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On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote: Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology.
Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling?
I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +
Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people.
Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote.
Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking.
Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time.
Trump went from less than 1% of voters supporting him, to being the only president in history to get more votes each run while running 3+ times. That led to being the only Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. That seems to me to pretty objectively be about more than just rallying a Republican base that didn't like him. Especially when we remember that basically every other Republican candidate (and their supporters) started as Trump haters and he didn't win them over by coddling them.
That's not a special metric, nor even particularly impressive. Other presidents could only run twice because they won both their elections, such as how GWB had 50M votes in 2000, and then got wayyy more votes in 2004 (62M), and then had to stop because he couldn't run again lol.
Also, everyone starts at 0% initial support.
Yeah but Trump has increased his vote over time the more overtly Fascist he’s become.
2016 Trump there were already plenty of warning signs, but you can maybe make a case that it was less mask off, people thought a lot was bluster, other dissatisfaction etc. The MAGA was still there sure, but there was much more of a general disruptor kinda vibe.
Look even then I thought it was horseshit, but I’m being generous, first time for everything.
Next time round he’s running after what he did in his first term, including ‘Stop the steal’ and Jan 6th. Grabs more votes.
Last time he grabs more again, possibly by the pussy, despite his historic record, and despite a much more overtly hard right campaign. Gone are the types enthused by Bernie Sanders who think Trump still might be preferable to a Clinton type because he dangles a few plausible deniability carrots their way, that kind of stuff has long been dropped/seen right through.
But I think in pointing this trend out GH is augmenting other arguments more than his own. I find it better (crude) evidence that the US’ populace is getting more fascist, or is more tolerant of it than anything else. And if it’s trending in that direction then other political movements breaking through gets less and less likely over time.
I think I might be with Kwark here (and pretty sure GH is as well): if you're hoping elections are going solve this, you've been smoking too much weed. I'm a bit more hopeful than Kwark, because I don't think we're in 1934 yet. More like 1932. And plenty can still go wrong for Trump and his fledgling fascist takeover. But people have to actually mobilize and do something to stop it.
Between sucking up to Russia, stopping meemaw from receiving welfare, allowing toxic waste dumps to poison drinking water, slashing funding to air safety, etc. it'll be a grab bag of terrible ideas which everyone should be able to find something in that is objectively made much worse by Trump. Perhaps that'll motivate people to some form of activism.
People’s collective ability to assess the effects of policy unless it’s a grotesquely obvious one with a very clear cause and effect, I’m not so sure of. Today’s obligatory Brexit mention. Still a good idea in many minds, doesn’t matter how the numbers are all fucking atrocious.
And if there are recognised problems, they’ll be blamed on external actors and not the policy. I’ve seen it over here, I expect we’ll see it in the US when Trump’s moves don’t pay dividends.
I imbibe certain other substances, weed isn’t really my vibe. I don’t think elections solve a lot of this at all. My contention is merely that agitation to not beat Mr Fascist at the ballot box means you’re electing to play on hard mode.
It may still be a brutal challenge anyway, but one is handicapping oneself.
I’m not advocating voting as a solution to many ills, merely that doing all the other important activism and groundwork that is somewhat lacking in our societies would be more effective if you didn’t have to do it merely to counteract legitimately elected Fascists. You could still do that in a Harris administration, and you should do that.
On February 21 2025 07:46 Uldridge wrote: His point is not that he did that, his point is that all the batshit crazy rightwing fascist racist people found someone to latch their insanity on and that that portion of the USA population is more than significant.
Beyond that, they grew their ranks to a popular vote win by tapping into "you're either with us or against us" and betting on people choosing fascism over "communism/socialism".
They didn't use this suggested method of coddling the center left and center right. They gave them an ultimatum; "do you want to be with US*gesturing at white supremacists, fascists, batshits, etc* or the communist/socialist witches! *gesturing at Liz Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, and AOC as the example of communists*".
