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On July 10 2025 21:09 Velr wrote:And it does that despite being as corrupt as corrupt gets. But i'm (very) unsure if it achieved that because it's system is working or the other side just paid the people more to get the desired result because Lula isn't exactly a saint either...
It can be hard to tell with Brazil. That's very true.
EDIT:
I suppose my point is that if you want to get an idea of the style of politician Trump is, or the style of government he would like to implement in the United States, then you can look at the styles of the leaders (and former leaders) he has gone out of his way to throw support behind since taking office.
When those are authoritarians like Bolsonaro, Netanyahu and Putin, it doesn't paint a pretty picture.
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On July 10 2025 19:31 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 19:15 oBlade wrote:On July 10 2025 19:04 Magic Powers wrote:On July 10 2025 18:58 oBlade wrote:On July 10 2025 18:34 Magic Powers wrote:On July 10 2025 18:23 BlackJack wrote:On July 10 2025 17:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Here BJ lazer focuses on 1% and argues about the 1%, even though the original point can reasonably only be about the 99%, then he denies that it was about the 99% because that'd be an "assumption". And then he draws a false comparison to surgeons (surgeons! In an equivalency to defend Trump, fucking hilarious. Give me a fucking break).
If you don’t understand how analogies work you could just ask and someone would be happy to explain it, I’m sure. Analogies work, and I understand analogies. Your analogy doesn't work, it's nonsense. Every "comparison" is false in a trivial sense because it compares something that isn't the exact same. Your problem with the analogy is you didn't even get to the point of it, you got tripped by that it mentions the field of medicine. The analogy is not calling Trump a surgeon in a way that you need to be astounded at the fact he didn't receive the years of rigorous medical training and years of experience in schooling and residency to get his credentials. That wasn't the point. No, wrong. Comparing Trump to surgeons is just literally always false. Mister "hyper-correctness" BJ should know that, but with his pro-Trump bias he obviously thinks otherwise. Again, the point was not to compliment Trump by implying he is similar to a surgeon (if you are stuck on the idea surgeon=good). That didn't have a single thing to do with it. Surgeons are not just morally above Trump, they're also good at what they do. Trump is an incompetent fascist. He's twice removed from surgeons. No comparison can be made. End of debate.
I wouldn't put any morals onto a surgeon by default. You can be a totally immoral surgeon. The Nazis had surgeons that experimented on prisoners in the concentration camps.
However, if surgeons are on average roughly as moral as other people, then i would agree, because Trump is definitively below average in that category.
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On July 10 2025 19:58 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 19:46 oBlade wrote:On July 10 2025 19:31 Magic Powers wrote:On July 10 2025 19:15 oBlade wrote:On July 10 2025 19:04 Magic Powers wrote:On July 10 2025 18:58 oBlade wrote:On July 10 2025 18:34 Magic Powers wrote:On July 10 2025 18:23 BlackJack wrote:On July 10 2025 17:17 Magic Powers wrote:
Here BJ lazer focuses on 1% and argues about the 1%, even though the original point can reasonably only be about the 99%, then he denies that it was about the 99% because that'd be an "assumption". And then he draws a false comparison to surgeons (surgeons! In an equivalency to defend Trump, fucking hilarious. Give me a fucking break).
If you don’t understand how analogies work you could just ask and someone would be happy to explain it, I’m sure. Analogies work, and I understand analogies. Your analogy doesn't work, it's nonsense. Every "comparison" is false in a trivial sense because it compares something that isn't the exact same. Your problem with the analogy is you didn't even get to the point of it, you got tripped by that it mentions the field of medicine. The analogy is not calling Trump a surgeon in a way that you need to be astounded at the fact he didn't receive the years of rigorous medical training and years of experience in schooling and residency to get his credentials. That wasn't the point. No, wrong. Comparing Trump to surgeons is just literally always false. Mister "hyper-correctness" BJ should know that, but with his pro-Trump bias he obviously thinks otherwise. Again, the point was not to compliment Trump by implying he is similar to a surgeon (if you are stuck on the idea surgeon=good). That didn't have a single thing to do with it. Surgeons are not just morally above Trump, they're also good at what they do. Trump is an incompetent fascist. He's twice removed from surgeons. No comparison can be made. End of debate. You're not focusing, buddy. This is going to be impossible for you to understand but I'm going to use an analogy inside an analogy. Saying Trump or Hegseth want the army to shoot unarmed peaceful protestors just because, for example, officers shot the guy who opened fire on them in Texas last week, would be like saying: Steve Ballmer wants to wipe all everyone's valuable data and programs off their hard drives, evidenced by he advocated deleting some viruses and worms, which are executable programs, so if he's into deleting those programs he obviously wants to delete all executable programs. What this analogy is about: Equivocation and blurring categories What this analogy is not about: The coding skills and computer literacy of Donald J. Trump Reasons to object to this analogy: Things that are falsely deleted can be recovered or you can reinstall a program that's deleted, whereas you can't reinstall a person shot by police, etc.Not reasons to object to this analogy: DJT doesn't have an MIT PhD in computer science so he's stupider than software engineers and this analogy was somehow calling him a computer genius (It isn't) By the way, there's surgeons who cut off the wrong limbs, work for organ traffickers, inscribe their initials inside patients, and oh yeah Mengele. Whoopsie. By the way, there are politicians who speak the truth, work for the people of America, threaten no violence, and oh yeah Cofveve. Whoopsie.
