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On October 03 2025 03:10 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2025 02:55 Billyboy wrote:On October 03 2025 02:47 LightSpectra wrote:
I don't think censorship is the right approach either, but "let people with objectively false opinions make fools of themselves" is obviously not working as a strategy. Flat earthism is on the rise. Holocaust denial is on the rise. Anti-vaxism is on the rise. The number of people who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows is on the rise. Disinformation is winning the war. We really need an unbiased, non politized center of truth so that people can all agree on them and then work from them to find solutions to our problems. Those can differ based on opinions and methods, and political leanings but the facts should not. The problem is that any center of truth is going to appear left leaning at this point because people on the right are currently believing a lot of unproven or unproveable things and no center of truth can have anything faith based. Anyone who figures out a successful strategy to combat disinformation will genuinely be heralded as the savior of civilization. I saw an article in Ars Technica recently that said prebunking (information campaigns before disinformation has a chance to flourish) has shown some promise against election denialism, but it's unclear how to use the same tactics to fight anti-vaxxers and whatnot.
It's basically the same as a debate tactic where you acknowledge and dismantle the opponent's position before he lays it out. It can be quite effective.
Once someone has laid out a position and gotten it stuck in the audience's mind, even good evidence will be hard to dislodge that thought. However, if you systematically dismantle an argument before anyone argues it, the audience will be skeptical of the argument before it's even presented by its proponents.
The problem is that people would literally have to pre-bunk every bit of disinformation that will come out. Sure, we can catch a lot as it gains a small toe-hold in the zeitgeist and then pre-bunk it, but it still has a toe hold. Meanwhile, some bit of disinformation can spread across the world in minutes in the social media age. Hard to pre-bunk some lie that didn't even exist until someone made it up a minute ago.
You also have the issue of getting the pre-bunking in front of the necessary audience and its rare for the boring old truth to spread as fast as some salacious lie.
So while it does work in specific cases, it'll never be enough to stay ahead of the disinformation campaigns being waged worldwide.
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On October 03 2025 01:39 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 23:58 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Razyda saying "conservatives are your Jews" is wild. What gets me is that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what is wrong with the Holocaust. They literally don't get why it is bad. The Nazis asserted that Jews were poisoning the nation and, if left unchecked, would destroy the German people. They asserted that by fighting the Jews they were really acting legitimately and legally in self defence. The critical issue with their assertion is that they made the whole thing up. Jews weren't destroying Germany, Nazis were destroying Germany and blaming Jews. It's like a guilty man insisting that his incarceration is basically the same as Nelson Mandela's. The comparison works as long as you have absolutely no understanding of why it was wrong to imprison Nelson Mandela.
What gets me is that people dont understand where Holocaust came from. It came from bunch of people believing that they are better than the others (sounds familiar?) See once you believe that, you giving yourself mandate to be right on everything by the virtue of being better. Pretty much whatever evil shit you do can be justified from that position.
"The Nazis asserted that Jews were poisoning the nation and, if left unchecked, would destroy the German people. They asserted that by fighting the Jews they were really acting legitimately and legally in self defence."
"I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out."
There is more to it though. To push genocide nazis had to dehumanise jews enough, that killing them will be about as evil as killing a fly, however they also had to make sure that they are seen as humans, enough to paint them as threat, and justify going this extra length to kill them. Right now there are exactly 2 words achieving this effect: Nazi and paedo.
"The critical issue with their assertion is that they made the whole thing up. Jews weren't destroying Germany, Nazis were destroying Germany and blaming Jews."
You simply not cold enough, bolded is true, italic is not. After loosing WW1, in 20 years they became a superpower. Their internal politics wasnt destroying Germany, it was external one which destroyed it.
Dont take me wrong I hate nazis more that you ever will. You see this is generational and geographical difference. For you WW2 is interesting because lots of people were fighting and dying. For me those lots of people were parents of my uncles/aunts (kinda second line), siblings of my grandparents, my great grand parents and so on.
"It's like a guilty man insisting that his incarceration is basically the same as Nelson Mandela's. The comparison works as long as you have absolutely no understanding of why it was wrong to imprison Nelson Mandela."
For comparision: I think liberals are Charlie Mason.
