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That's basically it in a nutshell for my experience as well. Elections are won by swaying Independents...the Dem strategy for Independents appeared to be "Tru

That's basically it in a nutshell for my experience as well. Elections are won by swaying Independents...the Dem strategy for Independents appeared to be "Trump is a fascist" "Trump supporters are garbage". Ok well..that's not really an argument? And yes we can bring up all the terrible Trump examples but if the point is separating yourself from that, how is what they've done any different? It just feels each side just despises the other and it all ends up like children arguing on the playground. Where are the adults? There's going to be all kinds of hyperbole thrown around today on both sides but personally see this as a failure by the Democrats to sway Independents.

contracertainty 2y ago
As a European I have to ask - do you really need another argument? If I stand on a platform for government in Europe with an arguably fascist agenda I will get called out as a fascist and will lose. Never mind if I am a convicted felon, rapist, and probable russian intelligence asset. Seriously, what are you guys thinking here? Americans would actually vote for an extreme right wing candiate just to prove a point to the dems? Just to get one over on the libs? Please explain.
- card_zero 2y ago
  (Except in Austria, which now has Volkskanzler Herbert Kickl.) Edit: maybe not, I think they're still in procedural limbo because no other party wants to be in the coalition.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure about the fascist agenda in eu given some recent results of some parties throughout the union
- 2muchcoffeeman 2y ago
  I think there are also a lot of single issue voters who don’t think about the ethics of the candidate or their world view. How many evangelical Christians just voted for an adulterer and convicted criminal because he’s not pro choice?
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    I live in a very Republican area and know quite a few people who do vote only on the one issue of pro-life. I don't think many of them would actually agree that Trump is an adulterer or a criminal though. They would chalk it up to Democratic lies or political attacks using the legal system as a weapon. Heck, I know quite a few people who are very strongly religious and somehow view Trump as a good Christian candidate. That one really blows my mind, unless they've changed the ten commandments entirely since I was growing up.
    - graemep 2y ago
      > I live in a very Republican area and know quite a few people who do vote only on the one issue of pro-life. it is an important issue. > Heck, I know quite a few people who are very strongly religious and somehow view Trump as a good Christian candidate. That one really blows my mind, unless they've changed the ten commandments entirely since I was growing up. What makes it bizarre is not things like adultery (a fundamental tenet of Christianity is that we are all sinners) but that Trump is clearly not a Christian. He does not even know the basics of Christianity - remember when he wished people "Happy Good Friday"?
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        > it is an important issue. For sure. I don't take issue with anyone voting based on whatever they care about in general. I don't feel strongly enough about one topic to be a single issue voter, but I get it for anyone that does feel that strongly. > What makes it bizarre is not things like adultery (a fundamental tenet of Christianity is that we are all sinners) but that Trump is clearly not a Christian. 100% agree. No one is perfect and I wouldn't expect anyone who is religious to always fit the bill, but Trump is an example of someone very far from any religious ideals. I was raised Catholic, if Trump were catholic I don't think he would have had time outside of confession to even run for office.
        graemep 2y ago
        > was raised Catholic, if Trump were catholic I don't think he would have had time outside of confession to even run for office. That literally made me lough out loud. Raised Catholic too (been an agnostic since, and some sort of Christian and technically if not theologically a Catholic now).
- xdennis 2y ago
  The problem is that it doesn't stick and people see it as desperate. Trump was very favorable to Israel and has a Jewish daughter. Not typical fascist behavior. Debbie Dingell said Trump will build internment camps and put her in one. Were were the internment camps in Trump's first term?
  - card_zero 2y ago
    He'll definitely go away without a fuss after his second term, right? He isn't considering what could be done about the 22nd amendment. Putin extended his terms in office in creative ways, but Trump isn't Putin and has a high regard for established political mechanisms, even if they mean there will be less importance for Trump at some point in the future.
    - gg82 2y ago
      I'm sure Trump will be happy to go into being former president Trump at the end of his term.... if the left let him.
      - card_zero 2y ago
        Is there any source of reassurance about this I can look to, or only your gut feeling?
      - yencabulator 2y ago
        What kind of a veiled threat is that? How would "the left" not let a president leave office?
    - colechristensen 2y ago
      In four years trump isn’t going to be able to speak in complete sentences, much less run for office. We don’t have to worry about him stealing any more elections, he’s far too old for that to be an issue
      - card_zero 2y ago
- indy 2y ago
  Fascist has become an overused word by the left. Everyone else (the majority of the american voting population it would seem) are tired of the label and tune out anyone who accuses someone of being a fascist. The response from the left has been to double down and accuse more people of fascism.
  - jonathanstrange 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - krona 2y ago