It's not a coincidence that something so obviously absurd worked. It's also not genetic or unchangeable. It is a direct and obvious consequence of decades of willful manipulation of public opinion through massive anti-socialist/communist propaganda campaigns, coups, assassinations, wars, etc.
Yeah, agreed there.
Equally if the ground is that poisoned already, how is pushing left going to work as a strategy? At least in any short term consideration.+ Show Spoiler +
You seem to simultaneously be correctly identifying the lay of the land, and proscribing solutions I broadly agree with in the medium thru long term, but mashing them together in a configuration that just doesn’t work in the short.
That ultimatum of which you speak is effective, but it’s only effective if people fucking hate the mere spectre of anything approaching socialism. And if that’s the case, expecting socialism to be the solution in any reasonable timeframe seems, unrealistic.
Which, if we take your own framework into account, it seems you’re already aware of.
Which seems a problematic circle to square to me. Push for socialism, but Jesus keep Trump out seems a better roll of the dice than to give him and his cronies the keys to the kingdom for a term.
This is a staple of US politics (climate change is one people are generally more familiar with) where after decades of shouting down the people (pretty much always socialists and whoever else they can get to come along) telling them not to stick their proverbial dicks in the bear trap, they turn — bloody member in hand — to ask what their bright idea is to fix the fact that their dick was severed by a bear trap.
Then once reattached, exclaim they have no good reason for them not to stick it in again. Then when they've ignored the warnings long enough and they've done it enough times that reattaching it isn't an option they look around and decide dicks are overrated and anyone that doesn't agree is the problem
.
If you listen to Chris Murphy it's obvious they get it, they are just admitting it about a decade too late.
You can skip to 16:19 for the TLDR one liner version.
On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote: Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology.
Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling?
I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +
Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people.
Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote.
Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking.
Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time.
Trump went from less than 1% of voters supporting him, to being the only president in history to get more votes each run while running 3+ times. That led to being the only Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. That seems to me to pretty objectively be about more than just rallying a Republican base that didn't like him. Especially when we remember that basically every other Republican candidate (and their supporters) started as Trump haters and he didn't win them over by coddling them.
That's not a special metric, nor even particularly impressive. Other presidents could only run twice because they won both their elections, such as how GWB had 50M votes in 2000, and then got wayyy more votes in 2004 (62M), and then had to stop because he couldn't run again lol.
Also, everyone starts at 0% initial support.
Yeah but Trump has increased his vote over time the more overtly Fascist he’s become.
2016 Trump there were already plenty of warning signs, but you can maybe make a case that it was less mask off, people thought a lot was bluster, other dissatisfaction etc. The MAGA was still there sure, but there was much more of a general disruptor kinda vibe.
Look even then I thought it was horseshit, but I’m being generous, first time for everything.
Next time round he’s running after what he did in his first term, including ‘Stop the steal’ and Jan 6th. Grabs more votes.
Last time he grabs more again, possibly by the pussy, despite his historic record, and despite a much more overtly hard right campaign. Gone are the types enthused by Bernie Sanders who think Trump still might be preferable to a Clinton type because he dangles a few plausible deniability carrots their way, that kind of stuff has long been dropped/seen right through.
But I think in pointing this trend out GH is augmenting other arguments more than his own. I find it better (crude) evidence that the US’ populace is getting more fascist, or is more tolerant of it than anything else. And if it’s trending in that direction then other political movements breaking through gets less and less likely over time.
I think I might be with Kwark here (and pretty sure GH is as well): if you're hoping elections are going solve this, you've been smoking too much weed. I'm a bit more hopeful than Kwark, because I don't think we're in 1934 yet. More like 1932. And plenty can still go wrong for Trump and his fledgling fascist takeover. But people have to actually mobilize and do something to stop it.
Between sucking up to Russia, stopping meemaw from receiving welfare, allowing toxic waste dumps to poison drinking water, slashing funding to air safety, etc. it'll be a grab bag of terrible ideas which everyone should be able to find something in that is objectively made much worse by Trump. Perhaps that'll motivate people to some form of activism.