It's "covfefe." You replaced "Mengele," my example of the worst possible surgeon in a list of bad surgeon characteristics, with a quote from Trump at the end of a list of good politicians characteristics. I understand imitation is the greatest form of flattery but it looks like you didn't grasp the framing or you did a good job complimenting Trump.
If comparing Trump to surgeons were always literally false, as you said, what would happen if someone were to compare old Trump to Mengele? That'd be a nice break from Hitler. Just let us know for the record. Let's say Trump is similar to Mengele, after all, they both have caused deaths, including of innocents. (This kind of claim has academic precedent - Chomsky famously said the GOP are worse than Nazis because of the gross amount of suffering able to be caused by Republicans against our entire species, whereas Nazis only genocided select subsets of humans and locally ruined Europe.) Are you on board with Trump being worse because - as you said - Mengele, as a surgeon, is morally above Trump and also good at what he does?
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On July 10 2025 20:54 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 19:59 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 19:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 10 2025 18:37 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 18:31 BlackJack wrote:On July 10 2025 17:57 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 17:17 Magic Powers wrote:
After years of right-wing denialism, I think it's fair to say BJ does in fact not agree with DPB in spirit. He's done everything other than make overtly clear that he supports Trump's cause and has been consistently flirting with the far-right. The sum of his actions (anti-left propaganda while staying silent on right-wing scandals) leads to this fairly obvious conclusion. I think this is fundamentally misreading BJ's posts. He likes to nitpick and will die on any hill where he's technically correct. If you can get past his adversarial style, he brings in a different perspective on things that I find interesting. I honestly doubt that he would disagree with the statement "It is problematic that Trump thinks it's okay to shoot protestors". But if you frame it differently, e.g. "Trump is ordering the national guard to shoot peaceful protesters", you will find yourself in an infinite loop of disagreement. Yes I agree that Trump is problematic when it comes to his actions or desired actions against protestors and people practicing free speech. I disagree that it’s “nitpicking” to insist that people not stretch the truth. It’s really not hard to do. Do you think I could get away with a similar stretching of the truth here? Saying that Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question is beyond stretching the truth. It plays right into his hands by giving credit to his “fake news” spiel. If Democrats could get their heads out of their asses maybe they would stop losing so many winnable elections. I think this is a valuable perspective, how one phrases things matters. I find myself doing this when people try to use questionable sources to substantiate important points in their posts. We had some election deniers come through here a while back, and it was illuminating to see where they were getting their information from. Unfortunately, BlackJack is just as easily susceptible to phrasing things incorrectly and/or uncharitably as well. For example, he just wrote this to you: " Saying that Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question is beyond stretching the truth." Who is BlackJack referring to here, in the underlined portion? Who said that? It seems that he's implying that I said that, especially based on his aggression towards me a few hours ago, but I sure didn't make that non sequitur he just fabricated, and neither did the video I posted. I didn't say that in my original post, and both the video and my follow-up article credit Esper for saying that Trump gave the order (literally years before Hegseth refused to answer the question about whether or not Hegseth has ever directed the military in a similar fashion). And if that weren't enough, I made an entire follow-up post further fleshing out the Trump side of things vs. the Hegseth side of things (which I even delineated by underlining the two different sections), which BlackJack has seemingly mashed together into an idea that I think "Trump gave an order ... because Pete Hegseth didn't answer a question." That's ridiculous. Hegseth's recent non-answer could not have possibly caused Trump to do something several years ago. That's not how time or causality work, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, maybe BlackJack isn't referring to me with this accusation. Or maybe it was an honest mistake on BlackJack's part. Or maybe it was a malicious strawman. I don't know, but even now he's clearly posting things that aren't even "technically correct", which is the phrase you had used that sometimes justifies his nitpicking. Ironically, BlackJack even had the foresight to write "Do you think I could get away with a similar stretching of the truth here?" And this is how BlackJack (and oBlade) derail a topic. Sigh. I'm not really defending BJ, he can fight his own battles. I am just saying that if you can get past the adversarial style, his perspective can help you see why some people view things differently. Perspectives based off of misinformation and bad faith takes are valuable in the same way stab wounds are valuable to someone doing an autopsy, if that's what you mean.
Oh, don't get me wrong, BJ likes to stir the pot if that's what you mean by bad-faith takes. I wouldn't say his perspective is based off of misinformation though.
