats ignored (or were perceived to have ignored) a lot of substantive issues for a large section of the population.

I don't think so, it doesn't matter how much you try to do for people if you also namecall them at the same time, they will assume you aren't on their side even if your policies are better for them. Vitriol ensures the vote becomes tribal instead of rationally inspecting both sides and picking the better option.

This can be seen as the democrats also not understanding the average person and this is where Bernie was actually hitting good points, his message was consistent and he was never demonising Trump on his name but explaining what they could do better by explaining policies in a way that people understood what they would get from them or lose if they didn't get implemented...

Of course the issue is a bit more complex, but they exacerbated the people that were unseen instead of helping the healing and some actors of course were way too happy to fan the flames.

This is a very bad day that is marking the beginning of a very bad period for everyone...

This is the Red Wave that was promised in 2020 and 2022 but failed to materialize.

Why didn't Harris and the Democrats pull it off? Well, they could start by not playing identity politics or calling Americans deplorables, Nazis, and garbage. Godwin's Law was in full swing for them.

I'm Japanese-American, demographically I should be a bleeding heart Democrat, but truthfully I can't stand their constant victimizing and divisive rhetoric and is why I voted for Trump and the Republicans in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

In low-information voters' defense, it's been amazing to me as a non-American how Trump's literal dementia was not in the front pages of the media every single day. The complicity of the news media in normalizing a senile candidate should't go unnoticed.

Nope.

I watched that now infamous three hour marathon podcast he did with Joe Rogan. That kind of performance is not something a demented man can do, full stop. To say nothing of his utterly crazy rally schedule, I legitimately don't know where he gets his energy.

Hate him if you want, that's your right and I will respect that. But Trump is terrifyingly sharp, especially for a man his age.

>The complicity of the news media in normalizing a senile candidate should't go unnoticed.

The media dumped Biden right quick after his old age couldn't be hidden anymore. That debate he had was straight up elder abuse by the media.

Drugs. Incoherent hour-long rants are the product of stimulants, the kind that give you the sort of terrible judgement that no one would ever want out of a presidential candidate.

Nope.

That three hour long podcast was a very coherent conversation, and it was quite enlightening in what Trump actually means when he says he has "good relationships" with people like Putin and Kim Jong Un.

Specifically in regards to the impact of that on the election, neither Biden nor Harris can talk their way out of a 1st grade reading class due to his age and her inability to orate respectively.

Communicating clearly and with conviction is among the most basic of required skills as a leader of a country, and neither could do even that much.

Practical and on point because Trump talks about things that the common American actually gives a shit about in a way that the common American can understand and relate to. This also has a side effect of uniting people under a common cause despite outward appearances.

Gruff because that style of speech appeals to most Americans who don't like being sophisticated, or worse: Being politically correct. Remember that being politically incorrect was one of the reasons Trump won in 2016, and it's still one of the reasons he won again today.

Charismatic because, well, I think everyone has to at least admit that the man draws people in despite any and all odds.

If the common cause is being against other people, that's still divisive.

Is that gruff or on point?

His practical message was incoherent; it was more of an erring of grievances, conspiracy theories, and wild policy ideas that he seemed to have come up with while speaking.

I can't argue with the fact that it appealed to people, but you can't say it wasn't divisive because it was practical and gruff. Those two things don't rule out divisiveness.

BTW, I voted Republican in every election until Trump, and the reason why I didn't vote for him was due to how divisive he was.

I think you just happen to agree with his side of the divide.

I don't know whether this was deliberate or a typo, but it's funny and apt.

Why not, though? Clearly, it is a winning strategy for the Republicans. So why not adopt it as well?

I'd be curious what your gut reaction was to the comedian that Trump's team hired to open at his rally at Madison Square Garden, just this past week, who referred to Puerto Rico as "a floating island of garbage" (starts at about 0:16):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNBdYplmKcI

Would your reaction be the same if he had referred to, say, Japan in the same way?

Also interestingly, Puerto Rican and Latino votes for Trump actually increased[2] fueled primarily by economic and governance concerns. That joke ultimately didn't seem to have a negative impact, if any. Contrast Biden calling Americans garbage, which simply added more fuel to the furor behind Trump and Republicans.

As for the hypothetical question: If someone joked Japan is a floating island of garbage and there is actual basis for that criticism, I would take that as a cue to man up and make myself and my homeland great again so I can look at the joker in the eye with results.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Percent_population_below_...

[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cze3yr77j9wo

But hey, that's just me.

If someone makes a baseless joke then they aren't worth the time of day, I agree with that.

To expand on the hypothetical question: Japan has a literal garbage island (it's an artificial island used as a landfill). We call it Dream Island (Yume no Shima) because of the irony.

