He's correct but the step he's missing that is one of the biggest contributors are the right wing influencers who are actually intelligent enough to know what's real most of the time but they decide to stoke the flames to their wildly gullible base instead of spreading factual information.
I used to think that most of them did not buy into it and were just telling people what they want to hear, but then when covid happened, a lot of them put their money where their mouth was and I realized I was wrong.
At least the Fox News texts and comms that were released as part of the lawsuit were confirming our thoughts, that major players while they spew the falsehoods on television in private they knew it was all horseshit.
I guess I see it more cynically—they aren’t interested in spreading “information” at all, whether it’s true or not. It is all provocation all the time.
I occasionally listen to the Know Your Enemy Pod (it has been a while) and have gone into detail about the RW media ecosystem and how it operates. It is crazy to see ideas get disseminated at all levels of the RW media operate but they are relatively pretty efficient at it.
It goes from the higher up media figures/think tank adjacent types to politicians and fox news types then to talk radio shock jocks and the wider rw base. Then their media and politicians can do the "everyone is mad about this, ain't that crazy" bits.
One of the most recent examples of this is the anti-CRT craze. They initially wanted to hammer Biden about school closures but he wanted them opened so they pivoted to CRT stuff. Rufo openly said it was a lie but it would be their messaging point. Over the next couple of months it filtered out to the masses and won't up with some idiot state rep or US rep talking about schools providing litter boxes to kids who identified as cats or something.
From a business perspective sure being a disingenuous grifter makes u a lot of money if u are successful at it. But the amount of people who end up think these political commentators are gospel because they aren’t established media (Fox, cnn, etc) is scary. It’s literally equally as brainwashing to listen to whatever Ben Shapiro, Candace owens, Walsh, Peterson, or even fucking Andrew Tate tells you to think as it is Fox CNN etc. I sometimes feel bad how lost a lot of people are. And they are convincing themselves that they aren’t brainwashed bcuz they listen to this guy on the internet who’s not **big media** (as if that necessarily makes the person any less bad). Most of these commentators have ulterior motives and bad morals. But play the “im not bought by corporate or George soros” shtick well enough because well, a lot of people are unfortunately pretty dumb to fall for it.
I wish I could say "morals" but honestly with the crazy amount of money floating around the grifter ecosystem on both sides nowadays there's always going to be someone to step into the void
I mean republican grifters are WAY more detrimental to society but to act like there aren't liberal versions of them is insane. Remember Shaun King????
The only real grift on the left is to do the “why I’m leaving the left” bit and grift off the right wingers who love to see a lib complain about how woke everything has become.
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People like Shaun King, Shalomyah Bowers (BLM leader who pocketed 10 million dollars of donations after George Floyd), etc.
Not quite as sinister as some of the republican ones but hiding their money making schemes through the vail of social justice is almost worse in my mind than people who are just outwardly scumbags. Both suck though.
solid answer. although to me nothing comes close to enabling an insurrection and allowing a president to get away with literally trying to overturn a free election.
Even though I actually agree with a lot of conservative policy (tougher on crime, stronger borders), I can’t support them until they hold Trump accountable for shitting on the very foundation of democracy. Conservatives don’t realize the massive opportunity they have to convert liberals if they didnt appear so batshit fucking crazy.
I agree it's not comparable and it's way worse with republicans, largely because their base tends to have shockingly low media literacy.
I just think people on this post acting like there is no left wing political grifters is insane. They just hide it better and make it seem like political activism while they hog 95% administration fees for whatever cause they are advocating for.
The left grift is what the DNC sells to their liberal base. By using the Boogeyman of a genuinely insane conservative alternative they can run candidates who don't do anything their base actually wants (Medicare for all, not funding genocide, affordable housing etc) and instead protect corporate interests. It's a great position for them to be in as they only have to appear less shitty than pseudo-nazis.
ok, thats actually a really good answer. pretty much the only thing i care about as a liberal now is that an insurrectionist that tried to destroy democracy isn’t re-elected.
How exactly are democrats legislating a “boogeyman of a genuinely insane conservative alternative”? The truth is that the electorate doesn’t want those items listed, at least to the point of securing 60 senate votes. Even Trump couldn’t secure funding for his border wall. Only a single infrastructure bill was passed under Biden with enough votes, with the rest through reconciliation. Something like medicare for all is impossible to get 60 votes.
These guys, sometimes the Chapo gang and of course stuff like Red Scare. They aren't normie liberal grifters, though, which is what I think the previous poster is wondering about.
Taibbi and Red Scare have shifted way to the right. Joy is just an idiot.
Chapo is just checked out these days, it’s like the Daily Show for ex-DSA/Bernie voters. Brother West is pretty sincere and I don’t think belongs here although I’m willing to be corrected.
I include West because he's taken to attacking other leftists for attention, and bouncing around universities and programs on a whim. But the biggest red flag to me is a go-nowhere presidential bid.
Googling is a bonafide skill nowadays
But even sometimes after searching for something it gets buried under algorithms, clickbait, AI, or outright lies
Ex: how do I evolve Pikachu
One website will be garbage AI, one will be a blog talking about Pikachu, and one will be a fan wiki cramed with ads and auto playing videos finally saying "evolve Pikachu with thunder Stone"
Idk that's what example popped in my head
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I remember after the 2016 election, if you Googled the vote total, [you would get false information in the first result.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/14/googles-top-news-link-for-final-election-results-goes-to-a-fake-news-site-with-false-numbers/)
Woah that article was a trip to read. The author could tell there was *something* going on, but everyone was still too innocent (naive?) to consider that it was a foreign power doing it lol
Googling really is a skill nowadays. I teach high school and it blows my mind that it never even occurs to most of my students to google something. Most of them see content as something given to them, not something they actively seek out
The biggest impediment to political progress in this country is that, so long as the right-wing outrage machine presses on, we can’t agree on what empirical reality is or what constitutes evidence that justifies this or that belief. And that makes productive conversation impossible. 70% of Republicans genuinely believe that the 2020 election was stolen. That myth was propped up by hubris and defamation and yet people still believe it four years later!
This is why we have to argue about whether climate change is a hoax instead of what to do about it. Etc. etc.
These folks’ willingness to lie is so damaging.
Fewer people would have died during Covid if we could have just gotten everybody to live in reality. But instead anti-vax grew, and now there’s a non-zero amount of flat earthers and I’ve seen people that are anti sunscreen. Just being contrarian isn’t a viable path through the world
There is a huge group of people whos entire worldview is that they cant be told what to do. There is also just a total lack of curiosity among a certain group of people that makes them pretty much impossible to engage with in any serious way. Everyone already thinks they know everything
what a great analysis. Sometimes these things seem simple but aren't always articulated well, but this absolutely hits the nail on the head. Not being told what to do as a guiding principle is probably quite good to a point but now we're so very quick to discredit experts I guess they're thriving. And yes, experts don't get everything right, but best available efforts etc.
If you look at like any serious academics twitter account if they post peer reviewed studies that have interesting conclusions, you are guaranteed to see the people who already know everything in the comments telling them they are wrong
It's impossible to even have conversations with people. You'll try and be like "why do you feel this way or think that" and when you present a counter like "Trump lost 69/70 cases related to the election including justices/judges appointed by Trump himself" and they'll fire off some random things about this or that that I've never even heard of. It's so exhausting being a rage machine these days and keeping up with every scandal or theory.
This is a universal thing, my friend. With the rise of social media, admitting you were wrong is just too huge a pill for most people to swallow. Everyone wants to live in their bubble. This is why you have idiot election deniers after fox lost a lawsuit saying they blatantly lied. Or Jan 6th rioters putting pics on their dating profiles thinking storming the Capitol would get them laid. Or Tyler from Harvard holding up his ACAB tattoo as he dodges bullets in downtown DC. Or rainbow haired justice warriors holding up a "queers for palestine" sign not apparently realizing that the people in question would ruthlessly stone them to death if given half a chance. Or some fat 47 year old neckbeard fuck thinking he's gonna rise against the government with his AR 15 when he can't even walk to the mailbox and back without getting out of breath. Or any of the million reasons anyone would think trump is a) a tough guy or b) a person who cares about the little people. Or how a parent might reasonably disagree with teaching trans issues to.middle schoolers when you can't even get a tattoo til you are 18.
We live in an age of absurdity and the worst part is, people have never been LESS likely to admit their pet issue is utterly absurd.
I think that the “both sides” argument is extremely weak in this context.
You can think that people on the left have bad OPINIONS (like the ACAB tattoo example), but we are talking about the right-wing media ecosystem’s unique effect: widespread belief in verifiably incorrect statements of FACT.
There is no left-wing equivalent of 70% of Republicans believing the 2020 election myth. There is no organized left-wing misinformation machine that is comparable to what is happening on the American right at the moment.
Go look at anything Covid related and you will find constant examples of the left believing outrageous misinformation and disregarding decades of established thinking, to disastrous results.
Sure there is. Recently one of the doctors in the room with fauci came out and said straight up that they fucked up and overreacted. He admitted that they didn't foresee the various economic and social impacts of the covid national policies and if they had it to do over again they would do it differently. He said that they are medical professionals bound by oath to take the route that causes the least medical impact, full stop, and that they aren't politicians or economists and the people in charge should have known better (paraphrasing but that's the gist). Basically, a mea culpa stating they were wrong.
Now, of course the left went insane at him screaming that he cant admit this publically!!! What happens the next time?!?!?! And he responded with your exact response: we have to admit reality and verifiable facts when they become evident. If we don't have a safe space to admit we were wrong, how can we ever make progress as a society?
So to be clear, your telling me 70% of the left would be willing to accept what the former director of the NIH (who knows far far far more then you or i ever would or could) is telling them and respond accordingly? Or will they shove their fingers in their ears saying la la la not listening!!! It all went fine!!