People’s collective ability to assess the effects of policy unless it’s a grotesquely obvious one with a very clear cause and effect, I’m not so sure of. Today’s obligatory Brexit mention. Still a good idea in many minds, doesn’t matter how the numbers are all fucking atrocious.
And if there are recognised problems, they’ll be blamed on external actors and not the policy. I’ve seen it over here, I expect we’ll see it in the US when Trump’s moves don’t pay dividends.
I imbibe certain other substances, weed isn’t really my vibe. I don’t think elections solve a lot of this at all. My contention is merely that agitation to not beat Mr Fascist at the ballot box means you’re electing to play on hard mode.
It may still be a brutal challenge anyway, but one is handicapping oneself.
I’m not advocating voting as a solution to many ills, merely that doing all the other important activism and groundwork that is somewhat lacking in our societies would be more effective if you didn’t have to do it merely to counteract legitimately elected Fascists. You could still do that in a Harris administration, and you should do that.
Obviously not electing Trump in the first place would've been the right move. That ship sailed. I'm not talking about past elections. I'm saying that there is 0% chance of any future elections getting rid of them (without also a serious groundswell of popular activism to force fair elections).
I'll have to dig to find it again. I think it was Nate Silver, but it could have been propublica or something else that analysed the 2024 elections and found that a major reason for Trump's victory was voter suppression. They estimated that without voter suppression, Kamala would've won most of the swing states, and the popular vote. Good luck with that now that they are actually back in control of the government.
On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote: Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology.
Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling?
I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +
Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people.
Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote.
Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking.
Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time.
Trump went from less than 1% of voters supporting him, to being the only president in history to get more votes each run while running 3+ times. That led to being the only Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. That seems to me to pretty objectively be about more than just rallying a Republican base that didn't like him. Especially when we remember that basically every other Republican candidate (and their supporters) started as Trump haters and he didn't win them over by coddling them.
That's not a special metric, nor even particularly impressive. Other presidents could only run twice because they won both their elections, such as how GWB had 50M votes in 2000, and then got wayyy more votes in 2004 (62M), and then had to stop because he couldn't run again lol.
Also, everyone starts at 0% initial support.
Yeah but Trump has increased his vote over time the more overtly Fascist he’s become.
2016 Trump there were already plenty of warning signs, but you can maybe make a case that it was less mask off, people thought a lot was bluster, other dissatisfaction etc. The MAGA was still there sure, but there was much more of a general disruptor kinda vibe.
Look even then I thought it was horseshit, but I’m being generous, first time for everything.
Next time round he’s running after what he did in his first term, including ‘Stop the steal’ and Jan 6th. Grabs more votes.
Last time he grabs more again, possibly by the pussy, despite his historic record, and despite a much more overtly hard right campaign. Gone are the types enthused by Bernie Sanders who think Trump still might be preferable to a Clinton type because he dangles a few plausible deniability carrots their way, that kind of stuff has long been dropped/seen right through.
But I think in pointing this trend out GH is augmenting other arguments more than his own. I find it better (crude) evidence that the US’ populace is getting more fascist, or is more tolerant of it than anything else. And if it’s trending in that direction then other political movements breaking through gets less and less likely over time.
I think that's a fair inference, at least for Republicans, and it's fucking scary. It's also consistent with the Republican philosophy of playing dirty and doing whatever it takes to win, as opposed to Democrats who have better ideas but are too passive and too chicken to get things done (which, in this case, means being okay with rigging elections, committing fraud and felonies, and installing yes-men to complete a hostile takeover of the government).
And to a degree I don’t really blame the Dems here. Blame them for much else, perhaps not this.
I’ve said many times, I don’t think you can necessarily replicate those tactics because fundamentally a lot of people who lean somewhat leftwards just don’t like the idea of strongmen pissing all over norms and laws and just democratic values in general.
Like much of us don’t want a left-leaning Trump equivalent, we’d just rather there not be Trump types to begin with.