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumenoshima

And I don't know about other people, but I consider any rhetoric against a political party to be directed against their politicians, not against their voters - unless explicitly stated.

This, right here, has been the focal point of Dem supporters everywhere - doubling down on the name-calling.

I seriously doubt that more than half the voters are homophobic, misogynistic fascists, but calling them that only stops them from engaging, it doesn't magically cause them to rethink their position and switch their vote.

It should’ve been disqualifying when president publicly mocks and physically parodies disabled journalist instead of answering god damn questions.

Taking high road didn’t help in 2016, wouldn’t have helped now.

But this trend is obviously not only in USA. Some political groups and their voters don’t care what is said, and other political group must upstand the highest moral standards.

There are a few groups not there, and those won Trump the election, and Democrats has name called those groups. If Democrats didn't demonize those people then maybe Trump would have lost.

Who trump hasn’t insulted? billionaires[0] and saudis?

[0] though even Bezos is an exception.

Did Trump insult white men? You see Democrats say white men are the problem all the time, I never see Trump or his supporters say that.

Be serious. You might for some reason think that this is their underlying message, but they don't say this. They even chose an old white man as their nominee, for goodness' sake.

When it is the people governing them, that's a perfectly rational decision - why would someone who views me with contempt govern me fairly?

Conclusion: You cannot arrogantly call someone a drooling fucktard. But you can call someone garbage non-arrogantly while also being a convicted felon.

The MAGA snowflakes prefer the felon, their soft skin can't seem to withstand arrogance.

It is true that Americans are pretty proud of winning WWII, and label that as defeating fascism… but it is plainly obvious that this current political movement aims to implement exactly what we were fighting to prevent back then. I think this is the main reason it is seen as an insult- people that language implies betrayal of what a lot of Americans died fighting for.

I do not think you know what this word means.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42059721.)

While the economic numbers are good, they are mainly good for people with already high economic status like existing home owners and professionals. For example, student loan forgiveness sounds great but then leaves every blue collar worker who didn't go to college wondering WTF are they doing for me? They are giving more money to people who are already ahead. When Musk says pain is coming, many of Trumps supporters are happy because they are already in pain and want to see those benefitting feel some of that pain.

Then they go and overplay their hands with social issues. I didn't see it at the time, but all of the DEI rollbacks we've been seeing over the past year or so should have been a signal. One of the middle of the road people on TV last night mentioned he had friends who tried to avoid interacting with people at work because they were afraid of saying something offensive. And these were likely center left people. I have had similar discussions with even my most progressive friends. The almost refusal to message young men is also a problem.

Most Americans want legal immigration, but the Democrats took too long to do something and then Trump was able to kill the bill last minute. It looked like the Democrats wanted to simply ignore it until they no longer could.

There are more, but I think these are some of the big Democrat self owns.

The pain ahead is realizing China is the new superpower. Tawain won't make it to 2028.

Of course the super rich are going to get themselves tons of benefits, but that remains in the abstract for most.

Trump may get lucky for the time being on China. They are struggling economically and may not have the desire to pick a fight right now. IMO, countries bordering Russia are under a more immediate threat.

https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/biden-harris-adm...

No, look down at the bottom under "A Significant Track Record of Borrower Assistance".

> If they had the power all along, then why wait til the week before the election?

Judges blocked all the other ways they tried to do it.

This is a lot like liberals complaining about things Trump didn't do.

Obamacare was based on Romneycare, and Romney had to disown it. Let’s not have discussions on things that dont happen. There is nothing the dems can do which wont be spun into harm by the republican side of the media sphere.

The most annoying part is that almost every time with an issue that couldn't be done, it should have been clear from the beginning. The idea of the government vacuuming up all (or most) student debt seems completely untenable right out of the gate, just like the idea that we would be able to build a physical wall across out entire southern border and make Mexico pay for it.

Its lazy politics all the way around. And that lazy politics wastes plenty of tax dollars and distracts everyone from issues actually worth talking about.

Again - the Obamacare-Romneycare example. One party tried to reach across the aisle, to bend over backwards to build common ground.

The republicans refused to cross the aisle, even when their points and desires were incorporated.

From the Gingrich era, it’s been a clear goal to stop any bi-partisan behavior. That only winner takes all policies and behavior is acceptable.

That dems started to do this, for DJT, is kinda sad. They should have started a lot earlier.

I request, that when policy is brought into the picture, let’s not forget that policy is fundamentally irrelevant to the Republican Party. It’s nice to discuss policy, yes. But policy is a treatment for real world issues in a working legislature. Not one where good policy must be rejected if it’s brought up by the Dems.

