If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they're lying.
Evidence or GTFO.
They already did Dick Cheney, it doesn't get much lower than that.
fundamentally the voters pick the politicians
No they don't. The DNC is a private entity that can nominate on whatever basis it feels like. That's especially true considering the nonsense of the 2024 primary. When there was something more of a semblance of a legitimate primary, in 2016, the voters soundly rejected Harris. That is, of course, before we get into Citizens United, dark money, the electoral college, etc. Bourgeois elections are not a legitimate representation of the people's will. There's even been studies that show no correlation between how popular a policy is and how likely it is to be enacted. Opinion polls likewise show strong, consistent disapproval of Congress.
Suppose the public is pro-Palestine - when did we ever get a chance to express that and have it represented in the political system? If we never got the chance, then how can you claim that Kamala's Zionism is an expression of popular will? The only opportunity I ever saw was to vote third party, which I did, but apparently that's not a legitimate method of making my voice heard on account of you're currently criticizing me for it. So then there was no method at all.
Candice Owens/Milo Yiannopoulos
The literal definition is someone who unquestionably supports anyone who waves a red flag. In practice, it means anyone who ever acknowledges a good thing done by a socialist state, or even refutes misinformation about them. If you say, "Cuba had a successful literacy program," there are people who will call you a tankie, even though it's just objectively true.
See, the difference between our perspectives is that you're punching down at voters rather than punching up at politicians. Maybe if every single person who stood by their valid moral principles was convinced to abandon them, it would've changed the outcome. I don't know how that's supposed to be achieved, exactly, aside from trying to shame people for having morals, which I don't expect to be particularly effective.
Alternatively, instead of changing the public in order to be in line with what politicians want, we could change politicians to be in line with what voters want. I think the word for that is "democracy."
If the status quo was enough to address Trumpism, then why is Trump president?
I don't say that the two parties are exactly the same, but 1) they will both lead to the same result and 2) they are both fundamentally unacceptable.
The democrats are not "the tourniquet party." Tourniquets stop bleeding, the democrats want to cause more bleeding. They are the "stab your femoral artery again" party. They don't fix shit.
If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress.
If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that's below, that the blow made. And they haven't even begun to pull the knife out, much less pull, heal the wound...
They won't even admit the knife is there.
Throughout history, there have been plenty of times when people supported genocide on the premise that it prevented some greater threat. I'm not aware of a single time in history where that position was the correct one.
I have not seen that movie.
You must also wish Socrates had it, since you don't know what basic logic looks like, at all.
In case it went over your head, the story I told you did not turn out the way I described, in fact, what Socrates said became an enduring concept in philosophy, they even came up with a special term for it, the two "horns" of the Euthyphro dilemma, like the two horns of a bull, if you grab one, you get impaled by the other. It is considered a compelling argument precisely because it's a no-win situation.
I actually watched the video you linked earlier. It's a good video, you just completely misinterpreted it. Again, I don't know how many times I have to explain this to you: just because a line of logic makes you look bad, that isn't enough reason for you to reject it. That's absolutely not what the video is saying.
That's a lot of words to say "no."
Yeah, liberals do have insane, uncompromising, unrealistic opinions and are very unwilling to accept others having different opinions.
Depends, if for example they're destroying a rail line used to conduct the Holocaust and it coincidentally caused that, then yes. If it's entirely unrelated, then no.
Not sure what that question has to do with anything.
Yes, I do consider basic fucking logic pretty damn important.
Besides it being an obvious trap, you absolutely admitted it was a trap, and then you said that you were intending to incriminate me either way. Don’t play these fucking games.
You. It doesn’t magically stop being a trap in the same way that a puzzle doesn’t stop being a puzzle because the puzzle maker said that’s what it was. I even linked to the video explaining how those incriminating statements work. Don’t piss on my leg.