      The distinctive fascist doctrine of perpetual war doesn't seem to be a MAGA calling cry. In fact isn't the opposite more true? And then the cult of traditionalism while strong in the NRx movement, is arguably stronger in the Republican side than in MAGA itself. Ultimately Fascism is deeply spiritual but all I get from Trump is brash 80's boomerism. He's not ideological enough.
      - jonathanstrange 2y ago
        They are fighting an alleged "culture war" and also call it that way. I also think that Trump's movement is very spiritual, almost like a cult. Anyway, all I'm saying is that based on common criteria the term Fascism is adequate for Trump's movement. I'm not claiming that it's strongly related to prior Fascist movements. These occurred in other countries at other times and I leave it to scholars to make comparisons if they must.
    - indy 2y ago
      Was America under Fascist rule from 2016 to 2020?
      - jpdb 2y ago
        America was under a fascist ruler, but not under a fascist system of government. Trump tested American democracy by consolidating power and was not successful, so we avoided being under a fascist rule The fear is that we might get to test democracy again, and most of America doesn't seem to mind that. Maybe it's due to lack of understanding, not caring, or genuinely wanting fascism, I don't know.
- nervousvarun 2y ago
  I can't begin to speak for America, my point was about the importance of Independent voters: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/first-us-independent-turnout-tops-democrats-ties-republicans-edison-research-2024-11-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/first-us-independent-turnou...
- sien 2y ago
  Giorgia Meloni - President of Italy. Victor Orban - President of Hungary. The AfD in Germany got a higher percentage of the vote in Thuringen in Germany than any other party. Currently polling higher than any member of the governing coalition nationally. Geert Wilders - successful in the Netherlands. Marine Le Pen - possible next president of France. The Freedom Party of Austria - has been in government. These parties all sometimes win in Europe.
  - amarcheschi 2y ago
    In italy happened the same "nooo you can't call them fascist" Freedom of protest was, in fact, restricted in italy in a way that it affects climate manifestations more than lobbies manifestation - we have taxis striking and blocking cities if someone wants to touch their ungodly privileges - Journalist striked on the public news because news has become unreliable, propaganda spewing news at a level before unheard of It didn't happen, but Giorgia meloni wanted to abolish the crime of torture to better allow police to do its work (lmao even) At the season opening of the teather la scala di Milano, one man shouted "viva l'Italia antifascista" (long live antifacist italy). Police was sent to check his documents and similar intimidatory shit
- fch42 2y ago
  only European but if your choice is binary, you can only make it that way. Some Americans may well vote for the rightwing candidate because they want to stick it to the left (or whoever the "anti" would be). Personally, I don't think that alone makes a majority in that binary choice; in Europe, it would mostly end up in the vote for a minor "ultra" party. And less-"anti" conservative voters have other options. In the US though, as someone with conservative values and views, one always has to choose ... do I want to vote with everyone else who votes for "my" camp including the stick-it-tos (because there's only one option "on my side"), do I not vote, or do I even vote against what feels closer to me because the stick-it-tos vote for them as well, and/or their head on the ticket is clearly one of the stick-it-tos ? Am I glad I needn't make that choice. And am I sad what kind of asocial extremes are encouraged by the binary, winner-takes-all US political system.
- graycat 2y ago
  deleted
  - stillold 2y ago
    Now try and add some evidence?
    - graycat 2y ago
      Right. In the US, on politics and the issues, getting the information and "evidence" is a really big problem. I have and/or have seen good evidence for all that I mentioned, but such evidence is NOT wanted by or common in the media which means that I have no well written, comprehensive, single reference to give. Uh, YOU try: Write a document with good evidence, details, quotes, video clips, etc., and see how much interest the US MSM (mainstream media) has in publishing it!!! I predict you will regard your effort, no matter how carefully done, as a waste of time. E.g., so far I've never seen even one credible graph over, say, the last 16 years, of, say, the US CPI (consumer price index). Same for budget deficits, spending bills, balance of foreign exchange, Fed loans, spending on the war in Ukraine (was there actually ANY spending or did we, instead, actually just ship war supplies produced in the US?) -- the actual details are absurdly messy, sloppy, missing, etc. Clearly, bluntly the details do not SELL -- won't get a big audience. To give good evidence here would exceed by several times the 10,000 bytes or so limit that Hacker News seems to have on a single post. US media credibility? Here is evidence of biased, cooked up, gang up, pile on, organized mob attack from 2017: https://youtu.be/f1ab6uxg908 With that example, there is less than zero credibility. So, for your "evidence", don't expect that from the US media. I wish, profoundly wish, have posted many times on social media, that the US news media should provide JUST such evidence, at least up to common standards of high school term papers. All that is no more than a spit into the wind -- the media does NOT want to expend bytes for such writing, documentation, evidence, etc. So, here I did all I can do to respond to the question I quoted, apparently, from a European. Agree or not with what I wrote, but it is the best I can do under the circumstances. The question from Europe are not very deep; so I gave answers of similar depth. The speeches in the election were not very deep. The Trump statements at the economic clubs in Chicago and Detroit were deeper. That's my explanation, best I can do, take it or leave it. But, really for an accusation of "Nazi", etc. the "burden of proof is on the accuser". The