mozz

So we’re moving goalposts and just straight-up refusing to answer a simple question about why it seems like the thing you posted was not just misleadingingly framed, but actually false. Sounds good.

I do understand that I haven’t been real polite to you and it creates a certain pressure to “get a win” by making some kind of counterpoint. Mission accomplished, I guess. Biden did actually give the speech he was invited to give, even though he’s also campaigning and that makes things more complicated in some ways. It’s true. You caught him.

You wanna address the thing with the second part of the headline, though?

I can’t open X links; I’m on Firefox and it’s fucked on Firefox now and I don’t really feel like hopping around on browsers just to keep Elon Musk happy. I’m happy to look at it if you can find it somewhere else. I did search for the quote and I didn’t find anything.

You wanna address the thing with the second part of the headline, though? Because I’m not real sure I trust “freedomrideblog” on Twitter and I would want to know more details about how Biden’s campaign is using the speech, and all that, but it definitely looks like part of the headline you posted was objectively a lie. No?

Chin up boyo! You said you were gonna keep doing this all the way until the election. That’s like 6 more months, you can’t get all downhearted about it already just about some messages explaining why this one was bullshit too.

He constructed it a little cleverly: Said that if it was a Republican, they’d be in the electric chair. I don’t think it was criminal.

Of course, he also openly tried to have his own vice president killed, and collects non-murder-related felonies like bottles for recycling, and at least so far all of that has been mostly okay of him to do, so I’m not sure how much it matters. 😕

I notice that this conversation has a very particular type of flow – Innuendo Studios talked about this in Never Play Defense.

Actually, I went back and looked at it’s actually worse than the example the video constructs by quite a lot. The video’s example was dishonest, but the exchange was actually pretty coherent. I think this message is a particularly strong example of the flow you’ve been doing – where I say the protestors are right and I’m glad that Biden is letting them speak and hope he will take their message on board because what he’s doing right now is wrong, and then you get all hostile while lecturing me that not everyone who disagrees with Biden is a Republican. There’s nothing openly comical to that level in the video, although the overall flow of “wild new assertion / coherent response / repeat” is pretty similar.

Yeah. It’s a big shame. I read Lawrence O’Donnell’s book about 1968. It’s so fucking sad. I couldn’t finish.

And then, even with all the justification all the progressives had for quitting from the political system – basically on par with if the US was directly sending 19-year-old US citizens over to Gaza and having them blow up hospitals and get their balls shot off, or if Biden himself were approving of the brutalizing of protestors, like sending them to the hospital with nightstick fractures, not “just” pepper spraying them and putting cuffs on them – I feel like you can draw this absolutely direct line from 1968 and the disillusionment that stemmed from it into the grim nightmare politics that took over in America, because only the assholes were still voting, from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton until now we have just a wreckage of a system that someone from the 60s wouldn’t even recognize.

Basically I feel like 2016 was a repetition of that same betrayal, and I’m really hoping that 2024 isn’t a repetition of the same fascist takeover that’s enabled by it, because now we’re much much closer to the edge. Daniel Ellsberg said that all the things Nixon did to him that formed one piece of his collapse and fall, they’re all legal now.

Back in the Clinton/Bush era 20 years ago when he said that, I actually think it made quite a bit of sense. The Democrats were a lot more corporate-friendly (dropping corporate tax instead of raising it like Biden did, boosting the WTO instead of telling them to go fuck themselves like Biden did), and the Republicans weren’t trying to kill their political opponents or put minority groups into literal concentration camps.

I’m not even gonna comment on “they keep scrubbing it from YouTube.”

I sorta had a feeling you wouldn’t make even the slightest effort to defend that bullshit you had said.

politicians are not your friends

No, politicians are not at all your friends. What you mean when you say “support” for Biden or that Biden betrayed us, or that thing shills sometimes say about “falling in line behind” the Democrats and how they don’t want to do it, is very weird to me.

Nobody in politics is your friend. The government is just a big, corrupt, very dangerous machine. It runs on money and propaganda and defense contractors, and sometimes good things come out of it and sometimes bad things, and Biden is one little cog in that machine. That’s why I’m comfortable saying good things that Biden did, or that he’s doing a very bad thing by enabling a genocide – I’m not viewing either of those as a statement of my “allegiance.” It’s just, like, hey I am a free person and here is how I am viewing the world and what the truth is.