Edit:
On October 03 2025 10:14 RenSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2025 03:10 LightSpectra wrote:On October 03 2025 02:55 Billyboy wrote:On October 03 2025 02:47 LightSpectra wrote:
I don't think censorship is the right approach either, but "let people with objectively false opinions make fools of themselves" is obviously not working as a strategy. Flat earthism is on the rise. Holocaust denial is on the rise. Anti-vaxism is on the rise. The number of people who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows is on the rise. Disinformation is winning the war. We really need an unbiased, non politized center of truth so that people can all agree on them and then work from them to find solutions to our problems. Those can differ based on opinions and methods, and political leanings but the facts should not. The problem is that any center of truth is going to appear left leaning at this point because people on the right are currently believing a lot of unproven or unproveable things and no center of truth can have anything faith based. Anyone who figures out a successful strategy to combat disinformation will genuinely be heralded as the savior of civilization. I saw an article in Ars Technica recently that said prebunking (information campaigns before disinformation has a chance to flourish) has shown some promise against election denialism, but it's unclear how to use the same tactics to fight anti-vaxxers and whatnot. It's basically the same as a debate tactic where you acknowledge and dismantle the opponent's position before he lays it out. It can be quite effective. Once someone has laid out a position and gotten it stuck in the audience's mind, even good evidence will be hard to dislodge that thought. However, if you systematically dismantle an argument before anyone argues it, the audience will be skeptical of the argument before it's even presented by its proponents. The problem is that people would literally have to pre-bunk every bit of disinformation that will come out. Sure, we can catch a lot as it gains a small toe-hold in the zeitgeist and then pre-bunk it, but it still has a toe hold. Meanwhile, some bit of disinformation can spread across the world in minutes in the social media age. Hard to pre-bunk some lie that didn't even exist until someone made it up a minute ago. You also have the issue of getting the pre-bunking in front of the necessary audience and its rare for the boring old truth to spread as fast as some salacious lie. So while it does work in specific cases, it'll never be enough to stay ahead of the disinformation campaigns being waged worldwide.
Really, thats your problem?
"Once someone has laid out a position and gotten it stuck in the audience's mind, even good evidence will be hard to dislodge that thought."
Thats propaganda.
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On October 03 2025 10:43 Razyda wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2025 10:14 RenSC2 wrote:On October 03 2025 03:10 LightSpectra wrote:On October 03 2025 02:55 Billyboy wrote:On October 03 2025 02:47 LightSpectra wrote:
I don't think censorship is the right approach either, but "let people with objectively false opinions make fools of themselves" is obviously not working as a strategy. Flat earthism is on the rise. Holocaust denial is on the rise. Anti-vaxism is on the rise. The number of people who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows is on the rise. Disinformation is winning the war. We really need an unbiased, non politized center of truth so that people can all agree on them and then work from them to find solutions to our problems. Those can differ based on opinions and methods, and political leanings but the facts should not. The problem is that any center of truth is going to appear left leaning at this point because people on the right are currently believing a lot of unproven or unproveable things and no center of truth can have anything faith based. Anyone who figures out a successful strategy to combat disinformation will genuinely be heralded as the savior of civilization. I saw an article in Ars Technica recently that said prebunking (information campaigns before disinformation has a chance to flourish) has shown some promise against election denialism, but it's unclear how to use the same tactics to fight anti-vaxxers and whatnot. It's basically the same as a debate tactic where you acknowledge and dismantle the opponent's position before he lays it out. It can be quite effective. Once someone has laid out a position and gotten it stuck in the audience's mind, even good evidence will be hard to dislodge that thought. However, if you systematically dismantle an argument before anyone argues it, the audience will be skeptical of the argument before it's even presented by its proponents. The problem is that people would literally have to pre-bunk every bit of disinformation that will come out. Sure, we can catch a lot as it gains a small toe-hold in the zeitgeist and then pre-bunk it, but it still has a toe hold. Meanwhile, some bit of disinformation can spread across the world in minutes in the social media age. Hard to pre-bunk some lie that didn't even exist until someone made it up a minute ago. You also have the issue of getting the pre-bunking in front of the necessary audience and its rare for the boring old truth to spread as fast as some salacious lie. So while it does work in specific cases, it'll never be enough to stay ahead of the disinformation campaigns being waged worldwide. Really, thats your problem? "Once someone has laid out a position and gotten it stuck in the audience's mind, even good evidence will be hard to dislodge that thought." Thats propaganda.