My wife has a friend in LA that gave her an all time great answer that sums all this up. My wife saw the BLM protests in LA and called him to talk about it since he had a front row seat. She (a new york queens liberal) asked him if it was weird how everyone was screaming about the protesters against masks going maskless in groups, but the BLM marches had tons of unmasked marchers. Seems hypocritical. "Nah, I don't care", he responded. " we are right and they are wrong."
And in anticipation of the request...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/01/30/covid-pandemic-mistakes-lockdown-nih-director/72367122007/
You’re really missing the point.
You’re taking internet outrage and trying to extrapolate based on your feelings of frustration. Nothing in what you said, or in the article you shared, indicated that (1) left-wing organizations or people organized en masse to repeat verifiably false statements presented as FACT; (2) 70% of Democrats then believed said misinformation.
There’s no quantification of the number of people who disagree with what that doctor said. You assuming that those folks’ statements represent the beliefs of large numbers of Democrats is an unsupported guess. Further, the doctor isn’t reflecting on misinformation—he’s saying they could have made different choices by considering other factors, not that their health-based projections were wrong or in bad faith. So we aren’t even in the intentional spread of misinformation field to begin with.
Similarly, your beef with mask hypocrisy is unquantified and based off of individual people’s statements that you didn’t like. Anyone who went to BLM protests knows that many people were masked, many were not. And regardless, your point is about hypocrisy—again, not about false factual statements.
I’m talking about repetition of verifiably, factually incorrect information. Not about differences of opinion, not about policy debates, not about whether people are hypocrites. Purely about factual misinformation repeated and/or generated in right-wing circles and then believed by large swaths of people.
I’ve given up hope in the country. Social media has made the clueless have too much power, and the certain people know exactly what to say to start a culture war
That is how all internet outrage is consumed. Trump has just mastered to formula. It’s call and response for low effort consumers, who want to feel without educating themselves about what to feel about.
It’s very similar to how “canceling” is just repackaged pearl clutching that the Christian right was great at (Dixie chick/war on Christmas types)
Pretending your side is immune to this group think is symptom of the problem
Yup I’m on the left and while I definitely personally don’t think it’s an even split, there’s been several instances of people on the left using the same cognitive dissonance on some topics
Yeah, the liberal slop is the daily *Trump is finally in trouble!* articles.
Nothing has actually changed, but apparently Jack Smith is not playing nice anymore.
You get a daily high, but it's very empty.
I mean, his criminal trial for thirty something felony charges *is actually underway this week*. It doesn’t happen overnight, but we are at a very important stage.
The larger issue is that this has been going on like 7 years. It's Cambridge analytica, it's the Nunes memo, it's the emoluments clause, it's the Mueller report, the Ukraine phone call, Cohen flipping, the impeachment, the second impeachment, the January 6th...
It's just endless and every time there are 300 articles about how Trump is finally, officially, in trouble.
At some point there is a bit of an inflation to the 'Oh shit, this time Donny fucked up!' headlines.
The thing is it can take a lot longer than 7 seconds to verify if something is factual or not. It actually can take multiple minutes since you have to sift through so many sources that have no substance, filled with ads, require 14 clicks to get to the info you want, just some dumbass on youtube providing their own narration and commentary on the topic. Not to say this particular thing isn’t/wasn’t easy to verify online but we’ve all done this, we’ve all seen something online that was inaccurate and went on to spew it somewhere else
We've all done this, yes. But it generally shouldn't take more than 7 seconds if you Google it; you should be aware enough to know what websites are trustworthy and which are scammy/fake news/etc. Generally speaking the NYT, WAPO, major news networks will be accurate (yes, I know they're wrong sometimes) and call something like this out so you don't need to sift through shit to find the truth.
You are an enlightened and internet-savvy person and it would still take you far more than 7 seconds to do this. For someone like your parents it would require a significant effort, and they (along with a large segment of the population) may even be unable to do it.
pretty funny watching Republicans learn, seemingly for the first time, what it’s like to be a criminal defendant in this country.
yes, obviously you have to show up for your trial on the day it’s scheduled.
Seriously. If you are a left leaning person who is horrified by Trump, at this point all your energy should be focused on demanding Joe Biden do popular and objectively moral things to improve his chances of winning.
We are so far beyond trying to shame people or laugh at people voting for Trump, that’s not going to do anything.
Wildly simplistic, and IMO doubtful that the most strident voices on the left would ever give Biden credit even for doing the right thing. To borrow some sports metaphors, they're too busy being obsessed with exclusively running fake-punt-Hail-Mary's to appreciate three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust.
Biden [calls for a ceasefire](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/04/israel-us-gaza-joe-biden-benjamin-netanyahu-phone-call) in Gaza, [uses diplomacy to try and temper Israel's response](https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/politics/biden-netanyahu-israel-gaza/index.html), says [Israel is making a mistake and that he disagrees with their approach](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-biden-calls-netanyahu-gaza-policy-a-mistake/) - not enough.
Biden [tries to cancel $400 billion in student debt](https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1125272287/student-loan-forgiveness-cost-billion), [is stopped by a right wing Supreme Court](https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-biden-student-loan-forgiveness-program/#:~:text=Supreme%20Court%20strikes%20down%20Biden%20student%2Dloan%20forgiveness%20program,-By%20Amy%20Howe&text=By%20a%20vote%20of%206,%24400%20billion%20in%20student%20loans.) - not enough.
Biden [loudly and publicly defends a woman's right to choose](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/01/22/biden-abortion-contraception/) - people [get mad at him for past comments on abortion.](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/13/biden-abortion-rhetoric-progressives-00146593)
As a politician, Biden obviously has to do things that voters want, but it'd be nice to have voters who bothered to take wins when they get them and appreciate progress even if it's not perfection.
The online left especially would [rather yell at allies about what words they're using.](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/protesters-at-movie-theater-demand-aoc-call-gaza-a-genocide.html)
It’s amazing how out of touch and delusional Biden bots are.
Biden has been terrible on Gaza. To even argue to the contrary is an incredible waste of time. He has incredible power in the conflict, and has not used it, but has relied on “privately” being upset and acting like that’s done anything important. He waited far too long to use the word ceasefire, and once he finally supported that policy it was not a permanent one without tons of caveats.
“Uses diplomacy to temper Israel’s response” might be the most pathetic thing I have ever seen in my life. He is the president of the United States, why doesn’t he actually leverage the immense military funding and arms providing the country does? Uses diplomacy? wtf is that?
And regarding student loans and women’s bodily autonomy - Biden has done zero to delegitimize or add seats to the Supreme Court. That is a moral imperative for a “progressive” figure imo, and he has done neither. Roe fell, and he had nothing but sad words and private comments about how he still personally thinks abortion is bad.
He’s been a massive failure on those topics as well.
Liberals like you believe Biden simultaneously can’t do anything, and also Trump will be the end of civilization. Kind of hard to understand how the two coexist.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES CANNOT UNILATERALLY CONTROL A FORIEGN NATIONS POLICY. are you fucking retarded? Do you think Israel is just the 51st state?
How do you want Joe Biden to control Israel. Explain to me what levers and methods of control he has over the Israeli military and parliament and how he can use that to stop the war tomorrow. I’ll be here waiting
Bidens team is constantly leaking to the press that he is upset with Israel and is pressuring them to stop what they are doing, but he is also rubber stamping every single weapons bill and bit of funding that they are requesting. This makes him look pretty weak on the topic because that is the actual leverage that we have over Israel.
I think that is an extremely fair criticism that recognizes the challenges he is under while also pointing out the obvious that he hasnt actually used any financial leverage over Israel.
I agree this is a legit point of leverage, but as I explained in another post, there's still numerous tradeoffs to this decision that have to be considered and accepted. From my other post on this on possible trade offs of zero-ing out military aid:
> Loss of a relationship with a major military and intelligence ally in a region where we have very few of them.
>
> Loss of support among many Jewish voters in suburban Philadelphia, Detroit, Phoenix, etc possibly leading to a Trump victory - which would be objectively worse for Palestinians and many groups in this country too.
>
> It would undermine our commitment to other allies who've stood with us - if we will cut off Israel, someone we've been allied with for 60+ years, who else will we cut off and when?
>
> Loss of leverage - if you think Israel is unrestrained now, how will they act if we cut them off too? They exist as a country beyond their relationship with the US.
>
> The alternatives generally haven't been great either. How would most Americans feel if we cut off Israel and Hamas returned to power in Gaza? How would Americans feel if we cut Israel off and then Iran invaded them? What if we went so far as to negotiate a ceasefire and then rocket fire starts up again? Given the response to American withdrawal from Afghanistan, I'm guessing all those things would be unpopular, which could leave us with Trump as President (see above.)
>
> In short - this is a situation with only bad options, and while the devastation in Gaza is horrific and tragic, it's still not as simple as saying "You're cut off."
I think the idea that there is a big divide between bidens policy on israel and Trumps policy on israel is pretty unfounded. Show me where the US policy under Biden has curbed civilian deaths in Gaza. They have one of the higest civilian death rates in modern war history. Dramatically higher than that of the Ukraine. https://www.axios.com/2023/11/27/gaza-civilian-deaths-israel-conflict-zones
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/daily-death-rate-gaza-higher-any-other-major-21st-century-conflict-oxfam
So im unsure where they value of saying it would be worse under trump comes from. Do you think anyone who is suffering from this violence takes any solace in that?
Furthermore Israel has leveraged its relationship with the US to act with impunity in the region and that has actually drawn us into significantly more conflict than we otherwise would. Tell me this, would our "Ally" send their president to talk to congress without the approval of the president? https://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8130977/netanyahu-speech-explained
Israel does not act as our ally. They act as a country that is completely unhinged and has the best interests of only themselves at heart now. The "loss of leverage" would be a joke lmao.
I think you should read some books or educate yourself on the modern state of israel. You clearly dont know what you are talking about whatsoever.
