Additionally, and most interestingly:

A pro-Trump super PAC called Future Coalition PAC has been placing contradictory ads targeting Arab voters in Michigan and Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. The group’s digital ads in Michigan portray Harris as taking Israel’s side against pro-Palestinian protesters. In Pennsylvania, on the other hand, the group’s ads question her support for Israel and accuse her of “pandering to Palestine.”

Sorry not sorry, but the left got played like a fiddle by not understanding the more immediate existential threat to their survival, and now I’m afraid we’ll all suffer for it. Bibi put Biden in what he knew was an unwinnable situation where he had to choose between appealing to 3% of Michigan voters (Arab-Americans) and appealing to 3% of Pennsylvania voters (Jewish Americans), and now the left flank is turning toward Trump over it and he might win both states:

“Because the situation has escalated in recent weeks, I think a lot people say what’s the difference?” said Warren David, a third-generation Arab American who is president of Arab America, a digital media platform. “ I am shocked at how many people say they are voting for Trump, when we were talking to people on the streets in bakeries and in different places. Trump is really capitalizing on this.” David said he was approached by a Trump surrogate to appear at his conference in Michigan this weekend and said no. Others — including leaders from the “uncommitted” movement who urged votes against Biden in the Democratic primary race — are appearing, he said.

Heaven help us all.

100%. I can’t imagine the conversations these news networks have behind closed doors. Do they honestly think a fascist who was just granted absolute immunity and already called them “the enemy of the people” WON’T shut their offices down if they criticize him? Are they that fucking dense?

Absolutely refreshing 9-minute conversation that put Cooper on his heels, capped off with this:

“Some of what we’re talking about tonight, Anderson, is not actually an opinion at all. It is just the facts. And you are one of the most trusted voices on television, and it is important in those moments where you know those conversations devolve into nonsense, particularly on the other side of the aisle. There are conspiracy theories–they won’t even say her name right! That has to be checked in the moment because that is what fascism looks like, that is how we start sliding down a very slippery slope, and we cannot afford to be here. The election is 12 days away, and this should not be even what is on the ballot, but democracy is on the line. That is not a partisan issue, it is the truth. And I think that’s what’s important for cable news networks, in particular, to be saying, whether you’re on Fox, you’re on CNN, or you’re on MSNBC. For all of us, that is our responsibility and our patriotic duty.”

God damn I hope we don’t look back on these moments as our last chance before the dominoes started falling…

I was hopeful when media figures started to ask themselves how to better cover Trump after 2016. NPR and On The Media had some decent journalism panels where they dug into the problems with obeying long-standing rules/norms to cover a candidate that weaponizes them. I saw a possibility for real reflection and maybe a significant course correction. That door slammed shut like 2 fucking years ago, and they’ve played EXACTLY the same game over this campaign. I knew we were fucked when a reporter came on after the Biden-Trump debate to say, essentially, “…and some of Trump’s supporters have claimed, without evidence, that Joe Biden has died.”

That’s it. That was the end of her coverage. They can’t even bring themselves to open their eyes long enough to observe unequivocally THAT THE PRESIDENT IS NOT DEAD. If the American experiment fails, a shitload of blame will lay at the feet of the media, who have long since abandoned their pursuit of "T"ruth in favor of the toxoplasma of rage.

This is the piece Robinson’s fuming about, and he’s absolutely fucking right. It was the most insane example of journalist circlejerking I’ve ever seen. Bunch of navel-gazing morons.

We also have a rule that you cannot use an alt account to evade a temporary ban, which you did.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt are professors of government at Harvard, and this is an opinion piece.

Some people just look for things to be offended about…

Best of luck, chief.

Damn, dude, take a deep breath. I didn’t lump you in with anything, infer you’re lumped in with anything, or disparage veterans in any way, shape, form, or fashion. I didn’t even know you existed until this very conversation. Talk about wildly disproportionate blowback.

Go tell the person who asked what’s actually going on, not me. I don’t agree with the people I overheard, I’m just the messenger and responded to that person’s question because they sounded curious.

Then offer your opinion about how a military operation looks to you. I was literally at a charity even for veterans and overheard a group of people talking who I don’t usually hear from. And they didn’t know I was listening, so they were transparently honest about how it looks to them. It startled me because it was a wildly different framing than I was familiar with. So when the person asked what exactly is going on beneath the surface, I offered an anecdote that was timely and relevant.

Don’t take everything so personally.