At this point, the game theory solution is for Dems to respond by also rejecting bipartisan efforts, and copying the republican playbook.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...

You forgot the part where they claimed their hands were tied, then finally did something about it 8 months before the election.

Lindsay Graham did!

"Everybody who comes on this floor and says our border is broken. We should do something about it. You're absolutely right. And unfortunately, we didn't get there. President Trump opposed the Senate bill."

This issue is a mess and has been kicked down the road for literal decades at this point. Maybe finally it will get passed…

E.g. on immigration he prevented courts from deferring certain deportation cases, which meant high-risk immigrants stayed in the country for longer.

That is because the result doesn't matter, not in "starve the beast" [1] cycle politics - it used to be mostly about money but the model can be used also for general politics. The playbook is:

1. side A rise to power claiming "issue X must be solved by doing Y" (all while knowing that doing Y is useless or counterproductive, but the voter base doesn't care - be it immigration or the defunding of healthcare or whatever)

2. The consequences hit delayed, when the term is at its end and the competitor B takes over (usually in US political cycles every 8 years, but these days it seems like the ping-pong is accelerating)

3. That leaves an opportunity for side A to constantly barge in from the side "look at issue X, vote for us next time and we'll fix it (for realsies this time!)"

4. Side A wins the next election.

When it comes to anything budget related, replace the campaigning slogan with "look at issue X, it is clear that the government is incapable of doing anything about that issue, let us privatise it".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

I mean he came into power and proudly declared he had never heard of NATO before running (!!) but was brought up to speed in ~2min (!!). That’s who he is.

This is why autocracies and oligarchies are bad. Not because they're just de facto evil, but because they produce undesirable outcomes, often even undesirable by their own standards (see: Russia's ongoing 3 day special military operation in Ukraine)

Every single person around him is playing a loyalty test. Thank god Fauci was expert enough to navigate that dynamic so delicately, but most others don't have the talent or appetite for it.

Yeah, a signal of large players in economy preparing themselves for a Trump victory - the begin of which was Meta unbanning Trump and the culmination of which was Bezos banning the WaPo endorsement. Big Business doesn't care about any values, all it cares about is money, and so it prepared for Trump possibly taking over again in time and getting into good terms with him.

Ok well..that's not really an argument?

And yes we can bring up all the terrible Trump examples but if the point is separating yourself from that, how is what they've done any different?

It just feels each side just despises the other and it all ends up like children arguing on the playground.

Where are the adults?

There's going to be all kinds of hyperbole thrown around today on both sides but personally see this as a failure by the Democrats to sway Independents.

We had an R state rep candidate come by our house. Highlighted two issues in her message to us. Both were simply not actual things. The existence of the problems were lies. WTF do you do with voters who consume media that’s made them believe those? It’s like a huge moat around even being able to talk to them about anything real, even if only to disagree about some real thing.

I wish that democrats had spent less time telling republicans that the boogeyman doesn't exist and more time showing them how we're going to keep them safe from the boogeyman. In WI, there was a referendum question that asked if people wanted to add language to the state constitution which would explicitly specify that only US citizens could vote. The democrats fought against that saying that election fraud was basically non-existent and that it would be a waste of time to change anything since it's already illegal for non-citizens to vote.

They fucked up though, because no matter how right the democrats were about the safety of elections the fear republican voters have is very real and it's never a waste of time to ease those fears.

As it turns out, if the referendum passes (and I'm guessing that it has) the result will be replacing language which says that every US citizen gets to vote with language which says only US citizens get to vote. It never said anything about replacing language in the referendum question voters saw though. The fear of illegal immigrants voting has likely been used to remove language protecting the right of US citizens to vote in WI and could open the door for laws that prevent certain US citizens from voting.

Since Democrats and Republicans are in full agreement that only US citizens should be able to vote the smart thing democrats should have done was push to add language explicitly stating that only citizens can vote but without replacing anything else. That would have satisfied the fearful republicans and protected the voting rights of all citizens. Instead they just wanted to lecture republicans about voter fraud statistics.

Every parent who has checked under their child's bed or looked in their closet for "monsters" understands this. When you have people acting like frightened children about something that isn't real, sometimes you just have to comfort them.

This is the same problem democrats have when republicans say they are afraid of small children going to school and getting sex change operations. Trump tells them it happens which is scary. Democrats just want to tell them that they are misinformed and that little kids aren't getting surgery, but they'd be smarter to say "You're right, little children getting sex changes at school is a horrible thing and we are putting forward a law that would ban that practice so that no child gets sex change surgery!". Why do democrats keep letting these issues both sides agree on become arguments that divide us?