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On July 10 2025 21:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 19:59 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 19:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 10 2025 18:37 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 18:31 BlackJack wrote:On July 10 2025 17:57 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 17:17 Magic Powers wrote:
After years of right-wing denialism, I think it's fair to say BJ does in fact not agree with DPB in spirit. He's done everything other than make overtly clear that he supports Trump's cause and has been consistently flirting with the far-right. The sum of his actions (anti-left propaganda while staying silent on right-wing scandals) leads to this fairly obvious conclusion. I think this is fundamentally misreading BJ's posts. He likes to nitpick and will die on any hill where he's technically correct. If you can get past his adversarial style, he brings in a different perspective on things that I find interesting. I honestly doubt that he would disagree with the statement "It is problematic that Trump thinks it's okay to shoot protestors". But if you frame it differently, e.g. "Trump is ordering the national guard to shoot peaceful protesters", you will find yourself in an infinite loop of disagreement. Yes I agree that Trump is problematic when it comes to his actions or desired actions against protestors and people practicing free speech. I disagree that it’s “nitpicking” to insist that people not stretch the truth. It’s really not hard to do. Do you think I could get away with a similar stretching of the truth here? Saying that Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question is beyond stretching the truth. It plays right into his hands by giving credit to his “fake news” spiel. If Democrats could get their heads out of their asses maybe they would stop losing so many winnable elections. I think this is a valuable perspective, how one phrases things matters. I find myself doing this when people try to use questionable sources to substantiate important points in their posts. We had some election deniers come through here a while back, and it was illuminating to see where they were getting their information from. Unfortunately, BlackJack is just as easily susceptible to phrasing things incorrectly and/or uncharitably as well. For example, he just wrote this to you: " Saying that Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question is beyond stretching the truth." Who is BlackJack referring to here, in the underlined portion? Who said that? It seems that he's implying that I said that, especially based on his aggression towards me a few hours ago, but I sure didn't make that non sequitur he just fabricated, and neither did the video I posted. I didn't say that in my original post, and both the video and my follow-up article credit Esper for saying that Trump gave the order (literally years before Hegseth refused to answer the question about whether or not Hegseth has ever directed the military in a similar fashion). And if that weren't enough, I made an entire follow-up post further fleshing out the Trump side of things vs. the Hegseth side of things (which I even delineated by underlining the two different sections), which BlackJack has seemingly mashed together into an idea that I think "Trump gave an order ... because Pete Hegseth didn't answer a question." That's ridiculous. Hegseth's recent non-answer could not have possibly caused Trump to do something several years ago. That's not how time or causality work, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, maybe BlackJack isn't referring to me with this accusation. Or maybe it was an honest mistake on BlackJack's part. Or maybe it was a malicious strawman. I don't know, but even now he's clearly posting things that aren't even "technically correct", which is the phrase you had used that sometimes justifies his nitpicking. Ironically, BlackJack even had the foresight to write "Do you think I could get away with a similar stretching of the truth here?" And this is how BlackJack (and oBlade) derail a topic. Sigh. I'm not really defending BJ, he can fight his own battles. I am just saying that if you can get past the adversarial style, his perspective can help you see why some people view things differently. I don't mind adversarial styles, as long as they lead to substantive dialogue instead of just starting shit and derailing topics. For example, BlackJack's first response to me on this topic was this: "I'm curious why you keep deciding to add "peaceful" in there when it's not even something she said. Or why you plainly state that he gave the order to shoot peaceful protestors when he didn't even answer the question. Are you unwilling or just incapable of being accurate?" That was his entire post, and I thought that two out of those three sentences warranted a response. I was happy to ignore his third sentence (the inflammatory accusation) and engage with him on the first two sentences, because those two were reasonable and could potentially lead to a conversation. I responded to both of those sentences... but then the majority of his next response to me was him freaking out about how we're all so unfair to him. At that point, it was clear to me that a productive dialogue with BlackJack wasn't going to be possible. "His perspective" - "how one phrases things matters", as you put it, earlier - isn't a new or unique revelation that BlackJack is productively bringing to the table. Most people have that same perspective, and BlackJack certainly doesn't epitomize careful word choice. In fact, a candidate for the least careful word choice in this whole discussion is when BlackJack wrote that I (or, I guess, some mystery person) said "Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question". I could have just responded to that with something flippant and aggressive like BlackJack's "Are you unwilling or just incapable of being accurate?", but instead I laid out why BlackJack's accusation is factually inaccurate and misrepresentative. The reason why I have issues with some of BlackJack's posting isn't because he's adversarial (and it's not because he's a big meanie or that he's dropping cold, hard truths that I just can't deal with because I'm too fragile); it's because there's often nothing substantive behind his aggression. Sometimes he might be a correct jerk, but there are plenty of instances where he's both a jerk and incorrect, and that's where I have the biggest issues.
I think it depends what you are trying to get out of the conversation. I've had more than a few of his posts where I've gone, "well, I hadn't considered that". The trick is to move the conversation beyond the nitpicking, because that's just an infinite loop.
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On July 10 2025 21:09 Velr wrote:And it does that despite being as corrupt as corrupt gets. But i'm (very) unsure if it achieved that because it's system is working or the other side just paid the people more to get the desired result because Lula isn't exactly a saint either...
The ironic thing is that the main cause of deforestation of the Amazon is beef farming, so heavy tariffs on Brazil is unintentionally saving the environment (unless he makes a carve-out for beef or something). Sometimes idiots blunder themselves into doing good things by accident.
