- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
Just because Republicans choose unreality doesn’t mean the media should ignore the facts of January 6.
On January 6, 2021, I watched CNN as thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. As someone well-versed in watching tragedy on television, I was struck by just how indisputable the facts were at the time: violent, red-hat-clad MAGA rioters, followed by Republicans in Congress, tried to stop democracy in its tracks. Trump had told his followers that the protest in Washington, DC, “will be wild,” and in the assault that followed his speech, some rioters smeared feces on the walls of the Capitol. Hundreds of them have since been convicted on charges ranging from assault on federal officers to seditious conspiracy. These are stubborn facts, the kind that do not care about your feelings. These facts include the inalienable truth that Trump is the first president in American history to reject the peaceful transfer of power.
It never occurred to me that these facts could somehow be perverted by partisanship. But three years later, we are seeing just that, as Republicans cling to the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” by Joe Biden and are poised to make Trump their 2024 nominee. And perhaps even more dangerous than the GOP ditching reality is the news media’s inability to cover Trumpism as the threat to democracy that it very much is.
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But the problem is, when all you have is conventional political framing, everything looks like politics as usual. One candidate makes a claim; the other disputes it. Two sides are divided, etc. This framing only works if both parties operate within the frameworks of a shared reality. But Trumpism doesn’t allow for the reality the rest of us inhabit. Trump’s supporters believe their leader’s reality and not, say, the reality the rest of us see with our eyes. As Trump once told a crowd: “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Journalists may be well-intentioned in trying to be “objective,” or they’re simply afraid of being labeled partisan. Either way, coverage of January 6 that gives equal weight to both sides—one based in reality, one not—is helping pave the road for authoritarianism.
Ok, let me preface this by OF COURSE Biden is by far the lesser evil compared to Trump, OF COURSE single issue voting is some Republican style bullshit and OF COURSE Trump would be even more supportive of a fascist government committing genocide, being a fascist war crime fanboy himself.
That being said, people who are outraged by Biden’s continued support of and thus enabling of genocide DO have a point. He’s supposed to represent the interests of every American who’s not a fascist, not those of a fascist apartheid regime currently committing the worst genocide since the Balkan wars in the 90s.
Just because the other guy is a much greater evil doesn’t mean that you can’t hold your own guy accountable for supporting evil. With Trump the only alternative, voting for him is a given, but giving him a free pass shouldn’t be.
Criticizing Biden’s handling of the war is not just allowed, but encouraged. His handling of it is dog shit.
What’s naive and stupid to do is refuse to vote for him because of it, when the threat is a person who bragged about becoming a dictator and retaliating against anyone he dislikes.
It’s neat how you completely ignored the entire first paragraph of the comment.
Uh, what we are talking about is people who are already saying they won’t vote for Biden. I run into this a lot. It’s terrifying to know a significant part of the electorate are so myopic they would install Trump forever to “make a point”.
It truly doesn’t matter if they have a point, if the only end result is not voting or throwing their vote away on a third party. If Trump wins, they will be a big part of how.
People don’t like being manipulated to vote a certain way, they get angry when that is done to them. They realize that other citizens had died for their right to vote, and they hold it sacred.
And when you’re angry, you tend to make dumb mistakes.
How many of us know the stance of the people they’re going to vote for, when it comes to ranked choice voting?
As long as we are drawing the line in the sand as “reality” the truth is much more stark. We already live in a nation controlled by oligarchs and the vote has already been robbed of what little power it ever had. In a sense accelarionism isn’t so much accelerating the decline of US democracy but accelerating its suspended funeral.
It’s not just ‘throwing the baby away with the bath water ‘, it’s burning down the whole fucking country just because mommy didn’t give you candy.
Where “mommy didn’t give you candy” in this case is “the guy you’re being screamed at to vote for is supporting genocide.”
Just because you don’t think genocide is a big deal, that doesn’t mean you don’t need the votes of those that do.
I’m voting for Biden, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that some people won’t, and that his support for genocide is the reason.