Yes, the problem is that it's an impossible task. So propaganda flourishes and the truth is lost. You are a victim of it. You have been brainwashed by right wing media and no matter how much good evidence you are presented with, you refuse to accept it because the right wing media's disinformation campaign got to you first.
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On October 03 2025 07:01 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2025 06:24 Simberto wrote:On October 03 2025 06:21 KwarK wrote:On October 03 2025 06:01 LightSpectra wrote:On October 03 2025 05:17 Gorsameth wrote:On October 03 2025 05:04 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 03 2025 04:59 Gorsameth wrote:On October 03 2025 04:44 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 03 2025 04:31 Magic Powers wrote:On October 03 2025 04:13 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
Which answer did you pick and why?
And/Or
Why didn't you choose any particular answer?
And/Or
What does your answer look like to you?
And/or
Is there a more custom answer you would have preferred be up there and why?
I won't even opine myself if you all just discuss that for awhile. I might ask questions, but I would be fine being ignored for you to discuss it among yourselves. I chose "The Democratic party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them". But it was a very close call between that and the socialist future option. I'd say the realist in me won this time. I believe you know my argumentation? I want more socialism in my own country, and if I was American I'd definitely want a lot more socialism. I also believe that voting Democrat as much as possible is the path towards more socialism in America. This is where you and I disagree. My preferred answer would be one that views Democrats as only a jumping-off-point. They're not the solution in and of itself, but they are useful. I think Democrats can be pressured into becoming more pro-socialism over time, by the same method that Republicans can be pressured into becoming less racist. That method is to keep voting for the lesser evil (which you disagree with). The lesser evil is Democrats. The next step is to vote for the lesser evil among Democrats. The reason why I think lesser-evilism is currently (!) the right choice is that I don't view Democrats as any worse than Republicans in any particular area. I don't think they're aiding and abetting fascists, I just think they lost their competence since Obama's era and they failed to deal with the Trump beast. They were caught off-guard by a variety of new phenomena. This doesn't make them evil (although some individual Dems are evil, I'm only describing Dems as a group), it makes them fallible people who have to learn. Though likely they'll also have to make way to a wave of new Democrats. That's a much bigger obstacle: some Dems (such as Biden) enjoy their power too much and ruin things for everyone. That's my somewhat nuanced take. I'll stop now, my comment is getting long. Thank you for that. I wonder if we could hear from one/some of the people (if they aren't right-wing) who chose " The Democratic party has has no viable path forward so we need an alternative" and/or " The US has no viable path forward, but to try to protect our loved ones from the worst of it"? I also wonder if anyone else that chose the same answer as you has any significant (or not so significant) disagreements with your elaboration? I don't even see how the "The Democratic party has has no viable path forward so we need an alternative" even works because to me the statement itself is a contradiction. We need a path to the left, and the democrats are not it. therefor we need to find a different party to be that path. A party that gets enough traction and voters to not just threaten, but beat the Democrats and replace them. But if such a voter block exists that can force that then that same voter block can also course correct the Democrats by working from within. You can't have a situation where there is an untapped voter block big enough to beat the Democrats from the left but at the same time unable to move the Democrats themselves left. Thank you for that. Can we infer from that information that you also chose " The Democratic party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them"? I didn't choose " No viable path for Democrats..." myself, but I do wonder if someone that did wants to address your concerns/points? Oh hell no, America is deeply fucked. It is in general deeply conservative and deeply racist (or at best is ok with people around them being deeply racist) and the progressives that would love to pull the country to the left either don't exist as a group large enough to force an influence or can't be arsed to go and vote. As far as I'm concerned Ideocracy has gone from being a parody, to a warning, to becoming a hopeful vision of the future, because atleast the people there were smart enough to recognise an 'expert' and turn to him for advise, which is more then can be said for current day America. Well, we might be fucked. There are some reasons to be optimistic though. We went from racial segregation to gay marriage being legal in all fifty states in less than a lifetime. I'm not convinced the Christo-fascists have won everything yet. AOC said she thinks they're weaker than they look. I agree. They’re making things worse for ordinary people and the worse things get the more right wing people will get. It’s not going to get better. The only hope we have is that at some point, those ordinary people will figure out that the rightwing people in charge are actually the ones making things worse, and not trans people/mexicans/jews/leftist/whoeverelsewehatetoday. I don't know if that is likely, they seem to be mostly resistant to that epiphany so far. + Show Spoiler +UK is the same. 16 years of non stop Conservative rule with declining services, increasing immigration, increasing cost of living, increasing inequality. They kept giving the right what they wanted, over and over, and things kept getting worse. The worse things got, the more they voted right. The Tories only finally got voted out because their right wing misrule got so bad that they weren’t right wing enough for the voters and got outflanked by Reform. . Am I misunderstanding people's responses that there isn't more opposition to this sort of "blackpilled" sentiment?