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On July 10 2025 22:11 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 21:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 10 2025 19:59 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 19:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 10 2025 18:37 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 18:31 BlackJack wrote:On July 10 2025 17:57 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 17:17 Magic Powers wrote:
After years of right-wing denialism, I think it's fair to say BJ does in fact not agree with DPB in spirit. He's done everything other than make overtly clear that he supports Trump's cause and has been consistently flirting with the far-right. The sum of his actions (anti-left propaganda while staying silent on right-wing scandals) leads to this fairly obvious conclusion. I think this is fundamentally misreading BJ's posts. He likes to nitpick and will die on any hill where he's technically correct. If you can get past his adversarial style, he brings in a different perspective on things that I find interesting. I honestly doubt that he would disagree with the statement "It is problematic that Trump thinks it's okay to shoot protestors". But if you frame it differently, e.g. "Trump is ordering the national guard to shoot peaceful protesters", you will find yourself in an infinite loop of disagreement. Yes I agree that Trump is problematic when it comes to his actions or desired actions against protestors and people practicing free speech. I disagree that it’s “nitpicking” to insist that people not stretch the truth. It’s really not hard to do. Do you think I could get away with a similar stretching of the truth here? Saying that Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question is beyond stretching the truth. It plays right into his hands by giving credit to his “fake news” spiel. If Democrats could get their heads out of their asses maybe they would stop losing so many winnable elections. I think this is a valuable perspective, how one phrases things matters. I find myself doing this when people try to use questionable sources to substantiate important points in their posts. We had some election deniers come through here a while back, and it was illuminating to see where they were getting their information from. Unfortunately, BlackJack is just as easily susceptible to phrasing things incorrectly and/or uncharitably as well. For example, he just wrote this to you: " Saying that Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question is beyond stretching the truth." Who is BlackJack referring to here, in the underlined portion? Who said that? It seems that he's implying that I said that, especially based on his aggression towards me a few hours ago, but I sure didn't make that non sequitur he just fabricated, and neither did the video I posted. I didn't say that in my original post, and both the video and my follow-up article credit Esper for saying that Trump gave the order (literally years before Hegseth refused to answer the question about whether or not Hegseth has ever directed the military in a similar fashion). And if that weren't enough, I made an entire follow-up post further fleshing out the Trump side of things vs. the Hegseth side of things (which I even delineated by underlining the two different sections), which BlackJack has seemingly mashed together into an idea that I think "Trump gave an order ... because Pete Hegseth didn't answer a question." That's ridiculous. Hegseth's recent non-answer could not have possibly caused Trump to do something several years ago. That's not how time or causality work, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, maybe BlackJack isn't referring to me with this accusation. Or maybe it was an honest mistake on BlackJack's part. Or maybe it was a malicious strawman. I don't know, but even now he's clearly posting things that aren't even "technically correct", which is the phrase you had used that sometimes justifies his nitpicking. Ironically, BlackJack even had the foresight to write "Do you think I could get away with a similar stretching of the truth here?" And this is how BlackJack (and oBlade) derail a topic. Sigh. I'm not really defending BJ, he can fight his own battles. I am just saying that if you can get past the adversarial style, his perspective can help you see why some people view things differently. I don't mind adversarial styles, as long as they lead to substantive dialogue instead of just starting shit and derailing topics. For example, BlackJack's first response to me on this topic was this: "I'm curious why you keep deciding to add "peaceful" in there when it's not even something she said. Or why you plainly state that he gave the order to shoot peaceful protestors when he didn't even answer the question. Are you unwilling or just incapable of being accurate?" That was his entire post, and I thought that two out of those three sentences warranted a response. I was happy to ignore his third sentence (the inflammatory accusation) and engage with him on the first two sentences, because those two were reasonable and could potentially lead to a conversation. I responded to both of those sentences... but then the majority of his next response to me was him freaking out about how we're all so unfair to him. At that point, it was clear to me that a productive dialogue with BlackJack wasn't going to be possible. "His perspective" - "how one phrases things matters", as you put it, earlier - isn't a new or unique revelation that BlackJack is productively bringing to the table. Most people have that same perspective, and BlackJack certainly doesn't epitomize careful word choice. In fact, a candidate for the least careful word choice in this whole discussion is when BlackJack wrote that I (or, I guess, some mystery person) said "Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question". I could have just responded to that with something flippant and aggressive like BlackJack's "Are you unwilling or just incapable of being accurate?", but instead I laid out why BlackJack's accusation is factually inaccurate and misrepresentative. The reason why I have issues with some of BlackJack's posting isn't because he's adversarial (and it's not because he's a big meanie or that he's dropping cold, hard truths that I just can't deal with because I'm too fragile); it's because there's often nothing substantive behind his aggression. Sometimes he might be a correct jerk, but there are plenty of instances where he's both a jerk and incorrect, and that's where I have the biggest issues. I think it depends what you are trying to get out of the conversation. I've had more than a few of his posts where I've gone, "well, I hadn't considered that". The trick is to move the conversation beyond the nitpicking, because that's just an infinite loop.
Agreed.
