I would really rather that these were actual examples, and not conspiracy theories. We all have our own unsubstantiated ideas about what shadowy no-gooders are doing, but I’d rather hear about things that are actually happening.
Anyone that says J6 was a “peaceful protest” that “got out of hand”
We all saw the footage of that day. There were gallows and calls to hang a sitting vice president.
It was an insurrection, fomented and encouraged by Donald Trump’s speech and actions leading up to that day. Plain and simple.
The right-wingers who say it wasn’t as serious as it was are gaslighting their base.
Edit: Victims of gaslighting in my replies
Sounds exactly like CNN’s headline “fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting” after the George Floyd protests where like, 30 people died.
Do you not think it’s relevant to point out that:
- Only 3.7% of the protests involved vandalism or property damage
- Only 2.3% of the protests involved any sort of violence (excluding vandalism or property damage)
- Much of the violence was directed against the BLM protesters
- Much of the violence was begun or escalated by police (who are supposed to be trained to de-escalate)
- Much of the property damage and property damage was not linked to protesters
If 5% of the people involved at violent BLM protests were violent and if the numbers above reflected only protester initiated violence, then that would mean roughly 0.12% of BLM protesters (or 1 in a thousand) were violent. But since, as we know, most of the violence was directed against them, that number is probably more like 0.05%, or 5 in 10,000. Obviously that number would be much worse for the actual instigators of most of the violence (police and far-right Trump supporters).
Also weird that you say “like 30 people” died when it was more like 10:
- 8 BLM protesters
- 1 far-right, pro-Trump protester, who was shot by a self-identified anti-fascist protester who said he had been acting in self-defense
- the above anti-fascist protester, who was shot by police
Yes, there were like 25 deaths related to political unrest in 2020, but most of those were not at BLM protests. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed-protests-political-unrest-acled
But hey, keep telling yourself that an active, intentionally orchestrated attempt by Trump and his supporters to violently overturn the results of our Presidential election was “basically the same thing lol” as a bunch of people who were protesting police violence and racism.
It’s comments like this that make me glad Lemmy has a star that lets you favorite them. Thank you very much.
an active, intentionally orchestrated attempt by Trump and his supporters to violently overturn the results of our Presidential election was “basically the same thing lol” as a bunch of people who were protesting police violence and racism.
Yes, that’s exactly what I said. -_-
Across the country? Damn that’s like less than a person per major city and I saw how brutally the police attacked protestors. If it hadn’t been mostly peaceful it’d’ve been in the hundreds dead.
I get your /s but I don’t think anyone should be dying in a protest, regardless of how small that number is relatively speaking.
I fully agree. That said these raw numbers are often used to condemn nationwide protests over legitimate grievances of police brutality and extrajudicial killings in which the police often initiated violence against the protesters. 30 people. 30 too many, but not nearly enough to condemn the protests as violent given their scale. 15,000,000-26,000,000 Americans participated in protests that summer knowing full well that they’d face tear gas, rubber bullets, and whatever else the cops felt like using. And 30 people died in the largest protests the country has ever seen.
All this to try to do whataboutism against an attempted coup in which people marched into the capitol building, some carrying weapons, chanting to hang the vice president for daring to certify an election
I’m not so sure you do get it because it seems like you want to hold protesters to the exact same moral judgment, despite agreeing with a factual analysis of how infrequent the most egregious behaviors were.
If you understand that, and, more importantly comprehend it, then that needs to cash out in your moral assessment of what happened, otherwise you have no business saying you agree or that you understand.
If the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, then the opposite of “I understand” is not “I don’t understand”, it’s “I understand, but still…”
Doesn’t seem like you got it considering you imagined an /s
One side lying doesn’t make the other side’s lie true, or justified, or anything else but a lie
Exactly.
You know what the word ‘mostly’ means, right?
How’s that exactly alike?
Conversely, anyone who says January 6th was a coup or anything approaching more then a wet fart. We should be so lucky that a fascist police state could be overthrown by 200 disorganized unarmed people walking into the capitol.
Whether it was a successful coup is a separate matter.
The problem wasn’t them getting anywhere near literally overthrowing the entire state, but the fact that they were trying/hoping to kill people.
There’s so many levels on which it is deeply concerning. One is just on the face value. They actually did storm the capital, the security forces in place seemed ambivalent or perhaps actually complicit to some degree. Nevertheless, numerous people were injured or died.