The point is that the irrational fear has to be addressed. Making fun of it, ignoring it, or lecturing on why the threat is imaginary won't help.

Every democrat I know wants elections to be more secure than they are. They just also want them to be fair. There's been a lot of room for proactive measures here that democrats could have been pushing for, but there have been efforts too (https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1007715994/manchin-offers-a-v...)

https://www.elections.on.ca/en/voting-in-ontario/id-to-vote-...

Some US states have voting ID requirements, and they tend to be (though not always!) significantly stricter than that, sometimes requiring a specifically a government-issued photo id, for instance.

I’m pretty sure laws that have much looser definitions of “ID” and/or provision resources to ensure timely, free, and easy access to such an ID, see less resistance from democrats. If the entire pro-ID movement just wanted to do what Ontario does it’d be less of a contentious issue, I think.

[edit] for the record, though, I agree this is a place Democrats could safely give ground—the data do not well-support their disenfranchisement concerns, and 30+ states already have some kind of voter id law.

It is, separately, also true that there is no evidence there’s any actual reason to enact more of these laws. The data also don’t support that, at all. But whatever, it’s probably not significantly harmful, just a minor waste of resources.

That’s the risk when the measure is more-or-less harmless but also the problem it addresses isn’t real. They can just keep claiming the problem still exists and running on it.

They’ve been beating this drum for what, fifteen years at this point? More? They should at least have found smoke, if not fire, instead they just keep saying they smell a raging forest fire and coming back with single burnt matches when given the reigns of government to go look for it and tell us what they find.

Being able to cast a vote illegally is trivially easy because there are exceptions baked into the system like provisional ballots. Lucky there is an thorough audit process so having that vote actually counted while avoiding election fraud charges is a lot harder.

This has been a constant refrain from Democrats: "The thing that you are upset about is not happening. Well, it is happening, but it is the exception. Ok, it's happening everywhere, but it's a good thing." No, of course Harris isn't for government sex changes for imprisoned illegal immigrants, except for the fact that she said she was. The truth is that we all know that she would say anything to win, and holding her to any position she ever publicly held feels unfair.

The people who have been kept low-information are the Democrats, because they have been surrounded by media largely controlled by their political party. Republicans often have bad information, but they're constantly out there consuming information and hate-reading what Democrats are saying. Independents, in my experience, are the highest-information of all, because they don't think of political parties as something they can offload their morality to. Independents only see politics in terms of actual issues, and track those issues rather than having parasocial relationships with political celebrities.

In that vein, I'm pretty sure that if I had an experience where a political candidate came to my house and talked about issues that weren't real, I'd talk about those issues specifically, and speculate about their origin. I think you don't mention them because they were real, but a lot of liberals have taken this position of officially denying reality if reality could help Trump. Is widespread voter fraud real? No. Should people be unconcerned about making it easier? Also, no.

If upper-middle class liberals could have won the "stop sounding like Scientologists" challenge, they could have won. If The Democratic party could have wanted to win more than they wanted to avoid alienating any donors, they could have won by taking any popular position on anything. Trump spent most of his campaign actively campaigning for Harris by calling her a radical-left socialist; if she were actually a radical-left socialist instead of an empty vessel to be filled with cash, she would have won. If the Democratic party hadn't chosen again not to run a fair, open, lively primary, they would have won.

With Trump campaigning against radical-left socialist Harris, and Harris campaigning against rapist Hitler, homophobic Stalin, and racist Mussolini, the majority of people looked at which candidate was lying the most, and voted for the other one. Everybody knows who Trump is, and he's already been president, and nobody went to camps. It was a rather sleepy standard Republican presidency, whose few deviations from the norm pleased people. The only reason we heard about Harris is because she (and Buttigieg) pretended to be for single-payer healthcare in order to destroy a popular candidate who was running on an honest program.

While Trump wouldn't do any of that, right? He would say things because they're true :D

> It was a rather sleepy standard Republican presidency, whose few deviations from the norm pleased people

Just a small insurrection at the end, no biggie. Oh, and some international agreements were shattered, but who cares about those anyway. I mean, there was also Corona which jolted some people from sleep, but thanks to Trump's recommendation to get some chlorine you could get right back to sleeping :)

2) “boys in girls sports”. So incredibly niche that who gives a fuck, and does not appear to be an actual problem that sports conferences and associations aren’t handling just fine on their own. Why does anybody care about this? Right wing news, entire reason. Not an actual issue.

And then you're surprised why people vote differently to you...

So why can't Democrats just come out against this insanity and take the easy W? The whole, "well it isn't a really an issue" argument doesn't fly when you still demand your way on it.