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On July 10 2025 12:10 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 11:20 Billyboy wrote:On July 10 2025 11:14 BlackJack wrote:On July 10 2025 07:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 10 2025 05:24 BlackJack wrote:On July 10 2025 04:27 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 10 2025 04:18 oBlade wrote:Absolute fascism. How many total unarmed peaceful protestors have been shot in the at least 3 weeks since the alleged order was given (since that video was posted)? You don't think it's problematic that Trump and Hegseth ordered the military to shoot unarmed, peaceful protesters? Only if the orders are actually carried out? I'm curious why you keep deciding to add "peaceful" in there when it's not even something she said. Or why you plainly state that he gave the order to shoot peaceful protestors when he didn't even answer the question. Are you unwilling or just incapable of being accurate? Because most protesters are peaceful. And I qualified the original post with "it appears", and only dropped that qualifier after oBlade responded with a clear reply that an order from Trump or Hegseth wouldn't matter as long as it wasn't being followed. I responded that the order itself would still be a reason for concern. I think it's a problem if our leaders are morally okay with shooting peaceful, unarmed protesters, even if those protesters don't end up being shot. Do you agree? You can't retroactively add adjectives just because those adjectives apply to most of the group. You can't say that a surgeon that orders limb amputations every now and again wants to amputate healthy limbs just because "most limbs are healthy." But the good news is that at least 5-6 people are going to agree with this logic and tell me I'm wrong because scoring points here is more important than our shared understanding of language. Then Kwark will drop in and have some loyalty to the truth here but not without insisting that I'm arguing just for the sake of arguing. What is your greater point here? Is it that they only suggested killing miss behaving protesters? Does that make it acceptable to you or... ? The same point I've made repeatedly. By being incapable of speaking accurately you're doing a disservice to your own credibility and any legitimate criticism becomes dismissed as hyperventilating over Trump. We've seen this nonsense repeatedly. E.g. "Trump says he wants Liz Cheney executed by firing squad" or "Trump threatens to use the military against anyone that opposes his candidacy on election night." (Mind you, Biden would still be commander-in-chief on election night and for another 2 months after). It's one thing if you're in the media and revenues are falling and you need to give embellishing clickbait just to stay in business. But doing it for no reason on a rather small gaming forum politics thread is rather silly.
To your and I'm sure a bunch of peoples surprise I sympathize with you and I do not really disagree with your overall point, the problem is the way you go about it makes it appear to people like you are disagreeing with the overall sentiment and the the thread generally ends up with a few pages of shit. Perhaps just add two more lines or something that says something like, well I agree it was pretty crazy to talk about shooting protestors that is bad enough we do not need to add peaceful to make it worse, or however you want.
That being said I think the bigger problem is it works. I have very rightwing and maga people all around me so they fill my feed. There is non stop hyperbole but worse than that there is just straight up made up shit. The last couple of days a meme of Paul McCartney not willing to play some show because they were to woke and he hated that was circulating. Just 100% fiction.
On top of that the facebook staff that was trying to keep disinformation off the site, they all moved politically towards what they were getting rid of. Even knowing it was false did not stop its influence. Meaning this style of commentary is super effective and the right has been doing it better and to a more extreme way. The left is catching up, and I personally do not like it, but I do understand it.
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On July 10 2025 22:11 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 21:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 10 2025 19:59 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 19:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 10 2025 18:37 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 18:31 BlackJack wrote:On July 10 2025 17:57 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 17:17 Magic Powers wrote:
After years of right-wing denialism, I think it's fair to say BJ does in fact not agree with DPB in spirit. He's done everything other than make overtly clear that he supports Trump's cause and has been consistently flirting with the far-right. The sum of his actions (anti-left propaganda while staying silent on right-wing scandals) leads to this fairly obvious conclusion. I think this is fundamentally misreading BJ's posts. He likes to nitpick and will die on any hill where he's technically correct. If you can get past his adversarial style, he brings in a different perspective on things that I find interesting. I honestly doubt that he would disagree with the statement "It is problematic that Trump thinks it's okay to shoot protestors". But if you frame it differently, e.g. "Trump is ordering the national guard to shoot peaceful protesters", you will find yourself in an infinite loop of disagreement. Yes I agree that Trump is problematic when it comes to his actions or desired actions against protestors and people practicing free speech. I disagree that it’s “nitpicking” to insist that people not stretch the truth. It’s really not hard to do. Do you think I could get away with a similar stretching of the truth here? Saying that Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question is beyond stretching the truth. It plays right into his hands by giving credit to his “fake news” spiel. If Democrats could get their heads out of their asses maybe they would stop losing so many winnable elections. I think this is a valuable perspective, how one phrases things matters. I find myself doing this when people try to use questionable sources to substantiate important points in their posts. We had some election deniers come through here a while back, and it was illuminating to see where they were getting their information from. Unfortunately, BlackJack is just as easily susceptible to phrasing things incorrectly and/or uncharitably as well. For example, he just wrote this to you: " Saying that Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question is beyond stretching the truth." Who is BlackJack referring to here, in the underlined portion? Who said that? It seems that he's implying that I said that, especially based on his aggression towards me a few hours ago, but I sure didn't make that non sequitur he just fabricated, and neither did the video I posted. I didn't say that in my original post, and both the video and my follow-up article credit Esper for saying that Trump gave the order (literally years before Hegseth refused to answer the question about whether or not Hegseth has ever directed the military in a similar fashion). And if that weren't enough, I made an entire follow-up post further fleshing out the Trump side of things vs. the Hegseth side of things (which I even delineated by underlining the two different sections), which BlackJack has seemingly mashed together into an idea that I think "Trump gave an order ... because Pete Hegseth didn't answer a question." That's ridiculous. Hegseth's recent non-answer could not have possibly caused Trump to do something several years ago. That's not how time or causality work, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, maybe BlackJack isn't referring to me with this accusation. Or maybe it was an honest mistake on BlackJack's part. Or maybe it was a malicious strawman. I don't know, but even now he's clearly posting things that aren't even "technically correct", which is the phrase you had used that sometimes justifies his nitpicking. Ironically, BlackJack even had the foresight to write "Do you think I could get away with a similar stretching of the truth here?" And this is how BlackJack (and oBlade) derail a topic. Sigh. I'm not really defending BJ, he can fight his own battles. I am just saying that if you can get past the adversarial style, his perspective can help you see why some people view things differently. I don't mind adversarial styles, as long as they lead to substantive dialogue instead of just starting shit and derailing topics. For example, BlackJack's first response to me on this topic was this: "I'm curious why you keep deciding to add "peaceful" in there when it's not even something she said. Or why you plainly state that he gave the order to shoot peaceful protestors when he didn't even answer the question. Are you unwilling or just incapable of being accurate?" That was his entire post, and I thought that two out of those three sentences warranted a response. I was happy to ignore his third sentence (the inflammatory accusation) and engage with him on the first two sentences, because those two were reasonable and could potentially lead to a conversation. I responded to both of those sentences... but then the majority of his next response to me was him freaking out about how we're all so unfair to him. At that point, it was clear to me that a productive dialogue with BlackJack wasn't going to be possible. "His perspective" - "how one phrases things matters", as you put it, earlier - isn't a new or unique revelation that BlackJack is productively bringing to the table. Most people have that same perspective, and BlackJack certainly doesn't epitomize careful word choice. In fact, a candidate for the least careful word choice in this whole discussion is when BlackJack wrote that I (or, I guess, some mystery person) said "Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question". I could have just responded to that with something flippant and aggressive like BlackJack's "Are you unwilling or just incapable of being accurate?", but instead I laid out why BlackJack's accusation is factually inaccurate and misrepresentative. The reason why I have issues with some of BlackJack's posting isn't because he's adversarial (and it's not because he's a big meanie or that he's dropping cold, hard truths that I just can't deal with because I'm too fragile); it's because there's often nothing substantive behind his aggression. Sometimes he might be a correct jerk, but there are plenty of instances where he's both a jerk and incorrect, and that's where I have the biggest issues. I think it depends what you are trying to get out of the conversation. I've had more than a few of his posts where I've gone, "well, I hadn't considered that". The trick is to move the conversation beyond the nitpicking, because that's just an infinite loop.
BJ doesn't let you move past the nitpicking. He'll rub it in your face until you say something that he interprets in bad faith and the cycle continues. If you try to break the cycle he considers that a W and he'll use every opportunity to remind you of his W regardless of how bad his interpretation was to begin with. If you ignore him he'll use insults and ad homs to get under your skin until you have enough and call him out. Then he'll act upset over your alleged hypocrisy and he'll remind you again of his big W. And so on and so forth. It never ends.
The only solution is to not put anywhere near as much effort into your responses to him as he does to yours. Just call out his shit and let him blabber on until his face turns green.
Use the opportunity to spread accurate information while he's busy looking for another big W.
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I mean, it's not like BJ invented this, he as well as oBlade and Introvert are just doing variations of Sealioning, each with their own unique flavor, demanding clarifications and extremely precise language and engaging only on inane "points" that they want to bring up, while completely ignoring similar questions and requests that are pointed at them.
Obviously, it's a big oversimplification, but it's all age old right wing tactics and it's crazy to me that "we" as the collective of people who are left of center but much more importantly not blind to Trump and his ilks intentions and tactics still haven't, 10 years into this shit (and I acknowledge that the grievance politiking has started much earlier) haven't really found an effective way of dealing with it.
I guess every time someone decides to ignore them another person will pick the thread up and he'll (in this case BJ) return to it and make statements and ask questions that might engage someone else and then you get a few pages of dull slop.
I guess the alternative is to just have a thread without them but that means we are just locking ourselves into an echo chamber, this is not really more productive then that but at least it gives us some insight into what their side is "into", even if they continue denying it's their side because they are "above that" and "actual conservatives" while continuing to defend this and attack whoever threatens it (ie. bringing up Mamdani's college application while ignoring Epstein or the Tax cuts bill).
