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>Mass manipulation is quite cheap and easy in the age of Facebook. You don’t think this occurs? "Cheap and easy" != effective. The alleged Russia intervention

by gspetr 5y ago

>Mass manipulation is quite cheap and easy in the age of Facebook. You don’t think this occurs? "Cheap and easy" != effective. The alleged Russia intervention appears to have been on the order of several hundred thousands of dollars worth of Facebook ads. The exact figure differs depending on what sources you read, but a Pres. election operates on the scale of billions, not < 1M. And if it is so effective, how come Mike Bloomberg, who spent some $560 Million on his election campaign, had nothing to show for it? Surely he could have hired all those Russian political campaign savants with that much money, no? >Don’t like the result of a Presidential election and you have an army of fanatics willing to assault the Capitol then you may have them do so with impunity. An army of... unarmed fanatics? The wanna-be insurrectionists killed nobody, there were no weapons brandished in the Capitol. Do you want people to take seriously a claim that around a 1000 unarmed men are enough to overthrow the most militarized and powerful government in the history of mankind? The Feds were also well aware of it, just type into any search engine "NYT Jan 6 informants". >Republican jurors Republican jurors in DC, that voted 93% for Clinton in 2016? Really? This is the line of thinking that lead good people, but who consumed too much media, to believe that Jussie Smollett really was really assaulted in the dead of night in very blue Chicago in freezing temperatures by Trump supporters with a noose and bleach, yelling "This is MAGA country". At some point you have to rely on Occam's Razor and start questioning the most basic of premises without being afraid of appearing a conspiracy nut. > Capone was never charged with murder. Yes, but those who carried out his orders were. And if a murder takes place there's a body, or if the body was moved or disposed of, there's at least evidence of struggle or evidence that the victim was at the crime scene. And there is also evidence that the criminals were at the crime scene at the time the crime itself took place.

syki 5y ago
Thank you for your response. It’s fascinating to me. I talk about sowing dissent as the specific form of mass manipulation that is easy and cheap to do. You then bring Bloomberg’s failed Presidential bid. Winning an election requires support and buying support is hard to do without rallying the base. Bloomberg spent that money trying to manufacture a base and that is hard to do. Sowing dissent is easy and cheap. You provide a great example of this when bringing up Smollet. Look at how easy and cheap it was to get people all upset and angry over something that didn’t actually happen. You ask why the insurrectionists aren’t charged with insurrection and I say that I don’t know. I give an example of how sometimes prosecutors bring charges they think they can win and not necessarily with the full extent of what they think the person did. It is obvious this is so and there are lots of examples of this. But you ignore the broader point and get stuck in the minutia of the example I used. That’s fascinating. It’s fascinating that you think Republicans jurors are not a thing in D.C. By your own admittance at least 7% of the electorate are Republicans. Prosecutors need unanimous verdicts. Not just 93% approval. But like I said I don’t know the thinking prosecutors used on this case to determine what charges to bring. The U.S. is not the most militarized government in the world. North Korea is. Unarmed rebellions have successfully occurred many times. In Romania thousands of unarmed people stormed the seat of government and that led to the overthrow of the government. What happened a year ago was an insurrection. It was poorly thought and incompetently led but the precedent has been set. It’s now known how fragile our system and society are. You make assumptions about me because you yourself have bought into narratives that you have been fed. Try to look at things dispassionately. I suspect you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that my vote for Trump in 2016 was the first time I voted for the winner in a Presidential election. I’ve voted for Republicans for President more than I have Democrats. In fact, I’ve never voted for a Democrat for President.
- gspetr 5y ago
  >In Romania thousands of unarmed people stormed the seat of government and that led to the overthrow of the government. Wikipedia says[0] it was "the only violent overthrow of a communist government". Violent does not sound unarmed to me, since punches and kicks only take you so far. "As anti-government protesters demonstrated in Timișoara in December 1989, he perceived the demonstrations as a political threat and ordered military forces to open fire on 17 December, causing many deaths and injuries. The revelation that Ceaușescu was responsible resulted in a massive spread of rioting and civil unrest across the country.[3] The demonstrations, which reached Bucharest, became known as the Romanian Revolution—the only violent overthrow of a communist government in the course of the Revolutions of 1989" [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu >The U.S. is not the most militarized government in the world. https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/07/the-united-states-spends-more-on-defense-than-the-next-11-countries-combined https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/07/the-united-states-spends-m... >It’s fascinating that you think Republicans jurors are not a thing in D.C. It is a thing. It's also a thing that an average Republican in Texas and an average Republican in NY or DC are not quite the same. Even if we put forward the very unlikely premise that they are super MAGA Republican, peer pressure is a thing. Simply going by the numbers, chances are a significant chunk of their friends and family are Democrats, and it's not like an average person can easily hide they were on a jury. Also, consider how many juries there would be for that many defendants, will no one be convicted?
  - syki 5y ago
    The speech Ceacescu gave in Bucharest after what happened in Timisoara led directly to his downfall. It started with unarmed people storming the capitol building. There’s video of this on YouTube. The army switched sides to be against Ceacescu and that led to armed fighting against the Securitate. But great job at ignoring all the broader points and ignoring the fact that you originally claimed that unarmed rioters can’t possibly overthrow the government and now write that Romania was the only violent overthrow of a communist government. This means that some communist government were overthrown by unarmed people. So you must now agree with me that unarmed people can overthrow a government. The U.S. spends the most money in absolute dollars on the military. It is not the most militarized nation in the world. That would go to a nation that spends the highest percent of GDP on the military or one that has the highest percent of its population in the military. The U.S. is not first in any of these categories. You would benefit from taking a course on statistics and economics.

