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The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to is fully in conspiracy theory territory. It was a common-ish talking point on right-wing social media around ~2017 because it fulfills the fascist bulletpoints of depicting the enemy (Democrats) as simultaneously weak and strong, and makes DNC seem like a shadowy cabal pulling the strings of everything in the world including the GOP.
So obviously it's something GH will trot out without context.
Bonus fun fact, it was later revealed that 12 Russian GRU agents were the ones who delivered the emails to WikiLeaks.
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On March 25 2026 04:14 LightSpectra wrote:The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to is fully in conspiracy theory territory. It was a common-ish talking point on right-wing social media around ~2017 because it fulfills the fascist bulletpoints of depicting the enemy (Democrats) as simultaneously weak and strong, and makes DNC seem like a shadowy cabal pulling the strings of everything in the world including the GOP. So obviously it's something GH will trot out without context. Bonus fun fact, it was later revealed that 12 Russian GRU agents were the ones who delivered the emails to WikiLeaks.
Thank you for that, I had it somewhere in the back of my mind but I put it in the bullshit folder where it belongs.
It's funny that those 12 GRU agents were (if I recall correctly) also indicted by Muller who, according to our "centrist" posters here who came to defend Trumps comments on his death was doing a personal which hunt and was trying to destroy Trump, funny how they left the thread as soon as they were called out for that.
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On March 25 2026 03:59 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 03:47 Jankisa wrote:On March 25 2026 02:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 02:38 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2026 02:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 01:58 KwarK wrote:On March 24 2026 23:23 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 12:14 KwarK wrote:
There is no “walk away” option for the US. Abandoning the Persian Gulf entirely would be an absolute surrender. There are a dozen reasons for Iran to keep the strait closed for a long time.
Iran has, so far this war, taken orders of magnitude more damage than the US. The US has lost a handful of planes and crew and a lot of interceptors. Iran has lost its navy, air force, hardened bunkers, warehouses, stockpiles, bases etc., in addition to the new Supreme Leader having had his father, wife, and teenage son killed.
As I keep repeating, the US and Israel peak immediately, they do the most damage on day 1 where they destroy all the highest value targets. On day 2 they destroy the second highest value targets because they can't destroy the highest value targets a second time. On day 3 the third. The longer the war goes the less damage bombing can do. They already killed his wife, they can't do it again.
Iran's retaliation grows steadily over time but doesn't even start to kick in until day 150 or so. There is significant latency between crude oil leaving the Gulf and the diesel in a gas station. Consumers haven't actually seen any impact in supply yet. The prices increases are speculative, suppliers don't want to sell today if they think that the price will be higher tomorrow and they won't have oil tomorrow to sell. And even once the supply does drop the strategic reserves have enough to cover months of the missing output from the Gulf. As the strategic reserves run low the prices will increase. As prices increase additional more expensive sources of oil will be brought online which will be priced accordingly. The longer it goes the higher the price gets.
That is Iran's retaliation. It hasn't started yet and it won't have any deterrence impact if they sign an early ceasefire. Even if Israel and the US stop bombing entirely they still need to interdict it, or charge such high transit fees that prices are higher. They need people to remember that 2026 was the year where there was a global recession caused by high oil prices so that the next time someone wants to bomb Iran they think twice. If Iran opens the strait early then they have no deterrent. They'd be saying "feel free to bomb the shit out of us for a week, we'll announce a disruption but as long as you stocked up the reserve ahead of time you can weather it". They'll get bombed by Israel once a year.
The idea that the US and Israel can beat the shit out of Iran, kill the leader's wife, kill his son, and then call a timeout before he hits back is absurd to me. It would undermine every single part of their publicly stated strategy of using the strait as a last resort deterrent bargaining chip. They constructed this strategy over decades, they know this. It would be national suicide.
The idea that Iran, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, has nothing to gain from spiking oil prices is nuts. The regime and country have been absolutely savaged. I've been hating on American strategy a lot here because the American strategy is nonsensical but that doesn't mean that the USAF can't demolish buildings. They were in terrible shape before and much worse shape now than they were then. If the regime is to survive they need hard foreign currency. They need their oil on the market and as few of their competitors as possible as a matter of national survival. The rebuilding project will not be cheap and there are a lot of regime loyalists who will need to be paid.
Additionally it simply wouldn't make sense not to continue the position that they control the strait. Free navigation of the seas is a postwar American invention enforced by the US Navy. Lots of countries would like to declare that actually they own this bit of water or that bit of water and that everyone has to pay them transit fees or whatever but they haven't been able to because the US Navy will disprove that notion. These waterways aren't just open by default, they're national territory by default, open is an artificial state of affairs that has been constructed and maintained by the US Navy. If the US declares that they're no longer interested in keeping the strait open then it won't suddenly revert to free neutrality under a ceasefire. It'll be owned by the strongest.
This is existential for Iran. Either they establish a convincing deterrent by confronting the US Navy over the strait and winning (which includes the US Navy forfeiting) or they die. There's no deal to be made here where the strait is reopened any time soon, it'll stay closed until such a time as a country with sufficient force projection to open it opens it. Can/should the world make the US a pariah state for an illegal war of choice leading to global recession? How about the European countries facilitating it? Or is the US integrated into the global economy (and their European accomplices dependent) in such a way that they can't be held accountable for their crimes? What would any of that look like? Those are general questions not specific to Kwark btw. + Show Spoiler +The question doesn't really make sense.
Let's imagine a town filled with people. And not civic minded Nordic people who pick up litter when they go for a walk in the woods, let's imagine it's filled with people who would steal Amazon packages from each others' porches. Fortunately there's a chief of police and a police force and they mostly get everyone to behave and as such everyone in the town can benefit from the predictable order of law, they can order things from Amazon, they can leave the house to go to work and still have their stuff when they come home etc. If you start breaking the rules then you're excluded from the society, people won't let you in their shops, they won't sell you gasoline, you get disconnected from utilities, it's a bad time.
Now let's imagine the chief of police fires the police force and burns down the courthouse.
What you're asking is what he should be convicted of and how long he should spend in jail.
It doesn't work.
That is absolutely not the same thing as him getting away with the crime of burning down the courthouse, it's just no longer functional to think of burning down the courthouse as a crime. Getting away with a crime would be continuing to benefit from the society built on a system of rules without being held accountable for breaking them (Israel gets away with having nukes for example). What he has done is remove the rules entirely and return the town to the natural state of anarchy. + Show Spoiler +That is not to say that there won't be consequences, it's just the concept of being prosecuted has gone. The consequences will show up with the power goes off because someone decided to steal the copper in the substation for scrap metal. They'll be more or less self imposed.