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United States43059 Posts
On October 03 2025 10:43 Razyda wrote:
"The critical issue with their assertion is that they made the whole thing up. Jews weren't destroying Germany, Nazis were destroying Germany and blaming Jews."
You simply not cold enough, bolded is true, italic is not. After loosing WW1, in 20 years they became a superpower. Their internal politics wasnt destroying Germany, it was external one which destroyed it.
Razyda coming in out of the blue with the idea that Nazism made Germany strong. That their internal policy was successful, it was only foreign policy where they went wrong.
Weirdly enough, that’s not a thing historians think. Historians think Germany was already a European great power in 1933 due to the demographics, cutting edge science and engineering, and industrial output. Historians think that the spending projects of the Nazis are inseparable from their cannibalism, that they could only sustain the state by consuming first the property of German Jews and then the wealth and people of other nations. That without all the murder it all falls apart.
But you know who thinks that it was the Nazis who saved Germany? Who thinks that they had some great domestic policy ideas? Nazis. And also Razyda. Isn’t that weird?
Edit to explain in more detail just how much bullshit the Nazi economic mirage is.
In 1933 military spending was 3% of German gross national product, by 1936 it was 13%, by 1939 it was 23%. Almost 1/4 of all labour was nonproductive, not helping improve the quality of life of Germans, used entirely for destruction, by 1939.
The economy was transformed into a war economy which did a lot to lower unemployment but devastated consumer spending. The material consumption of Germans fell dramatically under the Nazi economy, they worked harder than ever and yet had less and less to show for it.
Between 1936 and 1939 rearmament was consuming 60% of all capital investment in Germany, new factories, new equipment, new jobs, were all going into the war.
That's an absurd amount of Keynesian stimulus, almost overnight the Nazi government became by far the largest employer and investor in the German economy, everyone had a job because the demand of the total war economy was so high. But anyone who understands Keynesian stimulus knows that it doesn't actually make the economy bigger, it doesn't increase the number of workers or the number of hours in the day, it rearranges the existing economy. You're taking value that was being used for one thing and using it for another. If the government is suddenly spending vast amounts of money on nonproductive purposes then this must surely either be balanced by massively increased taxes which literally take value out of the private economy to make room for the government or by inflation.
There are a few answers to this.
1. Debt. In 1932 it was about 8.5b RM. By 1939 it was 47.5b. (and by 1945 390b).
2. Seizures. The property of all German Jews, then later the considerable treasuries of Austria and Czechoslovakia.
3. De facto seizures of bank balances. They created a second currency called MEFO bills. When a German arms supplier was paid for weapons they weren't paid with cash, they were paid with MEFO bills which they then declared were redeemable for cash. They issued shitloads of these and made them hard to redeem. They issued far more MEFO bills than they actually had cash for, by 1938 there were 6b RM of MEFO bills outstanding and never redeemed. In theory the supplier had been paid, but in practice they had an IOU, an off the books government debt that would never be cashed. Industry was forced to hold their "cash" balance in MEFO bills rather than actual cash.
4. Actual seizures of bank balances. The Nazis gave German workers jobs in rearmament and paid them. The German workers deposited their pay at the bank. The banks were then required to "loan" their money to the German state, despite there being no possibility of repayment. The German state then had money to pay the workers. The German workers were being paid with their own money, they had been converted to slaves, unable to actually spend any money on themselves. Not that it made a huge difference to them because there weren't any consumer goods to buy in the first place. And if you were a German who didn't like your new status as essentially a slave the Nazis were happy to have a discussion with you about your thoughts on labour relations.