2) Boys are in girls sports, and Biden destroyed Title IX with an executive order. And you've gone from "fictional" to "Why does anybody care about this?" You don't see this as a dishonest progression?

edit: and now edited to "who gives a fuck." Women who dedicate their lives to sports. Men who think that half the population deserves half the medals and half the opportunity. Me.

Oh she mentioned defending title IX and I had zero clue wtf she meant (I mean, I know what title IX is, but figured it was some kind of allusion to something I’d only know if I listened to Mark Levin even more than I already do). A glance at The Googles and this appears to be exactly the kind of thing I mean.

Feel free to label anyone who doesn't vote the way you do a "Low information voter"

[edit] shit, we can’t even get to substance on issues where we agree the broad category of thing needs to be addressed. Immigration! Yes! Let’s do some stuff on that! “Biden’s open border” ok well congrats we already solved that because that’s not a thing, rhetorically or in fact, zero democrats with any power want an open border and the border is not open, so… “illegals smuggling fentanyl!” wait how much money do you want to devote to that specifically, because that’s a negligible source of fentanyl in the US (citizens smuggling fentanyl, however…) and yeah we’re just bogged down disagreeing on facts again.

Our understanding of the world is profoundly mediated by fiction, which is to say, lies.

That's why it all ends up like children arguing on the playground. The kind of playground‡ where my 14-year-old classmate Evangalyn Martinez got stabbed to death for, I think it was, stealing Joella Mares's boyfriend, and nobody leaves the playground alive.

Under those circumstances, what does it mean to live a good life rather than a bad one? Good answers exist, but they're not easy.

______

† This is a metaphor. I don't mean that each adult has literally swallowed a child and is digesting them alive like a python.

‡ Technically that was actually the parking lot. Also, I was already no longer her classmate at the time, and because we were in different grades, I don't remember if I ever met her. She wouldn't be my last classmate to be stabbed; in my high school biology class each student was paired with the same lab partner for the whole semester, and the next year, someone else at the high school nonfatally stabbed my lab partner, Shannon Sugg, now Shannon L. Schneider (ginga.snapz1718). If memory serves, she dropped out from the psychological trauma. You can read the decision in her lawsuit against the school at https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/nm-court-of-appeals/141549..., which says it was Alicia Andres who stabbed her. ”Plaintiff asserts that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment imposed a clearly established duty upon school officials to protect her from this stabbing.” I'm glad violent crime has dropped a lot since then in the US.

It actually is, though.

Sure, it didn’t work—probably because enough people weren’t convinced that it was true enough (and also because they didn’t care)—but it's not unreasonable to think that such an argument should have been enough.

Victor Orban - President of Hungary.

The AfD in Germany got a higher percentage of the vote in Thuringen in Germany than any other party. Currently polling higher than any member of the governing coalition nationally.

Geert Wilders - successful in the Netherlands.

Marine Le Pen - possible next president of France.

The Freedom Party of Austria - has been in government.

These parties all sometimes win in Europe.

Freedom of protest was, in fact, restricted in italy in a way that it affects climate manifestations more than lobbies manifestation - we have taxis striking and blocking cities if someone wants to touch their ungodly privileges -

Journalist striked on the public news because news has become unreliable, propaganda spewing news at a level before unheard of

It didn't happen, but Giorgia meloni wanted to abolish the crime of torture to better allow police to do its work (lmao even)

At the season opening of the teather la scala di Milano, one man shouted "viva l'Italia antifascista" (long live antifacist italy). Police was sent to check his documents and similar intimidatory shit

How many evangelical Christians just voted for an adulterer and convicted criminal because he’s not pro choice?

Heck, I know quite a few people who are very strongly religious and somehow view Trump as a good Christian candidate. That one really blows my mind, unless they've changed the ten commandments entirely since I was growing up.

it is an important issue.

> Heck, I know quite a few people who are very strongly religious and somehow view Trump as a good Christian candidate. That one really blows my mind, unless they've changed the ten commandments entirely since I was growing up.

What makes it bizarre is not things like adultery (a fundamental tenet of Christianity is that we are all sinners) but that Trump is clearly not a Christian. He does not even know the basics of Christianity - remember when he wished people "Happy Good Friday"?

For sure. I don't take issue with anyone voting based on whatever they care about in general. I don't feel strongly enough about one topic to be a single issue voter, but I get it for anyone that does feel that strongly.

> What makes it bizarre is not things like adultery (a fundamental tenet of Christianity is that we are all sinners) but that Trump is clearly not a Christian.

100% agree. No one is perfect and I wouldn't expect anyone who is religious to always fit the bill, but Trump is an example of someone very far from any religious ideals. I was raised Catholic, if Trump were catholic I don't think he would have had time outside of confession to even run for office.