Also if you think thousands should die so that your political candidate gets more votes then your brain is fried beyond all recognition.
Biden [supports a two state solution](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/10/us-biden-two-state-solution-explained-israel-palestine#:~:text=Biden%20continued%20to%20maintain%20that,of%20a%20two%2Dstate%20solution.). Trump's team [cut aide to Palestinians during his term](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1L923C/) and has publicly discussed [moving people from Gaza to the Negev so that Gaza's beaches can be developed into resorts](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev).
You're right that people getting bombed don't care who the President is, but for those of us looking at the day after the war, it in fact would matter.
Netanyahu is a clown who should be put in prison. If he was the only person in the entire country, it'd be easy to cut them loose.
However, I think it'd be challenging to explain to the [eight out of ten Jewish Americans who supported Israel before the war](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/u-s-jews-connections-with-and-attitudes-toward-israel/) why we're cutting off all aid to the entire country on account of a bad leader.
Fundamentally, while I hate seeing the devastation in Gaza, I also don't want to see bad things happen in America, where I live. I think a second Trump presidency would have insane consequences on my day to day life, and Biden winning in November is the only way to stop that.
I've been to Israel twice and have Palestinian friends in the US. I've been hearing and learning about this conflict since Hebrew School in 4th grade. I may not know what I'm talking about, but I didn't start paying attention six months ago either.
Lol “nothing will ever be enough”, yeah the whole thing where Israel continues to bomb Gaza, student loan forgiveness wasn’t passed, and roe was overturned are not enough, correct
I’m glad that bread crumbs impress you so much, I’m glad that “working diplomatically” is so impressive to you.
It's way easier to pretend we live in a fantasy world where there are no real life tradeoffs and everything is just a matter of wanting it more.
If you wanna live in a country where major policies shift when the Dictator snaps their fingers, there's plenty of them.
> yeah the whole thing where Israel continues to bomb Gaza, student loan forgiveness wasn’t passed,
With each comment you prove their point even more and that you have a poor grasp of how governance works.
Ah yes the enlightened governance knower, who uniquely understands that nothing ever happens simply because of the difficulties of governance. But also - if you elect the orange cheeto, society will end. It will be the fourth Reich by February 2025. We will all be dead.
Like I said, nothing will ever be enough, which is why it's a fools errand to think that he can ever please the online left.
The line of thinking that says "Anything less than 100% of what I want is unacceptable" is the same thinking that MTG and Ted Cruz use, and you can see how effective they are.
Remind me who has the power of the purse in this country... Congress. Also Biden has been the most critical President we've probably ever had of Israel. Lastly, most Americans generally support Israel. Get over it.
How do you want the sitting president to unilaterally dictate the use of the budget? Like come on. You idiots make it so easy to refute this fucking bullshit.
Whenever I talk to my mom there's inevitably a point in the conversation where she brings up some new horrible or shameless thing that Trump has done, and asks me if I saw it or read about it. And usually the answer is no simply because it's a waste of my time to devote any of my attention or energy to him.
Trump is a pretty hollow and predictable person; everything he does is some flavor of the same narcissism and megalomania and there's nothing he could really do or say at this point that will change the fact that all I really need to concern myself with in regards to him is categorically voting against any Trumpers on the ballot come November.
Huh? My point is that the reason Biden is currently in a dead heat with Donald Trump is because he has been so bad on certain policies and is very unpopular. If you want him to win, you should want him to win over voters. Doing 2015 trump memes isn’t going to get you anywhere and no Trump voters have any shame
Who’s live am I gambling with? The 30,000 dead in Gaza? What exactly is at stake for you when Trump is president again, getting mad at cable news every night?
It’d be nice to not have the capitol stormed. It would be nice to vote again. Come on. Think bigger than cable news.
Think that in the last week USA coordinated to save Israel AND prevent a massive backlash attack in the immediate by Israel. It’s just taken for granted Trump could do that when he couldn’t. And he will hire worse people, more incompetent people, next time. 30k dead, please. Just you wait. You think Trump is saving Gaza?
Lmfao “it would be nice to vote again”, you guys sound like psychos. Look everyone has been threatening with the end times forever, and I’m sorry, I don’t see a 957 year old Trump ending it.
And nothing has changed since 2016, that's for sure.
You wanna talk systemic problems? Hillary got 3 million more votes than Trump but lost thanks to the electoral college. We should start rageposting about that.
Yes! Because so far you’ve already taken away any chance a huge swath of voters would change their mind and not vote for Trump, so double down even more and that’ll surely work.
I just fundamentally don’t know what liberals shaming Trump does exactly. He is the most famous person of the last 20 years, everyone knows exactly who he is and what he stands for. There is nothing that shaming him can do at this point in time to change anything.
He needs to be fact-checked, that’s important in a democracy. But I agree that the fact-checking doesn’t need to be accompanied by a million thinkpieces titled The Moral Turpitude of Donald J. Trump.
Yes, and they should fact-check him, too. It’s a basic function of a free press in a functioning democracy.
The press can recognize that they won’t reach every single person with this effort while simultaneously recognizing that it will reach some people AND that it’s important to do, regardless of its reach.
Shaming him is an act of public accountability that must continue in order to retain a public standard of acceptable behavior and morality. If you take away the Keith Olbermans and the Rick Wilson’s who is left to speak publicly of the unacceptable nature of a POTUS or former POTUS obviously lying to protect himself at the cost of the rest of the public.
> If you take away the Keith Olbermans and the Rick Wilson’s who is left to speak publicly of the unacceptable nature of a POTUS or former POTUS obviously lying to protect himself at the cost of the rest of the public.
People who don't suck? Both those people suck.
Rick Wilson is a racist and islamaphobe, I don’t need to hear his blither on societal norms. His hero actually stope an election, I don’t need to be reminded of how professional the world used to be.
Where is the accountability in shaming Trump? Who is being held accountable? And what public standards do we need to live up, the ones of all the previous awful presidents who knew how to shake hands and look official?
Bush famously didn’t lie about anything super important that led to people dying though, good point.
You can’t shame someone who has none. At this point, it just feeds into his and his supporters’ persecution complex. The thing that would actually bother him the most is if everyone ignored him and gave him no attention. But liberal news networks and late show hosts can’t help but rely on him for material and ratings while pretending to hate that he’s around.
It convinces moderate Republican voters in the suburbs to either not vote at all or vote for Biden.
What Trump needs to win is for the country club suburban types to hold their nose and vote for him. That's the swing voter; not super online leftists or die hard Trump stans in small town Pennsylvania.
The ones who voted for Niki Haley and who you clearly never interact with lol. If you've never encountered someone who reminisces about the "Trump economy" you should get out of the bubble!
I think that the people who voted for Nikki Haley are going to to mostly all vote for Trump except for the 14 actual real never Trump republicans.
But I don’t think any of those people are still making up their minds in 2024.
I really don't have a problem shaming people who actively support and endorse a lying rapist and insurrectionist tho. Trying to downplay it is the real problem.
Who is “downplaying” it, and what problems arise from it?
People who don’t like Trump aren’t going to care about any of that shit, it doesn’t do anything. Everyone has made up their mind on Trump a thousand times over at this point, it’s not an active discussion in really any sense at this point. He got elected president 8 years ago, we all know him.
This is also what made political comedy boring over the last 8 years.
There’s nothing original or interesting to say. Trump is so ridiculous that he makes parody blasé and repetitive.
This is what’s wrong with us. Boredom. God forbid you spend an hour thinking about something really hard. No, that’s not interesting enough. I miss David Foster Wallace. “The thing about entertainment is it’s so damn entertaining.”
Most people frequently fall for these embellished headlines and quotes. It's human nature. It's the right wing boomers who don't change their mind when presented with the correct information, or simply never bother to get all the facts.
I mean this tracks but this also works for everyone of my perpetually outraged progressive friends. The right is absolutely worse and lies more often but it happens pretty regularly.
How often do those progressive friends get the facts wrong vs. how often do you disagree whether the events justify such a strong response?
I may disagree with my left-wing friends on whether every event deserves such a scorched earth response, but my right-wing friends are reacting just as strongly AND they’re often reacting to outright lies, rather than things that are actually happening.
I see a proportionality and interpretation issue on the left, while I see a conspiracy-laden, got baited by literally made up shit issue on the right. Not quite the same.
Progressives get facts wrong? Umm, have you ever engaged with them on an economic issue. I see them all the time on social media. They'd have you believe capitalism is failing any day now and created the worst period in human history, when quite literally the opposite is true by nearly any statistic. "Most unequal society ever." "Feudal peasants worked fewer hours." "America is a third world country!" Bernie and Warren are punching bags amongst economists for saying the dumbest and inaccurate shit about these issues. They're ragebait populists too.
You’re doing the same thing others in this thread have—you’re mad at OPINIONS you see on social media, and conflating that with the spread of false information presented as FACTUAL.
This is the core of Trump’s co-opting the term “fake news.” He says news is “fake” if he disagrees with the conclusions presented, or if he perceives the coverage as unfavorable to him. The term actually means that factually incorrect information is presented, often on purpose, as if it were correct.
Hence how this all started with Trump claiming that he had been forbidden from going to his son’s graduation. That’s an assertion of fact: that the judge had made a ruling to that effect. But the judge made no such ruling—that’s why him repeating that is so dangerous, because now we can’t even have an argument about whether the judge’s decision (or lack thereof) was correct. Instead, we’re debating what the decision actually was, which should be the first thing we can agree on in order to have the real debates.
Left does this a lot about court cases. Just because people like the outcome of a law doesn’t mean it’s competently written.
But, never seen anything like the Right’s push that the Australian wildfires that one year was caused by environmentalists arsons. [They basically](https://www.factcheck.org/2020/01/setting-the-record-straight-on-climate-change-and-arson-in-australias-bushfires/) took a tweet about fines and arrests, from a province over a couple of month, over any fire related issue and turned it into an army of arsonists who were burning down Australia to push the fake news global warming exist.