rape? He said, she said. There in the dressing room of the department store, did she scream and get some witnesses? Nazi? Just what is the evidence that Trump has done anything like the Nazi stuff Hitler did? Felon? He has never gotten a sentence -- if he does, then he can appeal, win the appeal, and show that he is NOT a "convicted felon". So, no sentence. The papers case, the J6 case, the Georgia case, the "hush money" case -- all are falling apart due to appeals, etc. They are NOT legal cases but just efforts to misuse the legal system to have others, as here, believe he is a felon. But with the appeals, e.g., even to the SCOTUS, ALL of the cases are falling apart. My view is that the wrong here is from low level parts of the US legal system and not from Trump. And where are the arguments about 10+ million illegal immigrants, the inflation, the attacks on US fossil fuel energy, the Ukraine war, the Gaza war, the Lebanon war, the hundreds of missiles from Iran, the promotion of biological men in women's sports, the lies about abortion (Trump sent the issue back to the states to decide), the bans on gas powered cars and trucks, etc.?
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  > As a European As a European you don't have presidential elections that matter. Executive and legislative power is in the hands of your parliament and the president is a figurehead (if you have one). If you want to compare your European experience to the USA, you should look at congress and not the presidential elections. You'd probably find the same dynamics there as in your own country, with the exception that the blocs that you have in parliament have been distilled into two parties.
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    My home country has 3 major parties each at about a quarter of the seats, the rest split between about half a dozen others. The various parties have very different views, only one of them I'd argue is "right wing" in the US sense, and they've all mostly learned to make compromises and not be too divisive, or they face a more moderate party taking their seats. US two-party system really is the weird one.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      Every European parliament will form into a "government" bloc and an "opposition" bloc after the election. Right wing / left wing doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. The US congress does manage to make bi-partisan bills. Because members of congress can go against their party sometimes. In European parliaments that kind of behaviour usually results in a crisis of government and a vote of confidence. > or they face a more moderate party taking their seats That's not right. You cannot lose your parliament seat in any European parliament until the next election. If an MP or an entire party in Europe is too divisive, they might not be able to be part of a majority and they will be in opposition. In the USA, the executive government is not elected by parliament - so you're comparing apples to oranges. The president builds the executive government after being elected by the people in the states. That's something different.
vundercind 2y ago
One major difficulty with addressing republicans and “low-information” independents (there aren’t a ton of true-swing voters anyway, most are partisans who prefer not to label themselves that but vote as if they were) is that you can’t discuss issues with them. If you try, you immediately get sidelined into dealing not with disagreements on issues, but with having to try to convince them that basically their entire list of concerns is fictional. We had an R state rep candidate come by our house. Highlighted two issues in her message to us. Both were simply not actual things. The existence of the problems were lies. WTF do you do with voters who consume media that’s made them believe those? It’s like a huge moat around even being able to talk to them about anything real, even if only to disagree about some real thing.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  > We had an R state rep candidate come by our house. Highlighted two issues in her message to us. Both were simply not actual things. The existence of the problems were lies. This has been a constant refrain from Democrats: "The thing that you are upset about is not happening. Well, it is happening, but it is the exception. Ok, it's happening everywhere, but it's a good thing." No, of course Harris isn't for government sex changes for imprisoned illegal immigrants, except for the fact that she said she was. The truth is that we all know that she would say anything to win, and holding her to any position she ever publicly held feels unfair. The people who have been kept low-information are the Democrats, because they have been surrounded by media largely controlled by their political party. Republicans often have bad information, but they're constantly out there consuming information and hate-reading what Democrats are saying. Independents, in my experience, are the highest-information of all, because they don't think of political parties as something they can offload their morality to. Independents only see politics in terms of actual issues, and track those issues rather than having parasocial relationships with political celebrities. In that vein, I'm pretty sure that if I had an experience where a political candidate came to my house and talked about issues that weren't real, I'd talk about those issues specifically, and speculate about their origin. I think you don't mention them because they were real, but a lot of liberals have taken this position of officially denying reality if reality could help Trump. Is widespread voter fraud real? No. Should people be unconcerned about making it easier? Also, no. If upper-middle class liberals could have won the "stop sounding like Scientologists" challenge, they could have won. If The Democratic party could have wanted to win more than they wanted to avoid alienating any donors, they could have won by taking any popular position on anything. Trump spent most of his campaign actively campaigning for Harris by calling her a radical-left socialist; if she were actually a radical-left socialist instead of an empty vessel to be filled with cash, she would have won. If the Democratic party hadn't chosen again not to run a fair, open, lively primary, they would have won. With Trump campaigning against radical-left socialist Harris, and Harris campaigning against rapist Hitler, homophobic Stalin, and racist Mussolini, the majority of people looked at which candidate was lying the most, and voted for the other one. Everybody knows who Trump is, and he's already been president, and nobody went to camps. It was a rather sleepy standard Republican presidency, whose few deviations from the norm pleased people. The only reason we heard about Harris is because she (and Buttigieg) pretended to be for single-payer healthcare in order to destroy a popular candidate who was running on an honest program.