That literally made me lough out loud. Raised Catholic too (been an agnostic since, and some sort of Christian and technically if not theologically a Catholic now).

I'm personally also worried about the rise of left-wing authoritarianism in the US but that's another matter and far less of a general danger to the world at this time. But it's worth noting that authoritarian positions are popular on either side of the political fence in the US right now, and classical enlightened liberalism seems to be completely dead. (To be fair, it was never strong in the US to begin with.)

Trump tested American democracy by consolidating power and was not successful, so we avoided being under a fascist rule

The fear is that we might get to test democracy again, and most of America doesn't seem to mind that. Maybe it's due to lack of understanding, not caring, or genuinely wanting fascism, I don't know.

I'm a centrist, the way I see it you go into storytelling hour with a grinding monologue aimed to gaslighting yourself and any listeners into a position of "we should execute our political opponents for being fascists, maybe some communism banners would be chic too"

It's a caricature of ideology that even chatGPT would laugh at.

And then the cult of traditionalism while strong in the NRx movement, is arguably stronger in the Republican side than in MAGA itself.

Ultimately Fascism is deeply spiritual but all I get from Trump is brash 80's boomerism. He's not ideological enough.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that based on common criteria the term Fascism is adequate for Trump's movement. I'm not claiming that it's strongly related to prior Fascist movements. These occurred in other countries at other times and I leave it to scholars to make comparisons if they must.

Just a thought

This behaviour culminates in what you're seeing.

And as you agreed, Trump does the same, more than anyone. So unless you are openly stating "the left should behave more decent than the right if they want votes", there is a problem in your logic as well.

There is no right wing equivalent to the institutions I mentioned: CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Hollywood, not to mention schools, universities, tech giants like Google, Apple, Meta etc, all of whom lean left and have shown biases in their actions.

Please try to entertain the hypothesis that maybe I'm not the one in an incredibly well insulated bubble

Edit: maybe not, I think they're still in procedural limbo because no other party wants to be in the coalition.

Some Americans may well vote for the rightwing candidate because they want to stick it to the left (or whoever the "anti" would be).

Personally, I don't think that alone makes a majority in that binary choice; in Europe, it would mostly end up in the vote for a minor "ultra" party. And less-"anti" conservative voters have other options.

In the US though, as someone with conservative values and views, one always has to choose ... do I want to vote with everyone else who votes for "my" camp including the stick-it-tos (because there's only one option "on my side"), do I not vote, or do I even vote against what feels closer to me because the stick-it-tos vote for them as well, and/or their head on the ticket is clearly one of the stick-it-tos ?

Am I glad I needn't make that choice. And am I sad what kind of asocial extremes are encouraged by the binary, winner-takes-all US political system.

Trump was very favorable to Israel and has a Jewish daughter. Not typical fascist behavior.

Debbie Dingell said Trump will build internment camps and put her in one. Were were the internment camps in Trump's first term?

Mussolini was in power in Italy 10 years before Hitler was in Germany and he wasn't very anti-Semitic at all. He was influenced by Hitler towards the end of his reign but even then his anti-Semitic policies were mild when compared to Germany.

Part of the problem with calling someone a fascist is that people associate the word with Hitler. But Hitler wasn't the only fascist or even the first fascist.

So perhaps this:

> Part of the problem with calling someone a fascist is that people associate the word with Hitler.

Is not making the point you think it's making.

We don’t have to worry about him stealing any more elections, he’s far too old for that to be an issue

So because Israel is involved in something means that something can't be fascist? What about the fascist things Netanyahu is doing with Israel?

Okay, I'm in the US and will try to explain.

> As a European

Yup, the US is at least different!

> an arguably fascist agenda

> extreme right wing candiate

US politics can be tough fighting, lots of lying, deception, anxiety creation, violent demonstrations, assassinations, emotional appeals, media definitely biased and pumping out paid for propaganda, big influence from special interests (e.g., want money from the central government), lots of money buying and selling, e.g., as I recall, the Democrat Party spent ballpark $1.6 billion on ads -- the rich people giving that money want a return on their investment.

In the US, Trump is a moderate, i.e., "all the traffic is in the middle of the road".