In the scenario in which the US engages in an illegal war and sends the world into a global recession while destroying its own alliance system there are no more pariah states and there is no more accountability. This is what Carney was explaining so beautifully at Davos . https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/ I think we're largely in agreement, though I believe Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the US's aiding and abetting of it was enough already. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Basically there's always been "winners and losers" in this scheme (my personal perspective is a bit different), and people like Carney are basically saying that if they're slipping into the "losers" side then it's a good time to abandon ship. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination. From my particular British/European perspective, in both a general sense but also something I argued specifically in the Israel/Palestine instance, was that keeping Trump out of assuming office was so important precisely because other nations and institutions either lacked the capacity or will to rein in a US that abandons all pretence of a lawful world order. Illusory though it might be I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. Oh, wow, breaking news, Trump was selected to be leader of the Republicans by Democrats! That is news to me because from what I remember there was a whole primary campaign where Trump won over a bunch of establishment Republicans, some of whom he still keeps around and humiliates daily. GH is referring to an internal email released by WikiLeaks from which the claim is derived that Hillary Clinton purposefully boosted Trump's Republican primary campaign in 2016 under the assumption that he would be the easiest candidate to defeat in the general election. + Show Spoiler +This is omitting a great deal of information, including that a) they didn't actually spend any money or resources advertising for Trump or anything of the sort, it was just a strategy of who to focus on when criticizing Republicans on the campaign trail ("As the presumed Democratic nominee, whomever she decided to dignify by responding to—whether the comments were directed at her or not—would be presumed to be the spokesperson, or nominee, of the Republican Party", source below), b) they also said the same things about Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, and c) every political party has done thionally not do so.is in every election in modern times because it's generally a useful strategy and you would be an idiot to intent https://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/
Correct. So when you turn around and make the following strawman to triumph over with unrelated rationalizations instead, it has to be willful.
On March 25 2026 04:14 LightSpectra wrote:The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to is fully in conspiracy theory territory. It was a common-ish talking point on right-wing social media around ~2017 because it fulfills the fascist bulletpoints of depicting the enemy (Democrats) as simultaneously weak and strong, and makes DNC seem like a shadowy cabal pulling the strings of everything in the world including the GOP. So obviously it's something GH will trot out without context. Bonus fun fact, it was later revealed that 12 Russian GRU agents were the ones who delivered the emails to WikiLeaks.
The way you guys make up fictional arguments like "The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" is seemingly good for maintaining social cohesion around here, but it is irrefutably toxic to discussion.
I said: ...The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office.
It's a fact. That's what they wanted. Like Wombat's rationalization noted, it was likely a (catastrophic) miscalculation. Democrats chose their candidate, and they got the opposing candidate they wanted, and then lost 2x.
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Calling it a strawman and then immediately double downing on it is a bold move. Unless you're asserting there's a substantial difference between "Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" and Democrats "elevat[ed] Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place". Or you don't know what a strawman is and you're self-soothing because you don't like being fact checked.
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On March 25 2026 05:37 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 05:29 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 03:59 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 03:47 Jankisa wrote:On March 25 2026 02:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 02:38 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2026 02:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 01:58 KwarK wrote:On March 24 2026 23:23 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 24 2026 12:14 KwarK wrote:
There is no “walk away” option for the US. Abandoning the Persian Gulf entirely would be an absolute surrender. There are a dozen reasons for Iran to keep the strait closed for a long time.
Iran has, so far this war, taken orders of magnitude more damage than the US. The US has lost a handful of planes and crew and a lot of interceptors. Iran has lost its navy, air force, hardened bunkers, warehouses, stockpiles, bases etc., in addition to the new Supreme Leader having had his father, wife, and teenage son killed.
As I keep repeating, the US and Israel peak immediately, they do the most damage on day 1 where they destroy all the highest value targets. On day 2 they destroy the second highest value targets because they can't destroy the highest value targets a second time. On day 3 the third. The longer the war goes the less damage bombing can do. They already killed his wife, they can't do it again.
Iran's retaliation grows steadily over time but doesn't even start to kick in until day 150 or so. There is significant latency between crude oil leaving the Gulf and the diesel in a gas station. Consumers haven't actually seen any impact in supply yet. The prices increases are speculative, suppliers don't want to sell today if they think that the price will be higher tomorrow and they won't have oil tomorrow to sell. And even once the supply does drop the strategic reserves have enough to cover months of the missing output from the Gulf. As the strategic reserves run low the prices will increase. As prices increase additional more expensive sources of oil will be brought online which will be priced accordingly. The longer it goes the higher the price gets.
That is Iran's retaliation. It hasn't started yet and it won't have any deterrence impact if they sign an early ceasefire. Even if Israel and the US stop bombing entirely they still need to interdict it, or charge such high transit fees that prices are higher. They need people to remember that 2026 was the year where there was a global recession caused by high oil prices so that the next time someone wants to bomb Iran they think twice. If Iran opens the strait early then they have no deterrent. They'd be saying "feel free to bomb the shit out of us for a week, we'll announce a disruption but as long as you stocked up the reserve ahead of time you can weather it". They'll get bombed by Israel once a year.
The idea that the US and Israel can beat the shit out of Iran, kill the leader's wife, kill his son, and then call a timeout before he hits back is absurd to me. It would undermine every single part of their publicly stated strategy of using the strait as a last resort deterrent bargaining chip. They constructed this strategy over decades, they know this. It would be national suicide.
The idea that Iran, one of the largest oil exporters in the world, has nothing to gain from spiking oil prices is nuts. The regime and country have been absolutely savaged. I've been hating on American strategy a lot here because the American strategy is nonsensical but that doesn't mean that the USAF can't demolish buildings. They were in terrible shape before and much worse shape now than they were then. If the regime is to survive they need hard foreign currency. They need their oil on the market and as few of their competitors as possible as a matter of national survival. The rebuilding project will not be cheap and there are a lot of regime loyalists who will need to be paid.
Additionally it simply wouldn't make sense not to continue the position that they control the strait. Free navigation of the seas is a postwar American invention enforced by the US Navy. Lots of countries would like to declare that actually they own this bit of water or that bit of water and that everyone has to pay them transit fees or whatever but they haven't been able to because the US Navy will disprove that notion. These waterways aren't just open by default, they're national territory by default, open is an artificial state of affairs that has been constructed and maintained by the US Navy. If the US declares that they're no longer interested in keeping the strait open then it won't suddenly revert to free neutrality under a ceasefire. It'll be owned by the strongest.
This is existential for Iran. Either they establish a convincing deterrent by confronting the US Navy over the strait and winning (which includes the US Navy forfeiting) or they die. There's no deal to be made here where the strait is reopened any time soon, it'll stay closed until such a time as a country with sufficient force projection to open it opens it. Can/should the world make the US a pariah state for an illegal war of choice leading to global recession? How about the European countries facilitating it? Or is the US integrated into the global economy (and their European accomplices dependent) in such a way that they can't be held accountable for their crimes? What would any of that look like? Those are general questions not specific to Kwark btw. + Show Spoiler +The question doesn't really make sense.
Let's imagine a town filled with people. And not civic minded Nordic people who pick up litter when they go for a walk in the woods, let's imagine it's filled with people who would steal Amazon packages from each others' porches. Fortunately there's a chief of police and a police force and they mostly get everyone to behave and as such everyone in the town can benefit from the predictable order of law, they can order things from Amazon, they can leave the house to go to work and still have their stuff when they come home etc. If you start breaking the rules then you're excluded from the society, people won't let you in their shops, they won't sell you gasoline, you get disconnected from utilities, it's a bad time.
