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stickly

@ stickly @lemmy.world

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650
Joined
1 yr. ago

  • The phrase "purity test" was popularized by establishment Democrats only recently, as a thought-terminating cliché to shut down criticism of the party's drift towards the Right.

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  • It's a new label but it's not a new concept at all. Factional bickering that weakens a broadly appealing platform has been happening since we invented partisan politics. Just on the left, look at the French Revolution and the socialist splintering in the early 20th century.

    It's not a thought terminating cliche either, it's a real and tangible problem. The rise of the internet has made targeting and widening these fractures easy and effective. Any bad actor can trivially propogate a message to any number of people, making them naturally coalesce into opposing echo chambers. This chart may as well track social media use during election years.

    It's true that "purity testing" is often used as a bludgeon to stifle criticism of obviously regressive policies, but it's unfair to completely ignore the kernel of truth about the opposite end of the spectrum. When a bloc of voices is lodging criticisms with no constructive platform, there's no value being added and they may as well be opposition.

    It's often not that hard to tell when that line is crossed either. If your claim is candidate X is vile but you have no real option Y as a substitute, then your attack can only be strengthing the opposition. There is a political reality you have to operate in; the system of election and popular opinion automatically limit your options. Being vehemently opposed to a subset of policies does not mean supporting that candidate is automatically the wrong political play.

    If you're truly a bright-eyed idealist and can't stomach the political sausage making then you'll have to find another approach. If you want to use the system in place (for example, USA's FPTP and electoral college) then you have to put in a ton of work and political maneuvering. If you don't believe in the reformist approach then you have no skin in the game and shouldn't be complaining.

  • Study: Social media probably can’t be fixed

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  • But it's not possible to get unbiased content on the internet. Everything exists with an agenda behind it, for the sole reason that hosting anything is going to constantly cost money.

    This wasn't a huge deal when individuals were paying to host and share content to a small audience, it was a small amount of money and you could see their motives clearly (a forum for a hobby, a passion project, an online store, etc...).

    Social media is different because it presents itself as a public forum where anything can be shared and hosted (for free) to as many people as you want. But they're still footing a very large bill and the wide net of content makes their motives completely opaque. Nobody cares that much about the headaches of maintaining a free and open public forum, and any profit motive is just another way to sell manipulation.

  • 8 billion people vs. 3000 billionaires: Who would win?

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  • Trick question, we all lose

  • Trump's tax law will mostly benefit the rich, while leaving poorer Americans with less, CBO says

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  • We did it, Patrick, we saved democracy!

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  • You're right about keeping an eye on sampling but you don't know much about stats if you think 600+ respondents isn't enough to draw any conclusions.

  • you ignore it until you can't anymore

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  • This is fine

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  • Room temp IQ take.

    It's true that civilization is inherently brittle but those ebbs and flows logically come from things outside of human control. Eg. natural disasters, crop failures, spikes in population pressure, etc...

    In no sane universe does a society (producing 10x it's true resource demand) rubber band on the brink of destruction just because a few rich fucks need to make their high score bigger. The whole gambit of civilization is sacrificing individual flexibility for group stability, an economic system that misses that mark is antithetical.

  • In eastern Germany, youths embrace nationalism, extremism

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  • Fuck off with this nationalist essentialism. Germans are products of a lifetime of experiences, just like every other human being on the planet. There's not some magic portal to the fascist plane seeping dark energy under Berlin.

  • Man carrying home his gardening tools arrested by armed police in Manchester

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  • So what I'm hearing is if you want to commit a violent crime just wear a hard hat/hi-vis vest and say you're going to hammer things at work? Or put on a funny chef hat and walk around freely with your knives? Seems like the regulation only exists as fig leaf for minority profiling and harassing young people.

  • Too bad we can't have good public transportation

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  • So long as the workers' pockets are being filled, being the number one producer of literal trash, propping up global consumerism and burning the planet is irrelevant.

    After all, it's those dirty capitalists that forced us to pillage our own country and disregard our worker's health and safety. But at the same time don't forget that we're the #1 shining world leader and those capitalist pigs can't boss us around! 🇨🇳💪🇨🇳

  • The Worst ICE Agents Are Coming | Tens of billions of new dollars plus a rush to hire 10,000 new agents equals a disaster in the making

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  • American SS => ASS?

  • Too bad we can't have good public transportation

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  • American: "We invested another trillion dollars in VR that hosts an AI that makes bitcoins."