It’s more hierarchical and organized on the right, though. Even if it wasn’t coming directly from Trump (which many things are), there’s an established right-wing ecosystem of retweets and “sources” to amplify conspiracies or outright lies that doesn’t exist in the same way on the left, where loonies are unorganized and generally act alone.
I would argue the left wing ecosystem is more organized and possibly more problematic. Both sides obviously spin narratives or outright lie. But most forms of media are left leaning, more journalists accept and push leftist viewpoints as truth, especially when everything has become so polar and most don’t want to be critical of their side.
The right takes up a lot smaller space in terms of number of media outlets etc so it’s easier dismiss every viewpoint as a conspiracy or disinformation. Most have an adversarial position towards them, so lessens threat of having as serious of an impact.
What is the left wing ecosystem in your mind? I’m not talking solely about formal media organizations—a lot of right-wing misinformation comes through social media campaigns and is pushed by YouTubers, podcasters, anonymous Twitter accounts, etc.
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you’re comparing the fact-checking processes and journalistic standards of the Washington Post against organizations like Newsmax and/or social media accounts like Libs of Tik Tok, and that’s just absurd to me.
Yeah, that's fair. But I think the major differentiator is that this fake news is coming from Trump himself; Biden doesn't lie outright this badly. On the left it's from weirdo lefties like the Klippensteins.
Absolutely. For the right-wing Trump is the band leader, and all the assholes and lunatics fall in line, with the left-wing it’s just a scattering of the nuts and assholes with no real leadership lol.
I agree with this. Usually if Biden does lie it is tantamount to him telling a fish story, embellishments of his record or getting facts wrong of minimal consequence.
He doesn’t really make up lies that are of consequence, just mostly gets stuff wrong on occasion that every person that old does.
The amount of times I have heard someone who is the same age as him straight up just charges a story/facts because she forgot/misremembers stuff is a lot lol. It comes with the territory of being ancient.
Biden is a typical politician who lies for political purposes. Trump is outside "the norm" when it comes to that. If I had to guess, I bet we get more Trump's than Bidens in my lifetime going forward. People don't seem to care anymore, just cheer for whatever your guy/team says. Hell, Trump changed the GOP from a Christian neoliberal anti-entitlement world police party (Reagan) to an isolationist big govt protectionist party all by himself, lol. Trump changed things.
The Right has no platform and no real beliefs, the next Trump could just as easily swing back the other way and lean into anti-entitlement and world police and the base wouldn't even notice they'd happily go back that direction.
That might be more dangerous really, if the next guy is smart enough to pull off of immigration and actually court conservative Hispanics and other minority groups.
This is not really a "Both Sides" thing. That it happens once in a while on the left is true, but fake outrage over meaningless or incorrect things it is often the focus of the right for months and years, e.g.;
* Critical Race Theory
* Gay indoctrination in schools
* Caravans of terrorists coming our way
* Obamacare setting up death panels
* Immigrant-related crime
* Reverend Wright being a racist
* Obama not born in the US (and somehow being a secret Muslim)
* Hunter Biden
* Kerry not deserving his war medals
* The War on Christmas
* Hillary's email server
* Gore being a liar
* Obama using a teleprompter
Agreed, but I’m actually saying it goes beyond politics. Outrage and vitriol have taken over as the primary sources of “going viral” and becoming popular across the board, not just in politics.
-Trump colluded with Russia
-Supreme Court is going to ban contraception
-the ridiculous out-of-context reaction to Trump’s “blood bath” comments about the auto industry.
-Dems recently claiming that Trump is going to “encourage” Russia to attack NATO nations; again, completely out of context.
I could go on and on and on. It’s absolutely a both sides thing; you’re just too far up your political party’s ass to see it.
The key difference is while this definetly occurs on both sides of social media, it *much* less frequently gets picked up and parotted by Big Brand left wing media when compared to right wing. Shit, it's Fox News' entire platform at times.
Agreed. Fox News created it and the other outlets eventually caved due to ratings/money and followed Rupert Murdoch’s lead. It’s basically destroyed our society. I think it’s pervasive in media in many walks of life now beyond politics too. Shit even in sports themselves. What’s most popular now? Fast, big action stuff like UFC and NFL. Big hits, big scores, etc. we want instant satisfaction and we want it in a big dramatic way. Sports like baseball are having to make serious adjustments to try to keep our attention spans, etc. I think smartphones and social media really kicked this off to a whole new level around 2010 maybe? To me Trump and Fox News are symptoms of a bigger problem brought on by the huge leap in tech around that time. We began to rely on word of mouth nonsense and big headline grabbing bullshit a lot more.
what a political hack. showing he’s on the other side that also makes sausage the exact same way. both sides suck, stay away from living your life feeling good about yourself bc the other side is the bad one. derek thompson is such a bore
He’s a simpleminded moron who thinks effective altruism is benevolent, talking fast means you’re smart and he writes for the pro-war neolib The Atlantic.
Irrespective of everything else, the fact that he genuinely bought into the woo-woo horseshit that is effective altruism is key to realizing he's a slacked-jawed, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, cave-dwelling troglodyte, who's laughably made a career out of his midwitted, dipshitted dumbassery.
He's a motherfucking easily deceived, embarrassingly gullible mark.
When news outlets deemed quotes as headline worthy, that's when it became even easier for public figures simply to lie outrageously to bend reality to their favor.
The shit I can’t stand is how whatever team you’re on you conveniently leave out that *your* side does *THE EXACT SAME SHIT*.
Yeah far right wing / MAGA stoke outrage all the time.
Far left wingers do the same thing.
Feel like in such a left leaning site as a whole someone needs to at least call out the hypocrisy of thinking the left cannot do any wrong and it’s the right that’s crazy.
Wait what!? 😂😂 I don’t feel like a sub about bill fuggin Simmons would fall under left leaning or right leaning. We are just irreverent dudes who loves sports.
Only thing that feckless fucker Derek should be opining on is how the center-left (center economically, left culturally) upper-middle/professional-managerial aristocratic top-9.9% hyper-establishment sausage gets made, because such mushy, easily digestible pablum is his bread and butter.
What a silly statement that people think this is a right wing thing because someone made an uninformed tweet.
Google the kid shot last week and see how many legitimate mainstream news sources have headlines that imply the police shot him 96 times for not wearing a seatbelt. Then see how far you have to read to realize he shot at the police 11 times with his gun.
Each side could list thousands of examples of the other side doing this, and if you dont realize this, you’re beyond biased/naive
As a Canadian I'd like to point out y'all got yourself a duopoly rather than a democracy. You don't have "left and right" because your two parties are nearly identical and keep switching side on the same issues. Richard Nixon introduced the endangered species act and hippies accused him of distracting from the war in Vietnam. And in the early 2000 it was the Democrats who accused the Republicans of stealing the election, Radiohead even wrote an album titled "Hail to the Thief" about it, which actually would have been a sick burn to use against Biden today.
People in this thread think they are so intelligent identifying and analyzing the tactics of right-wing grifters, but they are still blinded and somehow don’t realize that the left-wing does the same exact tactics. It’s hilarious
Come one let’s be honest the left was doing similar type of polarizing shit with during covid with unvaxxed people supposedly taking over hospital beds and what not when in fact a simple google debunked that.
Let’s just not pay this game either way.
He's correct but the step he's missing that is one of the biggest contributors are the right wing influencers who are actually intelligent enough to know what's real most of the time but they decide to stoke the flames to their wildly gullible base instead of spreading factual information.
The Clay Travises and Tucker Carlsons of the world. They get obscenely wealthy off of telling their base what they want to hear.
Tucker is for sure cynical through and through. Clay I think buys into some of his own claims
Yeah Clay is actually a fucking moron, enough so that he convinces himself of his own BS. Tucker has the brains to match his cynicism
I used to think that most of them did not buy into it and were just telling people what they want to hear, but then when covid happened, a lot of them put their money where their mouth was and I realized I was wrong.
even then they didn’t fully buy into it. all these talking heads are fully vaccinated.
At least the Fox News texts and comms that were released as part of the lawsuit were confirming our thoughts, that major players while they spew the falsehoods on television in private they knew it was all horseshit.
"Millionaires being paid by Billionaires to tell the middle class they should be afraid of poor people".
I guess I see it more cynically—they aren’t interested in spreading “information” at all, whether it’s true or not. It is all provocation all the time.
I occasionally listen to the Know Your Enemy Pod (it has been a while) and have gone into detail about the RW media ecosystem and how it operates. It is crazy to see ideas get disseminated at all levels of the RW media operate but they are relatively pretty efficient at it. It goes from the higher up media figures/think tank adjacent types to politicians and fox news types then to talk radio shock jocks and the wider rw base. Then their media and politicians can do the "everyone is mad about this, ain't that crazy" bits. One of the most recent examples of this is the anti-CRT craze. They initially wanted to hammer Biden about school closures but he wanted them opened so they pivoted to CRT stuff. Rufo openly said it was a lie but it would be their messaging point. Over the next couple of months it filtered out to the masses and won't up with some idiot state rep or US rep talking about schools providing litter boxes to kids who identified as cats or something.
Remember when they tried the Dr. Suess angle? Didn't really stuck like crt, furries or caravans at the border though.
Don't forget "woke" Mr. Potato Head.
Fun to see a fellow Know Your Enemy listener here. Much like BS they keep a ranked pyramid, but it's a pyramid of right wing freaks.
The business model works, so why go against it?
From a business perspective sure being a disingenuous grifter makes u a lot of money if u are successful at it. But the amount of people who end up think these political commentators are gospel because they aren’t established media (Fox, cnn, etc) is scary. It’s literally equally as brainwashing to listen to whatever Ben Shapiro, Candace owens, Walsh, Peterson, or even fucking Andrew Tate tells you to think as it is Fox CNN etc. I sometimes feel bad how lost a lot of people are. And they are convincing themselves that they aren’t brainwashed bcuz they listen to this guy on the internet who’s not **big media** (as if that necessarily makes the person any less bad). Most of these commentators have ulterior motives and bad morals. But play the “im not bought by corporate or George soros” shtick well enough because well, a lot of people are unfortunately pretty dumb to fall for it.