Xeamek 2y ago
Ok, well... that's not really an argument, is it? It actually is, though. Sure, it didn’t work—probably because enough people weren’t convinced that it was true enough (and also because they didn’t care)—but it's not unreasonable to think that such an argument should have been enough.
- krona 2y ago
  Appealing to insult is not, in fact, an argument. It's a form of rhetoric which doesn't change peoples minds, it reinforces them.
  - Xeamek 2y ago
    "X is a fascist" is not just a simple insult. Pretending that's all it is is ignorance at best
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    “You are fascist” actually isn’t just an insult. If you display fascist tendencies then you’re a fascist, and he displays many of those typical tendencies.
    - a-french-anon 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - vacuity 2y ago
      There are actual fascists (and not as few as I would like) and they need to be called out, but using the term inaccurately and provocatively on a broad group makes it easier to oppose the usage outright. Optics are important to politics, like it or not.
kragen 2y ago
One of the hardest lessons to learn growing up is that there aren't really any adults, not in the sense I believed when I was a kid. "Adult" is a role people play when they're interacting with kids. Some do it better than others. But inside every adult is a terrified child† desperately struggling to make sense of an uncertain, incomprehensible world. Unfortunately for that child, life always ends in death; it won't be long until you are dead and everyone who remembers you is dead. And our reasoning abilities are not capable of understanding very much of the world, so often nothing we do matters, not even for the purposes it was intended for. Mostly our understanding of the world consists of stories we tell ourselves with relatively little connection to reality. Our understanding of the world is profoundly mediated by fiction, which is to say, lies. That's why it all ends up like children arguing on the playground. The kind of playground‡ where my 14-year-old classmate Evangalyn Martinez got stabbed to death for, I think it was, stealing Joella Mares's boyfriend, and nobody leaves the playground alive. Under those circumstances, what does it mean to live a good life rather than a bad one? Good answers exist, but they're not easy. ______ † This is a metaphor. I don't mean that each adult has literally swallowed a child and is digesting them alive like a python. ‡ Technically that was actually the parking lot. Also, I was already no longer her classmate at the time, and because we were in different grades, I don't remember if I ever met her. She wouldn't be my last classmate to be stabbed; in my high school biology class each student was paired with the same lab partner for the whole semester, and the next year, someone else at the high school nonfatally stabbed my lab partner, Shannon Sugg, now Shannon L. Schneider (ginga.snapz1718). If memory serves, she dropped out from the psychological trauma. You can read the decision in her lawsuit against the school at https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/nm-court-of-appeals/1415498.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/nm-court-of-appeals/141549..., which says it was Alicia Andres who stabbed her. ”Plaintiff asserts that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment imposed a clearly established duty upon school officials to protect her from this stabbing.” I'm glad violent crime has dropped a lot since then in the US.
throw0101d 2y ago
> the Dem strategy for Independents appeared to be "Trump is a fascist" "Trump supporters are garbage". > Ok well..that's not really an argument? Choosing to not put a fascist(-leaning) individual into power is "not really an argument"? So it's okay to re-elect individuals who have tried at least once to stop the peaceful transfer of power? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup
intended 2y ago
”where are the adults” I mean, the Republican game plan was to create this situation. Once they decided that they will do what it takes to win, they really did succeed. I mean take everything from the climate crisis, to my favorite - creationism being taught in school at the same level as evolution. The playbook is literally right there, you get experts to come on stage, ridicule them to your audience, show that they are cartoons and have no real value. Then you provide you viewers with good sounding news bites and manage the optics, and you can get a convicted felon elected to President. Yes - it really is just the information ecosystem. There really is no free speech when one side is a regular joe and the other side is a marketing and political speech behemoth. It is that simple, and we can’t do anything about it, because that would be harming our ability to speak freely.
Pxtl 2y ago
Okay, but what about the truth? I mean, if one of Trump's own closest advisors carefully states that he fits the definition of a fascist, is it not fair to call him one? If Trump outwardly celebrates many of the traditional concepts of fascism like attacking the media, attacking minorities, attacking "enemies from within" is it not fair to call him that? And what do you say about a person who supports fascism? That they're very fine people?