Once upon a time, Socrates had a discussion about the gods with someone named Euthyphro. Socrates asked, "Are the things the gods command good because the gods command them, or do the gods command things that just happen to be good? If you say it's the first, then saying that the gods command good things is really just saying "the gods command what the gods command," a meaningless tautology. But if you say the gods command things that we independently judge to be good, then there must be some other source of goodness, and in that case, why don't we follow that directly, without needing the gods?"
Euthyphro responded "AHA! YOU'RE TRYING TO LURE ME INTO A TRAP!!! I CAUGHT YOU11!!!! THAT QUESTION MAKES ME LOOK BAD EITHER WAY SO IT'S OBVIOUSLY BAD FAITH!!!" and Socrates said, "Aw, dang, you got me" and it never came up again.
Never pretended I wasn't anti-Nazi.
Do you know what meta is? Did you know that you can describe the concept of a topic and aspects of said topic without necessarily going into it? Because I clearly was talking about the hyper-fixation people have on the genocide as a topic
And that is, itself, a statement about genocide. Saying that people are "hyper-fixated" on genocide, and that they shouldn't be, that they should "move the fuck on" and that "the world doesn't revolve around genocide" is saying that genocide isn't that big of a deal actually, that it's just a matter of preference, like whether you like waffles or pancakes.
The fact is that genocide is a moral abomination and people are perfectly right to "fixate" on it, because that's what you do when something abominable is happening in front of you. If I see somebody pull out a gun and start shooting people, and start complaining that everybody is "hyper-fixated" on the shooter and that they shouldn't be, then I am making a statement about the shooting and how significant it is. This isn't hard to understand.
Because I refuse to believe you’re this dense. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you’re smart enough to understand,
Right, you're "giving me the benefit of the doubt" by saying that I'm lying.
How?? I said the thing, I jumped through your hoop, I overexplained and keep overexplaining myself. Why is it so difficult to understand? Is it really that inconceivable?
Now you did. I said that you were minimizing genocide. Now, I think you have a completely incoherent and self-contradictory position.
No, you set up a trap. You don’t set up traps when you want straight answers.
Brother, it was not a "trap." I even did you the courtesy of explaining the implications of both of your possible responses. What kind of "trap-setter" explains their trap?
I asked you a very simple, staightforward, and perfectly fair hypothetical. I did not realize that you don't understand how hypotheticals worked, or that a hypothetical apparently killed your family or something to the point that you would take this much offense over it. Again, just because a hypothetical makes your position look bad, that is not sufficient reason to reject it. That's just like, how arguments work, on a very fundamental level.
YOU dragged the conversation to c/memes. YOU wanted to “expose me” over here, “in front of the class”.
Who do you even think you're fooling?
My comment was on the topic of genocide
Yes, that's what I said, you were talking about genocide.
You PRETEND
Why do you keep saying this? Are you a mind-reader? I haven't "pretended" a single thing this conversation. I genuinely, 100% believe that you were minimizing genocide. I'm not aware of any other possible interpretation of what you said.
Why should I if that was not the topic?
It seems like it would've been really fucking easy to say "No, that wouldn't justify the Holocaust" and then explain whatever other interpretation supposedly exists for what you said, instead of playing this game where you refuse to answer and then answer like 20 comments later in a different thread.
Who the fuck is talking about genocides?
Both you, and the person you originally replied to.
I gave you an explicit example where I literally removed the word genocide from the sentence to explain my meta-comment,
You attempted to minimize genocide by suggesting that being pro- or anti-genocide was merely a matter of personal preference an abhorrent and repugnant thing that you keep coming back to for some reason, as if it wasn't abhorrent and repugnant.
Then you’re all Pikachu-face confused when it turns out that I’m well-read on genocide and that I denounce it freely.
Then why couldn't you earlier? Why couldn't you "freely denounce the Holocaust" when I asked if a particular line of logic would justify it.
"Not getting a Nazi isn't an option. But what we can control is whether we get a Strasserist Nazi or a Hitlerite Nazi. Clearly, you have a moral responsibility to support the Strasserist."
(It's getting harder and harder to do parodies because a lot of people would unironically agree with that.)