And then there’s everything about the precedent it sets for next time, the excuses and defenses being made of it, and the ways in which those sympathetic to it may prepare to execute on the same idea again in the future, perhaps learning from prior lessons, and perhaps confident that they won’t face any legal exposure.
It’s a horrifying idea to have been allowed to take root in the form of real physical actions, which are then carried forward in culture to set the stage for future actions.
We should be so lucky that a fascist police state could be overthrown by 200 disorganized unarmed people walking into the capitol.
It wasn’t just 200 disorganised unarmed people, it was 200 partially-organised partially-armed people with explicit support from the sitting president trying to disturb the proceedings, so the president could carry out his plan to use “alternate electors”.
Why do people like you always act like the republicans weren’t hoping to capitalise on what happened?
200? What planet do you live on? Watch a video of it. Read the January 6th Commission report.
On the day it happend I watched the videos being shared by the people participating amongst each other. There were tremendously more than 200 people.
Are you trying to illustrate the point?
It wasn’t 200, it was 2000.
And while most did not carry guns, they brought other weapons and armor, and used improvised devices as weapons. And some did bring guns. Source: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/07/28/politics/armed-insurrection-january-6-guns-fact-check/index.html
Thank God they were poorly organized and that the capitol police resisted…but it’s a complete lie to say it was 200 unarmed people.
This is all on video! This isn’t a matter of opinion!
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.
“I have to admit, I’m always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up,” the CIA agent says.
“Thank you,” the KGB says. “We do our best but truly, it’s nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them.”
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. “Thank you friend, but you must be confused… There’s no propaganda in America.”
…in Ba Sing Se
In the old age homes of Virginia and Maryland.
There’s no propaganda in America.
promptly fires everyone who criticizes Israel
“Democrats are liberal/progressive”
In reality, they’re pretty conservative.
The Overton Window
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
A concept where political discourse is slowly shifted to one side or another over time. For example conservatism.
Politics are talked about the right who move even further right, the centralists are moved to old right and the leftists are moved to the center … the old leftists are now seen as extreme and unacceptable while the far right are also unacceptable but gain some ground … everyone shifts one step to the right and now everything is more conservative.
The right shift is what is happening now … but it can happen and shift towards the left as well.
They are still liberal though but not progressives. Liberalism isn’t necessarily a left wing ideology.
A lot of leftists (and I hardly ever saw it before coming on Lemmy) use ‘Liberal’ to mean Classic or Neo Liberal - basically a synonym of capitalist… That’s not at all what it means in American politics, where it means the opposite of Conservative. If we used that definition, Conservatives would be called Liberals as well as Liberals being Liberals, which obviously makes no sense for US lingo. However, they both are Liberals in the neo/classic sense as most US Liberals aren’t calling for communism.
The conservatives are only liberal in the economic sense. They are the party of book banning, anti-abortion and anti-lgbtq. Liberalism is also about human rights and freedoms. But just because you think gays should be allowed to marry and acces to have an abortion should be a right that doesn’t put you left on the political spectrum or even make you a progressive. Since that is pretty much a centrist political position in the rest of the world. Most Democrats are liberal in the economic sense but also in the human liberty sense. But only a few Democrats in the house and senate can be truly called progressives. Since most Democrats are fine with the status quo and aren’t pushing society forward. They are just fighting of the attacks of the GOP
This sort of confusion is why I think we need to always define economic and social political positions separately rather than lump them together.
You’d need more than two parties for that.
Good
Right, I agree. The progressive side of the US is not fairly represented by Democrats nationally.
That’s not at all what it means in American politics
Two red scares and a cold war created an Orwellian memory hole such that Americans don’t even have the words anymore. It’s double-plus ungood.
Liberalism isn’t necessarily a left wing ideology.
It’s an inherently right wing ideology lol. They’re just conservatives that want/like to think they’re progressive.
Liberal economic theories beleive the free market is the best solution generally, but allow the free market to be intervened in or even entirely supplanted in cases of market failure or where significant social problems arise from private ownership. There is a lot of debate inside liberalism as to when a market has failed, or when a social issue requires intervention, which is why sometimes you will see centrist liberals and left liberals arguing. Just look at Canada with our Liberal Party, its a big tent party with a small social democrat rump(since most social Dems are NDP), a larger social liberal / left liberal group, as well as some centrist and “blue liberals” (these would be right liberals, who are harder to convince about market failures).
