Just goes to show the right are brainless and only follow what message comes from the top. Loved democracy under Reagan, now are subverting it under Trump.
The new propaganda war
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The modern world is so interconnected that what was once the work of many is now the work of one or none. A single individual or an automated bot can spread propaganda and false news to millions in the span of an hour. The scale and speed with which bad actors are able to spread information in the modern world is TERRIFYING. We needed legislation and regulation of these platforms a decade ago and every year that goes by without legislation or action against them is an abject failure and dereliction of responsibility on the part of politicians in this and every other government.
Russia seeking to expand and deciding to annex another country as the start of campaign to expand its borders that they very obviously plan to continue with other bordering countries is a major issue. We are talking about escalation into another world war. So yes funding opposition to stop Putin's campaign is really important and more important than basically any other foreign aid. Putin's invasion is second only to climate change in seriousness and gravity of consequence for people of many nations and ethnicities around the world. Putin made this a world issue and his ambitions make it an urgent and pressing world issue.
This argument that foreign aid is some zero sum game that comes at the cost of domestic funding is literal Russian propaganda that has been adopted and championed by the most vile of the right wing assholes in the US. It is not some magical coincidence that a large portion of the GOP is now against Ukrainian aid and it should give you pretty big pause to realize that your stance here aligns with the freedom caucus. Not to mention this isolationist argument is the exact same argument spread by fascists throughout modern history including Goebbels and Mussolini. This isn't new
Yes our government is failing people here at home and more absolutely needs to be done to support people in need. Yes there are many many issues here at home that are important and need to be addressed. But allowing Putin to ramrod his way into Eastern Europe will not improve the lives of anyone here or abroad nor is the funding given to Ukraine suddenly going to be allocated to the things either of us would want to see it allocated to. The end result would be that money doesn't get spent or gets spent on some other foreign aid and then in a few years as Putin starts trying to annex more territory a world conflict starts and everyone here and elsewhere in the world will be worse off for it.
Like it or not the economy of the world is interconnected and we have allies in Europe. If/when those allies are dragged into conflict because Putin misses the glory days of the USSR and wants to recreate the eastern block that means we are obligated to help and defend those countries. The world cannot afford to just walk away. And lest you think that's some far flung conspiracy theory take a look at the countries that have specifically joined NATO now as a result of Putin's actions. That's all the proof you need. The reality is that funding opposition in Ukraine is not only necessary but it's cost effective both in monetary costs and human cost because if Putin is allowed to continue his campaign the fronts of the war and the people involved will balloon quickly and with that the costs of staving his takeover of other countries increases exponentially.
Isolationist thinking is a tried and true fascist canard that is even less applicable now than it has been at any other point in human history. We live in an interconnected and interdependent world. Do not allow yourself to be led to believe it's possible to just be an island apart from the world.
Ironically this exact line of thinking is something that has been heavily pushed and propagandized by the very sort of campaigns this article is about.
Russia seeking to expand and deciding to annex another country as the start of campaign to expand its borders that they very obviously plan to continue with other bordering countries is a major issue. We are talking about escalation into another world war. So yes funding opposition to stop Putin's campaign is really important and more important than basically any other foreign aid. Putin's invasion is second only to climate change in seriousness and gravity of consequence for people of many nations and ethnicities around the world. Putin made this a world issue and his ambitions make it an urgent and pressing world issue.
This argument that foreign aid is some zero sum game that comes at the cost of domestic funding is literal Russian propaganda that has been adopted and championed by the most vile of the right wing assholes in the US. It is not some magical coincidence that a large portion of the GOP is now against Ukrainian aid and it should give you pretty big pause to realize that your stance here aligns with the freedom caucus. Not to mention this isolationist argument is the exact same argument spread by fascists throughout modern history including Goebbels and Mussolini. This isn't new
Yes our government is failing people here at home and more absolutely needs to be done to support people in need. Yes there are many many issues here at home that are important and need to be addressed. But allowing Putin to ramrod his way into Eastern Europe will not improve the lives of anyone here or abroad nor is the funding given to Ukraine suddenly going to be allocated to the things either of us would want to see it allocated to. The end result would be that money doesn't get spent or gets spent on some other foreign aid and then in a few years as Putin starts trying to annex more territory a world conflict starts and everyone here and elsewhere in the world will be worse off for it.