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On July 10 2025 22:57 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2025 22:11 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 21:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 10 2025 19:59 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 19:39 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On July 10 2025 18:37 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 18:31 BlackJack wrote:On July 10 2025 17:57 EnDeR_ wrote:On July 10 2025 17:17 Magic Powers wrote:
After years of right-wing denialism, I think it's fair to say BJ does in fact not agree with DPB in spirit. He's done everything other than make overtly clear that he supports Trump's cause and has been consistently flirting with the far-right. The sum of his actions (anti-left propaganda while staying silent on right-wing scandals) leads to this fairly obvious conclusion. I think this is fundamentally misreading BJ's posts. He likes to nitpick and will die on any hill where he's technically correct. If you can get past his adversarial style, he brings in a different perspective on things that I find interesting. I honestly doubt that he would disagree with the statement "It is problematic that Trump thinks it's okay to shoot protestors". But if you frame it differently, e.g. "Trump is ordering the national guard to shoot peaceful protesters", you will find yourself in an infinite loop of disagreement. Yes I agree that Trump is problematic when it comes to his actions or desired actions against protestors and people practicing free speech. I disagree that it’s “nitpicking” to insist that people not stretch the truth. It’s really not hard to do. Do you think I could get away with a similar stretching of the truth here? Saying that Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question is beyond stretching the truth. It plays right into his hands by giving credit to his “fake news” spiel. If Democrats could get their heads out of their asses maybe they would stop losing so many winnable elections. I think this is a valuable perspective, how one phrases things matters. I find myself doing this when people try to use questionable sources to substantiate important points in their posts. We had some election deniers come through here a while back, and it was illuminating to see where they were getting their information from. Unfortunately, BlackJack is just as easily susceptible to phrasing things incorrectly and/or uncharitably as well. For example, he just wrote this to you: " Saying that Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question is beyond stretching the truth." Who is BlackJack referring to here, in the underlined portion? Who said that? It seems that he's implying that I said that, especially based on his aggression towards me a few hours ago, but I sure didn't make that non sequitur he just fabricated, and neither did the video I posted. I didn't say that in my original post, and both the video and my follow-up article credit Esper for saying that Trump gave the order (literally years before Hegseth refused to answer the question about whether or not Hegseth has ever directed the military in a similar fashion). And if that weren't enough, I made an entire follow-up post further fleshing out the Trump side of things vs. the Hegseth side of things (which I even delineated by underlining the two different sections), which BlackJack has seemingly mashed together into an idea that I think "Trump gave an order ... because Pete Hegseth didn't answer a question." That's ridiculous. Hegseth's recent non-answer could not have possibly caused Trump to do something several years ago. That's not how time or causality work, as far as I can tell. On the other hand, maybe BlackJack isn't referring to me with this accusation. Or maybe it was an honest mistake on BlackJack's part. Or maybe it was a malicious strawman. I don't know, but even now he's clearly posting things that aren't even "technically correct", which is the phrase you had used that sometimes justifies his nitpicking. Ironically, BlackJack even had the foresight to write "Do you think I could get away with a similar stretching of the truth here?" And this is how BlackJack (and oBlade) derail a topic. Sigh. I'm not really defending BJ, he can fight his own battles. I am just saying that if you can get past the adversarial style, his perspective can help you see why some people view things differently. I don't mind adversarial styles, as long as they lead to substantive dialogue instead of just starting shit and derailing topics. For example, BlackJack's first response to me on this topic was this: "I'm curious why you keep deciding to add "peaceful" in there when it's not even something she said. Or why you plainly state that he gave the order to shoot peaceful protestors when he didn't even answer the question. Are you unwilling or just incapable of being accurate?" That was his entire post, and I thought that two out of those three sentences warranted a response. I was happy to ignore his third sentence (the inflammatory accusation) and engage with him on the first two sentences, because those two were reasonable and could potentially lead to a conversation. I responded to both of those sentences... but then the majority of his next response to me was him freaking out about how we're all so unfair to him. At that point, it was clear to me that a productive dialogue with BlackJack wasn't going to be possible. "His perspective" - "how one phrases things matters", as you put it, earlier - isn't a new or unique revelation that BlackJack is productively bringing to the table. Most people have that same perspective, and BlackJack certainly doesn't epitomize careful word choice. In fact, a candidate for the least careful word choice in this whole discussion is when BlackJack wrote that I (or, I guess, some mystery person) said "Trump gave an order to slaughter peaceful protestors because Pete Hegseth didn’t answer a question". I could have just responded to that with something flippant and aggressive like BlackJack's "Are you unwilling or just incapable of being accurate?", but instead I laid out why BlackJack's accusation is factually inaccurate and misrepresentative. The reason why I have issues with some of BlackJack's posting isn't because he's adversarial (and it's not because he's a big meanie or that he's dropping cold, hard truths that I just can't deal with because I'm too fragile); it's because there's often nothing substantive behind his aggression. Sometimes he might be a correct jerk, but there are plenty of instances where he's both a jerk and incorrect, and that's where I have the biggest issues. I think it depends what you are trying to get out of the conversation. I've had more than a few of his posts where I've gone, "well, I hadn't considered that". The trick is to move the conversation beyond the nitpicking, because that's just an infinite loop. BJ doesn't let you move past the nitpicking. He'll rub it in your face until you say something that he interprets in bad faith and the cycle continues. If you try to break the cycle he considers that a W and he'll use every opportunity to remind you of his W regardless of how bad his interpretation was to begin with. If you ignore him he'll use insults and ad homs to get under your skin until you have enough and call him out. Then he'll act upset over your alleged hypocrisy and he'll remind you again of his big W. And so on and so forth. It never ends. The only solution is to not put anywhere near as much effort into your responses to him as he does to yours. Just call out his shit and let him blabber on until his face turns green. Use the opportunity to spread accurate information while he's busy looking for another big W.
It's also hypocritical that BlackJack would chastise others for "being incapable of speaking accurately", especially during a topic where his apparent mischaracterization is potentially larger than anyone else's.
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On July 10 2025 23:13 Jankisa wrote:
I mean, it's not like BJ invented this, he as well as oBlade and Introvert are just doing variations of Sealioning, each with their own unique flavor, demanding clarifications and extremely precise language and engaging only on inane "points" that they want to bring up, while completely ignoring similar questions and requests that are pointed at them.
Obviously, it's a big oversimplification, but it's all age old right wing tactics and it's crazy to me that "we" as the collective of people who are left of center but much more importantly not blind to Trump and his ilks intentions and tactics still haven't, 10 years into this shit (and I acknowledge that the grievance politiking has started much earlier) haven't really found an effective way of dealing with it.
I guess every time someone decides to ignore them another person will pick the thread up and he'll (in this case BJ) return to it and make statements and ask questions that might engage someone else and then you get a few pages of dull slop.