Obligatory caveat that yes not all the left blah blah.
People don’t like a Bernie Sanders or a Jeremy Corbyn for their bullshitting ability, but for perceived integrity and honesty, and I suppose general human decency. Yes, inb4 they’re not infallible humans.
If either of them was caught on tape saying half the shit Trump says, argh just grab em’ by the pussy etc their popularity would fucking plummet
I’ve been plenty critical of the Dems as any longstanding poster on here would know, I’m just not sure how you compete now those appear to be the battle lines and respective (broad) bases
On February 20 2025 23:06 Liquid`Drone wrote: Call out the blatantly obvious ones but ignore the ones where the plausible deniability is strong. Call out patterns, ignore singular offenses. For Elon Musk it's becoming easier and easier every passing day to call him a nazi and harder and harder to deny it. I'm noticing it with my students - many have stated - looking at the nazi-greeting, that this was just an awkward autist gesturing. These students are overwhelmingly not nazis.
However presenting them with context of other tweets and the totality of musk's dogwhistling, they're like, oh, that's fucked up. It's kinda in line with 'call out the racism that is unquestionably racist, but avoid describing people who are a bit insensitive or ignorant as racist'- thought that I've also been a proponent of. Finding exactly where the balance is is tough of course but my experience is that even among trump supporters, racists and nazis are considered bad people.
So - don't entirely abandon terms and phrases like nazi, fascist and racist, but be careful not to hyperbole - that really pushes people away - and while pushing away the actual nazis isn't something I have much of an issue with, there are tons of people that can get behind some of the dog whistly language without believing in the actual ideology.
Does anyone besides white supremacists and the people that "coincidentally" support them get/deserve this sort of political coddling?
I mean, sure? I think right wingers describing social democratic policies as communist is counter productive for their cause, too, and that if you saw this happen from moderate right wingers towards moderate left wingers, it'd be likely to push them away more than it'd convince them to join them. + Show Spoiler +
Similarly from left to right - if I'm arguing with a voter of the Norwegian conservative party and they're like hey, we need to reduce sick pay to make people less likely to stay home from work when they're not actually sick, then I do a piss-poor job convincing them if I start off by describing their preferred solution as an ayn randian hellscape.
Like picture these scales
communist -------social democrat -------centrist --------conservative/economically liberal------- ayn rand
I think people that are placed on various degrees of this axis can easily end up moving from one of these descriptions to the other. Centrists are potential social democrats and also potential conservatives/economically liberal, social democrats are potential communists but also potential centrists, the conservative/economically liberal can be swayed towards ayn rand or towards centrism - but not towards communism. I further think that if the conserative/economically liberal are conversing with the social democrats and they say 'you guys are communists', the social democrats will be less likely to move towards centrism from that interaction.
not racist ----------------------------- racist
While I don't have fitting terms to describe the potential positions on this scale, I can imagine a similar mechanic unfolding. Say there are 5 points of the not racist to racist scale (like above) - while a 1 (least racist) is less racist than a 3, describing the 3 as a racist does not move the 3 towards the 2 (where he can potentially be swayed), but rather towards the 4. Trying to reach the 5 is a hopeless endeavor, but if you're a 1, you'd rather have more 3s than 4s and you can predict that even if the 3 is guilty of some racist thoughts and actions, he could still be considerably more racist, and he himself will not consider himself racist (the racists are the 4s and 5s, obviously).
not nazi --------------------------- nazi
Same applies here - except while for racism you can argue that tons of people find themselves somewhere between 2 and 4, I think with nazism the gray area is significantly smaller, there aren't really any 'well I'm fine with genodicing half a million jews but 5-6 million is too many'-people.
Except in the US we saw Trump and Republicans do the opposite. Put simply, they incessantly called basically anyone to the left of Liz Cheney a communist and won the popular vote.