contracertainty 2y ago

As a European I have to ask - do you really need another argument? If I stand on a platform for government in Europe with an arguably fascist agenda I will get called out as a fascist and will lose. Never mind if I am a convicted felon, rapist, and probable russian intelligence asset. Seriously, what are you guys thinking here? Americans would actually vote for an extreme right wing candiate just to prove a point to the dems? Just to get one over on the libs? Please explain.

card_zero 2y ago
(Except in Austria, which now has Volkskanzler Herbert Kickl.) Edit: maybe not, I think they're still in procedural limbo because no other party wants to be in the coalition.
amarcheschi 2y ago
I wouldn't be so sure about the fascist agenda in eu given some recent results of some parties throughout the union
2muchcoffeeman 2y ago
I think there are also a lot of single issue voters who don’t think about the ethics of the candidate or their world view. How many evangelical Christians just voted for an adulterer and convicted criminal because he’s not pro choice?
- _heimdall 2y ago
  I live in a very Republican area and know quite a few people who do vote only on the one issue of pro-life. I don't think many of them would actually agree that Trump is an adulterer or a criminal though. They would chalk it up to Democratic lies or political attacks using the legal system as a weapon. Heck, I know quite a few people who are very strongly religious and somehow view Trump as a good Christian candidate. That one really blows my mind, unless they've changed the ten commandments entirely since I was growing up.
  - graemep 2y ago
    > I live in a very Republican area and know quite a few people who do vote only on the one issue of pro-life. it is an important issue. > Heck, I know quite a few people who are very strongly religious and somehow view Trump as a good Christian candidate. That one really blows my mind, unless they've changed the ten commandments entirely since I was growing up. What makes it bizarre is not things like adultery (a fundamental tenet of Christianity is that we are all sinners) but that Trump is clearly not a Christian. He does not even know the basics of Christianity - remember when he wished people "Happy Good Friday"?
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      > it is an important issue. For sure. I don't take issue with anyone voting based on whatever they care about in general. I don't feel strongly enough about one topic to be a single issue voter, but I get it for anyone that does feel that strongly. > What makes it bizarre is not things like adultery (a fundamental tenet of Christianity is that we are all sinners) but that Trump is clearly not a Christian. 100% agree. No one is perfect and I wouldn't expect anyone who is religious to always fit the bill, but Trump is an example of someone very far from any religious ideals. I was raised Catholic, if Trump were catholic I don't think he would have had time outside of confession to even run for office.
      - graemep 2y ago
        > was raised Catholic, if Trump were catholic I don't think he would have had time outside of confession to even run for office. That literally made me lough out loud. Raised Catholic too (been an agnostic since, and some sort of Christian and technically if not theologically a Catholic now).
xdennis 2y ago
The problem is that it doesn't stick and people see it as desperate. Trump was very favorable to Israel and has a Jewish daughter. Not typical fascist behavior. Debbie Dingell said Trump will build internment camps and put her in one. Were were the internment camps in Trump's first term?
- card_zero 2y ago
  He'll definitely go away without a fuss after his second term, right? He isn't considering what could be done about the 22nd amendment. Putin extended his terms in office in creative ways, but Trump isn't Putin and has a high regard for established political mechanisms, even if they mean there will be less importance for Trump at some point in the future.
  - gg82 2y ago
    I'm sure Trump will be happy to go into being former president Trump at the end of his term.... if the left let him.
    - card_zero 2y ago
      Is there any source of reassurance about this I can look to, or only your gut feeling?
    - yencabulator 2y ago
      What kind of a veiled threat is that? How would "the left" not let a president leave office?
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    In four years trump isn’t going to be able to speak in complete sentences, much less run for office. We don’t have to worry about him stealing any more elections, he’s far too old for that to be an issue
    - card_zero 2y ago
indy 2y ago
Fascist has become an overused word by the left. Everyone else (the majority of the american voting population it would seem) are tired of the label and tune out anyone who accuses someone of being a fascist. The response from the left has been to double down and accuse more people of fascism.
- jonathanstrange 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - krona 2y ago
    The distinctive fascist doctrine of perpetual war doesn't seem to be a MAGA calling cry. In fact isn't the opposite more true? And then the cult of traditionalism while strong in the NRx movement, is arguably stronger in the Republican side than in MAGA itself. Ultimately Fascism is deeply spiritual but all I get from Trump is brash 80's boomerism. He's not ideological enough.
    - jonathanstrange 2y ago
      They are fighting an alleged "culture war" and also call it that way. I also think that Trump's movement is very spiritual, almost like a cult. Anyway, all I'm saying is that based on common criteria the term Fascism is adequate for Trump's movement. I'm not claiming that it's strongly related to prior Fascist movements. These occurred in other countries at other times and I leave it to scholars to make comparisons if they must.
  - indy 2y ago
    Was America under Fascist rule from 2016 to 2020?
    - jpdb 2y ago
      America was under a fascist ruler, but not under a fascist system of government. Trump tested American democracy by consolidating power and was not successful, so we avoided being under a fascist rule The fear is that we might get to test democracy again, and most of America doesn't seem to mind that. Maybe it's due to lack of understanding, not caring, or genuinely wanting fascism, I don't know.
nervousvarun 2y ago
I can't begin to speak for America, my point was about the importance of Independent voters: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/first-us-independent-turnout-tops-democrats-ties-republicans-edison-research-2024-11-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/first-us-independent-turnou...
sien 2y ago
Giorgia Meloni - President of Italy. Victor Orban - President of Hungary. The AfD in Germany got a higher percentage of the vote in Thuringen in Germany than any other party. Currently polling higher than any member of the governing coalition nationally. Geert Wilders - successful in the Netherlands. Marine Le Pen - possible next president of France. The Freedom Party of Austria - has been in government. These parties all sometimes win in Europe.