Now let's imagine the chief of police fires the police force and burns down the courthouse.
What you're asking is what he should be convicted of and how long he should spend in jail.
It doesn't work.
That is absolutely not the same thing as him getting away with the crime of burning down the courthouse, it's just no longer functional to think of burning down the courthouse as a crime. Getting away with a crime would be continuing to benefit from the society built on a system of rules without being held accountable for breaking them (Israel gets away with having nukes for example). What he has done is remove the rules entirely and return the town to the natural state of anarchy. + Show Spoiler +That is not to say that there won't be consequences, it's just the concept of being prosecuted has gone. The consequences will show up with the power goes off because someone decided to steal the copper in the substation for scrap metal. They'll be more or less self imposed.
In the scenario in which the US engages in an illegal war and sends the world into a global recession while destroying its own alliance system there are no more pariah states and there is no more accountability. This is what Carney was explaining so beautifully at Davos . https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/ I think we're largely in agreement, though I believe Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the US's aiding and abetting of it was enough already. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Basically there's always been "winners and losers" in this scheme (my personal perspective is a bit different), and people like Carney are basically saying that if they're slipping into the "losers" side then it's a good time to abandon ship. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination. From my particular British/European perspective, in both a general sense but also something I argued specifically in the Israel/Palestine instance, was that keeping Trump out of assuming office was so important precisely because other nations and institutions either lacked the capacity or will to rein in a US that abandons all pretence of a lawful world order. Illusory though it might be I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. Oh, wow, breaking news, Trump was selected to be leader of the Republicans by Democrats! That is news to me because from what I remember there was a whole primary campaign where Trump won over a bunch of establishment Republicans, some of whom he still keeps around and humiliates daily. GH is referring to an internal email released by WikiLeaks from which the claim is derived that Hillary Clinton purposefully boosted Trump's Republican primary campaign in 2016 under the assumption that he would be the easiest candidate to defeat in the general election. + Show Spoiler +This is omitting a great deal of information, including that a) they didn't actually spend any money or resources advertising for Trump or anything of the sort, it was just a strategy of who to focus on when criticizing Republicans on the campaign trail ("As the presumed Democratic nominee, whomever she decided to dignify by responding to—whether the comments were directed at her or not—would be presumed to be the spokesperson, or nominee, of the Republican Party", source below), b) they also said the same things about Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, and c) every political party has done thionally not do so.is in every election in modern times because it's generally a useful strategy and you would be an idiot to intent https://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/ Correct. So when you turn around and make the following strawman to triumph over with unrelated rationalizations instead, it has to be willful. On March 25 2026 04:14 LightSpectra wrote:The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to is fully in conspiracy theory territory. It was a common-ish talking point on right-wing social media around ~2017 because it fulfills the fascist bulletpoints of depicting the enemy (Democrats) as simultaneously weak and strong, and makes DNC seem like a shadowy cabal pulling the strings of everything in the world including the GOP. So obviously it's something GH will trot out without context. Bonus fun fact, it was later revealed that 12 Russian GRU agents were the ones who delivered the emails to WikiLeaks. The way you guys make up fictional arguments like "The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" is seemingly good for maintaining social cohesion around here, but it is irrefutably toxic to discussion. I said: ... The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. It's a fact. That's what they wanted. Like Wombat's rationalization noted, it was likely a (catastrophic) miscalculation. Democrats chose their candidate, and they got the opposing candidate they wanted, and then lost 2x. Calling it a strawman and then immediately double downing on it is a bold move. Unless you're asserting there's a substantial difference between "Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" and Democrats "elevat[ed] Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place". Or you don't know what a strawman is and you're self-soothing because you don't like being fact checked.
Chances are someone else would have to explain it to you for it to make it through your emotional defenses.
They wanted Trump as their opponent and they got him. Then lost. Twice. You can rationalize it as "actually they just wanted it and didn't try hard" if you'd like, it's just irrelevant to the point.
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The Clinton campaign wanted Republican primary voters to spread their votes out between Trump, Cruz, and Carson instead of consolidating entirely on their stronger candidates like Kasich. (Of course, none of that mattered because despite leading in the polls by >10 points two weeks before election night, any Republican candidate would've ended up winning since FBI Director James Comey handed the election to them on a silver platter by publicly reopening the investigation into Clinton's email server for which she was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing a second time.)
But why bother with the nuanced facts of reality when you can just spread the right-wing conspiracy version of it?
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On March 25 2026 02:07 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 01:55 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:49 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:28 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:21 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:09 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 00:57 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 00:29 Gorsameth wrote:On March 25 2026 00:07 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 23:16 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
So what's your approach to stop harmful ideas from spreading? You didn't refute or argue for either option.
Admit that even the most totalitarian of fascist state is incapable of stopping ideas from spreading no matter how dangerous or harmful the government considers it. Then lower your expectations towards stuff that Democracies can achieve, like spreading better ideas with it and establishing trust that dissent is welcomed but challenged. Ask yourself which examples that Baal brought up that you would consider a harmful idea, or if you’d like your most hated political party to decide which ideas are harmful. In terms of lowering the reach or persuasive power of the absolutely looney conspiracies, I advocate almost no censorship. They thrive on telling you the “truth that the government doesn’t want you to hear.” For platforms, just pin the note on HIV or COVID sourcing to WHO or CDC or AMA. That’s an example of more speech, not less. edit: I see Drone posted while I was composing this, so I’d like to agree with him that education on questioning the source and skepticism of claims more broadly is very important. Your answer is basically to keep doing the thing we are doing that we know isn't working. Because letting people spread misinformation with a little note attached is what we have now Unless you think the world isn't currently drowning in an ever deeping ocean of misinformation, lies and outright propaganda that feeds polarization and violence, keeping the current course seems like a bad idea. We’re living with the entirely foreseen consequences of not doing what I suggested. Go read Baal’s post and tell me where your disagreement is. The disagreement is that undeniable proof can kill a bad idea, which is the central hypothesis Baal put forward. Are you sure he didn’t quote examples illustrating the downsides of censorship? The argument is that you’re doing more harm than good with the described censorship. Re-read his post, or maybe Drone’s response to the response to discover it. You aren’t getting away with straw-manning a post we can all still read. I do not think saying a thing is so, makes it so. If you want to make an argument that letting harmful content just go out unfiltered, you have to actually argue why that would be better, not just state that that would be better. His argument specifically was that it's better to let stuff just rip through the population because the bad ideas will just get killed when they're proven wrong. I believe that argument to be flawed. He argued on how an alternate idea is worse and gave examples that you’re either unwilling or unable to take up. Thats simply a critique of a proposition. It isn’t proposing that his own preference doesn’t have downsides, any more than saying that the free election of leaders by the population at large proposes that no bad leaders will ever be elected. Are you going to make an argument at any point? Censorship has huge downsides. The examples in Baal’s post are ones I’d select too. We’re seeing the bad results of past censorship actions today. The best path is to add notices and pick more speech instead of less speech.