5. Out of control real terms inflation. Germans had jobs, they were getting paid, but the German economy wasn't producing consumer goods for German consumers, it had been converted to a total war economy fueled by out of control debt spending. Paper money was in ready supply but actual goods were hard to come by. Costs spiraled and there were shortages everywhere. The Nazis addressed this in two ways. First, they simply set wages and prices from the top. It didn't actually address the issue but they're a police state and didn't need to. And secondly, they banned trade unions and murdered rabble rousers who complained about working harder than ever for less real pay.
6. Literal slavery.
The Nazis were incredibly bad at economic management. Like absurdly so, and in a way that is absolutely inseparable from the fact that they were Nazis. You've got to remember that these are not educated people, they were idiots with absolutely no clue what they were doing but were confident that they could micromanage it all with sufficient dedication to the ideology. They bounced from crisis to crisis, papering over the cracks with ever increasing amounts of theft. Can't pay your workers? Rob the bank. Workers complain that the price has gone up? Force the stores to sell it at a loss. Store complains about selling it at a loss? Seize the store, execute the owner. Can't run the store at a profit? Rob the bank again. And, as with all totalitarian systems, it was extraordinarily corrupt. If you knew the right person you could get your MEFO bills redeemed, and of course they'd take a cut. If you knew the right person you could have the prices set in your favour. If you knew the right person then you could complain about the raw materials to your factory being too expensive and the supplier would get a visit letting them know that their patriotic duty was to give you what you needed at the price you wanted.
Nazis are cannibals. Always have been. Always will be. Nazi apologists like Razyda always like to imagine "what if" scenarios that don't make sense like "what if the Nazis just stayed within Germany" or the perennial "what if the Nazis tried to fight WW2 in a rational way instead of dedicating half their war effort to eradicating the Slavs". Well, if they did that then they wouldn't have been Nazis. Nazism as an ideology cannot be separated from the spiral of seizure, slavery, murder, and war, because that is the only fuel the engine of Nazism burns.
Recommended for further reading.
https://www.amazon.com/Wages-Destruction-Making-Breaking-Economy/dp/0143113208
I can put it on google drive for anyone who wants it.
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On October 03 2025 11:00 RenSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2025 10:43 Razyda wrote:On October 03 2025 10:14 RenSC2 wrote:On October 03 2025 03:10 LightSpectra wrote:On October 03 2025 02:55 Billyboy wrote:On October 03 2025 02:47 LightSpectra wrote:
I don't think censorship is the right approach either, but "let people with objectively false opinions make fools of themselves" is obviously not working as a strategy. Flat earthism is on the rise. Holocaust denial is on the rise. Anti-vaxism is on the rise. The number of people who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows is on the rise. Disinformation is winning the war. We really need an unbiased, non politized center of truth so that people can all agree on them and then work from them to find solutions to our problems. Those can differ based on opinions and methods, and political leanings but the facts should not. The problem is that any center of truth is going to appear left leaning at this point because people on the right are currently believing a lot of unproven or unproveable things and no center of truth can have anything faith based. Anyone who figures out a successful strategy to combat disinformation will genuinely be heralded as the savior of civilization. I saw an article in Ars Technica recently that said prebunking (information campaigns before disinformation has a chance to flourish) has shown some promise against election denialism, but it's unclear how to use the same tactics to fight anti-vaxxers and whatnot. It's basically the same as a debate tactic where you acknowledge and dismantle the opponent's position before he lays it out. It can be quite effective. Once someone has laid out a position and gotten it stuck in the audience's mind, even good evidence will be hard to dislodge that thought. However, if you systematically dismantle an argument before anyone argues it, the audience will be skeptical of the argument before it's even presented by its proponents. The problem is that people would literally have to pre-bunk every bit of disinformation that will come out. Sure, we can catch a lot as it gains a small toe-hold in the zeitgeist and then pre-bunk it, but it still has a toe hold. Meanwhile, some bit of disinformation can spread across the world in minutes in the social media age. Hard to pre-bunk some lie that didn't even exist until someone made it up a minute ago. You also have the issue of getting the pre-bunking in front of the necessary audience and its rare for the boring old truth to spread as fast as some salacious lie. So while it does work in specific cases, it'll never be enough to stay ahead of the disinformation campaigns being waged worldwide. Really, thats your problem? "Once someone has laid out a position and gotten it stuck in the audience's mind, even good evidence will be hard to dislodge that thought." Thats propaganda. Yes, the problem is that it's an impossible task. So propaganda flourishes and the truth is lost. You are a victim of it. You have been brainwashed by right wing media and no matter how much good evidence you are presented with, you refuse to accept it because the right wing media's disinformation campaign got to you first.