I guess the alternative is to just have a thread without them but that means we are just locking ourselves into an echo chamber, this is not really more productive then that but at least it gives us some insight into what their side is "into", even if they continue denying it's their side because they are "above that" and "actual conservatives" while continuing to defend this and attack whoever threatens it (ie. bringing up Mamdani's college application while ignoring Epstein or the Tax cuts bill).
It's a compulsion of the same handful of people. They can't help themselves.
I'm actually not that worried about it being an echo chamber, because when they aren't incessantly bickering with bad faith right wing sealioning, they are able to discuss their (admittedly pretty tepid) political differences more effectively (it's also a lot more interesting to read/interact with).
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I think the thread would be significantly poorer if the likes of Introvert, oBlade, BJ or GH didn't feel like they could contribute. I have very few other spaces where I can engage constructively with someone who is on such a completely different wavelength as myself.
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On July 10 2025 23:13 Jankisa wrote:
I mean, it's not like BJ invented this, he as well as oBlade and Introvert are just doing variations of Sealioning, each with their own unique flavor, demanding clarifications and extremely precise language and engaging only on inane "points" that they want to bring up, while completely ignoring similar questions and requests that are pointed at them.
Obviously, it's a big oversimplification, but it's all age old right wing tactics and it's crazy to me that "we" as the collective of people who are left of center but much more importantly not blind to Trump and his ilks intentions and tactics still haven't, 10 years into this shit (and I acknowledge that the grievance politiking has started much earlier) haven't really found an effective way of dealing with it.
I guess every time someone decides to ignore them another person will pick the thread up and he'll (in this case BJ) return to it and make statements and ask questions that might engage someone else and then you get a few pages of dull slop.
I guess the alternative is to just have a thread without them but that means we are just locking ourselves into an echo chamber, this is not really more productive then that but at least it gives us some insight into what their side is "into", even if they continue denying it's their side because they are "above that" and "actual conservatives" while continuing to defend this and attack whoever threatens it (ie. bringing up Mamdani's college application while ignoring Epstein or the Tax cuts bill).
At this point, i have a list of posters with whom i simply do not engage anymore. Most of the time, i manage to keep to that, no matter how annoyingly idiotic their posts are.
Sadly, that mostly means that i don't really post a lot anymore.
But that is also not a global solution. As you said, someone will always reply. Basically, rightwingers have found a way to destroy dialogue, and we have not yet found the counter. Somehow, they are also winning elections through doing this.
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On July 11 2025 00:39 EnDeR_ wrote:
I think the thread would be significantly poorer if the likes of Introvert, oBlade, BJ or GH didn't feel like they could contribute. I have very few other spaces where I can engage constructively with someone who is on such a completely different wavelength as myself.
I don't know what you think they contribute but I have never seen them engage or contribute anything of value. Nothing about how they post is constructive or additive to the conversations had.
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United States43242 Posts
Sometimes someone will say something stupid but I don’t need to call it out because BlackJack already has. That’s on the plus side of the ledger. But on the other side sometimes the person saying something stupid is BlackJack. Ultimately we have to keep our expectations from this topic reasonable. All of us are wasting every second we spend here.
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On July 11 2025 00:39 EnDeR_ wrote:
I think the thread would be significantly poorer if the likes of Introvert, oBlade, BJ or GH didn't feel like they could contribute. I have very few other spaces where I can engage constructively with someone who is on such a completely different wavelength as myself.
I'll give you one of the 4 for sure. And 2 are maybe's.
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On July 11 2025 00:39 EnDeR_ wrote:
I think the thread would be significantly poorer if the likes of Introvert, oBlade, BJ or GH didn't feel like they could contribute. I have very few other spaces where I can engage constructively with someone who is on such a completely different wavelength as myself.
In what way exactly would the thread be poorer without them? Include myself, too, if you like. Get rid of Introvert, oBlade, BJ, GH, myself, KwarK and everyone else who has frequently played instigator. What exactly would then be missing from the thread?
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On July 11 2025 01:44 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2025 00:39 EnDeR_ wrote:
I think the thread would be significantly poorer if the likes of Introvert, oBlade, BJ or GH didn't feel like they could contribute. I have very few other spaces where I can engage constructively with someone who is on such a completely different wavelength as myself. In what way exactly would the thread be poorer without them? Include myself, too, if you like. Get rid of Introvert, oBlade, BJ, GH, myself, KwarK and everyone else who has frequently played instigator. What exactly would then be missing from the thread? opposing viewpoints.
Even if some of those viewpoints just get dismissed out of hand with a "well that person is crazy". Its good not to fall into a complete echo chamber.
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On July 11 2025 01:44 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2025 00:39 EnDeR_ wrote:
I think the thread would be significantly poorer if the likes of Introvert, oBlade, BJ or GH didn't feel like they could contribute. I have very few other spaces where I can engage constructively with someone who is on such a completely different wavelength as myself. In what way exactly would the thread be poorer without them? Include myself, too, if you like. Get rid of Introvert, oBlade, BJ, GH, myself, KwarK and everyone else who has frequently played instigator. What exactly would then be missing from the thread?
Actual discussion since there would be a consensus on most issues or people easily agreeing to disagree. Though having people that who you can change the opinion of discussing might be nice.
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EPT