Like it or not the economy of the world is interconnected and we have allies in Europe. If/when those allies are dragged into conflict because Putin misses the glory days of the USSR and wants to recreate the eastern block that means we are obligated to help and defend those countries. The world cannot afford to just walk away. And lest you think that's some far flung conspiracy theory take a look at the countries that have specifically joined NATO now as a result of Putin's actions. That's all the proof you need. The reality is that funding opposition in Ukraine is not only necessary but it's cost effective both in monetary costs and human cost because if Putin is allowed to continue his campaign the fronts of the war and the people involved will balloon quickly and with that the costs of staving his takeover of other countries increases exponentially.
Isolationist thinking is a tried and true fascist canard that is even less applicable now than it has been at any other point in human history. We live in an interconnected and interdependent world. Do not allow yourself to be led to believe it's possible to just be an island apart from the world.
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Every anti-American and anti-Western line of thinking has been propagandized by Russian and Chinese bad actors for the sake of these cold and hot wars between competing world powers. This isn't in contention. Instead, it's the confluence between real, lived aggrievances with the American government from both a domestic and international context as being nothing but ignorant misinformation that is pissing folks the fuck off who have to live with the consequences of European and American supremacy.
Your finger wagging about the interconnectedness of the world economy and our European allies is predicated on the assumption that I am obligated to agree with the dominance of such a Western world order despite the fact that I am continuously aware of where that dominance came from- it came from the wholesale genocide of Indigenous groups in the Americans and centuries of the forced servitude and wealth extraction, both of which continue today. My people have fucking nothing. And the reason they have fucking nothing is specifically because of the colonialism that continues today. You might not give a shit about Black and Indigenous people, but I do.
My argument is not that Ukraine does not need help and should not get aid, meaning your confluence with my post with the fucking Freedom Caucus can get shoved. Of course they should get aid; I fundamentally don't agree with countries invading one another. My argument is that Ukraine's aid was not done solely on the basis of a moral principle that a country's sovereignty must be respected, because the West does not actually believe that sovereignty is a line that cannot be crossed. If it needs to install puppet dictators, stand idly by while some other genocide occurs, or engage in its own propaganda and misinformation to its own citizens, it will happily do so to maintain supremacy. The speed at which the West mobilized for Ukraine was done primarily for geopolitical reasons, namely to prevent Russia's campaign of expansionism. That level of urgency will never be used on another group or country facing similar or worse catastrophic conditions. Never. Not unless it's in the crosshairs of Russia or China.
This entire conversation is being acted upon the presumption that the West had a moral highground that Russia and China are undermining. I don't agree. The West has always been a meat grinder. All they're doing is tapping into actual, demonstrable moral and political failings with the West, which can be countered if the West were actually interested in not being a capitalistic, colonial cesspit. But it's not going to do that.
So you can sit here and talk down to me, but it makes me no difference. Again, white supremacy is not some fucking spectre of Russian troll farms. It's a demonstrable sociopolitical phenomenon that liberals cannot be trusted to help dismantle.
I wrote a long reply because I think it's an important point and one that needs to be made clear. I took a long time to say exactly what I felt needed to be said and address the far too prevalent viewpoint of isolationism. It was not an attack on you it was a rebuttal to the argument for isolationism.
How the hell does anyone read what I wrote and come to the conclusion that I don't care about black or indigenous people? Where did I dismiss white supremacy as a Russian troll job? Your framing of my response as some dismissal of minority people/issues is absolutely outrageous. My words speak for themself I said what I said and anyone is free to read them. The only person talking down to anyone in this conversation was you.
They're told to tune in, like and subscribe. Because there's way more money in an interested and invested audience than a skeptical and objective one. This even goes for some of the leftiest of the left spaces. So it's not based on political spectrum, it's the result of decades and decades of chipping away at the old standards and establishing new ones and years of rewards.
now they can start to pull those rewards back and let the profitable decline begin.
Extremely true. Horseshoe theory, all that goodness. A *lot* of left spaces I'm in seem to utterly despise the West in general and the US in particular. Must be nice when the "comparison" is countries where investigations and reporting into the underlying concerns of society isn't allowed, but here we are.