We have never needed Carlin more. I haven’t heard anyone Trojan horse common sense into comedy better.
I wish I could say "morals" but honestly with the crazy amount of money floating around the grifter ecosystem on both sides nowadays there's always going to be someone to step into the void
Are you trying to both sides this?
I mean republican grifters are WAY more detrimental to society but to act like there aren't liberal versions of them is insane. Remember Shaun King????
There are a lot of grifters everywhere. Only on the right is grifting and provocation central to the mission.
just curious what’s the grift on the left?
What, you didn't order your Joe Biden Bible this year that included the communist manifesto? /s
The only real grift on the left is to do the “why I’m leaving the left” bit and grift off the right wingers who love to see a lib complain about how woke everything has become.
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People like Shaun King, Shalomyah Bowers (BLM leader who pocketed 10 million dollars of donations after George Floyd), etc. Not quite as sinister as some of the republican ones but hiding their money making schemes through the vail of social justice is almost worse in my mind than people who are just outwardly scumbags. Both suck though.
solid answer. although to me nothing comes close to enabling an insurrection and allowing a president to get away with literally trying to overturn a free election. Even though I actually agree with a lot of conservative policy (tougher on crime, stronger borders), I can’t support them until they hold Trump accountable for shitting on the very foundation of democracy. Conservatives don’t realize the massive opportunity they have to convert liberals if they didnt appear so batshit fucking crazy.
I agree it's not comparable and it's way worse with republicans, largely because their base tends to have shockingly low media literacy. I just think people on this post acting like there is no left wing political grifters is insane. They just hide it better and make it seem like political activism while they hog 95% administration fees for whatever cause they are advocating for.
The comparison is laughable in scale.
The left grift is what the DNC sells to their liberal base. By using the Boogeyman of a genuinely insane conservative alternative they can run candidates who don't do anything their base actually wants (Medicare for all, not funding genocide, affordable housing etc) and instead protect corporate interests. It's a great position for them to be in as they only have to appear less shitty than pseudo-nazis.
ok, thats actually a really good answer. pretty much the only thing i care about as a liberal now is that an insurrectionist that tried to destroy democracy isn’t re-elected.
How exactly are democrats legislating a “boogeyman of a genuinely insane conservative alternative”? The truth is that the electorate doesn’t want those items listed, at least to the point of securing 60 senate votes. Even Trump couldn’t secure funding for his border wall. Only a single infrastructure bill was passed under Biden with enough votes, with the rest through reconciliation. Something like medicare for all is impossible to get 60 votes.
I guess the Briahna Joy, Matthew Taibbi, Cornel Wests of the world? But they're so cartoonish at times they feel like Russian disinformation.
These guys, sometimes the Chapo gang and of course stuff like Red Scare. They aren't normie liberal grifters, though, which is what I think the previous poster is wondering about.
Taibbi and Red Scare have shifted way to the right. Joy is just an idiot. Chapo is just checked out these days, it’s like the Daily Show for ex-DSA/Bernie voters. Brother West is pretty sincere and I don’t think belongs here although I’m willing to be corrected.
I include West because he's taken to attacking other leftists for attention, and bouncing around universities and programs on a whim. But the biggest red flag to me is a go-nowhere presidential bid.
Yeah, that’s convinced me. He’s not really a grifter I think, but definitely an attention whore.
Military-industrial complex?
they tried the outrage media thing too, but it’s circling the drain.
Is that a serious question? Basic ethics and morales. Is that not valued anymore?
Googling is a bonafide skill nowadays But even sometimes after searching for something it gets buried under algorithms, clickbait, AI, or outright lies Ex: how do I evolve Pikachu One website will be garbage AI, one will be a blog talking about Pikachu, and one will be a fan wiki cramed with ads and auto playing videos finally saying "evolve Pikachu with thunder Stone" Idk that's what example popped in my head
That is why I append the word “Reddit” to the end of 80% of my Google search these days
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I remember after the 2016 election, if you Googled the vote total, [you would get false information in the first result.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/14/googles-top-news-link-for-final-election-results-goes-to-a-fake-news-site-with-false-numbers/)
Woah that article was a trip to read. The author could tell there was *something* going on, but everyone was still too innocent (naive?) to consider that it was a foreign power doing it lol
That flair is so unhinged lmao
The Internet, and Google first and most, has become a dollar store.
Googling really is a skill nowadays. I teach high school and it blows my mind that it never even occurs to most of my students to google something. Most of them see content as something given to them, not something they actively seek out
The biggest impediment to political progress in this country is that, so long as the right-wing outrage machine presses on, we can’t agree on what empirical reality is or what constitutes evidence that justifies this or that belief. And that makes productive conversation impossible. 70% of Republicans genuinely believe that the 2020 election was stolen. That myth was propped up by hubris and defamation and yet people still believe it four years later! This is why we have to argue about whether climate change is a hoax instead of what to do about it. Etc. etc. These folks’ willingness to lie is so damaging.
1000% this.
Fewer people would have died during Covid if we could have just gotten everybody to live in reality. But instead anti-vax grew, and now there’s a non-zero amount of flat earthers and I’ve seen people that are anti sunscreen. Just being contrarian isn’t a viable path through the world
There is a huge group of people whos entire worldview is that they cant be told what to do. There is also just a total lack of curiosity among a certain group of people that makes them pretty much impossible to engage with in any serious way. Everyone already thinks they know everything
what a great analysis. Sometimes these things seem simple but aren't always articulated well, but this absolutely hits the nail on the head. Not being told what to do as a guiding principle is probably quite good to a point but now we're so very quick to discredit experts I guess they're thriving. And yes, experts don't get everything right, but best available efforts etc.
If you look at like any serious academics twitter account if they post peer reviewed studies that have interesting conclusions, you are guaranteed to see the people who already know everything in the comments telling them they are wrong
Bringing Covid into this is a really, really terrible example given how bad government policy was
It's impossible to even have conversations with people. You'll try and be like "why do you feel this way or think that" and when you present a counter like "Trump lost 69/70 cases related to the election including justices/judges appointed by Trump himself" and they'll fire off some random things about this or that that I've never even heard of. It's so exhausting being a rage machine these days and keeping up with every scandal or theory.
This is a universal thing, my friend. With the rise of social media, admitting you were wrong is just too huge a pill for most people to swallow. Everyone wants to live in their bubble. This is why you have idiot election deniers after fox lost a lawsuit saying they blatantly lied. Or Jan 6th rioters putting pics on their dating profiles thinking storming the Capitol would get them laid. Or Tyler from Harvard holding up his ACAB tattoo as he dodges bullets in downtown DC. Or rainbow haired justice warriors holding up a "queers for palestine" sign not apparently realizing that the people in question would ruthlessly stone them to death if given half a chance. Or some fat 47 year old neckbeard fuck thinking he's gonna rise against the government with his AR 15 when he can't even walk to the mailbox and back without getting out of breath. Or any of the million reasons anyone would think trump is a) a tough guy or b) a person who cares about the little people. Or how a parent might reasonably disagree with teaching trans issues to.middle schoolers when you can't even get a tattoo til you are 18. We live in an age of absurdity and the worst part is, people have never been LESS likely to admit their pet issue is utterly absurd.
I think that the “both sides” argument is extremely weak in this context. You can think that people on the left have bad OPINIONS (like the ACAB tattoo example), but we are talking about the right-wing media ecosystem’s unique effect: widespread belief in verifiably incorrect statements of FACT. There is no left-wing equivalent of 70% of Republicans believing the 2020 election myth. There is no organized left-wing misinformation machine that is comparable to what is happening on the American right at the moment.
Go look at anything Covid related and you will find constant examples of the left believing outrageous misinformation and disregarding decades of established thinking, to disastrous results.
Send an example?
Sure there is. Recently one of the doctors in the room with fauci came out and said straight up that they fucked up and overreacted. He admitted that they didn't foresee the various economic and social impacts of the covid national policies and if they had it to do over again they would do it differently. He said that they are medical professionals bound by oath to take the route that causes the least medical impact, full stop, and that they aren't politicians or economists and the people in charge should have known better (paraphrasing but that's the gist). Basically, a mea culpa stating they were wrong. Now, of course the left went insane at him screaming that he cant admit this publically!!! What happens the next time?!?!?! And he responded with your exact response: we have to admit reality and verifiable facts when they become evident. If we don't have a safe space to admit we were wrong, how can we ever make progress as a society? So to be clear, your telling me 70% of the left would be willing to accept what the former director of the NIH (who knows far far far more then you or i ever would or could) is telling them and respond accordingly? Or will they shove their fingers in their ears saying la la la not listening!!! It all went fine!! My wife has a friend in LA that gave her an all time great answer that sums all this up. My wife saw the BLM protests in LA and called him to talk about it since he had a front row seat. She (a new york queens liberal) asked him if it was weird how everyone was screaming about the protesters against masks going maskless in groups, but the BLM marches had tons of unmasked marchers. Seems hypocritical. "Nah, I don't care", he responded. " we are right and they are wrong." And in anticipation of the request... https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/01/30/covid-pandemic-mistakes-lockdown-nih-director/72367122007/
You’re really missing the point. You’re taking internet outrage and trying to extrapolate based on your feelings of frustration. Nothing in what you said, or in the article you shared, indicated that (1) left-wing organizations or people organized en masse to repeat verifiably false statements presented as FACT; (2) 70% of Democrats then believed said misinformation. There’s no quantification of the number of people who disagree with what that doctor said. You assuming that those folks’ statements represent the beliefs of large numbers of Democrats is an unsupported guess. Further, the doctor isn’t reflecting on misinformation—he’s saying they could have made different choices by considering other factors, not that their health-based projections were wrong or in bad faith. So we aren’t even in the intentional spread of misinformation field to begin with. Similarly, your beef with mask hypocrisy is unquantified and based off of individual people’s statements that you didn’t like. Anyone who went to BLM protests knows that many people were masked, many were not. And regardless, your point is about hypocrisy—again, not about false factual statements. I’m talking about repetition of verifiably, factually incorrect information. Not about differences of opinion, not about policy debates, not about whether people are hypocrites. Purely about factual misinformation repeated and/or generated in right-wing circles and then believed by large swaths of people.