Propaganda towards your base has some very different criteria for being successful compared to talking to other people who disagree with you. Propaganda towards your base should, for maximum efficiency, combine enthusiasm towards your own cause with anger towards the other group. Whereas if you are talking to someone and you represent one side and they the other, and you want any chance at convincing them that you are in the right, anger is the one emotion you really want to avoid invoking.
Like - being laser focused on Trump putting kids in cages and separating children from their parents as part of a 'he's a fucking racist monster'-package is a great tactic for riling up your own base and getting them out to vote. (To what degree Trump's policy differed from what democrats had done in the past is completely irrelevant to the argument I'm making here, btw.) Telling Trump supporters that they themselves are racists because they wanted to reduce illegal immigration and that's what this looks like under Trump is however a terrible tactic if you are at all interested in having those people not vote Trump next time.
Trump went from less than 1% of voters supporting him, to being the only president in history to get more votes each run while running 3+ times. That led to being the only Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. That seems to me to pretty objectively be about more than just rallying a Republican base that didn't like him. Especially when we remember that basically every other Republican candidate (and their supporters) started as Trump haters and he didn't win them over by coddling them.
That's not a special metric, nor even particularly impressive. Other presidents could only run twice because they won both their elections, such as how GWB had 50M votes in 2000, and then got wayyy more votes in 2004 (62M), and then had to stop because he couldn't run again lol.
Also, everyone starts at 0% initial support.
Yeah but Trump has increased his vote over time the more overtly Fascist he’s become.
2016 Trump there were already plenty of warning signs, but you can maybe make a case that it was less mask off, people thought a lot was bluster, other dissatisfaction etc. The MAGA was still there sure, but there was much more of a general disruptor kinda vibe.
Look even then I thought it was horseshit, but I’m being generous, first time for everything.
Next time round he’s running after what he did in his first term, including ‘Stop the steal’ and Jan 6th. Grabs more votes.
Last time he grabs more again, possibly by the pussy, despite his historic record, and despite a much more overtly hard right campaign. Gone are the types enthused by Bernie Sanders who think Trump still might be preferable to a Clinton type because he dangles a few plausible deniability carrots their way, that kind of stuff has long been dropped/seen right through.
But I think in pointing this trend out GH is augmenting other arguments more than his own. I find it better (crude) evidence that the US’ populace is getting more fascist, or is more tolerant of it than anything else. And if it’s trending in that direction then other political movements breaking through gets less and less likely over time.
I think that's a fair inference, at least for Republicans, and it's fucking scary. It's also consistent with the Republican philosophy of playing dirty and doing whatever it takes to win, as opposed to Democrats who have better ideas but are too passive and too chicken to get things done (which, in this case, means being okay with rigging elections, committing fraud and felonies, and installing yes-men to complete a hostile takeover of the government).
And to a degree I don’t really blame the Dems here. Blame them for much else, perhaps not this.
I’ve said many times, I don’t think you can necessarily replicate those tactics because fundamentally a lot of people who lean somewhat leftwards just don’t like the idea of strongmen pissing all over norms and laws and just democratic values in general.
Like much of us don’t want a left-leaning Trump equivalent, we’d just rather there not be Trump types to begin with.
Obligatory caveat that yes not all the left blah blah.
People don’t like a Bernie Sanders or a Jeremy Corbyn for their bullshitting ability, but for perceived integrity and honesty, and I suppose general human decency. Yes, inb4 they’re not infallible humans.
If either of them was caught on tape saying half the shit Trump says, argh just grab em’ by the pussy etc their popularity would fucking plummet
I’ve been plenty critical of the Dems as any longstanding poster on here would know, I’m just not sure how you compete now those appear to be the battle lines and respective (broad) bases
Yeah those are good points; Democratic leadership can't simply copy/paste Trump's tactics and expect the same level of support from liberals/progressives.
They wouldn’t need necessarily to. The moment they commit to becoming anti democratic strongmen they’re going to pick up a fair chunk of support from the people who support Trump today. They’re not with Trump for the policy, they’re with him for the totalitarianism. Tariffs are a fairly left wing policy economically, for example, protecting native industry and jobs at the price of trade and shareholder returns.