You really have not a clue do you? I am an avid reader of left wing media. (to be fair some here believe that:
On September 27 2025 22:15 Phyanketto wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2025 21:28 oBlade wrote:On September 27 2025 21:22 Magic Powers wrote:On September 27 2025 21:16 oBlade wrote:On September 27 2025 21:06 Magic Powers wrote:
No, I'm not the one who calls them far-right propaganda. On September 27 2025 17:41 Magic Powers wrote:
National Review is strictly far-right. They're a propaganda outlet, not a "right-of-center publication". The longer you deny this, the more convinced I am that you view far-right content as "moderately right-wing". What are we doing here buddy? Let's make it more than one page without personality transplanting. On September 27 2025 21:06 Magic Powers wrote:
You can reject reality and live in a fantasy land, but I actively embrace reality. Okay. Tell us what outlets you think are merely right, but not far, strictly, or propagandaly so. (Notice I'm not requesting you tell us what MBFC labels right, but not far, strictly, and propagandaly so, which you will then abandon immediately and refuse to justify at the slightest scrutiny.) You literally cut off my first quote to get rid of the full context and create a strawman. Razyda did the exact same thing recently and I also called him out for it. Seems like you're following the exact same playbook as he does. What is an outlet that is right, but not far? MSNBC. Chopping a story or EO or Legislation down to its most palatable parts and not discussing any kind of implications essentially normalizes the right's praxis of gish galloping scandal.
Really? ) So our definitions may differ. Ultimately remove adjectives then read the news.
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On October 03 2025 11:40 Razyda wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2025 11:00 RenSC2 wrote:On October 03 2025 10:43 Razyda wrote:On October 03 2025 10:14 RenSC2 wrote:On October 03 2025 03:10 LightSpectra wrote:On October 03 2025 02:55 Billyboy wrote:On October 03 2025 02:47 LightSpectra wrote:
I don't think censorship is the right approach either, but "let people with objectively false opinions make fools of themselves" is obviously not working as a strategy. Flat earthism is on the rise. Holocaust denial is on the rise. Anti-vaxism is on the rise. The number of people who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows is on the rise. Disinformation is winning the war. We really need an unbiased, non politized center of truth so that people can all agree on them and then work from them to find solutions to our problems. Those can differ based on opinions and methods, and political leanings but the facts should not. The problem is that any center of truth is going to appear left leaning at this point because people on the right are currently believing a lot of unproven or unproveable things and no center of truth can have anything faith based. Anyone who figures out a successful strategy to combat disinformation will genuinely be heralded as the savior of civilization. I saw an article in Ars Technica recently that said prebunking (information campaigns before disinformation has a chance to flourish) has shown some promise against election denialism, but it's unclear how to use the same tactics to fight anti-vaxxers and whatnot. It's basically the same as a debate tactic where you acknowledge and dismantle the opponent's position before he lays it out. It can be quite effective. Once someone has laid out a position and gotten it stuck in the audience's mind, even good evidence will be hard to dislodge that thought. However, if you systematically dismantle an argument before anyone argues it, the audience will be skeptical of the argument before it's even presented by its proponents. The problem is that people would literally have to pre-bunk every bit of disinformation that will come out. Sure, we can catch a lot as it gains a small toe-hold in the zeitgeist and then pre-bunk it, but it still has a toe hold. Meanwhile, some bit of disinformation can spread across the world in minutes in the social media age. Hard to pre-bunk some lie that didn't even exist until someone made it up a minute ago. You also have the issue of getting the pre-bunking in front of the necessary audience and its rare for the boring old truth to spread as fast as some salacious lie. So while it does work in specific cases, it'll never be enough to stay ahead of the disinformation campaigns being waged worldwide. Really, thats your problem? "Once someone has laid out a position and gotten it stuck in the audience's mind, even good evidence will be hard to dislodge that thought." Thats propaganda. Yes, the problem is that it's an impossible task. So propaganda flourishes and the truth is lost. You are a victim of it. You have been brainwashed by right wing media and no matter how much good evidence you are presented with, you refuse to accept it because the right wing media's disinformation campaign got to you first. You really have not a clue do you? I am an avid reader of left wing media. (to be fair some here believe that: Show nested quote +On September 27 2025 22:15 Phyanketto wrote:On September 27 2025 21:28 oBlade wrote:On September 27 2025 21:22 Magic Powers wrote:On September 27 2025 21:16 oBlade wrote:On September 27 2025 21:06 Magic Powers wrote:
