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"But I'm tired of everything somehow being Democrats' fault"....lol

scrubs 1y ago
It's not wholly the dems fault. Nobody took the manhood and backbone from maga republicans: they gave it up themselves and willingly butt kissed. The dems are partially complicit insofar as they were a weak counterbalance 2016 and 2024. The more culpable entity is the US congress. As i see it it's instiutional stupidity is mainly (not totally) at the heart of the problem. It is hard to come up with first cause. But a helpful starting point for this mess was when Ross Perot ran as a populist. At that time both parties were at the start of an accelerating run of service to self and corporations over middle America. Then came newt gringrich and a whole bunch of other increasingly hyperbolic nonsense which contributed to fund raising off culture wars. America won't get fixed until congress gets fixed. A good president can pause decline but it cannot fix root causes
- conartist6 1y ago
  I see social media algorithms as the fuel for the populist/culture-war trend. I was working at Facebook during the 2016 election and while we were trying very hard to say that Facebook didn't elect Trump by peddling Russian influence, there was almost no doubt that Trump's superior comprehension of the kind of direct-appeal "lowball" tactics that would be winning plays in that arena were the proximate cause of his victory. The platform strongly rewarded controversy because no kind of engagement was considered negative. It was a system designed to pick content that maximized engagement, so it was always going to favor grandstanding over truth-telling. By the way I agree with you wholeheartedly that the problem is that congress is not currently serving as the check and balance it was intended to be. What can we do about that? Is it time to end the filibuster?
  - lazyeye 1y ago
    With everything we've seen till now, the idea that the Dems are the "truth-tellers" is ridiculous.
    - scrubs 1y ago
      Culture wars of dems v. republicans is over. Rather than arguing over who's BS is less offensive i want the focus on you and me telling congress (thats all of them): you suck. You are not substantively running the fundamentals right. I want them to focus on that. The rest is not important anymore.
  - scrubs 1y ago
    Trump is a complicated-bad subject. It's required to have a realist position on him: he has a feral sense of populism --- it is malignant long term --- he is very good at social media is as you well explained. There is a sense in which Trump has more street smarts, and frankly, was more willing to go to the mat. That's easier when you dont care about anything except for winning. Again, ultimately not good for the US ... but short term good for MAGA. As to what to do about it: I feel like we need now in politics what some of the enlightenment movement emphasized then: real, rational, substance. We have got to get to place where pretty boys talking BS rhetoric on TV is toxic. Having a talking point for complex subjects isn't good enough anymore. We want results: a 10 year fiscal plan so debt doesn't swamp the federal budget; operational control of the border with immigration allowed; equal justice under the law including corporations and connected people. I want more Americans asking congress: where's the beef? Right now Congress are not statesmen; they'll have to have to be told by the electorate to do better at running the country. They simply won't do it without that pressure. Most people are +/- 20% of center. We have more in common and we're in larger numbers: forget political parties; we want the fundamentals handled.
    - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
      People act like Trump is this outsider taking on the elites when he's just an actor fronting for various backroom fascists that have been working on this for decades. We had the whole pantomime about project 2025 for example. A cabinet full of billionaires. Musk funding. Trump delivering on abortion even though he could clearly not care less about it. Fascist judges chosen by the Federalist society. None of his shit would work if there weren't powerful forces making sure that it did, falling over themselves to excuse or distract from Trump's many blunders. Or viciously attacking his rivals over made up shit. I like to start from the Powell memo personally but there is a vast right wing conspiracy. It's not one amoral psychopath you're dealing with but a whole well-funded ecosystem of them.
  - r721 1y ago
    >The platform strongly rewarded controversy because no kind of engagement was considered negative. Good article on this topic from 2021: >Five points for anger, one for a ‘like’: How Facebook’s formula fostered rage and misinformation https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/26/facebook-angry-emoji-algorithm/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/26/faceboo... >The first downgrade to the angry emoji weighting came in 2018, when Facebook cut it to four times the value of a like, keeping the same weight for all of the emotions. >But it was apparent that not all emotional reactions were the same. Anger was the least used of the six emoji reactions, at 429 million clicks per week, compared with 63 billion likes and 11 billion “love” reactions, according to a 2020 document. Facebook’s data scientists found that angry reactions were “much more frequent” on problematic posts: “civic low quality news, civic misinfo, civic toxicity, health misinfo, and health antivax content,” according to a document from 2019. Its research that year showed the angry reaction was “being weaponized” by political figures. >In April 2019, Facebook put in place a mechanism to “demote” content that was receiving disproportionately angry reactions, although the documents don’t make clear how or where that was used, or what its effects were.