How? The DNC doesn’t listen to us, writing our reps is basically a waste of time and paper unless you like collecting robosigned form letter replies from political offices.
Fuck trump in every way and if there is any justice left in this world cheetolini will rot in a cell for the rest of his life, to be clear.
That said, we have 40 years of congressional voting patterns that PROVE they only listen to ‘the people’ about 20% of the time.
So how? How do we hold him accountable? By making meme posts and tiktoks?
Yes I am MUCH happier that Biden won and I will be voting for him again, but let’s not pretend we aren’t in an oligarchy controlled by wealthy families.
Yes the Dems do a bit better of a job helping the citizens, but not nearly enough and not in the ways needed most.
We NEED to get rid of first past the post voting, we NEED to get money out of politics.
Until that happens, we will ALWAYS be stuck choosing the lesser evil and our wealth will continue to be shuffled up to the already disgustingly rich.
I don’t know how the US could change it’s voting system. It’s so carved into the national identity with the constitution. It’s a big change. I see us in the UK more likely to change our voting system before the US.
Maine is already switched to Ranked Choice voting. I agree its a big change, but if you had told me 20 years ago that I could legally buy weed in a boutique store in New York City someday, I’d have told you basically the same thing.
It’s actually not, they track it. It’s important to know voter sentiment so the competent members of Congress actually keep track of the issues people write about and their positions on them. In terns of response, I’m not sure if you know how many people an average Congressmember has and how much mail they get, but if everyone including the Congressmember spent all day individually responding to every letter they got (most of which are form complaints), they would get even less done. The form response is (again, if the member is at all competent) usually slightly modified from a form response because, frankly, why would you have a different response to the same question every time? The response reads all political because it has to, they’re writing for a broad audience and they don’t know you.
They probably are listening to the people who write them, who tend to skew older and have more time on their hands to do so, so are likely more conservative or status quo. There are issues the Dems will shift on if they see that’s where the wind is blowing. Also, if you have a specific local issue, don’t write to DC, write to the local office. They actually have people dedicated to helping with state and local concerns.
All well and good, but these idiot kids are actually refusing to vote for him over this single issue. I agree that It’s fine to be bothered how he’s handling things- even if they’re a bit misunderstood on how things actually work- I mean, sure…it’s bothering.
But this is the biggest “I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face” America will EVER see.
Single issue lmao. “Yeah Hitler did genocide but that’s just a single issue”
OK dude.
If we want to win, we need to appeal to people who disagree with your support for genocide, no matter how much you hate them.
So your solution is to make it easier for Trump to win? You know that would make things even worse?
If only there was a democratic process to choose the Democratic nomination for president… Man, that would be such a great idea. I wonder why no one thought of it?
THE SOLUTION WOULD BE TO HAVE A FUCKING PRIMARY, and not, you know un-democratically ban other candidates for the nomination in 10% of the states, so far.
You’re the ones with a genocidal candidate you want everyone else to vote for. It’s your job to find a solution to get people to vote for him, if you don’t want to have a contest to decide who people would vote for as the democratic nomination.
The only thing that is making it easier for Trump to win is Biden’s unwavering support for the genocide centrists have evidently always wanted.
Do you realize that the war won’t stop with the orangeoutan right?
You misspelled ‘genocide’ as ‘war’
For the love of fuck, how many times do I have to tell you genocide supporters that I don’t support Trump?
Lol, I never said that you were, second, why do you think that I support war?
Then there was no reason to bring him up.
I didn’t say you support war. I said you support genocide. Your insistence on downplaying it by calling it “war” pretty much cements it.
Nobody hates you, we’re just sick of idealists in a time when we need pragmatists.
Well said.
If you actually believed that, and weren’t an idealist centrism and genocide yourself, you would pragmatically demand a primary to choose a candidate who could win and not try and demand unearned votes through shaming.
You’re as pragmatic as a college kid carrying around a dog-eared copy of ‘Atlas Shrugged’
Those pesky idealists… being opposed to checks notes literal fucking genocide.