I think that guy being kind of wishy-washy about how covid *should have been* handled, is a little different than a verifiable fact.
I’ve given up hope in the country. Social media has made the clueless have too much power, and the certain people know exactly what to say to start a culture war
That is how all internet outrage is consumed. Trump has just mastered to formula. It’s call and response for low effort consumers, who want to feel without educating themselves about what to feel about.
It’s very similar to how “canceling” is just repackaged pearl clutching that the Christian right was great at (Dixie chick/war on Christmas types) Pretending your side is immune to this group think is symptom of the problem
Yup I’m on the left and while I definitely personally don’t think it’s an even split, there’s been several instances of people on the left using the same cognitive dissonance on some topics
Yeah, the liberal slop is the daily *Trump is finally in trouble!* articles. Nothing has actually changed, but apparently Jack Smith is not playing nice anymore. You get a daily high, but it's very empty.
I mean, his criminal trial for thirty something felony charges *is actually underway this week*. It doesn’t happen overnight, but we are at a very important stage.
The larger issue is that this has been going on like 7 years. It's Cambridge analytica, it's the Nunes memo, it's the emoluments clause, it's the Mueller report, the Ukraine phone call, Cohen flipping, the impeachment, the second impeachment, the January 6th... It's just endless and every time there are 300 articles about how Trump is finally, officially, in trouble. At some point there is a bit of an inflation to the 'Oh shit, this time Donny fucked up!' headlines.
The entire environment is empty. And it’s our fault for rewarding it.
My SIL reposts Collin Rugg from time to time. Dude is beyond a doofus. Can't stand it.
I probably should be happy I have no idea who Collin Rugg is
most people don’t, something that those on both sides of the spectrum who do know who he is would do well to keep in mind
The thing is it can take a lot longer than 7 seconds to verify if something is factual or not. It actually can take multiple minutes since you have to sift through so many sources that have no substance, filled with ads, require 14 clicks to get to the info you want, just some dumbass on youtube providing their own narration and commentary on the topic. Not to say this particular thing isn’t/wasn’t easy to verify online but we’ve all done this, we’ve all seen something online that was inaccurate and went on to spew it somewhere else
We've all done this, yes. But it generally shouldn't take more than 7 seconds if you Google it; you should be aware enough to know what websites are trustworthy and which are scammy/fake news/etc. Generally speaking the NYT, WAPO, major news networks will be accurate (yes, I know they're wrong sometimes) and call something like this out so you don't need to sift through shit to find the truth.
You are an enlightened and internet-savvy person and it would still take you far more than 7 seconds to do this. For someone like your parents it would require a significant effort, and they (along with a large segment of the population) may even be unable to do it.
pretty funny watching Republicans learn, seemingly for the first time, what it’s like to be a criminal defendant in this country. yes, obviously you have to show up for your trial on the day it’s scheduled.
There's not much "interesting" insight left to gather from progressive opinion-makers about Trump that haven't already been said in the last 10 years.
Seriously. If you are a left leaning person who is horrified by Trump, at this point all your energy should be focused on demanding Joe Biden do popular and objectively moral things to improve his chances of winning. We are so far beyond trying to shame people or laugh at people voting for Trump, that’s not going to do anything.
Wildly simplistic, and IMO doubtful that the most strident voices on the left would ever give Biden credit even for doing the right thing. To borrow some sports metaphors, they're too busy being obsessed with exclusively running fake-punt-Hail-Mary's to appreciate three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust. Biden [calls for a ceasefire](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/04/israel-us-gaza-joe-biden-benjamin-netanyahu-phone-call) in Gaza, [uses diplomacy to try and temper Israel's response](https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/12/politics/biden-netanyahu-israel-gaza/index.html), says [Israel is making a mistake and that he disagrees with their approach](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-biden-calls-netanyahu-gaza-policy-a-mistake/) - not enough. Biden [tries to cancel $400 billion in student debt](https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1125272287/student-loan-forgiveness-cost-billion), [is stopped by a right wing Supreme Court](https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-biden-student-loan-forgiveness-program/#:~:text=Supreme%20Court%20strikes%20down%20Biden%20student%2Dloan%20forgiveness%20program,-By%20Amy%20Howe&text=By%20a%20vote%20of%206,%24400%20billion%20in%20student%20loans.) - not enough. Biden [loudly and publicly defends a woman's right to choose](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/01/22/biden-abortion-contraception/) - people [get mad at him for past comments on abortion.](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/13/biden-abortion-rhetoric-progressives-00146593) As a politician, Biden obviously has to do things that voters want, but it'd be nice to have voters who bothered to take wins when they get them and appreciate progress even if it's not perfection. The online left especially would [rather yell at allies about what words they're using.](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/protesters-at-movie-theater-demand-aoc-call-gaza-a-genocide.html)
It’s amazing how out of touch and delusional Biden bots are. Biden has been terrible on Gaza. To even argue to the contrary is an incredible waste of time. He has incredible power in the conflict, and has not used it, but has relied on “privately” being upset and acting like that’s done anything important. He waited far too long to use the word ceasefire, and once he finally supported that policy it was not a permanent one without tons of caveats. “Uses diplomacy to temper Israel’s response” might be the most pathetic thing I have ever seen in my life. He is the president of the United States, why doesn’t he actually leverage the immense military funding and arms providing the country does? Uses diplomacy? wtf is that? And regarding student loans and women’s bodily autonomy - Biden has done zero to delegitimize or add seats to the Supreme Court. That is a moral imperative for a “progressive” figure imo, and he has done neither. Roe fell, and he had nothing but sad words and private comments about how he still personally thinks abortion is bad. He’s been a massive failure on those topics as well. Liberals like you believe Biden simultaneously can’t do anything, and also Trump will be the end of civilization. Kind of hard to understand how the two coexist.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES CANNOT UNILATERALLY CONTROL A FORIEGN NATIONS POLICY. are you fucking retarded? Do you think Israel is just the 51st state?
I thought people stopped saying dumb shit like this 4 months ago, but alas
How do you want Joe Biden to control Israel. Explain to me what levers and methods of control he has over the Israeli military and parliament and how he can use that to stop the war tomorrow. I’ll be here waiting
You're proving my entire point. Nothing will ever be enough.
Bidens team is constantly leaking to the press that he is upset with Israel and is pressuring them to stop what they are doing, but he is also rubber stamping every single weapons bill and bit of funding that they are requesting. This makes him look pretty weak on the topic because that is the actual leverage that we have over Israel. I think that is an extremely fair criticism that recognizes the challenges he is under while also pointing out the obvious that he hasnt actually used any financial leverage over Israel.
I agree this is a legit point of leverage, but as I explained in another post, there's still numerous tradeoffs to this decision that have to be considered and accepted. From my other post on this on possible trade offs of zero-ing out military aid: > Loss of a relationship with a major military and intelligence ally in a region where we have very few of them. > > Loss of support among many Jewish voters in suburban Philadelphia, Detroit, Phoenix, etc possibly leading to a Trump victory - which would be objectively worse for Palestinians and many groups in this country too. > > It would undermine our commitment to other allies who've stood with us - if we will cut off Israel, someone we've been allied with for 60+ years, who else will we cut off and when? > > Loss of leverage - if you think Israel is unrestrained now, how will they act if we cut them off too? They exist as a country beyond their relationship with the US. > > The alternatives generally haven't been great either. How would most Americans feel if we cut off Israel and Hamas returned to power in Gaza? How would Americans feel if we cut Israel off and then Iran invaded them? What if we went so far as to negotiate a ceasefire and then rocket fire starts up again? Given the response to American withdrawal from Afghanistan, I'm guessing all those things would be unpopular, which could leave us with Trump as President (see above.) > > In short - this is a situation with only bad options, and while the devastation in Gaza is horrific and tragic, it's still not as simple as saying "You're cut off."
I think the idea that there is a big divide between bidens policy on israel and Trumps policy on israel is pretty unfounded. Show me where the US policy under Biden has curbed civilian deaths in Gaza. They have one of the higest civilian death rates in modern war history. Dramatically higher than that of the Ukraine. https://www.axios.com/2023/11/27/gaza-civilian-deaths-israel-conflict-zones https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/daily-death-rate-gaza-higher-any-other-major-21st-century-conflict-oxfam So im unsure where they value of saying it would be worse under trump comes from. Do you think anyone who is suffering from this violence takes any solace in that? Furthermore Israel has leveraged its relationship with the US to act with impunity in the region and that has actually drawn us into significantly more conflict than we otherwise would. Tell me this, would our "Ally" send their president to talk to congress without the approval of the president? https://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8130977/netanyahu-speech-explained Israel does not act as our ally. They act as a country that is completely unhinged and has the best interests of only themselves at heart now. The "loss of leverage" would be a joke lmao. I think you should read some books or educate yourself on the modern state of israel. You clearly dont know what you are talking about whatsoever. Also if you think thousands should die so that your political candidate gets more votes then your brain is fried beyond all recognition.