Is your thesis that the current crop of nutty antivaxxers and flat earthers are a result of past censorship?
What is your actual argument? Lay the logic out for me please.
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On March 25 2026 05:52 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 05:44 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 05:37 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 05:29 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 03:59 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 03:47 Jankisa wrote:On March 25 2026 02:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 02:38 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2026 02:13 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 01:58 KwarK wrote:[quote] + Show Spoiler +The question doesn't really make sense.
Let's imagine a town filled with people. And not civic minded Nordic people who pick up litter when they go for a walk in the woods, let's imagine it's filled with people who would steal Amazon packages from each others' porches. Fortunately there's a chief of police and a police force and they mostly get everyone to behave and as such everyone in the town can benefit from the predictable order of law, they can order things from Amazon, they can leave the house to go to work and still have their stuff when they come home etc. If you start breaking the rules then you're excluded from the society, people won't let you in their shops, they won't sell you gasoline, you get disconnected from utilities, it's a bad time.
Now let's imagine the chief of police fires the police force and burns down the courthouse.
What you're asking is what he should be convicted of and how long he should spend in jail.
It doesn't work.
That is absolutely not the same thing as him getting away with the crime of burning down the courthouse, it's just no longer functional to think of burning down the courthouse as a crime. Getting away with a crime would be continuing to benefit from the society built on a system of rules without being held accountable for breaking them (Israel gets away with having nukes for example). What he has done is remove the rules entirely and return the town to the natural state of anarchy. + Show Spoiler +That is not to say that there won't be consequences, it's just the concept of being prosecuted has gone. The consequences will show up with the power goes off because someone decided to steal the copper in the substation for scrap metal. They'll be more or less self imposed.
In the scenario in which the US engages in an illegal war and sends the world into a global recession while destroying its own alliance system there are no more pariah states and there is no more accountability. This is what Carney was explaining so beautifully at Davos . https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/ I think we're largely in agreement, though I believe Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the US's aiding and abetting of it was enough already. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. Basically there's always been "winners and losers" in this scheme (my personal perspective is a bit different), and people like Carney are basically saying that if they're slipping into the "losers" side then it's a good time to abandon ship. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination. From my particular British/European perspective, in both a general sense but also something I argued specifically in the Israel/Palestine instance, was that keeping Trump out of assuming office was so important precisely because other nations and institutions either lacked the capacity or will to rein in a US that abandons all pretence of a lawful world order. Illusory though it might be I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. Oh, wow, breaking news, Trump was selected to be leader of the Republicans by Democrats! That is news to me because from what I remember there was a whole primary campaign where Trump won over a bunch of establishment Republicans, some of whom he still keeps around and humiliates daily. GH is referring to an internal email released by WikiLeaks from which the claim is derived that Hillary Clinton purposefully boosted Trump's Republican primary campaign in 2016 under the assumption that he would be the easiest candidate to defeat in the general election. + Show Spoiler +This is omitting a great deal of information, including that a) they didn't actually spend any money or resources advertising for Trump or anything of the sort, it was just a strategy of who to focus on when criticizing Republicans on the campaign trail ("As the presumed Democratic nominee, whomever she decided to dignify by responding to—whether the comments were directed at her or not—would be presumed to be the spokesperson, or nominee, of the Republican Party", source below), b) they also said the same things about Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, and c) every political party has done thionally not do so.is in every election in modern times because it's generally a useful strategy and you would be an idiot to intent https://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/ Correct. So when you turn around and make the following strawman to triumph over with unrelated rationalizations instead, it has to be willful. On March 25 2026 04:14 LightSpectra wrote:The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to is fully in conspiracy theory territory. It was a common-ish talking point on right-wing social media around ~2017 because it fulfills the fascist bulletpoints of depicting the enemy (Democrats) as simultaneously weak and strong, and makes DNC seem like a shadowy cabal pulling the strings of everything in the world including the GOP. So obviously it's something GH will trot out without context. Bonus fun fact, it was later revealed that 12 Russian GRU agents were the ones who delivered the emails to WikiLeaks. The way you guys make up fictional arguments like "The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" is seemingly good for maintaining social cohesion around here, but it is irrefutably toxic to discussion. I said: ... The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. It's a fact. That's what they wanted. Like Wombat's rationalization noted, it was likely a (catastrophic) miscalculation. Democrats chose their candidate, and they got the opposing candidate they wanted, and then lost 2x. Calling it a strawman and then immediately double downing on it is a bold move. Unless you're asserting there's a substantial difference between "Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" and Democrats "elevat[ed] Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place". Or you don't know what a strawman is and you're self-soothing because you don't like being fact checked. Chances are someone else would have to explain it to you for it to make it through your emotional defenses. They wanted Trump as their opponent and they got him. Then lost. Twice. You can rationalize it as "actually they just wanted it and didn't try hard" if you'd like, it's just irrelevant to the point. The Clinton campaign wanted Republican primary voters to spread their votes out between Trump, Cruz, and Carson instead of consolidating entirely on their stronger candidates like Kasich. (Of course, none of that mattered because despite leading in the polls by >10 points two weeks before election night, any Republican candidate would've ended up winning since FBI Director James Comey handed the election to them on a silver platter by publicly reopening the investigation into Clinton's email server for which she was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing a second time.) But why bother with the nuanced facts of reality when you can just spread the right-wing conspiracy version of it?
You weren't really around, but your assertion that Clinton would have lost to any Republican because of Comey's investigation isn't where people here settled. We pretty much all agreed that saying things like that was silly. That's distinct from saying "it negatively impacted her race", which we would all agree with.
Seems you memoryholed Dems also wanted to go against Trump for 2024 though
Dems relish Trump-Biden rematch
Democrats see former President Donald Trump’s post-indictment political resurgence as alarming for the country ... and great for Joe Biden’s reelection hopes.
Take it from Sen. Debbie Stabenow. The Michigan Democrat had front row seats to the former president’s shocking win in her state in 2016, and then to his loss to Biden four years later.
She thinks a 2024 rematch would look more like the 2020 outcome.
“Trump’s obviously an extremely dangerous person who would be very dangerous for the country. But I’m confident that President Biden could beat him,”
As Trump reels in endorsements, rakes in campaign dollars and reclaims his lead in Republican primary polls, Democrats are growing more enthusiastic about his chances of clinching his party’s nomination. They think Trump would not only maximize Biden’s chances of a second term, but help the party battle for control of Congress.
www.politico.com
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Most of the world operated under the assumption that there was no way America would be stupid enough to vote for Trump.
I don't blame Democrats for underestimating how absolutely fucked up the American voting public is. They had hope (half) the country was redeemable.
They were wrong.
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So Trump keeps talking about non-existing peace talks
President Trump said on Tuesday Iran made a valuable offer to reach a deal with the United States, in negotiations that Iranian officials have so far denied are taking place.
www.npr.org
"We've won this. This war has been won," President Donald J. Trump
24-02-2026.