The problem is that left wing Trump is still going to need to commit to trans eradication. That’s non negotiable for the American public at this point.
"I’ll be calling our great American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada," he said, adding that he won't be at the game because he will speaking with governors in Washington.
"We will all be watching, and if Governor Trudeau would like to join us, he would be most welcome," Trump said.
Both of Canada's major sports networks are talking Trump rather than hockey. LOL.
A sign of the health of the USA's middle class is the growing #s of youth hockey participants in the country. Hockey is a very expensive sport. For the first time ever, the USA has more youth hockey players than Canada. If the USA wins tonight it'll be very far from a "Miracle On Ice". It'll be expected.
"I’ll be calling our great American Hockey Team this morning to spur them on towards victory tonight against Canada," he said, adding that he won't be at the game because he will speaking with governors in Washington.
"We will all be watching, and if Governor Trudeau would like to join us, he would be most welcome," Trump said.
Both of Canada's major sports networks are talking Trump rather than hockey. LOL.
A sign of the health of the USA's middle class is the growing #s of youth hockey participants in the country. Hockey is a very expensive sport. For the first time ever, the USA has more youth hockey players than Canada. If the USA wins tonight it'll be very far from a "Miracle On Ice". It'll be expected.
On February 21 2025 00:58 KwarK wrote: It's like their repeated claim of people over 100 years old receiving social security. The SSA uses COBOL, an older coding language, that stores dates using an epoch system with 0 being an arbitrary point in time with dates counted forward from then. If there is invalid or no data on the birth year of an individual then they're going to show up as hundreds of years old. That doesn't mean the SSA believes they literally are hundreds of years old, it's just if you calculate age by "current day sequential number minus sequential number on day of birth" then that's just what 2025 minus "" looks like.
source? It is amazing how much easy money there is modernizing COBOL and xBASE systems. For almost 20 years I've been living off of a compiler I made in 2007 that compiles Foxpro/Clipper/Visual Objects/dBASE3 into C#.
On February 21 2025 09:52 KwarK wrote: They wouldn’t need necessarily to. The moment they commit to becoming anti democratic strongmen they’re going to pick up a fair chunk of support from the people who support Trump today. They’re not with Trump for the policy, they’re with him for the totalitarianism. Tariffs are a fairly left wing policy economically, for example, protecting native industry and jobs at the price of trade and shareholder returns.
The problem is that left wing Trump is still going to need to commit to trans eradication. That’s non negotiable for the American public at this point.
I'd say tariffs are a tool without political affiliation. Yes. Tariffs + Worker's rights +Regulation would mean that you shield your economy from cheaper foreign competition that does shit on workers or the enviroment
But it's not like that. Trump wants Robber Barons that could increase hours, decrease pay, don't have to mind regulations and scalp the shit out of their customers because there is zero competition - and they also don't have to pay taxes because the IRS auditors who could find their scheme have just been fired.
Capitalism is threatened by lack of real innovation, enshitification and markets completely getting dominated by a hand full of corporations each that no longer compete, but peacfully co-exist.
And Trump is dumb enough to help them go on with it.
It was the GOP who trust-busted the shit out of a consolidated economy.. now they are the "oh no Tampons" Party.
Democratic politicians get away with a LOT of dog whistles for their borderline calls to violence. Like when House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries threatened they are going to "fight in the streets." I can't speak for Vance but we could just oppose threats to public figures no matter what country they occur in.
Again, what makes you think there are going to be elections or a united states by the "end" of his term?
On February 21 2025 18:33 oBlade wrote:
Most of them were not convicted of things related to "threats" but I agree about the FPV drone one.
So this must have been a Biden admin oversight and they will be now be charged on the basis that most of them are on tape, threatening a vice president with imminent death, while trying to get hold of him as a violent mob?
Right?
Because otherwise..you know.. it looks like threatening people is okay ... as long as it is the right kind of people.
EPT
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