No, I'm not the one who calls them far-right propaganda. On September 27 2025 17:41 Magic Powers wrote:
National Review is strictly far-right. They're a propaganda outlet, not a "right-of-center publication". The longer you deny this, the more convinced I am that you view far-right content as "moderately right-wing". What are we doing here buddy? Let's make it more than one page without personality transplanting. On September 27 2025 21:06 Magic Powers wrote:
You can reject reality and live in a fantasy land, but I actively embrace reality. Okay. Tell us what outlets you think are merely right, but not far, strictly, or propagandaly so. (Notice I'm not requesting you tell us what MBFC labels right, but not far, strictly, and propagandaly so, which you will then abandon immediately and refuse to justify at the slightest scrutiny.) You literally cut off my first quote to get rid of the full context and create a strawman. Razyda did the exact same thing recently and I also called him out for it. Seems like you're following the exact same playbook as he does. What is an outlet that is right, but not far? MSNBC. Chopping a story or EO or Legislation down to its most palatable parts and not discussing any kind of implications essentially normalizes the right's praxis of gish galloping scandal. Really? ) So our definitions may differ. Ultimately remove adjectives then read the news.
Brother your definition of liberals seems to be 'people I don't like', I hope to god our definitions differ.
Also tell me more about this Charlie Mason.
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On October 03 2025 04:50 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2025 04:37 WombaT wrote:
The idea that internet posting isn’t important is insane to me, given how that machinery is blatantly fuelling the worst of our politics. And, very obviously so.
I mean it’s either irrelevant or it isn’t. I don’t think you can be concerned about the social media rigmarole and misinformation, while simultaneously thinking posting is pointless and doesn’t have influence, even if merely on aggregate. Those are contradictory ideas. I disagree. If the problem were CO2 emissions then the impact of what we're doing on TL is about as impactful as an individual forgetting to use a reusable cotton shopping bag. Sure, you can say that CO2 is either irrelevant or it's not, but scale matters. We can identify that there is an important issue, and that there is technically a link between an activity and that issue, without assigning that activity more weight than it is worth. Big picture, sure, internet idea spread is changing things. No argument there, you'd be insane to deny it, 100% right. You make a new youtube account and within a few videos it is putting right wing content in your feed. You watch a right wing video and it suggests more and pretty soon you're chanting that the Jews will not replace us. But that's algorithms, influencer culture, big tech, botnets upvoting/retweeting content, Russian money flowing to DW people, and so forth. What we're doing here is early 2000s era text posting on a forum dedicated to an ancient video game. We don't even have a feed here. None of us are doing shortform clickbait video content. It's just not relevant.
I don't think internet forum discussions are meaningless. For me, it's been a good way to see different points of view and understand why some people make the choices they make. It may sound silly, but this forum has been the main source of my knowledge for US politics.
The other thing is that LLMs are trained on our (as in the broader context) text. Enough GH types talking about genocide enablers or the multiple ways democrats are particularly ineffective, it will get confidently spouted by some bot to some kid somewhere. The points you make, in aggregate, make their way to people's eyeballs.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqxz19lyredo
Pastor who Trump named his "spiritual advisor" pleads guilty to sexual relations with a 12 year old girl.
FBI are probably furiously burning more Epstein files (that definitely don't exist, but the Democrats are definitely on them) in response.