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On March 25 2026 06:08 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 05:52 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 05:44 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 05:37 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 05:29 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 03:59 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 03:47 Jankisa wrote:On March 25 2026 02:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 02:38 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2026 02:13 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
I think we're largely in agreement, though I believe Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians and the US's aiding and abetting of it was enough already.
[quote]
Basically there's always been "winners and losers" in this scheme (my personal perspective is a bit different), and people like Carney are basically saying that if they're slipping into the "losers" side then it's a good time to abandon ship.
[quote]
From my particular British/European perspective, in both a general sense but also something I argued specifically in the Israel/Palestine instance, was that keeping Trump out of assuming office was so important precisely because other nations and institutions either lacked the capacity or will to rein in a US that abandons all pretence of a lawful world order. Illusory though it might be I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. Oh, wow, breaking news, Trump was selected to be leader of the Republicans by Democrats! That is news to me because from what I remember there was a whole primary campaign where Trump won over a bunch of establishment Republicans, some of whom he still keeps around and humiliates daily. GH is referring to an internal email released by WikiLeaks from which the claim is derived that Hillary Clinton purposefully boosted Trump's Republican primary campaign in 2016 under the assumption that he would be the easiest candidate to defeat in the general election. + Show Spoiler +This is omitting a great deal of information, including that a) they didn't actually spend any money or resources advertising for Trump or anything of the sort, it was just a strategy of who to focus on when criticizing Republicans on the campaign trail ("As the presumed Democratic nominee, whomever she decided to dignify by responding to—whether the comments were directed at her or not—would be presumed to be the spokesperson, or nominee, of the Republican Party", source below), b) they also said the same things about Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, and c) every political party has done thionally not do so.is in every election in modern times because it's generally a useful strategy and you would be an idiot to intent https://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/ Correct. So when you turn around and make the following strawman to triumph over with unrelated rationalizations instead, it has to be willful. On March 25 2026 04:14 LightSpectra wrote:The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to is fully in conspiracy theory territory. It was a common-ish talking point on right-wing social media around ~2017 because it fulfills the fascist bulletpoints of depicting the enemy (Democrats) as simultaneously weak and strong, and makes DNC seem like a shadowy cabal pulling the strings of everything in the world including the GOP. So obviously it's something GH will trot out without context. Bonus fun fact, it was later revealed that 12 Russian GRU agents were the ones who delivered the emails to WikiLeaks. The way you guys make up fictional arguments like "The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" is seemingly good for maintaining social cohesion around here, but it is irrefutably toxic to discussion. I said: ... The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. It's a fact. That's what they wanted. Like Wombat's rationalization noted, it was likely a (catastrophic) miscalculation. Democrats chose their candidate, and they got the opposing candidate they wanted, and then lost 2x. Calling it a strawman and then immediately double downing on it is a bold move. Unless you're asserting there's a substantial difference between "Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" and Democrats "elevat[ed] Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place". Or you don't know what a strawman is and you're self-soothing because you don't like being fact checked. Chances are someone else would have to explain it to you for it to make it through your emotional defenses. They wanted Trump as their opponent and they got him. Then lost. Twice. You can rationalize it as "actually they just wanted it and didn't try hard" if you'd like, it's just irrelevant to the point. The Clinton campaign wanted Republican primary voters to spread their votes out between Trump, Cruz, and Carson instead of consolidating entirely on their stronger candidates like Kasich. (Of course, none of that mattered because despite leading in the polls by >10 points two weeks before election night, any Republican candidate would've ended up winning since FBI Director James Comey handed the election to them on a silver platter by publicly reopening the investigation into Clinton's email server for which she was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing a second time.) But why bother with the nuanced facts of reality when you can just spread the right-wing conspiracy version of it? You weren't really around, but your assertion that Clinton would have lost to any Republican because of Comey's investigation isn't where people here settled. We pretty much all agreed that saying things like that was silly. That's distinct from saying "it negatively impacted her race", which we would all agree with. Seems you memoryholed Dems also wanted to go against Trump for 2024 though Show nested quote +Dems relish Trump-Biden rematch
Democrats see former President Donald Trump’s post-indictment political resurgence as alarming for the country ... and great for Joe Biden’s reelection hopes.
Take it from Sen. Debbie Stabenow. The Michigan Democrat had front row seats to the former president’s shocking win in her state in 2016, and then to his loss to Biden four years later.
She thinks a 2024 rematch would look more like the 2020 outcome.
“Trump’s obviously an extremely dangerous person who would be very dangerous for the country. But I’m confident that President Biden could beat him,”
As Trump reels in endorsements, rakes in campaign dollars and reclaims his lead in Republican primary polls, Democrats are growing more enthusiastic about his chances of clinching his party’s nomination. They think Trump would not only maximize Biden’s chances of a second term, but help the party battle for control of Congress. www.politico.com
I don't know who "we" is, TL.net posters? Am I supposed to assign that some level of expertise or inside knowledge?
The Comey Letter Probably Cost Clinton The Election
Comey concedes he may have been responsible for Trump's election
Are you going to assert Biden is the reason Trump won the 2024 Republican primary too? Based off of an article from April 2023 that basically amounts to "we're confident we'll win" (as if candidates don't routinely say that all the time lol)?
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On March 25 2026 06:15 Gorsameth wrote:
Most of the world operated under the assumption that there was no way America would be stupid enough to vote for Trump.
I don't blame Democrats for underestimating how absolutely fucked up the American voting public is. They had hope (half) the country was redeemable.
They were wrong.
The reality is the United States is an ultra-conservative country where Republicans win by default unless they've fucked up the economy immediately before the election (edit: or Ross Perot is running). Obama's win in 2012 is the only recent exception.
The American voter gave Reagan two terms and the Bushes three terms. They love what they're seeing. Democrats occasionally do stupid shit but there's not much wiggle room when right-wing billionaires own all the social media, almost all the cable news, and a substantial portion of newspapers and radio.