Liberalism can be progressive, especially when the main thrust of a liberal party is left liberal or social liberal. Some Liberal parties are progressive sometimes, then more centrist at others as members and the membership changes over the years (or often on the strength and leanings of their leader). All still liberalism.
The real lie is the notion that “liberalism” was ever anything other than right-wing to begin with, let alone adjacent to progressivism.
By any civilized standard democrat politicians are far right extremists (a few token exceptions are closer to right or even center-right on some points, but they have little effect on the whole). Republicans are outright deranged lunatics, mixed with a worryingly increasing percentage of fascists.
Socially left, but not communist
“brexit will bring in more trade! brexit will provide 350 million to the NHS!”
On a related note the whole notion extremely prevalent in the UK that all they have to do is decide they want to rejoin and it will happen. No matter which side of that a commentator is on, they almost never mention that they need to present something the EU27 actually want and convince them that the UK is not the ‘break international agreements’ kind of country any more. Overall the British still all seem to think that they are something better than everyone else and others have to do what they want and have no real agency.
You could call it a colonial mindset. Wonder where that way have come from.
The thing I loved about that lie is even as a 20 something who’d never been to that hemisphere I knew it was a lie because weren’t these the people trying to kill the NHS
The idea that they could leave and somehow get better trade deals, especially with European countries. The EU is the deal! It’s a trade agreement that favors the participants, how could they ever get a better deal?? What’s baffling is that a lot of older people voted for it and they can actually remember when the UK joined the EU. That means they realize that the UK joined for the deal but somehow that’s worth nothing.
A lot of those older people are racist and blame foreigners for literally every problem, and continuously vote against themselves
Vaccines will give you autism, microchips, actual diseases etc. It’s one of the best medical breakthroughs in history and we have idiots ruining it.
I got the vaccine and currently have autism, microchips and an actual disease! Checkmate!
Though I’m pretty sure they’re all not connected to each other.
You have a microchip in you? Curious about how/why, tell me more.
“vaccines will give you microchips” - nowhere does it say that the microchips will be given to me in a way that they end up in me. Maybe they’re just a nice side present that comes in the same box as the vaccine.
“I […] currently have […] microchips” - nowhere does it say I have them in me, just that I have them. I have them in my desktop computer, phone, and other electronical devices, and I’ve currently not shoved my smart dildo up my ass, so all outside me.
I thought you had one of the heartbeat aiding implements or such.
The concept of trickle down economics. Anyone with a functioning brain can tell you that it would never work. But somehow people as a whole in the US still think giving corporations and rich cunts extra money, and tax breaks somehow lead to the 99% reaping a benefit.
It has never been true because the basic function of capitalism is to get as much money as possible, while spending the least amount of money to do it. There’s no room for passing on the extra profits to your employees, clients, or vendors.
Supply-side Jesus (short animation) is a brilliant take on trickle-down economics and circular arguments about why the successful are successful and the poor are poor.
“Tax cuts will double our revenues and ensure that the empire never declines or falls!”
“Should you feed the lepers, Supply side Jesus?”
“No Thomas, that would just make them lazy.”
“Then shouldn’t you at least heal them Supply Side Jesus?”
“No James, leprosy is a matter of personal responsibility. If people knew I was healing the lepers there would be no incentive to avoid leprosy”Lol yep, any child who has played monopoly a few times can see how capitalism works. It always ends in one person having literally all the property and money… and generally with players quite upset at one another. And once all players have optimized the game, it simply becomes a game of luck.
any child who has played monopoly a few times can see how capitalism works. It always ends in one person having literally all the property and money.
It’s literally the name of the game.
Trickle down economics does work though.
It’s just that the thing that trickles down isn’t money.
In theory it does work, and it has historically worked in the past. A lot of wealthy people in the last few centuries were philanthropists that built schools, hospitals and other public works.
The main deterrent these days is that your typical billionaire is greedy and entitled.
Plus as we saw with some merchants and colonial figures, your name could be scrubbed from the history books and statues of you torn down if your past actions are incompatible with modern day morals. Edward Colston is a good example because despite him pumping a lot of money into philanthropic projects, he made his fortune from the transatlantic slave trade.
I can almost guarantee that people would have much more favourable views of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, etc if they pumped tonnes of money into building new homes and actual public transport infrastructure.
Starting a private space company doesn’t count as philanthropy. As for Bill Gates, years of medical disinformation have built up this narrative that he’s pumping money into medical research and vaccination programmes for nefarious reasons, like planting microchips into people.