I’m voting for Biden and you don’t care. You just want unquestioning support for the genocide you support.
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The people who can find a way to excuse, minimize or ignore Biden’s military and political support for genocide could probably find a way to excuse, minimize or ignore just about anything. There is no bottom, only partisanship and convenience.
Sure, but if you’re planning on sticking around in America, or care about its influence worldwide, shouldn’t you at least try to steer it towards the least worst option?
youth have always voted in low numbers, fuck em and their shitpost memes.
I strongly suspect that these one issue kids have no idea of what is going on in the Mideast
Israel was attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah. The over the top response by Netanyahu is much like you would get from the orange wanna-be dictator. Israel is under threat by Iran too. The arms sent were a show of force least any other hostile countries decide to pile on. Biden has been forceful with Israel behind the scenes, placing conditions on the use of the arms and pushing Israel to back off. He can’t do so publicly because it would let the hostile countries sense a weakness. Kids are triggered by emotions and fail to dig for news contrary to their biases because it doesn’t reinforce their need for an anger dopamine rush - much like MAGAs.
It is so much easier to sit on ones ass rather than to do the hard work of being intelligently informed and to create change
“I look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief they have known something of what has been passing in the world around them” - Harry Truman
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There is nothing nuanced about the indiscriminate slaughter of 1% of the Gazan population. So far. Trying to create nuance around genocide, is genocide denial. Nothing more.
To you “Never Again” meant “Never Again, unless…”
Also, I can’t believe you’d use a Harry Truman quote. Dude was so fucking stupid, even he knew how unprepared for the job he was. He was literally elected Senator because the local Democratic power broker couldn’t find anyone else willing to be his man in the Senate.
Also, not a fucking kid. I’m 40 fucking years old, and I see the same stupid Democratic party leaders making the same fucking mistake and being shocked when the same thing happens. Fucking boomers, who are unwilling to give up power until it is pried from their stupid, lead-tainted, selfish fucking dead hands.
Neat fanfic. He hasn’t done any of this at all.
Exactly. Their “genocide” is a knee-jerk sensationalist reaction to the typical extremist news they’re used to reading. It’s almost always a lot more nuanced than it appears.
As I like to say, life exists within the grey area that lies between the boundaries of black-and-white ideologies.
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Centrists will abandon literally any position except their support for genocide.
Actually, its part if a Palestinian campaign to destroy Israel. Israel did offer a two state solution multiple times. Its the Palestinians that reject the right of Israel to exist, not the other way around.
Sacrificing their own population to gain support doesn’t make them right.
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1947 called, it says you’re misinformed, or worse.
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This is correct. I despise Trump. When I voted for Biden, I understood I was voting for a 1 term president to allow Democrats 4 years to get their house in order. They haven’t and they don’t intend to.
The truth is that a vote for shit or slightly less shit is still shit. We’ve allowed two mega corporations in the DNC and RNC to monopolize our politics.
The only solution is a 3rd party. Voting for Biden or Trump just keeps the shit rolling. Sucks that Democrats might have a Ross Perot moment with Trump on the ballot, but they had time to bring up anyone else to fill the role, and they didn’t. I have the luxury of living in Tennessee, so my vote doesn’t matter, something else they promised to fix and didn’t. But anyone who wants to call me an idealist or pearl clutcher needs to wake up.
Oh look, the same tired old “both sides” bullshit.
If you hadn’t prefixed your comment with this, centrists who can’t defend their enthusiastic support for genocide for its own sake would be calling you a trumpist.
Yeah, I know from vast experience 😮💨
You’ll notice that you have to disclaim for a whole paragraph about how Biden is better than Trump, which of course he is, but no centrist has to similarly disclaim that they even dislike genocide at all.
Because none of them do.
Nothing about understanding the danger Trump poses makes you a “centrist” or “enthusiastic support” for genocide. Please grow up.
Nothing about questioning Biden’s support for genocide means I want Trump to win. But you’ll ignore that I’m voting for Biden as long as you never have to examine your love for genocide for its own sake.