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On March 25 2026 06:21 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 06:08 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 05:52 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 05:44 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 05:37 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 05:29 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 03:59 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 03:47 Jankisa wrote:On March 25 2026 02:51 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 02:38 WombaT wrote:
[quote]
From my particular British/European perspective, in both a general sense but also something I argued specifically in the Israel/Palestine instance, was that keeping Trump out of assuming office was so important precisely because other nations and institutions either lacked the capacity or will to rein in a US that abandons all pretence of a lawful world order. Illusory though it might be I know the point you're trying to raise and we don't disagree that keeping Trump out of office was an inflection point. We disagree on how that could/should have been done. The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. Oh, wow, breaking news, Trump was selected to be leader of the Republicans by Democrats! That is news to me because from what I remember there was a whole primary campaign where Trump won over a bunch of establishment Republicans, some of whom he still keeps around and humiliates daily. GH is referring to an internal email released by WikiLeaks from which the claim is derived that Hillary Clinton purposefully boosted Trump's Republican primary campaign in 2016 under the assumption that he would be the easiest candidate to defeat in the general election. + Show Spoiler +This is omitting a great deal of information, including that a) they didn't actually spend any money or resources advertising for Trump or anything of the sort, it was just a strategy of who to focus on when criticizing Republicans on the campaign trail ("As the presumed Democratic nominee, whomever she decided to dignify by responding to—whether the comments were directed at her or not—would be presumed to be the spokesperson, or nominee, of the Republican Party", source below), b) they also said the same things about Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, and c) every political party has done thionally not do so.is in every election in modern times because it's generally a useful strategy and you would be an idiot to intent https://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/ Correct. So when you turn around and make the following strawman to triumph over with unrelated rationalizations instead, it has to be willful. On March 25 2026 04:14 LightSpectra wrote:The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to is fully in conspiracy theory territory. It was a common-ish talking point on right-wing social media around ~2017 because it fulfills the fascist bulletpoints of depicting the enemy (Democrats) as simultaneously weak and strong, and makes DNC seem like a shadowy cabal pulling the strings of everything in the world including the GOP. So obviously it's something GH will trot out without context. Bonus fun fact, it was later revealed that 12 Russian GRU agents were the ones who delivered the emails to WikiLeaks. The way you guys make up fictional arguments like "The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" is seemingly good for maintaining social cohesion around here, but it is irrefutably toxic to discussion. I said: ... The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. It's a fact. That's what they wanted. Like Wombat's rationalization noted, it was likely a (catastrophic) miscalculation. Democrats chose their candidate, and they got the opposing candidate they wanted, and then lost 2x. Calling it a strawman and then immediately double downing on it is a bold move. Unless you're asserting there's a substantial difference between "Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" and Democrats "elevat[ed] Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place". Or you don't know what a strawman is and you're self-soothing because you don't like being fact checked. Chances are someone else would have to explain it to you for it to make it through your emotional defenses. They wanted Trump as their opponent and they got him. Then lost. Twice. You can rationalize it as "actually they just wanted it and didn't try hard" if you'd like, it's just irrelevant to the point. The Clinton campaign wanted Republican primary voters to spread their votes out between Trump, Cruz, and Carson instead of consolidating entirely on their stronger candidates like Kasich. (Of course, none of that mattered because despite leading in the polls by >10 points two weeks before election night, any Republican candidate would've ended up winning since FBI Director James Comey handed the election to them on a silver platter by publicly reopening the investigation into Clinton's email server for which she was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing a second time.) But why bother with the nuanced facts of reality when you can just spread the right-wing conspiracy version of it? You weren't really around, but your assertion that Clinton would have lost to any Republican because of Comey's investigation isn't where people here settled. We pretty much all agreed that saying things like that was silly. That's distinct from saying "it negatively impacted her race", which we would all agree with. Seems you memoryholed Dems also wanted to go against Trump for 2024 though Dems relish Trump-Biden rematch
Democrats see former President Donald Trump’s post-indictment political resurgence as alarming for the country ... and great for Joe Biden’s reelection hopes.
Take it from Sen. Debbie Stabenow. The Michigan Democrat had front row seats to the former president’s shocking win in her state in 2016, and then to his loss to Biden four years later.
She thinks a 2024 rematch would look more like the 2020 outcome.
“Trump’s obviously an extremely dangerous person who would be very dangerous for the country. But I’m confident that President Biden could beat him,”
As Trump reels in endorsements, rakes in campaign dollars and reclaims his lead in Republican primary polls, Democrats are growing more enthusiastic about his chances of clinching his party’s nomination. They think Trump would not only maximize Biden’s chances of a second term, but help the party battle for control of Congress. www.politico.com I don't know who "we" is, TL.net posters? + Show Spoiler + Yes. They will have to correct you on this at this point.
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Walk me through why I should give even the tiniest of fucks what the 2017 TL.net US Politics Mega-thread consensus was?
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On March 25 2026 07:09 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 07:08 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 06:21 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 06:08 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 05:52 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 05:44 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 05:37 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 05:29 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 25 2026 03:59 LightSpectra wrote:On March 25 2026 03:47 Jankisa wrote:
[quote]
Oh, wow, breaking news, Trump was selected to be leader of the Republicans by Democrats! That is news to me because from what I remember there was a whole primary campaign where Trump won over a bunch of establishment Republicans, some of whom he still keeps around and humiliates daily. GH is referring to an internal email released by WikiLeaks from which the claim is derived that Hillary Clinton purposefully boosted Trump's Republican primary campaign in 2016 under the assumption that he would be the easiest candidate to defeat in the general election. + Show Spoiler +This is omitting a great deal of information, including that a) they didn't actually spend any money or resources advertising for Trump or anything of the sort, it was just a strategy of who to focus on when criticizing Republicans on the campaign trail ("As the presumed Democratic nominee, whomever she decided to dignify by responding to—whether the comments were directed at her or not—would be presumed to be the spokesperson, or nominee, of the Republican Party", source below), b) they also said the same things about Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, and c) every political party has done thionally not do so.is in every election in modern times because it's generally a useful strategy and you would be an idiot to intent https://observer.com/2016/10/wikileaks-reveals-dnc-elevated-trump-to-help-clinton/ Correct. So when you turn around and make the following strawman to triumph over with unrelated rationalizations instead, it has to be willful. On March 25 2026 04:14 LightSpectra wrote:The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to is fully in conspiracy theory territory. It was a common-ish talking point on right-wing social media around ~2017 because it fulfills the fascist bulletpoints of depicting the enemy (Democrats) as simultaneously weak and strong, and makes DNC seem like a shadowy cabal pulling the strings of everything in the world including the GOP. So obviously it's something GH will trot out without context. Bonus fun fact, it was later revealed that 12 Russian GRU agents were the ones who delivered the emails to WikiLeaks. The way you guys make up fictional arguments like "The idea that Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" is seemingly good for maintaining social cohesion around here, but it is irrefutably toxic to discussion. I said: ... The fact is that Democrats tried what they wanted (including elevating Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place) and lost. Twice. Then Biden failed to use the potential power the SCOTUS gave him to prevent Trump from taking office. It's a fact. That's what they wanted. Like Wombat's rationalization noted, it was likely a (catastrophic) miscalculation. Democrats chose their candidate, and they got the opposing candidate they wanted, and then lost 2x. Calling it a strawman and then immediately double downing on it is a bold move. Unless you're asserting there's a substantial difference between "Trump only won the 2016 Republican primary because Clinton willed him to" and Democrats "elevat[ed] Trump to the leader of Republicans in the first place". Or you don't know what a strawman is and you're self-soothing because you don't like being fact checked. Chances are someone else would have to explain it to you for it to make it through your emotional defenses. They wanted Trump as their opponent and they got him. Then lost. Twice. You can rationalize it as "actually they just wanted it and didn't try hard" if you'd like, it's just irrelevant to the point. The Clinton campaign wanted Republican primary voters to spread their votes out between Trump, Cruz, and Carson instead of consolidating entirely on their stronger candidates like Kasich. (Of course, none of that mattered because despite leading in the polls by >10 points two weeks before election night, any Republican candidate would've ended up winning since FBI Director James Comey handed the election to them on a silver platter by publicly reopening the investigation into Clinton's email server for which she was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing a second time.) But why bother with the nuanced facts of reality when you can just spread the right-wing conspiracy version of it? You weren't really around, but your assertion that Clinton would have lost to any Republican because of Comey's investigation isn't where people here settled. We pretty much all agreed that saying things like that was silly. That's distinct from saying "it negatively impacted her race", which we would all agree with. Seems you memoryholed Dems also wanted to go against Trump for 2024 though Dems relish Trump-Biden rematch
Democrats see former President Donald Trump’s post-indictment political resurgence as alarming for the country ... and great for Joe Biden’s reelection hopes.