I never made an argument for isolationism because I never argued that aid should be pulled from Ukraine. I simply said people should question why the West was able to mobilize so quickly and yet stalls on other issues, especially when we are constantly told that "progress takes time," and I even further went on in the same post to say that an anti-Ukraine stance is the lazy conclusion to draw (and if you were further confused on where I stand, it is the wrong conclusion to draw.) Like I'm not sure how many times I need to say on this forum that I don't agree with Russia's invasion for folks to get that.
So you took that post, a post that wasn't even aimed at you, and went on about a multiparagraph strawman, insisting that I aligned with the fucking Freedom Caucus of all people, went "Yeah sure, there's other problems in the world, but..." to a person who fundamentally views the West's standing in the world as the result of some of the most vile injustices imaginable irrespective of Chinese and Russian crimes, which ultimately serves to downplay the severity of Western colonialism that is happening today, all with the attitude of a parent talking down to a child ("like it or not"), and you're the one who wants to act offended right now?
I will be charitable and say that perhaps I am reading a tone in your post that isn't there or wasn't intended. It's the Internet; it is easy to do so with text. Mea culpa on that. But I will also be upfront and say that I lack a fondness for you within the context of political discussions, partly because I feel your concern with foreign influence on American politics, a concern that isn't misplaced, can also doubly serve as a way to downplay real issues people have with the American government, and I'm not about that.
To be fair, I think many posters in the Ukraine's thread here on era would say the west is not doing enough and fast enough. Especially after Johnson delayed Ukraine's aid from US for months causing much damage to Ukrainians and their causes. That's on the US side which arguably still has done more than the rest of the EU block. More in that thread are upset at EU countries being even slower and weaker in their assistance to Ukraine due to a variety of reasons. The most aggravating part specifically is that many recognize that yes, it'd be entirely be in the western countries' selfish self interests to help Ukraine defend itself and maintain sovereignty. Yet it's taking so much time and energy to mobilize what they've got so far, which like I said, many would argue is not enough nor timely. To be frank, a lot of things just don't make sense to me in my mind so I wonder what else is going on that we are just simply not aware of.
In no sense was there ever a widespread collective hysteria (what?) or belief that governments could print a lot of money for stimulus without it causing inflation.
The floundering of aid across the US and EU- financially, materially, and even with support of taking in Ukranian refugees- is a separate issue from whether or not the aid should be given at all. I don't agree with pulling aid. But even whether or not I agree is irrelevant to the subject of how that aid has been contextualized upon ethical grounds within a Western lens, and how it makes sense for people who are getting hip to the fact that Western hegemony is based upon genocide and enslavement to question those ethical justifications and point out the hypocrisy. Yes, some people are going to go down the lazy path and think we need to pull aid and focus on domestic issues. But shit, you get alt-righters saying that wealth inequality is out of control and then go on to conclude it must be the fault of Jewish people or immigrants. Does that mean we do not question wealth inequality?
When I write posts (especially in the context of political discussion) it's almost never with the intention of being a direct reply to a specific post. I try to write for the audience of many not an audience of one since this is a board with many people who read and don't necessarily post. I feel it's often more important to write and address your posts to the greater discussion and the larger audience than for any one participant and so that's what I try to do. I usually find a post that broaches the topic I seek to address and reply to that in an effort to start a discussion and to ground my post in the ongoing conversation
You often post to important topics and I often see those topics as ones where there is an overarching message or argument that should be expanded on. Much of the time it's not even that I disagree completely with what you or others have said I just think information or context can be brought to bear that hasn't been expressed in the given thread.
I don't really read posts as "aimed" that's just not how I interpret a discussion board. A post made to a public board is a starting point for a dialogue. Obviously that's not always the case posts can absolutely be targeted responses but in general I see a thread as one giant conversation with many different participants all of whom are reading any given post that's made in the thread.
"This line of thinking" that my entire post was written to address was the isolationist viewpoint that just says "fuck Ukraine" as you yourself put it and I'm trying to address the general "you" of the people that espouse this view. The goal was not to condescend it was to inform anyone reading since as far as I read in this thread these points had not been made. I could have made this clearer maybe by quoting the specific line I was referring to for my response. I try not to quote single lines form a post because it's something people do to me all the time and it drives me insane.