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  In italy happened the same "nooo you can't call them fascist" Freedom of protest was, in fact, restricted in italy in a way that it affects climate manifestations more than lobbies manifestation - we have taxis striking and blocking cities if someone wants to touch their ungodly privileges - Journalist striked on the public news because news has become unreliable, propaganda spewing news at a level before unheard of It didn't happen, but Giorgia meloni wanted to abolish the crime of torture to better allow police to do its work (lmao even) At the season opening of the teather la scala di Milano, one man shouted "viva l'Italia antifascista" (long live antifacist italy). Police was sent to check his documents and similar intimidatory shit
fch42 2y ago
only European but if your choice is binary, you can only make it that way. Some Americans may well vote for the rightwing candidate because they want to stick it to the left (or whoever the "anti" would be). Personally, I don't think that alone makes a majority in that binary choice; in Europe, it would mostly end up in the vote for a minor "ultra" party. And less-"anti" conservative voters have other options. In the US though, as someone with conservative values and views, one always has to choose ... do I want to vote with everyone else who votes for "my" camp including the stick-it-tos (because there's only one option "on my side"), do I not vote, or do I even vote against what feels closer to me because the stick-it-tos vote for them as well, and/or their head on the ticket is clearly one of the stick-it-tos ? Am I glad I needn't make that choice. And am I sad what kind of asocial extremes are encouraged by the binary, winner-takes-all US political system.
graycat 2y ago
deleted
- stillold 2y ago
  Now try and add some evidence?
  - graycat 2y ago
    Right. In the US, on politics and the issues, getting the information and "evidence" is a really big problem. I have and/or have seen good evidence for all that I mentioned, but such evidence is NOT wanted by or common in the media which means that I have no well written, comprehensive, single reference to give. Uh, YOU try: Write a document with good evidence, details, quotes, video clips, etc., and see how much interest the US MSM (mainstream media) has in publishing it!!! I predict you will regard your effort, no matter how carefully done, as a waste of time. E.g., so far I've never seen even one credible graph over, say, the last 16 years, of, say, the US CPI (consumer price index). Same for budget deficits, spending bills, balance of foreign exchange, Fed loans, spending on the war in Ukraine (was there actually ANY spending or did we, instead, actually just ship war supplies produced in the US?) -- the actual details are absurdly messy, sloppy, missing, etc. Clearly, bluntly the details do not SELL -- won't get a big audience. To give good evidence here would exceed by several times the 10,000 bytes or so limit that Hacker News seems to have on a single post. US media credibility? Here is evidence of biased, cooked up, gang up, pile on, organized mob attack from 2017: https://youtu.be/f1ab6uxg908 With that example, there is less than zero credibility. So, for your "evidence", don't expect that from the US media. I wish, profoundly wish, have posted many times on social media, that the US news media should provide JUST such evidence, at least up to common standards of high school term papers. All that is no more than a spit into the wind -- the media does NOT want to expend bytes for such writing, documentation, evidence, etc. So, here I did all I can do to respond to the question I quoted, apparently, from a European. Agree or not with what I wrote, but it is the best I can do under the circumstances. The question from Europe are not very deep; so I gave answers of similar depth. The speeches in the election were not very deep. The Trump statements at the economic clubs in Chicago and Detroit were deeper. That's my explanation, best I can do, take it or leave it. But, really for an accusation of "Nazi", etc. the "burden of proof is on the accuser". The rape? He said, she said. There in the dressing room of the department store, did she scream and get some witnesses? Nazi? Just what is the evidence that Trump has done anything like the Nazi stuff Hitler did? Felon? He has never gotten a sentence -- if he does, then he can appeal, win the appeal, and show that he is NOT a "convicted felon". So, no sentence. The papers case, the J6 case, the Georgia case, the "hush money" case -- all are falling apart due to appeals, etc. They are NOT legal cases but just efforts to misuse the legal system to have others, as here, believe he is a felon. But with the appeals, e.g., even to the SCOTUS, ALL of the cases are falling apart. My view is that the wrong here is from low level parts of the US legal system and not from Trump. And where are the arguments about 10+ million illegal immigrants, the inflation, the attacks on US fossil fuel energy, the Ukraine war, the Gaza war, the Lebanon war, the hundreds of missiles from Iran, the promotion of biological men in women's sports, the lies about abortion (Trump sent the issue back to the states to decide), the bans on gas powered cars and trucks, etc.?
carlosjobim 2y ago
> As a European As a European you don't have presidential elections that matter. Executive and legislative power is in the hands of your parliament and the president is a figurehead (if you have one). If you want to compare your European experience to the USA, you should look at congress and not the presidential elections. You'd probably find the same dynamics there as in your own country, with the exception that the blocs that you have in parliament have been distilled into two parties.
- yencabulator 2y ago
  My home country has 3 major parties each at about a quarter of the seats, the rest split between about half a dozen others. The various parties have very different views, only one of them I'd argue is "right wing" in the US sense, and they've all mostly learned to make compromises and not be too divisive, or they face a more moderate party taking their seats. US two-party system really is the weird one.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    Every European parliament will form into a "government" bloc and an "opposition" bloc after the election. Right wing / left wing doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. The US congress does manage to make bi-partisan bills. Because members of congress can go against their party sometimes. In European parliaments that kind of behaviour usually results in a crisis of government and a vote of confidence. > or they face a more moderate party taking their seats That's not right. You cannot lose your parliament seat in any European parliament until the next election. If an MP or an entire party in Europe is too divisive, they might not be able to be part of a majority and they will be in opposition. In the USA, the executive government is not elected by parliament - so you're comparing apples to oranges. The president builds the executive government after being elected by the people in the states. That's something different.