Take it from Sen. Debbie Stabenow. The Michigan Democrat had front row seats to the former president’s shocking win in her state in 2016, and then to his loss to Biden four years later.
She thinks a 2024 rematch would look more like the 2020 outcome.
“Trump’s obviously an extremely dangerous person who would be very dangerous for the country. But I’m confident that President Biden could beat him,”
As Trump reels in endorsements, rakes in campaign dollars and reclaims his lead in Republican primary polls, Democrats are growing more enthusiastic about his chances of clinching his party’s nomination. They think Trump would not only maximize Biden’s chances of a second term, but help the party battle for control of Congress. www.politico.com I don't know who "we" is, TL.net posters? + Show Spoiler + Yes. They will have to correct you on this at this point. Walk me through why I should give even the tiniest of fucks what the 2017 TL.net US Politics Mega-thread consensus was?
I'm saying you're not disagreeing with me, you're disagreeing with basically everyone and they'll have a much better chance at getting you to understand why you're being silly about this.
If they won't, it is demonstrative of part of the toxic social cohesion/discussion habits I mentioned.
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I'll go to the grave weeping that I trusted political science experts and primary sources instead of the 2017 TL.net US Politics Mega-thread consensus.
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On March 25 2026 02:07 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 01:55 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:49 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:28 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:21 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:09 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 00:57 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 00:29 Gorsameth wrote:On March 25 2026 00:07 dyhb wrote:On March 24 2026 23:16 EnDeR_ wrote:
[quote]
So what's your approach to stop harmful ideas from spreading? You didn't refute or argue for either option.
Admit that even the most totalitarian of fascist state is incapable of stopping ideas from spreading no matter how dangerous or harmful the government considers it. Then lower your expectations towards stuff that Democracies can achieve, like spreading better ideas with it and establishing trust that dissent is welcomed but challenged. Ask yourself which examples that Baal brought up that you would consider a harmful idea, or if you’d like your most hated political party to decide which ideas are harmful. In terms of lowering the reach or persuasive power of the absolutely looney conspiracies, I advocate almost no censorship. They thrive on telling you the “truth that the government doesn’t want you to hear.” For platforms, just pin the note on HIV or COVID sourcing to WHO or CDC or AMA. That’s an example of more speech, not less. edit: I see Drone posted while I was composing this, so I’d like to agree with him that education on questioning the source and skepticism of claims more broadly is very important. Your answer is basically to keep doing the thing we are doing that we know isn't working. Because letting people spread misinformation with a little note attached is what we have now Unless you think the world isn't currently drowning in an ever deeping ocean of misinformation, lies and outright propaganda that feeds polarization and violence, keeping the current course seems like a bad idea. We’re living with the entirely foreseen consequences of not doing what I suggested. Go read Baal’s post and tell me where your disagreement is. The disagreement is that undeniable proof can kill a bad idea, which is the central hypothesis Baal put forward. Are you sure he didn’t quote examples illustrating the downsides of censorship? The argument is that you’re doing more harm than good with the described censorship. Re-read his post, or maybe Drone’s response to the response to discover it. You aren’t getting away with straw-manning a post we can all still read. I do not think saying a thing is so, makes it so. If you want to make an argument that letting harmful content just go out unfiltered, you have to actually argue why that would be better, not just state that that would be better. His argument specifically was that it's better to let stuff just rip through the population because the bad ideas will just get killed when they're proven wrong. I believe that argument to be flawed. He argued on how an alternate idea is worse and gave examples that you’re either unwilling or unable to take up. Thats simply a critique of a proposition. It isn’t proposing that his own preference doesn’t have downsides, any more than saying that the free election of leaders by the population at large proposes that no bad leaders will ever be elected. Are you going to make an argument at any point? Censorship has huge downsides. The examples in Baal’s post are ones I’d select too. We’re seeing the bad results of past censorship actions today. The best path is to add notices and pick more speech instead of less speech.
I don't think people distrust (the) government because censorship. I also think people should have a fair and healthy amount of distrust of the government. I also know people have and will exploit this mistrust for profit (infowars, ivermectin).
My problem isn't the risks of censorship (as I've said before I think we have to draw a line somewhere) it's that people abuse freedom of speech to actively harm others for profit. I see 'soft censorship' in the form of corrective notes like we saw rise during covid as just as problematic as hard censorship.
People in the conspiracy circles already lean into martyrdom a la "I'll get banned for saying this" or "Youtube doesnt want you to hear this but..." and having a 'corrective note' is just going to leverage natral distrust further, in the same way (and arguably worse than) full censorship would.
Not that I advocate full censorship often. Just saying that if censorship is actively harmful then soft censorship would be actively harmful for the same reasons, meaning 'more speech' in this way is not a solution.
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Northern Ireland26440 Posts
I’m still unsure what the point of this tangent is overall.
That the Dems are bad for going ‘hm, we hope x is our opponent in the election because we think they’re a great matchup for us’ and getting that wrong? Something basically every political party does, if not publicly then certainly in private?
I think it would be a different kettle of fish if the Dem machine was sneakily funding Trump’s rise or something like that, then yeah they’re not guilty merely of misjudging things, but actively culpable.
But as far as I’m aware that isn’t the case
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On March 25 2026 07:38 WombaT wrote:
I’m still unsure what the point of this tangent is overall.
That the Dems are bad for going ‘hm, we hope x is our opponent in the election because we think they’re a great matchup for us’ and getting that wrong? Something basically every political party does, if not publicly then certainly in private?
I think it would be a different kettle of fish if the Dem machine was sneakily funding Trump’s rise or something like that, then yeah they’re not guilty merely of misjudging things, but actively culpable.
But as far as I’m aware that isn’t the case
It's even dumber than that. It was the Clinton campaign saying "when criticizing Republicans we should specifically mention the shittiest three candidates so the angriest, most contrarian Republican primary voters spread out their votes among them instead of all voting for the one strongest candidate". You have to squint so hard you pass out to get "Democrats made Trump president" out of that, but it fits so well into fascist rhetoric that they can't help themselves.
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On March 25 2026 05:59 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 02:07 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:55 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:49 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:28 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:21 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:09 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 00:57 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 00:29 Gorsameth wrote:On March 25 2026 00:07 dyhb wrote:
[quote]Admit that even the most totalitarian of fascist state is incapable of stopping ideas from spreading no matter how dangerous or harmful the government considers it. Then lower your expectations towards stuff that Democracies can achieve, like spreading better ideas with it and establishing trust that dissent is welcomed but challenged. Ask yourself which examples that Baal brought up that you would consider a harmful idea, or if you’d like your most hated political party to decide which ideas are harmful.