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On October 03 2025 08:48 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2025 06:21 KwarK wrote:On October 03 2025 06:01 LightSpectra wrote:On October 03 2025 05:17 Gorsameth wrote:On October 03 2025 05:04 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 03 2025 04:59 Gorsameth wrote:On October 03 2025 04:44 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 03 2025 04:31 Magic Powers wrote:On October 03 2025 04:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 03 2025 04:06 Magic Powers wrote:
[quote]
I always tell others they need to be better than you in the aspect that they criticize about you. But the same goes for you. You can't demand from others to be better about something unless you're better about it first. I mean, lets be real. Your behavior isn't any more productive than anyone else's here. In terms of achieving change, neither is mine I'm guessing. Just saying. Which answer did you pick and why? And/Or Why didn't you choose any particular answer? And/Or What does your answer look like to you? And/or Is there a more custom answer you would have preferred be up there and why? I won't even opine myself if you all just discuss that for awhile. I might ask questions, but I would be fine being ignored for you to discuss it among yourselves. I chose "The Democratic party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them". But it was a very close call between that and the socialist future option. I'd say the realist in me won this time. I believe you know my argumentation? I want more socialism in my own country, and if I was American I'd definitely want a lot more socialism. I also believe that voting Democrat as much as possible is the path towards more socialism in America. This is where you and I disagree. My preferred answer would be one that views Democrats as only a jumping-off-point. They're not the solution in and of itself, but they are useful. I think Democrats can be pressured into becoming more pro-socialism over time, by the same method that Republicans can be pressured into becoming less racist. That method is to keep voting for the lesser evil (which you disagree with). The lesser evil is Democrats. The next step is to vote for the lesser evil among Democrats. The reason why I think lesser-evilism is currently (!) the right choice is that I don't view Democrats as any worse than Republicans in any particular area. I don't think they're aiding and abetting fascists, I just think they lost their competence since Obama's era and they failed to deal with the Trump beast. They were caught off-guard by a variety of new phenomena. This doesn't make them evil (although some individual Dems are evil, I'm only describing Dems as a group), it makes them fallible people who have to learn. Though likely they'll also have to make way to a wave of new Democrats. That's a much bigger obstacle: some Dems (such as Biden) enjoy their power too much and ruin things for everyone. That's my somewhat nuanced take. I'll stop now, my comment is getting long. Thank you for that. I wonder if we could hear from one/some of the people (if they aren't right-wing) who chose " The Democratic party has has no viable path forward so we need an alternative" and/or " The US has no viable path forward, but to try to protect our loved ones from the worst of it"? I also wonder if anyone else that chose the same answer as you has any significant (or not so significant) disagreements with your elaboration? I don't even see how the "The Democratic party has has no viable path forward so we need an alternative" even works because to me the statement itself is a contradiction. We need a path to the left, and the democrats are not it. therefor we need to find a different party to be that path. A party that gets enough traction and voters to not just threaten, but beat the Democrats and replace them. But if such a voter block exists that can force that then that same voter block can also course correct the Democrats by working from within. You can't have a situation where there is an untapped voter block big enough to beat the Democrats from the left but at the same time unable to move the Democrats themselves left. Thank you for that. Can we infer from that information that you also chose " The Democratic party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them"? I didn't choose " No viable path for Democrats..." myself, but I do wonder if someone that did wants to address your concerns/points? Oh hell no, America is deeply fucked. It is in general deeply conservative and deeply racist (or at best is ok with people around them being deeply racist) and the progressives that would love to pull the country to the left either don't exist as a group large enough to force an influence or can't be arsed to go and vote. As far as I'm concerned Ideocracy has gone from being a parody, to a warning, to becoming a hopeful vision of the future, because atleast the people there were smart enough to recognise an 'expert' and turn to him for advise, which is more then can be said for current day America. Well, we might be fucked. There are some reasons to be optimistic though. We went from racial segregation to gay marriage being legal in all fifty states in less than a lifetime. I'm not convinced the Christo-fascists have won everything yet. AOC said she thinks they're weaker than they look. I agree. They’re making things worse for ordinary people and the worse things get the more right wing people will get. It’s not going to get better. It's making people willing to vote for anti-establishment rhetoric, which some factions on both the left and the right are gaining from at the expense of neoliberalism. I don't think the future is set in stone.
One would think that, but at least here in Germany, and apparently in a lot of other places, left-wing anti-establishment is not gaining anything. All the votes go to the hard right.
Of course, having a viable left-wing party that is not kissing russian ass would be a nice thing. But the right doesn't seem to care about any of that.
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Not in Belgium by the way. We have the PvdA, which is quite hard left even for European standards. They've been gaining some traction in the last election cycles, but it's a hard fought battle as the right leaning parties still take the lion's share. I do think they're taking votes here and there because they're just another "answer" for the systemic issues that plague modern society. They haven't really impressed me yet though.
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EPT