Ralph Nader did an excellent interview talking about productive ways to push the Democrats to the left, and how upset he was at Democratic voters who were throwing away an opportunity to get some concessions from the Biden administration in exchange for their vote. His viewpoint makes a ton of sense to me.

Your viewpoint – sort of based on emotion, this sort of teenager mentality like “YOU’RE DEAD TO ME NOW I’LL CALL UNCLE TRUMP TO COME OVER AND BURN THE HOUSE DOWN BECAUSE WHO CARES YOU BROKE MY HEART” coupled with a lot of the sins you’re accusing him of actually being things he didn’t do, is just weird. Like, if you want to push Biden left, fuckin go for it man. Sounds great. But if you’ve decided that if Trump comes to power and nukes Iran and makes being gay illegal and puts all the Hispanics in camps and cancels the next election, that’s just the price the country will pay because Biden said this wrong thing about racism and it was so hurtful to you and he’s definitely a bad person and that good person / bad person is even relevant to how to vote, then okay sure. I won’t tell you not to. But I don’t think you should pretend that I’m the one treating my politicians in a strange parasocial non sensible way.

I know that if I was a Palestine protestor, and President Biden was going to speak, and the college said that they would immediately just end the ceremony if things got too out of hand, I would immediately think “Well that definitely wouldn’t be a good outcome. I better quiet down; I was going to have this big protest, but if it’ll end the commencement ceremony entirely, then I won’t, because that would attract some attention to the cause I’m trying to promote. It might make the news or something. I’m scared of that outcome and wouldn’t want it to happen; that threat is effective.”

Your conclusion makes perfect sense that the crowd was mostly filled with people who were seething with contempt for Joe Biden, but cowed into obedient sitting-facing-towards-him by the threat that if they made too much ruckus, it would successfully disrupt the event.

I don’t think you’re a Trumper/Republican because you don’t support Genocide Joe. I think you’re a Trumper/Republican because the way you don’t support him doesn’t make any fucking sense. You criticize him for things he objectively didn’t do, and you offer no particular solutions that would seem to lead to a better outcome for those of us who live in the US and want it to do less killing here and abroad, and the only solution that you seem to offer – refusing to vote for him and offering an endless drumbeat of propaganda about him – has an excellent possibility of leading to a catastrophically worse outcome for everyone. Including Palestinians. And, you’re so vocal and consistent in criticizing him – and only him – for such a big variety of things real and imagined that it’s hard for me to take away any possible conclusion than that you’re trying to make sure he doesn’t get elected.

It’s possible that you’re simply a very confused leftist. IDK. But that’s my take on it. I note, also, that the story linked to also explicitly contradicts the headline, in terms of when students left (“walked out”) from the ceremony:

Several students walked out of the graduation ceremony while Biden was presented with an honorary degree following his speech, CNN reported.

So they stayed to listen to him speak, and then walked out in protest when he was done speaking? This is impossible, to me, to read as anything other than a deliberate propaganda construction built on people leaving to go to the bathroom or something. IDK, maybe I’m missing something.

Hey, quick question unrelated to that obviously insane thing you just said: You posted a while back about how upset you were Joe Biden betrayed everyone, after he promised to decriminalize marijuana, and then didn’t do it even though he could literally do it at any time he wanted and that’s just one more example of him being shit. I listed out the things he had done (basically: federal pardons for possession, telling the DEA to reschedule it, and putting a decriminalization bill through congress), and then I asked you what else you would like him to do.

I think your post got removed as misinformation right after that, so I never got a chance to hear the answer. What else was it that you wanted him to do? That he could do literally any time, that you were upset that he betrayed everyone who voted for him by not doing?

Surely, since your goal is to push Biden left, not to just oppose him at every turn and make sure he doesn’t get elected, you are interested in non-propaganda information and discussion on topics like this.

Don’t forget, he also has a photo of 2 students facing away from Joe Biden and all the rest sitting facing the normal direction

Good for them. They’re standing up for what they believe in, and I agree with them, and I definitely think that this type of thing has some impact on Biden’s policies. Although at this rate, all the Palestinians will be dead before he works his way slowly and gradually around to the idea that maybe he’ll have to do more than a sternly worded phone call with Netanyahu in order for the killing to stop.

You’ll note that, because Biden bears little resemblance to the monstrous authoritarian caricature you try several times a day to paint him as, he and the college (who I’m sure talked with him about this exact issue, beforehand) both made no effort to “crack down” on them, and in fact he explicitly called out their protest as a good thing, during his speech.