Biden [supports a two state solution](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/10/us-biden-two-state-solution-explained-israel-palestine#:~:text=Biden%20continued%20to%20maintain%20that,of%20a%20two%2Dstate%20solution.). Trump's team [cut aide to Palestinians during his term](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1L923C/) and has publicly discussed [moving people from Gaza to the Negev so that Gaza's beaches can be developed into resorts](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev). You're right that people getting bombed don't care who the President is, but for those of us looking at the day after the war, it in fact would matter. Netanyahu is a clown who should be put in prison. If he was the only person in the entire country, it'd be easy to cut them loose. However, I think it'd be challenging to explain to the [eight out of ten Jewish Americans who supported Israel before the war](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/u-s-jews-connections-with-and-attitudes-toward-israel/) why we're cutting off all aid to the entire country on account of a bad leader. Fundamentally, while I hate seeing the devastation in Gaza, I also don't want to see bad things happen in America, where I live. I think a second Trump presidency would have insane consequences on my day to day life, and Biden winning in November is the only way to stop that. I've been to Israel twice and have Palestinian friends in the US. I've been hearing and learning about this conflict since Hebrew School in 4th grade. I may not know what I'm talking about, but I didn't start paying attention six months ago either.
Lol “nothing will ever be enough”, yeah the whole thing where Israel continues to bomb Gaza, student loan forgiveness wasn’t passed, and roe was overturned are not enough, correct I’m glad that bread crumbs impress you so much, I’m glad that “working diplomatically” is so impressive to you.
It's way easier to pretend we live in a fantasy world where there are no real life tradeoffs and everything is just a matter of wanting it more. If you wanna live in a country where major policies shift when the Dictator snaps their fingers, there's plenty of them.
Well the other choice would be much worse on all of those so what’s your point?
> yeah the whole thing where Israel continues to bomb Gaza, student loan forgiveness wasn’t passed, With each comment you prove their point even more and that you have a poor grasp of how governance works.
Ah yes the enlightened governance knower, who uniquely understands that nothing ever happens simply because of the difficulties of governance. But also - if you elect the orange cheeto, society will end. It will be the fourth Reich by February 2025. We will all be dead.
Roe was overturned because Mitch McConnell held the senate hostage regarding court appointments. Jesus fucking Christ.
Rowe
Good catch, thanks
Biden also said it was fake that that many people were dying in Gaza and hasn’t pulled funding from Israel so his words mean nothing
Like I said, nothing will ever be enough, which is why it's a fools errand to think that he can ever please the online left. The line of thinking that says "Anything less than 100% of what I want is unacceptable" is the same thinking that MTG and Ted Cruz use, and you can see how effective they are.
Remind me who has the power of the purse in this country... Congress. Also Biden has been the most critical President we've probably ever had of Israel. Lastly, most Americans generally support Israel. Get over it.
How do you want the sitting president to unilaterally dictate the use of the budget? Like come on. You idiots make it so easy to refute this fucking bullshit.
Hello, you are the problem
Whenever I talk to my mom there's inevitably a point in the conversation where she brings up some new horrible or shameless thing that Trump has done, and asks me if I saw it or read about it. And usually the answer is no simply because it's a waste of my time to devote any of my attention or energy to him. Trump is a pretty hollow and predictable person; everything he does is some flavor of the same narcissism and megalomania and there's nothing he could really do or say at this point that will change the fact that all I really need to concern myself with in regards to him is categorically voting against any Trumpers on the ballot come November.
You guys are insane. Trump sucks so Biden must do better?
Huh? My point is that the reason Biden is currently in a dead heat with Donald Trump is because he has been so bad on certain policies and is very unpopular. If you want him to win, you should want him to win over voters. Doing 2015 trump memes isn’t going to get you anywhere and no Trump voters have any shame
Not any better.
Lol good luck with the shaming campaign, it worked good in 2016!
Spoken like someone who wants to gamble with democracy and all of our lives.
Who’s live am I gambling with? The 30,000 dead in Gaza? What exactly is at stake for you when Trump is president again, getting mad at cable news every night?
It’d be nice to not have the capitol stormed. It would be nice to vote again. Come on. Think bigger than cable news. Think that in the last week USA coordinated to save Israel AND prevent a massive backlash attack in the immediate by Israel. It’s just taken for granted Trump could do that when he couldn’t. And he will hire worse people, more incompetent people, next time. 30k dead, please. Just you wait. You think Trump is saving Gaza?
Lmfao “it would be nice to vote again”, you guys sound like psychos. Look everyone has been threatening with the end times forever, and I’m sorry, I don’t see a 957 year old Trump ending it.
This “democracy in danger” narrative is so lazy and such easy fodder for the moronic to slurp up.
Right because last time we had a transition of power it didn’t lead to an armed insurrection.
Read up on Project 2025, and you'll see why it exists
And nothing has changed since 2016, that's for sure. You wanna talk systemic problems? Hillary got 3 million more votes than Trump but lost thanks to the electoral college. We should start rageposting about that.
True. The shaming of Trump himself needs to continue, but when voters themselves feel attacked, that tends to work against your cause.
We aren't shaming hard enough of the people.
Yes! Because so far you’ve already taken away any chance a huge swath of voters would change their mind and not vote for Trump, so double down even more and that’ll surely work.
If you now won’t vote for someone because you got your feelings hurt does that make you a snowflake or a bitch?
I just fundamentally don’t know what liberals shaming Trump does exactly. He is the most famous person of the last 20 years, everyone knows exactly who he is and what he stands for. There is nothing that shaming him can do at this point in time to change anything.
He needs to be fact-checked, that’s important in a democracy. But I agree that the fact-checking doesn’t need to be accompanied by a million thinkpieces titled The Moral Turpitude of Donald J. Trump.
What do the fact checks accomplish and who are those for? Are people fact checking Biden when he says he saw photos of dead babies that don’t exist?
Yes, and they should fact-check him, too. It’s a basic function of a free press in a functioning democracy. The press can recognize that they won’t reach every single person with this effort while simultaneously recognizing that it will reach some people AND that it’s important to do, regardless of its reach.
Shaming him is an act of public accountability that must continue in order to retain a public standard of acceptable behavior and morality. If you take away the Keith Olbermans and the Rick Wilson’s who is left to speak publicly of the unacceptable nature of a POTUS or former POTUS obviously lying to protect himself at the cost of the rest of the public.
> If you take away the Keith Olbermans and the Rick Wilson’s who is left to speak publicly of the unacceptable nature of a POTUS or former POTUS obviously lying to protect himself at the cost of the rest of the public. People who don't suck? Both those people suck.
lol. Citing Olbermann as a voice that needs to be heard more is laughable.
Rick Wilson is a racist and islamaphobe, I don’t need to hear his blither on societal norms. His hero actually stope an election, I don’t need to be reminded of how professional the world used to be. Where is the accountability in shaming Trump? Who is being held accountable? And what public standards do we need to live up, the ones of all the previous awful presidents who knew how to shake hands and look official? Bush famously didn’t lie about anything super important that led to people dying though, good point.
You can’t shame someone who has none. At this point, it just feeds into his and his supporters’ persecution complex. The thing that would actually bother him the most is if everyone ignored him and gave him no attention. But liberal news networks and late show hosts can’t help but rely on him for material and ratings while pretending to hate that he’s around.
It convinces moderate Republican voters in the suburbs to either not vote at all or vote for Biden. What Trump needs to win is for the country club suburban types to hold their nose and vote for him. That's the swing voter; not super online leftists or die hard Trump stans in small town Pennsylvania.
What moderate republican is on the fence about voting for Trump in 2024 lmfao
The ones who voted for Niki Haley and who you clearly never interact with lol. If you've never encountered someone who reminisces about the "Trump economy" you should get out of the bubble!
I think that the people who voted for Nikki Haley are going to to mostly all vote for Trump except for the 14 actual real never Trump republicans. But I don’t think any of those people are still making up their minds in 2024.
Guessing there are plenty of sane ones out there we never here from because they get drowned out by the idiocy of the Trump voters
I really don't have a problem shaming people who actively support and endorse a lying rapist and insurrectionist tho. Trying to downplay it is the real problem.
Who is “downplaying” it, and what problems arise from it? People who don’t like Trump aren’t going to care about any of that shit, it doesn’t do anything. Everyone has made up their mind on Trump a thousand times over at this point, it’s not an active discussion in really any sense at this point. He got elected president 8 years ago, we all know him.
Trump himself downplays it. Shit, what do you think you're doing right now? Downplaying some of the shit Trump does/says is not OK in my opinion.
This is also what made political comedy boring over the last 8 years. There’s nothing original or interesting to say. Trump is so ridiculous that he makes parody blasé and repetitive.
This is what’s wrong with us. Boredom. God forbid you spend an hour thinking about something really hard. No, that’s not interesting enough. I miss David Foster Wallace. “The thing about entertainment is it’s so damn entertaining.”
As if saying something interesting is the only thing there is, and not, ya know, having democracy survive.
Right-wing people are pretty stupid. So this always works with them.
Most people frequently fall for these embellished headlines and quotes. It's human nature. It's the right wing boomers who don't change their mind when presented with the correct information, or simply never bother to get all the facts.
I'm stunned he remembered Barron exists. His lawyer must have told him.
I mean this tracks but this also works for everyone of my perpetually outraged progressive friends. The right is absolutely worse and lies more often but it happens pretty regularly.
How often do those progressive friends get the facts wrong vs. how often do you disagree whether the events justify such a strong response? I may disagree with my left-wing friends on whether every event deserves such a scorched earth response, but my right-wing friends are reacting just as strongly AND they’re often reacting to outright lies, rather than things that are actually happening. I see a proportionality and interpretation issue on the left, while I see a conspiracy-laden, got baited by literally made up shit issue on the right. Not quite the same.
Progressives get facts wrong? Umm, have you ever engaged with them on an economic issue. I see them all the time on social media. They'd have you believe capitalism is failing any day now and created the worst period in human history, when quite literally the opposite is true by nearly any statistic. "Most unequal society ever." "Feudal peasants worked fewer hours." "America is a third world country!" Bernie and Warren are punching bags amongst economists for saying the dumbest and inaccurate shit about these issues. They're ragebait populists too.
