US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1292

On April 08 2019 23:28 Danglars wrote:

Basically this. Internet companies would like you to think views equal real percent changing their mind, because they’re marketing that to you. No evidence exists of changed votes because somebody on the internet told you that the pope endorsed Trump or BLM said something nasty about Clinton. That’s just Clinton spin from late 2016/early 2017, warmed up to serve again now.

On April 08 2019 23:18 byte-Curious wrote:
Alright, good to know you're confident in Trump losing. Those predictions were never wrong before, right?

Just wait until he nukes some country for some imagined insult and see his approval rating skyrocket well into the sixties. Strongmen are ultra popular in war times, and I'm using both the words "strong" and "man" very loosely.

The guy was born with a silver spoon in his fat face and convinced poor people he's one of them who 'made it out'.
The guy can't do a push-up and his fans think he's an athlete.
The guy fucks pornstars and evangelicals love him.
The guy is a draft dodger and soldiers think he's some sort of golden god.

I won't put it past him to con his way into a second term, and I'm confident that if he gets it, he never leaves again.
I'm also confident that if he doesn't get it, he's going to poison the well against his successor and claim the election was rigged, while his enabler gleefully count their Exxon money and watch democracy end in a bang.

On April 08 2019 23:18 byte-Curious wrote:
Alright, good to know you're confident in Trump losing. Those predictions were never wrong before, right?

Just wait until he nukes some country for some imagined insult and see his approval rating skyrocket well into the sixties. Strongmen are ultra popular in war times, and I'm using both the words "strong" and "man" very loosely.

The guy was born with a silver spoon in his fat face and convinced poor people he's one of them who 'made it out'.
The guy can't do a push-up and his fans think he's an athlete.
The guy fucks pornstars and evangelicals love him.
The guy is a draft dodger and soldiers think he's some sort of golden god.

I won't put it past him to con his way into a second term, and I'm confident that if he gets it, he never leaves again.
I'm also confident that if he doesn't get it, he's going to poison the well against his successor and claim the election was rigged, while his enabler gleefully count their Exxon money and watch democracy end in a bang.

On April 08 2019 23:35 Wombat_NI wrote:



Why people continually attempt to disarm Trump on the grounds that he’s strong, baffles me.

On April 08 2019 23:34 byte-Curious wrote:


What an absurd claim.

When millions of people interact with the troll farm content, obviously a non-zero amount of them are going to have their mind changed. And it's not even a random sample of people.They specifically targeted gullible groups who were already inclined to view themselves as victims and you don't think that had any effect?

Of course no direct evidence exists, you'd need to positively proof that someone changed their mind because they saw a meme.

On April 08 2019 23:40 byte-Curious wrote:


Hah, that's precisely what I said when Sen. Warren started to get dragged into the mud with him on that stupid Pocahontas issue, which was a colossal fail for her. If she stuck to policies, she would rape him over the coals in the general election.

On April 08 2019 23:40 byte-Curious wrote:


Hah, that's precisely what I said when Sen. Warren started to get dragged into the mud with him on that stupid Pocahontas issue, which was a colossal fail for her. If she stuck to policies, she would rape him over the coals in the general election.

On April 08 2019 23:52 xDaunt wrote:

Liawatha's problem isn't that she engaged with Trump in the mud. Her problem is that she was exposed for having embraced the worst form of liberal identity politics -- the "let's check the box" version -- and then demonstrated a tremendous lack of honesty about it. She not only exposed herself as a fraud, but she bungled her PR rehab efforts afterwards. At the very least, y'all have to admit that she has shown such levels of tone-deafness and political ineptitude that she has virtually disqualified herself from the presidency.

On April 08 2019 23:52 xDaunt wrote:

Liawatha's problem isn't that she engaged with Trump in the mud. Her problem is that she was exposed for having embraced the worst form of liberal identity politics -- the "let's check the box" version -- and then demonstrated a tremendous lack of honesty about it. She not only exposed herself as a fraud, but she bungled her PR rehab efforts afterwards. At the very least, y'all have to admit that she has shown such levels of tone-deafness and political ineptitude that she has virtually disqualified herself from the presidency.

On April 08 2019 23:58 IyMoon wrote:



As a Trump supporter... you're joking right? Like you honestly can't think people can be disqualified from being president anymore. You voted for a dude who sexually assaults people, who fucks porn stars after his wife give birth..... and you think being tone-deaf is disqualifying?

Dude.... really?

On April 09 2019 00:02 xDaunt wrote:

If you can't distinguish between the comparative levels of political acumen of Trump and Liawatha, I can't help you.

On April 08 2019 23:34 byte-Curious wrote:


What an absurd claim.

When millions of people interact with the troll farm content, obviously a non-zero amount of them are going to have their mind changed. And it's not even a random sample of people.They specifically targeted gullible groups who were already inclined to view themselves as victims and you don't think that had any effect?

Of course no direct evidence exists, you'd need to positively proof that someone changed their mind because they saw a meme.

On April 08 2019 23:35 Wombat_NI wrote:

I’m more sanguine and less complacent than many. Probably considerably more pragmatic on rhetoric than others are. I was 1/2 on the Brexit/Trump accumulator, I didn’t ultimately think he would win, but I saw the similarities and how he could take it. I wouldn’t discount it happening again.

He still could win yeah, just it’ll be more difficult for him this time round.