(My point wasn’t that the headline was a direct lie, but an example of engineering a single true fact by blowing it up and warping it to create a slanted picture of reality in the reader’s mind. That’s why I sent the full unedited video, as a way of contrasting it with a single event or a single picture taken from the perfect angle. I actually can’t visit X video links since Elon fucked things up, but if you want to send me some non-X videos I’m happy to take a look at those, too.)

I’m legitimately surprised that so few of the trolls have hit on the idea of coming in being fake pro-establishment. Like if there were more people here being super pro-Israel and doing the “Hamas is lying about casualties” “what on earth is Israel supposed to do, not defend themselves” talking points, to provide some justification for all the other trolls claiming that Lemmy is filled with pro-genocide-ers and they’re just doing their part sticking up for the unrepresented Palestinian viewpoint – I think if I were running an influence campaign I would probably sprinkle in some of those people, too.

I think “of course Joe Biden is dogshit, we all agree on that of course, but by God you better sit up and salute when he’s around, signed, your friendly Lemmy authoritarian person, fuck the protestors” is a likely candidate for one of those. If this is genuinely how you look at it though, have you considered reaching out to some of the shills and seeing if maybe you can get paid for posting this stuff? I think this would be a good tactical addition to what they’re doing.

Tracy Morgan, too, has a very important message

Lessons in headline engineering

Another possible headline was “At Morehouse, Biden says dissent should be heard because democracy is ‘still the way’” or another “Biden tells Morehouse graduates that scenes in Gaza from the Israel-Hamas war break his heart, too”

Outside of the ceremony, a small number of protestors gathered while the commencement itself did not see any major disruptions.

Last week, Morehouse College President David Thomas said he would rather halt proceedings than have students escorted away for protesting.

“If my choice is 20 people being arrested on national TV on the Morehouse campus, taken away in zip ties during our commencement, before we would reach that point, I would conclude the ceremony,” he said on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

But, none of that happened – either halting the ceremony or tackling or pepper spraying any of the people who were draped in Palestinian flags or turning their chairs around.

DeAngelo Fletcher, Morehouse College’s valedictorian, closed his address to his classmates by addressing global conflict, particularly the Israel-Hamas war.

“For the first time in our lives, we’ve heard the global community sing one harmonious song that transcends language and culture,” he said. “It is my sense as a Morehouse Man, nay – as a human being – to call for an immediate and a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.”

IDK how much more pro Palestinian than that he got, and it sorta sounds like “both sides.” But whatever. Anyway apparently Biden stood up and shook his hand after. Here’s the whole video; Biden’s part starts at around 1:43:30.

I don’t actually think it matters all that much what anybody says about Gaza; Biden stopping the weapons shipments, pushing for an immediate cease fire and humanitarian aid, and issuing an ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu would be a good start. I think mostly this commencement speech is notable in that, hey look, (1) there was protest and it was ok (2) you can make things sound way different depending on which aspects you present in the media coverage.

Idaho?

Prediction: Literally everything they are complaining about, will be an instance where they’re unhappy about the will of the majority of Oregonians

Brb

Edit: Yeah pretty much

Crook county voted for Donald Trump, a Republican governor, against decriminalising drugs and against restrictions on gun ownership. The state went the other way every time.

Fuckin’ democracy

They want to get rid of agriculture

you need to drive an electric car

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that my government would say, ‘You can’t go to church.’”

IDK, man. I do kind of get it; I think the underlying complaint is probably more just that no one likes feeling like everyone in their community looks at it one way, and there’s a force from outside preventing them from doing it that way when they mostly want to (like drug legalization, or having to wear masks or closing churches during Covid). That part honestly does make some sense to me.

I’d be curious how much is some real agriculture or legislative issue where they actually were being overridden, and how much is culture-war bullshit that doesn’t impact their daily lives in any way except when they see it on the propaganda-news that’s trying to get them all riled up. But I had more sympathy reading about it than I thought I would.

God damn it

I love that some of these politicians are assholes on a personal level about things like the leaves on the street or whatever the Rand Paul issue was, and that their neighbors feel empowered to deal with it on a purely interpersonal level. I’m not kidding. I can’t stop talking about how much I like that the political system in the US is that way.

I think – I’m being dead serious – that in the vast majority of countries, if you punched a politician for a reason of pure interpersonal conflict and nothing related to politics, the police and courts would make it a huge deal, because that is a special type of person you’re supposed to honor the better-than-you-ness of.