vundercind 2y ago

One major difficulty with addressing republicans and “low-information” independents (there aren’t a ton of true-swing voters anyway, most are partisans who prefer not to label themselves that but vote as if they were) is that you can’t discuss issues with them. If you try, you immediately get sidelined into dealing not with disagreements on issues, but with having to try to convince them that basically their entire list of concerns is fictional. We had an R state rep candidate come by our house. Highlighted two issues in her message to us. Both were simply not actual things. The existence of the problems were lies. WTF do you do with voters who consume media that’s made them believe those? It’s like a huge moat around even being able to talk to them about anything real, even if only to disagree about some real thing.

pessimizer 2y ago
> We had an R state rep candidate come by our house. Highlighted two issues in her message to us. Both were simply not actual things. The existence of the problems were lies. This has been a constant refrain from Democrats: "The thing that you are upset about is not happening. Well, it is happening, but it is the exception. Ok, it's happening everywhere, but it's a good thing." No, of course Harris isn't for government sex changes for imprisoned illegal immigrants, except for the fact that she said she was. The truth is that we all know that she would say anything to win, and holding her to any position she ever publicly held feels unfair. The people who have been kept low-information are the Democrats, because they have been surrounded by media largely controlled by their political party. Republicans often have bad information, but they're constantly out there consuming information and hate-reading what Democrats are saying. Independents, in my experience, are the highest-information of all, because they don't think of political parties as something they can offload their morality to. Independents only see politics in terms of actual issues, and track those issues rather than having parasocial relationships with political celebrities. In that vein, I'm pretty sure that if I had an experience where a political candidate came to my house and talked about issues that weren't real, I'd talk about those issues specifically, and speculate about their origin. I think you don't mention them because they were real, but a lot of liberals have taken this position of officially denying reality if reality could help Trump. Is widespread voter fraud real? No. Should people be unconcerned about making it easier? Also, no. If upper-middle class liberals could have won the "stop sounding like Scientologists" challenge, they could have won. If The Democratic party could have wanted to win more than they wanted to avoid alienating any donors, they could have won by taking any popular position on anything. Trump spent most of his campaign actively campaigning for Harris by calling her a radical-left socialist; if she were actually a radical-left socialist instead of an empty vessel to be filled with cash, she would have won. If the Democratic party hadn't chosen again not to run a fair, open, lively primary, they would have won. With Trump campaigning against radical-left socialist Harris, and Harris campaigning against rapist Hitler, homophobic Stalin, and racist Mussolini, the majority of people looked at which candidate was lying the most, and voted for the other one. Everybody knows who Trump is, and he's already been president, and nobody went to camps. It was a rather sleepy standard Republican presidency, whose few deviations from the norm pleased people. The only reason we heard about Harris is because she (and Buttigieg) pretended to be for single-payer healthcare in order to destroy a popular candidate who was running on an honest program.