In terms of lowering the reach or persuasive power of the absolutely looney conspiracies, I advocate almost no censorship. They thrive on telling you the “truth that the government doesn’t want you to hear.” For platforms, just pin the note on HIV or COVID sourcing to WHO or CDC or AMA. That’s an example of more speech, not less.
edit: I see Drone posted while I was composing this, so I’d like to agree with him that education on questioning the source and skepticism of claims more broadly is very important. Your answer is basically to keep doing the thing we are doing that we know isn't working. Because letting people spread misinformation with a little note attached is what we have now Unless you think the world isn't currently drowning in an ever deeping ocean of misinformation, lies and outright propaganda that feeds polarization and violence, keeping the current course seems like a bad idea. We’re living with the entirely foreseen consequences of not doing what I suggested. Go read Baal’s post and tell me where your disagreement is. The disagreement is that undeniable proof can kill a bad idea, which is the central hypothesis Baal put forward. Are you sure he didn’t quote examples illustrating the downsides of censorship? The argument is that you’re doing more harm than good with the described censorship. Re-read his post, or maybe Drone’s response to the response to discover it. You aren’t getting away with straw-manning a post we can all still read. I do not think saying a thing is so, makes it so. If you want to make an argument that letting harmful content just go out unfiltered, you have to actually argue why that would be better, not just state that that would be better. His argument specifically was that it's better to let stuff just rip through the population because the bad ideas will just get killed when they're proven wrong. I believe that argument to be flawed. He argued on how an alternate idea is worse and gave examples that you’re either unwilling or unable to take up. Thats simply a critique of a proposition. It isn’t proposing that his own preference doesn’t have downsides, any more than saying that the free election of leaders by the population at large proposes that no bad leaders will ever be elected. Are you going to make an argument at any point? Censorship has huge downsides. The examples in Baal’s post are ones I’d select too. We’re seeing the bad results of past censorship actions today. The best path is to add notices and pick more speech instead of less speech. Is your thesis that the current crop of nutty antivaxxers and flat earthers are a result of past censorship? What is your actual argument? Lay the logic out for me please. Some of the recent growth of the antivax movement is, certainly. Which you should already know from the post I have been referring to. Just examine and respond to actual claims instead of doing this "Omg, are you saying that?" twisting act. I doubt repeating them will help you any more than the first saying did. I also said that the goal was a reduction of reach and persuasion, not complete elimination. Some people will just get fooled every time, no matter what you do.
Now I tried a couple times to obtain a pertinent comment on the original examples of censorship backfiring, and if you don't have an argument perhaps you can just give an opinion, but here's a third time to try to get some focus. It's the first link of the post. What do you think about the examples of past attempts that backfire, and does that at all shape or change your opinion on censorship regimes? You don't have to think it's a cure-all, you don't have to malign people that think it's a worse approach, but you should give your own opinion or argument or evidence to why it's not true.
On March 25 2026 07:31 Fleetfeet wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 02:07 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:55 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:49 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:28 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 01:21 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 01:09 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 00:57 dyhb wrote:On March 25 2026 00:29 Gorsameth wrote:On March 25 2026 00:07 dyhb wrote:
[quote]Admit that even the most totalitarian of fascist state is incapable of stopping ideas from spreading no matter how dangerous or harmful the government considers it. Then lower your expectations towards stuff that Democracies can achieve, like spreading better ideas with it and establishing trust that dissent is welcomed but challenged. Ask yourself which examples that Baal brought up that you would consider a harmful idea, or if you’d like your most hated political party to decide which ideas are harmful.
In terms of lowering the reach or persuasive power of the absolutely looney conspiracies, I advocate almost no censorship. They thrive on telling you the “truth that the government doesn’t want you to hear.” For platforms, just pin the note on HIV or COVID sourcing to WHO or CDC or AMA. That’s an example of more speech, not less.
edit: I see Drone posted while I was composing this, so I’d like to agree with him that education on questioning the source and skepticism of claims more broadly is very important. Your answer is basically to keep doing the thing we are doing that we know isn't working. Because letting people spread misinformation with a little note attached is what we have now Unless you think the world isn't currently drowning in an ever deeping ocean of misinformation, lies and outright propaganda that feeds polarization and violence, keeping the current course seems like a bad idea. We’re living with the entirely foreseen consequences of not doing what I suggested. Go read Baal’s post and tell me where your disagreement is. The disagreement is that undeniable proof can kill a bad idea, which is the central hypothesis Baal put forward. Are you sure he didn’t quote examples illustrating the downsides of censorship? The argument is that you’re doing more harm than good with the described censorship. Re-read his post, or maybe Drone’s response to the response to discover it. You aren’t getting away with straw-manning a post we can all still read. I do not think saying a thing is so, makes it so. If you want to make an argument that letting harmful content just go out unfiltered, you have to actually argue why that would be better, not just state that that would be better. His argument specifically was that it's better to let stuff just rip through the population because the bad ideas will just get killed when they're proven wrong. I believe that argument to be flawed. He argued on how an alternate idea is worse and gave examples that you’re either unwilling or unable to take up. Thats simply a critique of a proposition. It isn’t proposing that his own preference doesn’t have downsides, any more than saying that the free election of leaders by the population at large proposes that no bad leaders will ever be elected. Are you going to make an argument at any point? Censorship has huge downsides. The examples in Baal’s post are ones I’d select too. We’re seeing the bad results of past censorship actions today. The best path is to add notices and pick more speech instead of less speech. I don't think people distrust (the) government because censorship. I also think people should have a fair and healthy amount of distrust of the government. I also know people have and will exploit this mistrust for profit (infowars, ivermectin). My problem isn't the risks of censorship (as I've said before I think we have to draw a line somewhere) it's that people abuse freedom of speech to actively harm others for profit. I see 'soft censorship' in the form of corrective notes like we saw rise during covid as just as problematic as hard censorship. People in the conspiracy circles already lean into martyrdom a la "I'll get banned for saying this" or "Youtube doesnt want you to hear this but..." and having a 'corrective note' is just going to leverage natral distrust further, in the same way (and arguably worse than) full censorship would. Not that I advocate full censorship often. Just saying that if censorship is actively harmful then soft censorship would be actively harmful for the same reasons, meaning 'more speech' in this way is not a solution. I think the distrust grew during the COVID times by committing these avoidable errors.
I acknowledge that the people who are into martyrdom will say ""I'll get banned for saying this" even in a risk-free environment. So don't make their comments literally true! That's going to let the loons tell their more normal friends that their buddy aint full of shit---he actually got banned or censored.
I'm ok with a few narrow avenues addressing "harm others for profit," such as real lawsuits for defamation or class action (ie false advertising or bad medical advice). Detail the harm and get a civil trial with a jury and monetary damages on the line.
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EPT