It's not wholly the dems fault. Nobody took the manhood and backbone from maga republicans: they gave it up themselves and willingly butt kissed. The dems are partially complicit insofar as they were a weak counterbalance 2016 and 2024. The more culpable entity is the US congress. As i see it it's instiutional stupidity is mainly (not totally) at the heart of the problem. It is hard to come up with first cause. But a helpful starting point for this mess was when Ross Perot ran as a populist. At that time both parties were at the start of an accelerating run of service to self and corporations over middle America. Then came newt gringrich and a whole bunch of other increasingly hyperbolic nonsense which contributed to fund raising off culture wars. America won't get fixed until congress gets fixed. A good president can pause decline but it cannot fix root causes

conartist6 1y ago
I see social media algorithms as the fuel for the populist/culture-war trend. I was working at Facebook during the 2016 election and while we were trying very hard to say that Facebook didn't elect Trump by peddling Russian influence, there was almost no doubt that Trump's superior comprehension of the kind of direct-appeal "lowball" tactics that would be winning plays in that arena were the proximate cause of his victory. The platform strongly rewarded controversy because no kind of engagement was considered negative. It was a system designed to pick content that maximized engagement, so it was always going to favor grandstanding over truth-telling. By the way I agree with you wholeheartedly that the problem is that congress is not currently serving as the check and balance it was intended to be. What can we do about that? Is it time to end the filibuster?
- lazyeye 1y ago
  With everything we've seen till now, the idea that the Dems are the "truth-tellers" is ridiculous.
  - scrubs 1y ago
    Culture wars of dems v. republicans is over. Rather than arguing over who's BS is less offensive i want the focus on you and me telling congress (thats all of them): you suck. You are not substantively running the fundamentals right. I want them to focus on that. The rest is not important anymore.
- scrubs 1y ago
  Trump is a complicated-bad subject. It's required to have a realist position on him: he has a feral sense of populism --- it is malignant long term --- he is very good at social media is as you well explained. There is a sense in which Trump has more street smarts, and frankly, was more willing to go to the mat. That's easier when you dont care about anything except for winning. Again, ultimately not good for the US ... but short term good for MAGA. As to what to do about it: I feel like we need now in politics what some of the enlightenment movement emphasized then: real, rational, substance. We have got to get to place where pretty boys talking BS rhetoric on TV is toxic. Having a talking point for complex subjects isn't good enough anymore. We want results: a 10 year fiscal plan so debt doesn't swamp the federal budget; operational control of the border with immigration allowed; equal justice under the law including corporations and connected people. I want more Americans asking congress: where's the beef? Right now Congress are not statesmen; they'll have to have to be told by the electorate to do better at running the country. They simply won't do it without that pressure. Most people are +/- 20% of center. We have more in common and we're in larger numbers: forget political parties; we want the fundamentals handled.
  - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
    People act like Trump is this outsider taking on the elites when he's just an actor fronting for various backroom fascists that have been working on this for decades. We had the whole pantomime about project 2025 for example. A cabinet full of billionaires. Musk funding. Trump delivering on abortion even though he could clearly not care less about it. Fascist judges chosen by the Federalist society. None of his shit would work if there weren't powerful forces making sure that it did, falling over themselves to excuse or distract from Trump's many blunders. Or viciously attacking his rivals over made up shit. I like to start from the Powell memo personally but there is a vast right wing conspiracy. It's not one amoral psychopath you're dealing with but a whole well-funded ecosystem of them.
- r721 1y ago
  >The platform strongly rewarded controversy because no kind of engagement was considered negative. Good article on this topic from 2021: >Five points for anger, one for a ‘like’: How Facebook’s formula fostered rage and misinformation https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/26/facebook-angry-emoji-algorithm/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/26/faceboo... >The first downgrade to the angry emoji weighting came in 2018, when Facebook cut it to four times the value of a like, keeping the same weight for all of the emotions. >But it was apparent that not all emotional reactions were the same. Anger was the least used of the six emoji reactions, at 429 million clicks per week, compared with 63 billion likes and 11 billion “love” reactions, according to a 2020 document. Facebook’s data scientists found that angry reactions were “much more frequent” on problematic posts: “civic low quality news, civic misinfo, civic toxicity, health misinfo, and health antivax content,” according to a document from 2019. Its research that year showed the angry reaction was “being weaponized” by political figures. >In April 2019, Facebook put in place a mechanism to “demote” content that was receiving disproportionately angry reactions, although the documents don’t make clear how or where that was used, or what its effects were.