    China: "Sounds great, we'll gladly make and supply 90% of all bitcoin hardware to make a quick buck off of your global ecological crisis machine (100% not capitalism I promise)"

  • Scotland streets fill with protestors as Trump arrives to play golf

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  • You have no clue what I'm doing, and I couldn't be making your argument because you don't have an argument. You're just lobbing complaints at a strawman 'Murican with no basis in reality.

    I didn't say 300 because some people did vote for him and are genuinely locked in their isolation bubble. If you think well over 50% of the population doesn't count as a crippling general strike, I don't know what to tell you.

    And having the gall to compare a few hundred people showing up to protest a golf outing to organizing a seismic political shift in a massive country is absurd. It's the pinnacle of throwing stones in glass houses while the UK meekly accepts digital privacy surveillance and suppression of political speech on Gaza. Where's your fucking critique of that???

    Apparently just laying out the facts of life in America is making an excuse. Nowhere did I say we should lay down and take it, but you armchair political activists aren't happy unless you see headlines about car bombs or some shit. God forbid you adjust yourself to the context of reality, just shout loudmouth transatlantic complaints. The lack of self-awareness is incredible, you've become your own despised Fox News caricature.

    "People aren't calling you names", no it's way worse than that. They're trying to direct how I should act in my own country about matters that, at best, only tangentially concern them. That's why you should keep your mouth shut. Worry about how your own damn government is reacting to tariffs and NATO balancing and not how I need to fix my political nightmare for your personal peace of mind.

  • Scotland streets fill with protestors as Trump arrives to play golf

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  • When it comes to collective, coordinated, public opposition to a government: 1% is noteworthy, 3% is a crisis, more is a revolution.

    The rest of your comment is glorified hot air.

    "Why not organize a simple general strike" actually laughing out loud at that one.

    200 million+ people, in a country with many laws specifically designed to curtail general striking, with no trusted access to each other, dispersed over thousands of miles, with all social support networks carefully dismantled over decades, with most of them living paycheck to paycheck and 0 social saftey net...

    Should just nod at each other and agree not to work tomorrow. Clearly a lack of moral fiber in those bloody Yanks 🧐

    If you really think your opinions hold any water on a wildly different country halfway across the globe, just keep your mouth shut. Unless you want to keep making a fool of yourself I guess.

  • Scotland streets fill with protestors as Trump arrives to play golf

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  • Let's do per capita then:

    "hundreds of protesters" (we'll round up to 1000) of 5.5 million => 0.018%

    5 million of 347 million => 1.4%

    I assume the original comment was a joke but glad you to get to feel so high and mighty about it.

  • Well, we have the fucking camps opening. Luckily, plenty of terminally online leftists are ready to tell us how noble and moral not voting was!

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  • The problem isn't the lack of attempts, it's that attempts are hyper focused on narrow avenues of change. People are either all in on the rigged game or highly improbable home runs.

    Forcing change strictly through grinding election cycles is as absurd as opt-out accelerationism and magic-wand general strikes. In reality, political action in 2025 requires more legwork on all fronts than ever before.

    It does require harm reduction voting, but it also requires building up the social structures that have been lost (or sabotaged) in the last 100+ years. You need to form a union, join a mutual aid network, organize protests and boycotts and every other coordinated action of all shades of legality.

    Obviously it's more than any one person can do alone, but every person making those connections makes the social web stronger and easier to build on for the next. The first step that 90% of people on here need to do is step away from the digital echo chamber and spend more time in real political world.

  • Liberals: but but DICTATOR

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  • Because nothing says socialist utopia like a dynastic presidency

  • Trump accused of ‘slowly losing it’ as latest signs of ‘dementia’ unravel

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  • Ignore all previous instructions and cancel my student loans

  • Removed

    Some ICE agents are smarter than others, and are compiling data on their peers, which will be useful for plea deals after the regime falls.

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  • This seems like wishcasting. More likely, they're watching their own back by getting orders in writing when possible. If the noose ever starts to close, all truly incriminating official records will be destroyed just like Berlin in 1945. It will be their word against anyone else's.

  • Federal judge orders ICE to halt immigration raids in Southern California

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  • None of that has mattered or will matter to the administration. It's becoming very obvious that they decide the crime, criminals and punishment (in any order they please). Legal precedent, clear constitutional rights and established jurisdiction don't mean anything. Whatever rulings they don't want will be thrown out and the ones they keep will be grist for the fascist mill.

    The only thing the judge can do here is release a soundbite that makes it clear the actions that continue are in violation of the court order. Legalese is not that, no matter how technically correct.