I often use "like it or not" as way to acknowledge the objections people have because otherwise if I did not acknowledge that I had considered those objections then people would assume that I hadn't considered them in my response. It's a means of pre empting what would otherwise be a response or rebuttal not a dismissal of those objections.
I do want to clarify that expressing a sentiment that it should give someone pause that their stance echoes the far right isn't a chastisement it's a warning. I myself I have reconsidered my stance on issues simply by virtue of who I find agreeing or disagreeing with that stance. It's meant to be a call to question not an insult. Any time I see an issue I felt I held firmly on moral grounds and it's adopted by morally repugnant people that's the sign for me to figure out: ok why do these awful people hold this view and does that reason reframe the issue or is this a scenario of supporting a just cause for the wrong reason? I've found it a motivating and useful gauge to measure against.
I appreciate that.
i think the root here is not a disagreement on the issues but more about the merit or viability of working within or outside the existing system. Climate change is a core issue for me and it's an issue that demands a truly global response which is not really something that can happen in an environment of rampant fascism or political revolution. So instead it's necessary to make the current state of capitalism and the governments that perpetuate it work as best as possible to achieve that goal. Thus my interest is largely in attempting to mitigate harm within the system and try to push to make the necessary changes.
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And this is such an old thing too, yet still people don't learn. You think people would see it after three quarter centuries or so of this bullshit, it's essentially the same guff as the specter of soviet subversion being used to discredit civil rights movements. Almost as bad or perhaps just as bad as disinformation is the way the fear of disinformation or subversion can be weaponized against the truth.
Get the fuck off social media. Go back to being anons. Close Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and every other media in existence. Your true friends know how to find you. The only way to not be targeted is to get off the firing line.
Yeah, this is such a tough fight. We're hamstrung in so many ways, as the right has figured out how to weaponize everything from freedom of the press, to the non-representative flaws in our system (electoral college, appointed positions, etc), to funding, all on top of the historical appeal of hate and fear. Help for their cause from foreign enemies is the last thing we need.
And yet, we are still holding our own much of the time. Over the last several elections, as the right gets more extreme, political engagement is up, and election results for the most extreme non-local candidates are mostly poor. History says this shit always loses, in the long run, even though it never dies for good.
I'm still hopeful that we can fight this off without hitting bottom, as it were.
And yet, we are still holding our own much of the time. Over the last several elections, as the right gets more extreme, political engagement is up, and election results for the most extreme non-local candidates are mostly poor. History says this shit always loses, in the long run, even though it never dies for good.
I'm still hopeful that we can fight this off without hitting bottom, as it were.
Engage. Reach out. Make connections. Make the good places (both online and physical) be the fun and rewarding places to hang out.
Past that, civil unrest and revolution? Dunno.
Unfortunately the right have adopted the term and MAGAs, TERFs etc are "critical thinkers" and so it gets more complicated.
I mean a big issue is also people are super susceptible for confirmation bias. Remember a bit ago when someone made the absolutely ludicrous claim in a thread here that the humanization of pets is a modern trend that started as push back to civil rights movement on the basis of a TikTok they supposedly saw (wasn't even posted) and a bunch of people here backed them up even as other repeatedly pointed out evidence that proved this was bullshit? People kept supporting an idea that felt right to them, with absolutely no evidence, on the basis of a video they hadn't even saw, in the face of tons of evidence to the contrary. Even the arguements being made were absurd, like a fixation on the term fur baby as part of the arguement (like the term came into prominence less than a decade ago), which was far more modern than civil rights era and thus actually contradicts their theory. People actively look for theories that support the world view they already support.
Are you saying it's a made up fear, but also true and targeting leftism?
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People on the left aren't immune to propaganda, and anyone telling themselves they are is just making themselves into an easy mark
Do what we did in Taiwan?
TikTok sues U.S. government, saying potential ban violates First Amendment
Well~ there is solution, and banning it doesn't really help. We've already been through two election here in Taiwan with "China" interferance for over 50 years and the way to combat it is with government working with citizen group. And that in the view of most citizen, the focus on social media...
www.resetera.com
You sorta undermine your point with bringing up horseshoe theory. It has nothing to actually do with the conversation.
All parts of the political spectrum are subject to propaganda and manipulation.