My parents still think the 2020 election was stolen…
I’m sorry
Which election?
Merkuh
Republican talking points. All of them. Pick literally anything they say about guns or economics. Literally anything.
Raising wages just causes prices to go up faster.
Unfortunately, they’re right about this one because democrats are in on it too.
Israel is defending itself against an antisemitic terrorist group which attacked it for no reason
Americans with their ‘greatest nation on earth’ charade.
It has a name: American exceptionalism. It’s used both by people who know it’s a lie and by people who believe it.
So it worked!
Most of what people believe about America’s history is post WWII mythmaking and revision. It’s a shame because the labor movement in America has a fascinating history, and we’re about to relive it.
The shoot-outs are going to be 100x better this time
Can’t wait to be teabagged by a Boston Dynamics robo dog after it murders my whole family for paying my Amazon Prime 2 days late!
Not even that. Politicians in even just the generation after Washington deified the framers of the Constitution, even when the remaining alive ones protested against it.
America is the greatest country in the world. Only those who haven’t travelled much would believe that.
It is a libertarian’s dream country though. No where else is it so easy to get others to invest in your idea.
Really? What kind of barriers to investment exist in other democracies?
* gestures broadly at US politics *
That you catch a cold because you’re cold
While being cold isn’t the cause of a cold there are some links between being cold and transmission of the flu even beyond people huddling together inside.
The lipids the viruses attach to become more durable hence resilient, and multiple studies have shown that cold temperatures have a suppressive effect on the immune system.
https://uscvhh.org/news-and-stories/the-real-reasons-you-get-sick-when-its-cold-outside.html
It’s weird seeing a regular colloquialism in a sea of politically charged comments. This one really seemed to get people riled up.
“Your socioeconomic status is a measure of work ethic, sacrifice, and ability to make good decisions. Poor people deserve to be poor, and suffer, for making bad decisions.”
Birth lottery which includes not just wealth but family connections is the biggest metric. We are way down the list of developed nations in terms of upward mobility. Only the outliers that prove to be of the greatest service to entrenched capital are granted entry. Most Americans, religious or not, have internalized the dogma of the prosperity gospel, itself an absolute parody of the dogma of Christianity it claims to be part of.
Go to any local fast food restaurant at rush hour, hell, go to any produce field at harvest, and tell me how much that studious hard work pays off. conversely, please regail me with tales of how hard it is to be a capital landlord,
making investmentsgambling with insider information with capital gained from previous exploitations, and then merely expecting an endless steam of capital for NO labor into what generated it. It’s like we were conquered by the traveling snake oil salesmen of old.It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
Also known as “prosperity gospel.” The religious justification for obscene wealth. The basic idea is that if you are rich, it’s because God has chosen you to BE rich because you are morally superior to everyone else. It’s an absolute perversion of Jesus’ teaching in the New Testament.
A while ago I read Bezos was posed a question about why he isn’t using his money and power to help impoverished people. IIRC he replied with something along the lines of “oh, we did a study and poverty is a moral failing, it can’t be solved, now if you’ll excuse me I have to go buy a dick-shaped rocket”
Ok, I made the rocket part up but you get the idea, Jeff Bezos is a pos
Hey, he is supporting the massive FL mansion and mega yacht industries.
Communism=Authoritarianism
I was taught in school the characteristics of authoritarianism and a couple weeks later, when i was being taught about communism, the same characteristics were said
Going a step further, the idea of authoritarian. Every ideology with a state relies on some type of authority to function, as a term it is an attempt at equating fascism and communism and serves as holocaust trivialization.
They usually come packaged together. You’ll have a hard time naming democratic liberal communist countries/leaders.
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Liberal socialism is a thing. But yes, hard to have liberal values alongside the communist cancer.
But if you have a hard time naming democratic communist leaders, that’s largely because you’ve only been taught about the totalitarian ones.
I did say they usually go together.
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I base it on my feelings
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And you base that on what?
All of the communist countries one immediately thinks of? Without needing to cherrypick like a badfaith tankie cuck.
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But a very easy time naming democratic communists. Even Stalin wasn’t a dictator, according to liberal historians such as Conquest who are experts on the soviet union. Socialism is more democratic than capitalism.
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You’re right that they’re absolutely not the same, however at a nation state level, I’d be very surprised if you could point to any communist regime at any point in history that wasn’t also authoritarian or didn’t end up that way