The US middle of the road: Free enterprise, entrepreneurs should be free to be successful in business, often based on a lot of private investment capital (money) but sometimes based on just two guys in a rented garage or one guy in college with a Web site or some guy with a simple Web site selling books and records. Curiously, it was the US that did that, for the US and now the whole world. People should make their own way financially, etc. If people genuinely need help, then there, in various forms, is a social safety net with some help but not enough for a good life or everything. Real socialism where the government is Big Daddy that everyone can count on for everything in life is left and not widely accepted. A guaranteed minimum income is not quite here yet. There is still some question how much the government will supply in free health care and education. Can spend $100,000+ a year on college, the main point is who you meet, not what you learn. For learning there are plenty of cheap colleges and universities where can learn as much as want as there is known now; really, can go from first year in college to PhD., MD, LLB all for free if just are a really good student. In simple terms, in the US no really good student is short on education due to lack of money.

And in the US, if need medical care, a REAL need, and can't pay, then there is ..., and also ..., and, don't tell anyone, ....

US politics and media throw around "fascism" essentially only as an insult for people who don't understand Germany in the 1930s or what real fascism was. It is ironic that someone from Europe needs someone from the US to explain "fascism". The fascism insult is to lead to a Hitler insult, wildly far from the truth. Europe DOES actually, deeply, correctly remember Hitler? Right????

In simple terms, fascism has the government have much more power, especially over the economy, including industry and business, than Trump wants or used in his first term as POTUS.

Uh, fascism needs a LOT of power in the government; in the US mostly people don't trust government and don't want government to have that much power. The standard joke is

"We are from the government, and we are here to help."

So, a charge of fascism is a lie to get votes from people afraid of government power. Yes, in his first term, Trump had a lot of power, and now has it again. But, really, the US left wants more power, in total, than Trump or the US center or right. In particular, if listen to what Kamala really said, she wants nearly all revenue (and effectively ownership) to flow to DC (District of Columbia, seat of the central government) and then returned in various government programs to people and selected businesses, e.g., the $93 trillion for whatever; Kamala wanted such in principle (like some sophomore art major college women with an all-night bull session with plenty of beer and about politics and society) but had no meaningful details for implementation.

> a convicted felon, rapist, and probable russian intelligence asset.

All 100% junk information generated and spread as political mud wrestling:

In no meaningful sense is Trump a "convicted felon". Parts of the US judicial system went after Trump to have some people BELIEVE he was a felon. It was political propaganda, all lies for a political purpose, with the eager complicity of parts of the media, to damage Trump's reputation and have stories and narratives to get eyeballs and ad revenue. The crime was from the prosecutors and judges, not Trump. But there the judicial system's bite had no teeth: All the cases are delayed for various reasons and, now that the election is over, have served their propaganda purpose and will disappear via various actions. It was all cooked up, made up, kangaroo court, dirty politics, lawfare, election interference. Apparently the US legal system is resisting just throwing out all the cases based just on laughter over the absurdities and wants to pretend to have actual legal deliberation but is being careful never actually to convict or jail Trump or have him pay some $500 million fine.

There is no meaningful evidence that Trump is a "rapist". Again, that's propaganda.

> probable russian intelligence asset

Nonsense. Cooked up, made up, fake, contrived nonsense by Hillary Clinton and others to convince some naive people. The complicit, biased media got a lot of shocking headlines, eyeballs, and ad revenue.

The US Constitution has its First Amendment, "freedom of speech". So, people get to speak nearly anything, including lies and propaganda, and do. It's up to the listeners to filter the truth from the rest.

> extreme right wing candiate

No good evidence. Not Trump. Just look at his statements and record -- he's solidly in the middle of the road. Ukraine? It's partially about NATO, will Ukraine belong to NATO? Get help from NATO? The far right has Cheney, John Bolton, and others who never wanted to pass up another opportunity for a war, e.g., for Ike's Military/Industrial Complex, war profiteers, one world, US "New American Century", police the world people.

> Please explain.

Okay, just did that!

In the south, at least this is flat wrong

A niece got PBK at Indiana University, went to Harvard Law, got first job at Cravath, Swaine, & Moore. Left for an MD, and has been practicing since then. Suspect she spent very little on tuition.

As a first grad student in math at Indiana University, I got paid for teaching, had a nice single dorm room, actually lived well, and saved some money.

There are a lot of buttons to push, strings to pull, to get low cost or free college, then free through Ph.D. Being a good student, good SAT scores, already know calculus well, all can help.

Point: Self study can work well. Obviously: Once a prof reading research papers, nearly always have to use self study, and the papers are generally much less polished than good textbooks.

So, I recommended to students short on money just to do some self teaching and show up, demonstrate what learned, and ask for a scholarship.

I have and/or have seen good evidence for all that I mentioned, but such evidence is NOT wanted by or common in the media which means that I have no well written, comprehensive, single reference to give.

Uh, YOU try: Write a document with good evidence, details, quotes, video clips, etc., and see how much interest the US MSM (mainstream media) has in publishing it!!! I predict you will regard your effort, no matter how carefully done, as a waste of time.