All platforms too.
What this conversation is important for is to remind liberals and leftists that they were never immune compared to Conservatives and the alt-right, they just have different triggers.
This. So much.
It has nothing to do with ideology at this point. We are constantly bombarded with information that we have to make decisions on. There is no single platform or source that you can completely rely on to give you information that you can trust 100% of the time.
So if you are a discerning person, you have to do a lot of research for claims. And verify a lot of information. This is extremely exhausting and at some point you have to accept that you are going to be tricked into believing something untrue at some point.
The sad thing is that people continuously fail to learn this. In this very thread, there are multiple posters straining to set up lines along their ideology as if to say "people who share my political opinion are not so gullible."
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I may be completely misunderstanding what is being said
Yep. Be it right, centre, left, or apolitical; regardless of political alignment, people are exposed to propaganda and susceptible to radicalisation.
I disagree.
It's not a new propaganda war.
I don't think democracy is losing either.
People receptive to democracy may be upset with the functioning but I don't believe core principles have been rejected by those supporters. And for those who challenge liberalism it is what is. 8 billion aren't going to move in lockstep.
The US has to break the feedback loop of extreme partisanship. Fundamental reform, de-alignment, and party realignment is a part of its history.
If it doesn't make the transformational changes demanded by the crises it's facing, then it's going to come to an end.
No different than say 1896 or 1968. We're in the middle of it so we'll see.
It's not a new propaganda war.
I don't think democracy is losing either.
People receptive to democracy may be upset with the functioning but I don't believe core principles have been rejected by those supporters. And for those who challenge liberalism it is what is. 8 billion aren't going to move in lockstep.
The US has to break the feedback loop of extreme partisanship. Fundamental reform, de-alignment, and party realignment is a part of its history.
If it doesn't make the transformational changes demanded by the crises it's facing, then it's going to come to an end.
No different than say 1896 or 1968. We're in the middle of it so we'll see.
This is such a huge issue right now and the majority of my daily work. It's INSANE that people willingly just fall for the propaganda and try to spread it everywhere.
Like I keep saying, I truly think misinformation is one of if not thr most dire threat to humanity today.
Like I keep saying, I truly think misinformation is one of if not thr most dire threat to humanity today.
One of the most upsetting things to me is that in the past 8 years, we mocked MAGA and the far right (like my uncles) for being a cliche and constantly spouting the same rhetoric: "don't listen to the mainstream news", "Do Your Own Research", "watch this random YouTube/TikTok video-that's where I get all my news from now", "that's what THEY want you to believe!"
And now I see so many on the left doing this exact same routine. It's almost verbatim.
It's an avalanche of misinformation and people seek out confirmation bias.
Like Nepenthe said, that still has to be just part of the story. You don't win an election on this demographic alone - not yet at least. You have to follow the money (inequality) as well.
I will just leave this here, but history is not for learning in the way you guys think it is, it's so that when it happens again it is better planned out. Genocide and other horrible stuff is going to keep happening but it's going to be better hidden or clarified.
There is one other important point of the drug war, or really mass incarceration in general, to strip away people's right to vote.
Absolutely. If it can happen to our dumb racist uncles it can and is happening to us. Remember Russia used disinformation campaigns during the BLM protests to toxify the discourse and are doing it again now with the current wars, including Palestine.
Oh I'm fully aware. It's just depressing people can't see it for what it is.
While nationstates are pushing their propaganda, its happening internally in the US as well. Democrats and Republicans are well and truly split at this point. When the Republicans had issues with the House Leader elections, Democrats pretty much laughed at them for being so dysfunctional. But no matter how much either side might hate it, they are both part of the US government, and it is clear that its not functioning as intending in pretty much all the branches. Like it or hate it, the MAGA right has a point in that something is broken in the US governement, just that they are one of the main contributors to it, and their candidate (Trump) is more likely to exploit it more and less likely to fix it.
Trump is a horrible horrible leader, but he got elected (sure the electoral college rules != popular vote, but thats the US system currently), which means that actually a significant part of US (not the majority, but a good chunk) does support him. If you look at some of the stuff people have proposed to undo the damage he did (Packing the Supreme Court for one) in isolation, it can seem pretty extreme. Currently, it seems that a lot of people on the left has the view that "Anything is acceptable as long as Trump doesn't win", and while I definitely don't want Trump re-elected, I'm not sure the US has a functioning democracy at the end of it all. One party with a majority in all branches of the government with a Supreme court packed with judges sympathetic to the party... Yeah, the US has a lot of work to get back to idealised "Democracy".