by gspetr 5y ago

syki 5y ago

Thank you for your response. It’s fascinating to me. I talk about sowing dissent as the specific form of mass manipulation that is easy and cheap to do. You then bring Bloomberg’s failed Presidential bid. Winning an election requires support and buying support is hard to do without rallying the base. Bloomberg spent that money trying to manufacture a base and that is hard to do. Sowing dissent is easy and cheap. You provide a great example of this when bringing up Smollet. Look at how easy and cheap it was to get people all upset and angry over something that didn’t actually happen. You ask why the insurrectionists aren’t charged with insurrection and I say that I don’t know. I give an example of how sometimes prosecutors bring charges they think they can win and not necessarily with the full extent of what they think the person did. It is obvious this is so and there are lots of examples of this. But you ignore the broader point and get stuck in the minutia of the example I used. That’s fascinating. It’s fascinating that you think Republicans jurors are not a thing in D.C. By your own admittance at least 7% of the electorate are Republicans. Prosecutors need unanimous verdicts. Not just 93% approval. But like I said I don’t know the thinking prosecutors used on this case to determine what charges to bring. The U.S. is not the most militarized government in the world. North Korea is. Unarmed rebellions have successfully occurred many times. In Romania thousands of unarmed people stormed the seat of government and that led to the overthrow of the government. What happened a year ago was an insurrection. It was poorly thought and incompetently led but the precedent has been set. It’s now known how fragile our system and society are. You make assumptions about me because you yourself have bought into narratives that you have been fed. Try to look at things dispassionately. I suspect you wouldn’t believe me if I told you that my vote for Trump in 2016 was the first time I voted for the winner in a Presidential election. I’ve voted for Republicans for President more than I have Democrats. In fact, I’ve never voted for a Democrat for President.

gspetr 5y ago
>In Romania thousands of unarmed people stormed the seat of government and that led to the overthrow of the government. Wikipedia says[0] it was "the only violent overthrow of a communist government". Violent does not sound unarmed to me, since punches and kicks only take you so far. "As anti-government protesters demonstrated in Timișoara in December 1989, he perceived the demonstrations as a political threat and ordered military forces to open fire on 17 December, causing many deaths and injuries. The revelation that Ceaușescu was responsible resulted in a massive spread of rioting and civil unrest across the country.[3] The demonstrations, which reached Bucharest, became known as the Romanian Revolution—the only violent overthrow of a communist government in the course of the Revolutions of 1989" [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu >The U.S. is not the most militarized government in the world. https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/07/the-united-states-spends-more-on-defense-than-the-next-11-countries-combined https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/07/the-united-states-spends-m... >It’s fascinating that you think Republicans jurors are not a thing in D.C. It is a thing. It's also a thing that an average Republican in Texas and an average Republican in NY or DC are not quite the same. Even if we put forward the very unlikely premise that they are super MAGA Republican, peer pressure is a thing. Simply going by the numbers, chances are a significant chunk of their friends and family are Democrats, and it's not like an average person can easily hide they were on a jury. Also, consider how many juries there would be for that many defendants, will no one be convicted?
- syki 5y ago
  The speech Ceacescu gave in Bucharest after what happened in Timisoara led directly to his downfall. It started with unarmed people storming the capitol building. There’s video of this on YouTube. The army switched sides to be against Ceacescu and that led to armed fighting against the Securitate. But great job at ignoring all the broader points and ignoring the fact that you originally claimed that unarmed rioters can’t possibly overthrow the government and now write that Romania was the only violent overthrow of a communist government. This means that some communist government were overthrown by unarmed people. So you must now agree with me that unarmed people can overthrow a government. The U.S. spends the most money in absolute dollars on the military. It is not the most militarized nation in the world. That would go to a nation that spends the highest percent of GDP on the military or one that has the highest percent of its population in the military. The U.S. is not first in any of these categories. You would benefit from taking a course on statistics and economics.