E.g., so far I've never seen even one credible graph over, say, the last 16 years, of, say, the US CPI (consumer price index). Same for budget deficits, spending bills, balance of foreign exchange, Fed loans, spending on the war in Ukraine (was there actually ANY spending or did we, instead, actually just ship war supplies produced in the US?) -- the actual details are absurdly messy, sloppy, missing, etc.

Clearly, bluntly the details do not SELL -- won't get a big audience.

To give good evidence here would exceed by several times the 10,000 bytes or so limit that Hacker News seems to have on a single post.

US media credibility? Here is evidence of biased, cooked up, gang up, pile on, organized mob attack from 2017:

     https://youtu.be/f1ab6uxg908

I wish, profoundly wish, have posted many times on social media, that the US news media should provide JUST such evidence, at least up to common standards of high school term papers. All that is no more than a spit into the wind -- the media does NOT want to expend bytes for such writing, documentation, evidence, etc.

So, here I did all I can do to respond to the question I quoted, apparently, from a European. Agree or not with what I wrote, but it is the best I can do under the circumstances. The question from Europe are not very deep; so I gave answers of similar depth. The speeches in the election were not very deep. The Trump statements at the economic clubs in Chicago and Detroit were deeper.

That's my explanation, best I can do, take it or leave it.

But, really for an accusation of "Nazi", etc. the "burden of proof is on the accuser". The rape? He said, she said. There in the dressing room of the department store, did she scream and get some witnesses? Nazi? Just what is the evidence that Trump has done anything like the Nazi stuff Hitler did? Felon? He has never gotten a sentence -- if he does, then he can appeal, win the appeal, and show that he is NOT a "convicted felon". So, no sentence. The papers case, the J6 case, the Georgia case, the "hush money" case -- all are falling apart due to appeals, etc. They are NOT legal cases but just efforts to misuse the legal system to have others, as here, believe he is a felon. But with the appeals, e.g., even to the SCOTUS, ALL of the cases are falling apart. My view is that the wrong here is from low level parts of the US legal system and not from Trump.

And where are the arguments about 10+ million illegal immigrants, the inflation, the attacks on US fossil fuel energy, the Ukraine war, the Gaza war, the Lebanon war, the hundreds of missiles from Iran, the promotion of biological men in women's sports, the lies about abortion (Trump sent the issue back to the states to decide), the bans on gas powered cars and trucks, etc.?

You have failed to provide one.

Just what was I supposed to do but "failed" at?

As a European you don't have presidential elections that matter. Executive and legislative power is in the hands of your parliament and the president is a figurehead (if you have one).

If you want to compare your European experience to the USA, you should look at congress and not the presidential elections. You'd probably find the same dynamics there as in your own country, with the exception that the blocs that you have in parliament have been distilled into two parties.

US two-party system really is the weird one.

> or they face a more moderate party taking their seats

That's not right. You cannot lose your parliament seat in any European parliament until the next election. If an MP or an entire party in Europe is too divisive, they might not be able to be part of a majority and they will be in opposition.

In the USA, the executive government is not elected by parliament - so you're comparing apples to oranges. The president builds the executive government after being elected by the people in the states. That's something different.

> Ok well..that's not really an argument?

Choosing to not put a fascist(-leaning) individual into power is "not really an argument"? So it's okay to re-elect individuals who have tried at least once to stop the peaceful transfer of power?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

I mean take everything from the climate crisis, to my favorite - creationism being taught in school at the same level as evolution.

The playbook is literally right there, you get experts to come on stage, ridicule them to your audience, show that they are cartoons and have no real value.

Then you provide you viewers with good sounding news bites and manage the optics, and you can get a convicted felon elected to President.

Yes - it really is just the information ecosystem. There really is no free speech when one side is a regular joe and the other side is a marketing and political speech behemoth.

It is that simple, and we can’t do anything about it, because that would be harming our ability to speak freely.

I mean, if one of Trump's own closest advisors carefully states that he fits the definition of a fascist, is it not fair to call him one? If Trump outwardly celebrates many of the traditional concepts of fascism like attacking the media, attacking minorities, attacking "enemies from within" is it not fair to call him that?

And what do you say about a person who supports fascism? That they're very fine people?

But somehow everyone else needs to be on their best behaviour and as soon as they say "fuck you back" in response to a torrent of "fuck you"s it 's a big deal.

If you want to talk tone and insults then you're definitely starting at the wrong end.

That is a person's right, but it is also failing to recognize that they are two sides of the same coin. So long as people hate one another for who they are voting for there will never be societal cohesion.