As for internationally, I think the main problem is that in the 1990s and 2000s, a lot of more neutral countries bought into the "rules-based world order" the US (and the west) were pitching. Especially the smaller nations who would be bullied by their bigger neighbours. Conform to international law, and you'd be protected. Step out of line and you'd be punished. And it worked for a while. But especially in the last few years, the US has really undermined that and the institutions it helped to build post WW2. Compare the refugee response from the wars in MiddleEast/Africa and Ukraine. Look at the dismissive attitude towards the ICC. "Rules for thee but not for me" is not something to brag about when striving for the moral high ground.
At the end of the day, you beat propaganda with facts that are provably true. But the facts aren't exactly in the US's favour right now, so its US propaganda vs other nations' propaganda. The same applies internally for the Democrats vs Republicans. The Democrats have a really hard time defending their stance on Israel, so the message is always "Trump is worse", and the Republicans know that Biden's stance is hard to defend, so its always "Genocide Joe"
Trump is a horrible horrible leader, but he got elected (sure the electoral college rules != popular vote, but thats the US system currently), which means that actually a significant part of US (not the majority, but a good chunk) does support him. If you look at some of the stuff people have proposed to undo the damage he did (Packing the Supreme Court for one) in isolation, it can seem pretty extreme. Currently, it seems that a lot of people on the left has the view that "Anything is acceptable as long as Trump doesn't win", and while I definitely don't want Trump re-elected, I'm not sure the US has a functioning democracy at the end of it all. One party with a majority in all branches of the government with a Supreme court packed with judges sympathetic to the party... Yeah, the US has a lot of work to get back to idealised "Democracy".
As for internationally, I think the main problem is that in the 1990s and 2000s, a lot of more neutral countries bought into the "rules-based world order" the US (and the west) were pitching. Especially the smaller nations who would be bullied by their bigger neighbours. Conform to international law, and you'd be protected. Step out of line and you'd be punished. And it worked for a while. But especially in the last few years, the US has really undermined that and the institutions it helped to build post WW2. Compare the refugee response from the wars in MiddleEast/Africa and Ukraine. Look at the dismissive attitude towards the ICC. "Rules for thee but not for me" is not something to brag about when striving for the moral high ground.
At the end of the day, you beat propaganda with facts that are provably true. But the facts aren't exactly in the US's favour right now, so its US propaganda vs other nations' propaganda. The same applies internally for the Democrats vs Republicans. The Democrats have a really hard time defending their stance on Israel, so the message is always "Trump is worse", and the Republicans know that Biden's stance is hard to defend, so its always "Genocide Joe"
One of the biggest things that needs to happen is the GOP needs to come back to sanity. So much is broken because they've lost their collective mind and everyone who isn't insane has essentially taken shelter in the Democratic tent. It's why you're seeing former Republicans run as Democrats, it's not that they've changed their minds on anything but that they still want to govern and the Republican party actively refuses to do so. This dynamic is causing a lot of stuff in US politics to go haywire and not work the way it should be. The system wasn't designed for one party to refuse to engage in actual governance, hell no system can handle that situation forever. We're starting to see the limits of that, I fear.
I've been agitated for years at the media's obsession with singling out "MAGA Republicans" as if they're just a loud minority faction. Just say Republicans. The majority is there with the hardcore fascists even if they're not willing to admit it or show their true colors.... yet. Any "old school" Republican twiddling their thumbs for the last decade+ as the fervent, blatant savages swallow up their party has given their consent in going along for the ride to the very end. They might rant on CNN about the crazies in their party but they're just going to vote for Trump again anyways. And as their party becomes ever more unhinged and enraged, inch by inch they'll move their own personal Overton window to the deep right to keep up with the beasts at the wheel.
Just say Republicans.
Just say Republicans.