Polite conversation not your strong suit? I don’t have an axe to grind here, dude, just making small talk.

I honestly don’t know. That explanation certainly makes sense, though. I’ll have to do some digging to see if I can find some studies that looked into it.

It’s certainly an interesting exercise in contrasting responses to a huge market shock. Obama was criticized for not doing enough, so Biden went all-in. We now know the Covid-era supply chain shocks were somewhat temporary, and rather than falling off a cliff like it did in 07/08, demand simply shifted to different markets, so one could reasonably conclude that the amount of demand-side spending through the pandemic was a bit excessive. That somewhat unnecessary influx of money is what allowed prices to jump, but it’s also interesting that our rate of inflation was persistently lower than many other developed nations, so it may not have been totally unnecessary. Hopefully economists have learned valuable lessons about the appropriate response to structural failures (like the housing crash) versus structural disruptions (like the pandemic), and adjust their recommendations going forward. Whether or not the recovery fixed some of our more long-term and systemic economy-wide failures like income inequality and the GFC-induced housing shortage (i.e. it didn’t), it’s laudable that Biden and Powell managed a very rare soft landing when they could have just as easily triggered a full-blown recession.

I didn’t say the former, and my opinion doesn’t preclude the latter.

…which is why I said:

I’d guess a sizeable bipartisan coalition within the military industrial complex sees it exactly the same way

I overheard a brief conversation between Trump-supporting veterans last week. Youngish guys, so not your average Vietnam boomer. It was startling to hear them talk about what’s going on in Israel in two stark terms:

1. They talked about Israel being savagely “attacked” by Iran. Not Hamas, but literally Iran.

2. They hope the military turns Iran to glass.

No mention of Palestine or Gaza at all, nor of the history of Israeli aggression. All they see is that Arabic nations launched an attack on Israel, and Israel is “fighting back.” It’s a mini holy war to these guys, and I’d guess a sizeable bipartisan coalition within the military industrial complex sees it exactly the same way. Palestine, to them, is just collateral damage in a broader war that was started by “them.”

The book Humankind by Rutger Bregman goes into the details and is a fascinating read. Psychologists Haslam and Reicher did a follow-up “BBC Prison Study” in 2002 to test some of Zimbardo’s findings, and they didn’t find any of the really problematic behaviors that Zimbardo found (many of which were more or less coached or coerced). So it’s not necessarily that the results were invalidated, per se, and more that Zimbardo’s conclusions are not as ironclad as he made them out to be in his original paper. They simply weren’t repeatable once basic ethical safeguards were put into place for the safety of the participants. It kinda speaks to the wild west era of psychological research in the mid 20th century where there were no rules and people were free to do all manner of fucked up things that researchers could never get away with today. In some ways that period is useful because they allowed us to test some of our more fundamental understandings without the limitations placed on us by modern liability and psychiatric/psychological protection, but it can’t really be overstated how much damage was done to some of the subjects of those studies. Our modern system has matured in such a way that findings can more systematically and rigorously be tested because standardized practices are the norm and study subjects have basic safeguards across various disciplines.

For what it’s worth, Haslam, Reicher, and Zimbardo put out a joint statement that addressed some of the controversy surrounding their more or less conflicting results which essentially boiled down to the conclusion that both experiments are valid, though each has significant differences and limitations.

You’re commenting on a thread about a user whose polite, bad faith sealioning was tolerated for months, and whose spamming behavior is the only thing that triggered meaningful enforcement. If that’s what you’re concerned about, you should be in favor of more heavy handed moderation of obviously disingenuous “politeness”.

I think sealioning is patently uncivil behavior, no matter the veneer of geniality. I just think that Lemmy hasn’t quite figured out how to strike a balance between moderators enforcing truth and moderators enforcing good behavior.

I challenge that the definition of “bigotry” is as broad as each individual wants to make it, and the kit gloves with which trollish behavior is consistently moderated differ significantly from the approach taken to a very broad definition of “bigoted” opinions, which regularly invite heavy reprimands. As long as the definition of “bigotry” is rigorously defined, I don’t necessarily disagree with you. As I see things, it isn’t.

And yes, much of this could have been avoided if the people attacking Monk had been held to a higher standard of acceptable behavior. That is exactly the argument I’m making. None of that crap should have been allowed to spiral out of control.

My point is they shouldn’t allow either. The only thing worse is using a double standard, because it prioritizes assholes you agree with over polite users you don’t.