Xeamek 2y ago

Ok, well... that's not really an argument, is it? It actually is, though. Sure, it didn’t work—probably because enough people weren’t convinced that it was true enough (and also because they didn’t care)—but it's not unreasonable to think that such an argument should have been enough.

krona 2y ago
Appealing to insult is not, in fact, an argument. It's a form of rhetoric which doesn't change peoples minds, it reinforces them.
- Xeamek 2y ago
  "X is a fascist" is not just a simple insult. Pretending that's all it is is ignorance at best
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  “You are fascist” actually isn’t just an insult. If you display fascist tendencies then you’re a fascist, and he displays many of those typical tendencies.
  - a-french-anon 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - vacuity 2y ago
    There are actual fascists (and not as few as I would like) and they need to be called out, but using the term inaccurately and provocatively on a broad group makes it easier to oppose the usage outright. Optics are important to politics, like it or not.

kragen 2y ago

One of the hardest lessons to learn growing up is that there aren't really any adults, not in the sense I believed when I was a kid. "Adult" is a role people play when they're interacting with kids. Some do it better than others. But inside every adult is a terrified child† desperately struggling to make sense of an uncertain, incomprehensible world. Unfortunately for that child, life always ends in death; it won't be long until you are dead and everyone who remembers you is dead. And our reasoning abilities are not capable of understanding very much of the world, so often nothing we do matters, not even for the purposes it was intended for. Mostly our understanding of the world consists of stories we tell ourselves with relatively little connection to reality. Our understanding of the world is profoundly mediated by fiction, which is to say, lies. That's why it all ends up like children arguing on the playground. The kind of playground‡ where my 14-year-old classmate Evangalyn Martinez got stabbed to death for, I think it was, stealing Joella Mares's boyfriend, and nobody leaves the playground alive. Under those circumstances, what does it mean to live a good life rather than a bad one? Good answers exist, but they're not easy. ______ † This is a metaphor. I don't mean that each adult has literally swallowed a child and is digesting them alive like a python. ‡ Technically that was actually the parking lot. Also, I was already no longer her classmate at the time, and because we were in different grades, I don't remember if I ever met her. She wouldn't be my last classmate to be stabbed; in my high school biology class each student was paired with the same lab partner for the whole semester, and the next year, someone else at the high school nonfatally stabbed my lab partner, Shannon Sugg, now Shannon L. Schneider (ginga.snapz1718). If memory serves, she dropped out from the psychological trauma. You can read the decision in her lawsuit against the school at https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/nm-court-of-appeals/1415498.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/nm-court-of-appeals/141549..., which says it was Alicia Andres who stabbed her. ”Plaintiff asserts that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment imposed a clearly established duty upon school officials to protect her from this stabbing.” I'm glad violent crime has dropped a lot since then in the US.

throw0101d 2y ago

> the Dem strategy for Independents appeared to be "Trump is a fascist" "Trump supporters are garbage". > Ok well..that's not really an argument? Choosing to not put a fascist(-leaning) individual into power is "not really an argument"? So it's okay to re-elect individuals who have tried at least once to stop the peaceful transfer of power? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

intended 2y ago

”where are the adults” I mean, the Republican game plan was to create this situation. Once they decided that they will do what it takes to win, they really did succeed. I mean take everything from the climate crisis, to my favorite - creationism being taught in school at the same level as evolution. The playbook is literally right there, you get experts to come on stage, ridicule them to your audience, show that they are cartoons and have no real value. Then you provide you viewers with good sounding news bites and manage the optics, and you can get a convicted felon elected to President. Yes - it really is just the information ecosystem. There really is no free speech when one side is a regular joe and the other side is a marketing and political speech behemoth. It is that simple, and we can’t do anything about it, because that would be harming our ability to speak freely.

Pxtl 2y ago

Okay, but what about the truth? I mean, if one of Trump's own closest advisors carefully states that he fits the definition of a fascist, is it not fair to call him one? If Trump outwardly celebrates many of the traditional concepts of fascism like attacking the media, attacking minorities, attacking "enemies from within" is it not fair to call him that? And what do you say about a person who supports fascism? That they're very fine people?