Its a lot easier to point out problems than to fix them though. We can discuss about how the GOP needs to come back to sanity, but actually achieving it is another matter. There's been plenty of posts about how my <insert relation here> believes in GOP philosophy, and it usually ends up with them cutting off contact, which just emphasises the "us vs them" that is happening right now. If the Dems see the current Republicans as "insane" and a cancer in society and goes to extremes (chemotherapy) measures to curb them, and the republicans do the same in reverse (not saying they are right, but its their POV), the body (USA) is just going to die from the 2x chemotherapy treatment.
Speaking of Party politics, what happens if neither party can achieve a majority, but there's a 3rd party that can help the other 2 do so. Say the Democrats get 45% of the seats, the Republicans get 40%, and 3rd Party get 15%.
Independents generally pick a side to caucus with when they get elected. For example, Bernie Sanders is generally an independent (when he doesn't change his party affiliation to run for president) but caucuses with the Democrats and so he counts toward their side.
What would usually kill a fever like this, to use the metaphor, is when the party that's gone crazy can no longer win the presidency due to the fact their politics are so out of step with the country. The GOP is there already, and has been for a while, but the issue is the electoral college keeping them relevant. If not for that they would have been forced to moderate their views decades ago in order to stay competitive. They haven't actually won a popular vote since W won his reelection and he lost the popular vote in 2000 so they shouldn't have even gotten that. Their current views are so out of lockstep with a majority of the country that they straight up can't win the popular vote at the moment, but because that count doesn't matter they don't see the need to change. As a result they keep drilling down to crazy town.
The single big change that would put us on a path to fixing the problem that is the GOP is killing the electoral college or making them no longer able to win Texas, both would essentially have the same effect of forcing them to moderate their views in some way due to them having no path to power otherwise.
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OP
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I'm permanently suspicious of any effort to represent the USA as the victim of a disinformation culture, rather than an active, inveterate and frequently unhinged participant in it. (Especially now. Certain lines from this piece could be describing recent State Dept press briefings.) The call is coming from inside the house. If you had a functioning reality to begin with, people would not be so ready and willing to leap into alternative ones.
Publications like the Atlantic, and thinkers like Applebaum for that matter, have all played and continue to play their role in creating the mess they now bemoan.
Publications like the Atlantic, and thinkers like Applebaum for that matter, have all played and continue to play their role in creating the mess they now bemoan.
Basically, yeah.
Contradictions are heightening, awareness of issues and access to information is more widely available and less controlled by the state department and corporate media, so obviously the US is losing support.
I like how the Influence and Perception Management Office is also admitting that both of the presidential candidates suck and people don't take them seriously.
Gonna be hard to change hearts and minds when the US keeps doing the bad shit that they have been doing for decades, but now they aren't able to hide and lie about it as well.
I like how the Influence and Perception Management Office is also admitting that both of the presidential candidates suck and people don't take them seriously.
Gonna be hard to change hearts and minds when the US keeps doing the bad shit that they have been doing for decades, but now they aren't able to hide and lie about it as well.
Essentially. It's not like US doesn't do propaganda or disinformation. It seems like folks in these articles are just upset that they aren't doing it well anymore.
This.
US propaganda has recently been based on the US being the law-abiding protector of the "rules based order" and that doesn't work anymore when folks can see in real time that the US only cares about rules and laws it likes.
Anne Applebaum has been writing about this topic and others tangential to it for decades, and is routinely published in The Atlantic, where she's a staff writer. Just because it's the latest of her many articles on this topic (and at least two exhaustive books covering similar topics), doesn't mean it's new for her. She's one of the pre-eminent writers in the world on authoritarianism, both past and present. I've only read "Gulag" but it was excellent. She was similar panned here for warning about Putin's build-up on the border of Ukraine, called hysterical and a war monger. Everything she said there was absolutely right.
What a lot of people are concerned about now is regulation of the Trump super pac owned and pro-Trump social media site, TikTok, being regulated, so any articles about authoritarian disinformation are criticized as American propaganda. It's like 2016 all over again, just sleep walking into foreign intervention and propaganda campaigns until we step further into authoritarianism ourselves.
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Okay. So the people who should be hearing this haven't been listening until now then it seems, or maybe are still not listening, or maybe already know. Not a good sign either way.
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27 years after Dugin wrote Foundations of Geopolitics everyone is suddenly surprised this shit is happening.