OBJECTION!

This thread has made me realize that while I was watching the hearings on it purely for comedy aspect, there were actually people out there being like, “Yeah that makes sense.”

Love it when the government takes away our stuff. Please, take away more of our stuff. Love me that security theater.

If you don’t like the app, just don’t use it. Nationalism is a hell of a drug.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with data security and everything to do with other social media companies lobbying to eliminate a competitor, using anti-China sentiment and fear-mongering as a justification. It’s all about the money.

I’m gonna have to admit to stealing that line from Dimension 20

Because he’s rich and powerful and laws are just threats made by the ruling class, which he’s a part of. The law is primarily a tool of class warfare and as such is only enforced consistently and in full force against the working class. Very occasionally, one rich person pisses off enough other rich people to be subject to it, but you have to be extremely bad at the game for that to happen. The more rich people are subjected to the law, the easier it is to be subjected to the law yourself if you’re rich, so generally you’re better off looking the other way while they do illegal shit so that you can get away with your own illegal shit. Plus they have the resources to fight you, so it means picking a costly battle.

I think the phrase is, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The economy had been trending upwards under Obama, and it peaked under Trump. If you’re a Keynesian, you might gripe that Trump increased spending when the economy was doing well rather then saving for a rainy day. Then, the rainiest of all rainy days hit with the pandemic, which shot spending through the roof. That caused rapid inflation that became most noticeable after Biden came in. Most Americans either don’t pay enough attention or attribute cause and effect to more or less random factors, so the experience is, Trump economy good, Biden economy bad.

Second, skepticism of the government is a facet of American culture, fed into from the national mythos regarding the Revolutionary War, by anticommunist propaganda about how the government doing stuff makes things worse, and also from experience with getting disillusioned from politicians not delivering on promises and the government generally not acting in people’s best interests. Kamala comes across more as representing the political establishment, and her messaging doesn’t tap into that dissatisfaction or contrarian nature.

Third, people feel like they’re getting fucked, and Trump offers a clear, simple narrative of who is fucking them. And the narrative scapegoats people at the bottom of the social structure, who are least able to push back against said narratives, and who already have negative stereotypes about them. If you’re not going to do that, then you either have to tell people they’re not getting fucked, or you have to blame the people who are actually doing the fucking, who are at the top of the social structure, who are most able to push back against your narrative. Imo, in order to employ the latter strategy most successfully, you need a sense of solidarity, a sense that everyone is included in your movement and you won’t allow anyone to be scapegoated or sacrifice anyone for your own advancement -and it’s kind of hard to do that with the whole genocide thing going on.

A crackpot who is connected to the CIA and a known source of misinformation and fake news.

Well, for starters, I don’t blindly believe anything people say about it.

Now they say that. They also lied and said that they weren’t asked any clarifying questions, when the linked comment proves that they very clearly were. They’re just trying to backtrack their unreasonable claims after the fact to make the response they got seem more disproportionate.

Especially anything tankie related.

Y’all will believe literally anything with zero evidence of it means making people you don’t like look bad.

No throw, only take?

Hell, I had a few members tell me that I was part of the evil capitalist elite because I had a job.

Anytime a person claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link to it, they are lying or misrepresenting what happened literally 100% of the time.

https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/chinese-genocide-of-uyghurs-in-xinjiang-continues

According to Adrian Zenz,

https://thediplomat.com/2024/04/erasing-memories-concealing-evidence-chinas-efforts-to-obscure-the-uyghur-genocide/

provided to UHRP by scholar Adrian Zenz

Whoopsie! That’s already two. It was easy to find those because they were already pointed out to you (along with several other of your sources) in the thread that you’re complaining about.

Here’s a tip - when you post a source on this subject, press “Ctrl+F” then type “Zenz,” and if anything comes up, don’t post it. Obviously, I can’t expect anyone to actually read their sources before posting them, but is 6 keystrokes really too much to ask?

I have a rule that anytime anyone says something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they are lying or mischaracterizing it literally 100% of the time, and that rule has proven itself yet again.

I found the thread and you had several people read your links and go through them in detail. Most of what they’re claiming is traced back to crackpot Adrian Zenz.

As I said, if you go there and say wrong things and then can’t back them up, they’re going to be rude to you. Citing Adrian Zenz is one form of not being able to back up your claims.

Do you have a link to that conversation? I’m interested in what your proof looked like.

If you say something wrong about something they care about and you can’t back it up, they’re going to be rude to you.

Lemmygrad.ml and Hexbear.net

So, looking for the wildest claims from the middle of the cold war and trying to pass them off as fact?

If you look at the estimates the article actually uses:

By the end of 1940, the population of the Gulag camps amounted to 1.5 million.[13]

According to some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953.[4] According to other estimates, at the beginning of 1953 the total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of which more than 465,000 were political prisoners.[22][23] Between the years 1934 to 1953, 20% to 40% of the Gulag population in each given year were released.[24][25]

Your number is several times higher than the highest estimate used outside of the historiography section (in case anyone reading is unfamiliar with the term, historiography is the study of how our understanding of history has changed over time, and so includes references to claims that have now been widely discredited).

More of a chance than they did. The dems were definitely going to lose before, now things are shaken up, Trump still has an edge but if they play their cards right who knows.

Why are they voting for the candidate who promises a conservative dystopia then?

You’re vastly overestimating the level of political literacy of the average American, let alone the average Trump voter.

And for that, I have a “leverage” on you that I don’t have on a Trump voter - the proposition that you don’t want a conservative dystopia.

Again, wrong on both counts. I’m already not supporting a conservative dystopia so you don’t have that leverage over me. Meanwhile, there are many people who vote Trump don’t intend to support a conservative dystopia, so you would have leverage over them.