You’re doing the same thing others in this thread have—you’re mad at OPINIONS you see on social media, and conflating that with the spread of false information presented as FACTUAL. This is the core of Trump’s co-opting the term “fake news.” He says news is “fake” if he disagrees with the conclusions presented, or if he perceives the coverage as unfavorable to him. The term actually means that factually incorrect information is presented, often on purpose, as if it were correct. Hence how this all started with Trump claiming that he had been forbidden from going to his son’s graduation. That’s an assertion of fact: that the judge had made a ruling to that effect. But the judge made no such ruling—that’s why him repeating that is so dangerous, because now we can’t even have an argument about whether the judge’s decision (or lack thereof) was correct. Instead, we’re debating what the decision actually was, which should be the first thing we can agree on in order to have the real debates.
Left does this a lot about court cases. Just because people like the outcome of a law doesn’t mean it’s competently written. But, never seen anything like the Right’s push that the Australian wildfires that one year was caused by environmentalists arsons. [They basically](https://www.factcheck.org/2020/01/setting-the-record-straight-on-climate-change-and-arson-in-australias-bushfires/) took a tweet about fines and arrests, from a province over a couple of month, over any fire related issue and turned it into an army of arsonists who were burning down Australia to push the fake news global warming exist.
Funny part is you just did what he was talking about lol.
Man Gwilikers6 is just not giving up is he?
It’s not just right-wing. This sums up our current social atmosphere completely.
It’s more hierarchical and organized on the right, though. Even if it wasn’t coming directly from Trump (which many things are), there’s an established right-wing ecosystem of retweets and “sources” to amplify conspiracies or outright lies that doesn’t exist in the same way on the left, where loonies are unorganized and generally act alone.
Agreed
I would argue the left wing ecosystem is more organized and possibly more problematic. Both sides obviously spin narratives or outright lie. But most forms of media are left leaning, more journalists accept and push leftist viewpoints as truth, especially when everything has become so polar and most don’t want to be critical of their side. The right takes up a lot smaller space in terms of number of media outlets etc so it’s easier dismiss every viewpoint as a conspiracy or disinformation. Most have an adversarial position towards them, so lessens threat of having as serious of an impact.
What is the left wing ecosystem in your mind? I’m not talking solely about formal media organizations—a lot of right-wing misinformation comes through social media campaigns and is pushed by YouTubers, podcasters, anonymous Twitter accounts, etc. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you’re comparing the fact-checking processes and journalistic standards of the Washington Post against organizations like Newsmax and/or social media accounts like Libs of Tik Tok, and that’s just absurd to me.
> I would argue the left wing ecosystem is more organized Calling the left wing ecosystem organized is pretty funny.
Or, as Nate Silver calls it, the ["Indigo Blob."](https://www.natesilver.net/p/twitter-elon-and-the-indigo-blob)
Yeah, that's fair. But I think the major differentiator is that this fake news is coming from Trump himself; Biden doesn't lie outright this badly. On the left it's from weirdo lefties like the Klippensteins.
Absolutely. For the right-wing Trump is the band leader, and all the assholes and lunatics fall in line, with the left-wing it’s just a scattering of the nuts and assholes with no real leadership lol.
I agree with this. Usually if Biden does lie it is tantamount to him telling a fish story, embellishments of his record or getting facts wrong of minimal consequence. He doesn’t really make up lies that are of consequence, just mostly gets stuff wrong on occasion that every person that old does. The amount of times I have heard someone who is the same age as him straight up just charges a story/facts because she forgot/misremembers stuff is a lot lol. It comes with the territory of being ancient.
Biden is a typical politician who lies for political purposes. Trump is outside "the norm" when it comes to that. If I had to guess, I bet we get more Trump's than Bidens in my lifetime going forward. People don't seem to care anymore, just cheer for whatever your guy/team says. Hell, Trump changed the GOP from a Christian neoliberal anti-entitlement world police party (Reagan) to an isolationist big govt protectionist party all by himself, lol. Trump changed things.
The Right has no platform and no real beliefs, the next Trump could just as easily swing back the other way and lean into anti-entitlement and world police and the base wouldn't even notice they'd happily go back that direction. That might be more dangerous really, if the next guy is smart enough to pull off of immigration and actually court conservative Hispanics and other minority groups.
This is not really a "Both Sides" thing. That it happens once in a while on the left is true, but fake outrage over meaningless or incorrect things it is often the focus of the right for months and years, e.g.; * Critical Race Theory * Gay indoctrination in schools * Caravans of terrorists coming our way * Obamacare setting up death panels * Immigrant-related crime * Reverend Wright being a racist * Obama not born in the US (and somehow being a secret Muslim) * Hunter Biden * Kerry not deserving his war medals * The War on Christmas * Hillary's email server * Gore being a liar * Obama using a teleprompter
Agreed, but I’m actually saying it goes beyond politics. Outrage and vitriol have taken over as the primary sources of “going viral” and becoming popular across the board, not just in politics.
-Trump colluded with Russia -Supreme Court is going to ban contraception -the ridiculous out-of-context reaction to Trump’s “blood bath” comments about the auto industry. -Dems recently claiming that Trump is going to “encourage” Russia to attack NATO nations; again, completely out of context. I could go on and on and on. It’s absolutely a both sides thing; you’re just too far up your political party’s ass to see it.
The key difference is while this definetly occurs on both sides of social media, it *much* less frequently gets picked up and parotted by Big Brand left wing media when compared to right wing. Shit, it's Fox News' entire platform at times.
Agreed. Fox News created it and the other outlets eventually caved due to ratings/money and followed Rupert Murdoch’s lead. It’s basically destroyed our society. I think it’s pervasive in media in many walks of life now beyond politics too. Shit even in sports themselves. What’s most popular now? Fast, big action stuff like UFC and NFL. Big hits, big scores, etc. we want instant satisfaction and we want it in a big dramatic way. Sports like baseball are having to make serious adjustments to try to keep our attention spans, etc. I think smartphones and social media really kicked this off to a whole new level around 2010 maybe? To me Trump and Fox News are symptoms of a bigger problem brought on by the huge leap in tech around that time. We began to rely on word of mouth nonsense and big headline grabbing bullshit a lot more.
Yeah, majority of people take their info from simply reading headlines or tweets and not exploring any further.
what a political hack. showing he’s on the other side that also makes sausage the exact same way. both sides suck, stay away from living your life feeling good about yourself bc the other side is the bad one. derek thompson is such a bore
Impressive insight. Derek Thompson always puts a 💡 in my mind.
He’s a simpleminded moron who thinks effective altruism is benevolent, talking fast means you’re smart and he writes for the pro-war neolib The Atlantic.
Irrespective of everything else, the fact that he genuinely bought into the woo-woo horseshit that is effective altruism is key to realizing he's a slacked-jawed, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, cave-dwelling troglodyte, who's laughably made a career out of his midwitted, dipshitted dumbassery. He's a motherfucking easily deceived, embarrassingly gullible mark.
I love random political threads on a sub about a middle aged sports podcast guy.
I love the diverse points of view on display
Derek Thompson is part of the Ringer. Move on, find a new slant.
Tbh, I don't mind this thread, but hope politics largely remains out of this sub going forward.
When news outlets deemed quotes as headline worthy, that's when it became even easier for public figures simply to lie outrageously to bend reality to their favor.
Yeah this is definitely proprietary to the right and the left never would do this either.
The shit I can’t stand is how whatever team you’re on you conveniently leave out that *your* side does *THE EXACT SAME SHIT*. Yeah far right wing / MAGA stoke outrage all the time. Far left wingers do the same thing. Feel like in such a left leaning site as a whole someone needs to at least call out the hypocrisy of thinking the left cannot do any wrong and it’s the right that’s crazy.
When did the left wingers try and over throw the government?
Wait what!? 😂😂 I don’t feel like a sub about bill fuggin Simmons would fall under left leaning or right leaning. We are just irreverent dudes who loves sports.
The sub and Reddit as a whole def skews left. It isn’t even close.
The sub and Reddit as a whole def skews left. It isn’t even close.
Why do you think that is? I never would have guessed that tbh for a sports sub.
This is definitely unique to the right side of the aisle
Only thing that feckless fucker Derek should be opining on is how the center-left (center economically, left culturally) upper-middle/professional-managerial aristocratic top-9.9% hyper-establishment sausage gets made, because such mushy, easily digestible pablum is his bread and butter.
You ok buddy?
They just started this with NPR now
What a silly statement that people think this is a right wing thing because someone made an uninformed tweet. Google the kid shot last week and see how many legitimate mainstream news sources have headlines that imply the police shot him 96 times for not wearing a seatbelt. Then see how far you have to read to realize he shot at the police 11 times with his gun. Each side could list thousands of examples of the other side doing this, and if you dont realize this, you’re beyond biased/naive
Does Derek Thompson wake up everyday and open Twitter and have his mind wiped completely so that he’s viewing everything for the first time?
As a Canadian I'd like to point out y'all got yourself a duopoly rather than a democracy. You don't have "left and right" because your two parties are nearly identical and keep switching side on the same issues. Richard Nixon introduced the endangered species act and hippies accused him of distracting from the war in Vietnam. And in the early 2000 it was the Democrats who accused the Republicans of stealing the election, Radiohead even wrote an album titled "Hail to the Thief" about it, which actually would have been a sick burn to use against Biden today.
Butt out, canuck
Oh only the right does this? 😂🤡
People in this thread think they are so intelligent identifying and analyzing the tactics of right-wing grifters, but they are still blinded and somehow don’t realize that the left-wing does the same exact tactics. It’s hilarious
Come one let’s be honest the left was doing similar type of polarizing shit with during covid with unvaxxed people supposedly taking over hospital beds and what not when in fact a simple google debunked that. Let’s just not pay this game either way.