Just stop feeding what feeds him. You aren’t going to win over his base, or a segment of it anyway regardless of what you do. Shift away from immigrants or racism, or whatever and just push the ‘what has he done for you lately’ out there more, or ‘here’s what we can do for you’

I don’t mean drop those criticisms at all, don’t get me wrong. The guy’s main political trick is ‘everyone but me is your enemy, I’m your friend though’.

Why people continually attempt to disarm Trump on the grounds that he’s strong, baffles me.

On April 09 2019 00:04 IyMoon wrote:



If you can't realize that after trump, telling anyone on the left someone is disqualifying is a huge joke... I can't help you

On April 08 2019 23:58 IyMoon wrote:



As a Trump supporter... you're joking right? Like you honestly can't think people can be disqualified from being president anymore. You voted for a dude who sexually assaults people, who fucks porn stars after his wife give birth..... and you think being tone-deaf is disqualifying?

Dude.... really?

On April 08 2019 23:34 byte-Curious wrote:


What an absurd claim.

When millions of people interact with the troll farm content, obviously a non-zero amount of them are going to have their mind changed. And it's not even a random sample of people.They specifically targeted gullible groups who were already inclined to view themselves as victims and you don't think that had any effect?

Of course no direct evidence exists, you'd need to positively proof that someone changed their mind because they saw a meme.

And no, I can't know if all the 70k votes would have been different sans IRA. Yet with ten million unique voters interacting with the comment, only a 0.7% conversion rate would have been needed to be reached. And it's not obvious to me that 0.7% is too high a bar.

On April 09 2019 00:07 GreenHorizons wrote:


Have you asked yourself how many of those impressions were also bots? ~50% of ALL internet traffic is basically fake. Have you questioned a source which doesn't ask that basic question?



I'd say this is a typical Democratic party strategy and maybe it even wins, but to what end?

The issue imo isn't that people rightly point out oppression (even if it makes white men voters uncomfortable), the issue is people need to be offered an explanation for why their reality doesn't match political rhetoric and their understanding of what the world is supposed to be based on what they were told/experienced growing up.

For Republicans/the right they don't understand why being average isn't enough anymore (the slight desegregation of capital). Why their parents/grandparents told them the world worked one way and it doesn't match their life experience . Why their kids went to college and aren't coming back. Why the factory full of the best workers is full of heroin addicts now. On and on and on (capitalism).

Trump gives them an answer, it's a bad one, but it's an answer. "It's whoever you don't like's fault. All the things that don't match your experience are lies, except what I say"

It's easy to forget but he ran on (in part) raising his own taxes, won, and then slashed them for himself and his buddies and bragged about it.

Democrats are having a lot of the same problems. The issue is that neither party can offer a solution that includes a real critique of capitalism and none of the things they say they want to fix can be corrected without critiquing capitalism. This is where "Compassionate capitalism" has risen from. That's what capitalism was already supposed to be. The issue is the way capitalism works is that those with the capital make the rules and they make rules to secure their capital. But as Greenspan learned the hard way, they are addicts, they don't act rationally and will collapse the system for their own perceived personal benefit.

So without either party offering real solutions people turn to a lot of other groups and ideas to explain the contradictions between their reality and what they are told their reality is supposed to be. Ideally they turn toward Marxism since it offers a coherent worldview that is reinforced rather than jarred by people's experiences. Unfortunately we've been groomed to be pretty terrible so neo-nazi, militias, "stupidpol", irony bros, grifter socialists, etc have all been exploding in popularity because corporate media isn't offering answers and people know it. It's terrifying to realize so people will run to whatever they can find that lets them maintain as much of their existing worldview as possible.

That's Bernie's strength. He's far from perfect, has some bad and also unpopular positions in the primary and general but that's not the problem. The Dem's issue going into the general is are they going to spend months talking about Mueller and Barr's sideshow on twitter/reddit/wherever and go the "drive down his turnout" route again or are they going to get out on the ground and go to people long disillusioned with voting and explain the concrete solutions and larger operating principals which will secure their liberation and get them to the polls in record numbers? The people that aren't voting Democrat (and even a lot of the people who are) know that's not neoliberalism either.

On April 09 2019 00:21 Danglars wrote:

Obviously, you’re operating on zero proof and pure supposition. I don’t really care what bars you think “aren’t too obvious to you that it’s too high a bar.” I have a higher standard for baseless allegations.

On April 09 2019 00:17 Plansix wrote:

Trump’s amazing political skills to stumble into a win in 2016 by one of the closest margins in history, lose the popular vote and lead his party to a sound beating in 2018. A bottomless reservoir of skill.

On April 08 2019 23:34 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Lets be fair here, it does seem to a fair victim narrative, russian propaganda or not withstanding. That russian propogandists happen to push that narrative does not make it any less real. From your same link:

The IRA had a roster of themes, primarily social issues, that they repeatedly emphasized and reinforced across their Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube content.

Black culture, community, Black Lives Matter
Blue Lives Matter, pro-police
Anti-refugee, pro-immigration reform
Texas culture, community, and pride
Southern culture (Confederate history)
Separatist movements and secession
Muslim culture, community, and pride
Christian culture, community, and pride
LGBT culture, community, and pride
Native American culture, community,and pride
Meme and “red pill” culture
Patriotism and Tea Party culture
Liberal and feminist culture
Veteran’s Issues
Gun rights, pro-2nd Amendment
Political Pro-Trump, anti-Clinton content
Pro-Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein content
Syria and ISIS, pro-Assad, anti-U.S. involvement
Trust in media

Are all of those false narratives also?