There’s a lot of technological possibilities. Also just things like food imports.

Which is right?

Why not none of them?

Not entirely. A few months ago AOC was discussing how her own internal polling of her own district ended up under-estimating her support by around 10 percentage points. It was in that hour long talk she gave explaining why she was still supporting Biden as the candidate, before he dropped out.

Polling has always been tricky, but I think in the past decade its gotten nigh-impossible. These institutions now seem to be more focused on not losing their jobs than actually trying to gauge support for a politician.

Makes me wonder if issue polling instead of politician polling is better. I imagine it probably is a little bit, but I’m not sure.

I don’t actually know what they got in exchange, but I’m guessing the N Koreans got the better end of the deal.

That is attention you paid to those tanks, resources consumed to deal with them.

(resources that could’ve otherwise hit an IFV full of guys)

You can’t electronically jam a tank. It also forces your opponents to pay a lot of attention to it, taking resources away from focusing on your squishy light infantry.

Musk has posted around 1,300 times on X this year about immigration and voter fraud.

Yeesh. And that’s just a couple topics. He knows he has other companies too, right?

I think they’re just trying to set expectations as high as possible so that if they lose, then their accusations of cheating will sound more plausible, giving them more room to actually try to cheat the election.

I think this is less “sports fans destroy own city” and more “existing criminals take advantage of chaos to get away with crimes”.

Personally I believe there is some responsibility on the massed, drunk sports fans to beat up and deter looters from taking advantage of their celebrations.

I actually sort of like this idea. People would still figure it out, of course, but it’d shift people’s default attention from the person to the platform.

He doesn’t gain much from pandering to his own supporters. There are still some people that are on the fence, not many, but a few. People that do believe in regulation cutting but also think the President should be a role model. This will probably tip a very small number of them, which matters in a close race.

That’s a pretty slow “slicing through defenses” if you ask me…

having little effect.

I disagree. Many people are brought out, you can very commonly find people’s personal accounts. The problem is they’re continuously recruiting as well, and do overwhelmingly well particularly with young male gamers who are disproportionately active online.

We can’t forget that every year, millions of people turn 18. Right now, four whole years worth of them don’t really personally remember a lot about the Trump presidency, they were doing the whole growing up thing.

I do agree that people do bear responsibility when they seek it out. I don’t think that’s most though, for most its the default from their local culture that they need education and critical thinking to save them from. Much like religion in general, if nobody helps you break free with independent ideas and critical thinking skills, you simply won’t. It’s a default of sorts, depending on the overall environment you were reared in.

Conspiracy theories, which underpin so many fascist movements, are fun, is part of the problem.

What’s more pleasant, living in a harsh and difficult reality where you’re a small fry and real change is hard and life is mostly dull, or living in a dream world where all your problems are “their” fault and you can live with an emotional sense of superiority?

You can be an egalitarian, having to be equal with everyone, or you can be better than some people. Then, remembering that you can always just avoid thinking about contradictory evidence, try to objectively decide which you might prefer. Being an equal, or being a superior? I mean, does it matter what’s true? Does it make a difference in your day to day life if black and white people actually are fundamentally equal, if you don’t really have to treat them that way?

Imo, this is how it gets the smart people. Running theory anyway.

Agreed. I would point to widespread systemic racism as an evidence of this festering. And this was despite Ulysses S Grant’s, as President and controlling both Houses of Congress at the time, attempted harsh persecution of the KKK during Reconstruction. There’s just only so much you can do against what is essentially a domestic guerilla campaign. They hide. Really well. They come out and do things when you’re not watching, and flee when faced with real danger.

It’s not a strawman, I think you mean shifting a goalpost. It’s not that either though, since my position has remained completely consistent. I’m arguing it does not work, the problem of right wing authoritarianism was never actually addressed. It was driven underground, it was hidden, it’s symptoms were masked as people went around thinking “no problems here!”. This was a grave error. From its position underground, it was only a matter of time before it at some point rose threaten society again.

The solution you advocate for requires a neverending process of rolling the dice, hoping no Nazi infiltration into courts or higher government has happened. This does not work, it is not a viable long-term solution. A long term solution must take both a societal and medical perspective into account to understand how a person actually becomes a Nazi.

The medical part is largely under-discussed, it’s only recently that physiological changes in the brain differentiating these sorts of conservatives are becoming more recognized, and explaining why an ideology of fear is so much more effective on them than you or I.

The court order would have never been brought forward if the ideology had been successfully stamped out post-war. Ultimately, an idea cannot be forcibly destroyed though, only driven into hiding where it can continue to fester underground and through back-channels, as the John Birch Society did here in the States.

This is why addressing the root socioeconomic and individual psychological causes becomes necessary. While most people like to focus on one or the other, I think both are necessary.

edit for grammar

It’s not apologia to understand something. Understanding things allows us better opportunity to address root causes. If simply killing/imprisoning/suppressing them all worked, the AfD would not be an issue in Germany after WW2 and post-war reconstruction.

No, not necessarily. A person is not responsible for traumas inflicted on them, nor the physiological fear-based adaptations that creates in their bodies. While we can blame them for not seeking treatment, we then have to consider our health care system.

That’s because you’re in possession of a certain set of skills and experiences that gives you the room to exercise critical thinking.

These are acquirable, though, you were not born with them. If someone has not had an equivalent opportunity to acquire your skills, they would lack this ability. Let’s not forget that we have a fairly strong cultural thrust towards anti-intellectualism in certain regions of the country. Our experiences are not all equal, and it has a great deal to do with our specific communities.