Disentangling Disinformation: Not As Easy As It Looks
from the impossibility-theories dept
Body bags claiming that ?disinformation kills? line the streets this week in front of Facebook?s Washington, D.C. headquarters. A group of protesters, affiliated with ?The Real Facebook Oversight Board? (an organization that is, confusingly, not affiliated with Facebook or its Oversight Board), is urging Facebook?s shareholders to ban so-called misinformation ?superspreaders??that is, a specific number of accounts that have been deemed responsible for the majority of disinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines.
Disinformation about the vaccines is certainly contributing to their slow uptake in various parts of the U.S. as well as other countries. This disinformation is spreading through a variety of ways: Local communities, family WhatsApp groups, FOX television hosts, and yes, Facebook. The activists pushing for Facebook to remove these ?superspreaders? are not wrong: while Facebook does currently ban some COVID-19 mis- and disinformation, urging the company to enforce its own rules more evenly is a tried-and-true tactic.
But while disinformation ?superspreaders? are easy to identify based on the sheer amount of information they disseminate, tackling disinformation at a systemic level is not an easy task, and some of the policy proposals we?re seeing have us concerned. Here?s why.
1. Disinformation is not always simple to identify.
In the United States, it was only a few decades ago that the medical community deemed homosexuality a mental illness. It took serious activism and societal debate for the medical community to come to an understanding that it was not. Had Facebook been around?and had we allowed it to be arbiter of truth?that debate might not have flourished.
Here?s a more recent example: There is much debate amongst the contemporary medical community as to the causes of ME/CFS, a chronic illness for which a definitive cause has not been determined?and which, just a few years ago, was thought by many not to be real. The Centers for Disease Control notes this and acknowledges that some healthcare providers may not take the illness seriously. Many sufferers of ME/CFS use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to discuss their illness and find community. If those platforms were to crack down on that discussion, relying on the views of the providers that deny the gravity of the illness, those who suffer from it would suffer more greatly.
2. Tasking an authority with determining disinfo has serious downsides.
As we?ve seen from the first example, there isn?t always agreement between authorities and society as to what is truthful?nor are authorities inherently correct.
In January, German newspaper Handelsblatt published a report stating that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was not efficacious for older adults, citing an anonymous government source and claiming that the German government?s vaccination scheme was risky.
AstraZeneca denied the claims, and no evidence that the vaccine was ineffective for older adults was procured, but it didn?t matter: Handelsblatt?s reporting set off a series of events that led to AstraZeneca?s reputation in Germany suffering considerably.
Finally, it?s worth pointing out that even the CDC itself?the authority tasked with providing information about COVID-19?has gotten a few things wrong, most recently in May when it lifted its recommendation that people wear masks indoors, an event that was followed by a surge in COVID-19 cases. That shift was met with rigorous debate on social media, including from epidemiologists and sociologists?debate that was important for many individuals seeking to understand what was best for their health. Had Facebook relied on the CDC to guide its misinformation policy, that debate may well have been stifled.
3. Enforcing rules around disinformation is not an easy task.
We know that enforcing terms of service and community standards is a difficult task even for the most resourced, even for those with the best of intentions?like, say, a well-respected, well-funded German newspaper. But if a newspaper, with layers of editors, doesn?t always get it right, how can content moderators?who by all accounts are low-wage workers who must moderate a certain amount of content per hour?be expected to do so? And more to the point, how can we expect automated technologies?which already make a staggering amount of errors in moderation?to get it right?
The fact is, moderation is hard at any level and impossible at scale. Certainly, companies could do better when it comes to repeat offenders like the disinformation ?superspreaders,? but the majority of content, spread across hundreds of languages and jurisdictions, will be much more difficult to moderate?and as with nearly every category of expression, plenty of good content will get caught in the net.
Reposted from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog
Filed Under: content moderation, control, disinformation, rules
Comments on “Disentangling Disinformation: Not As Easy As It Looks”
Misinformation
I think a huge part of the issue is that most folks don’t realize that facebook posts may contain bits of news, but it’s not a replacement for actual news. It’s sort of like the national enquirer like that… there may be bits of truth, but you have to sort through the full bs like "the devil spotted in smoke over fire"
I don’t see people loosing their collective minds over National Enquirer… so why the hell do so many people fall for the bs on facebook? Well, I guess people are more likely to believe what their "friends" tell them… even if they don’t actually know these "friends"
Re: Misinformation
Or what Fox news tells them, which they share with their friends.
Re: Misinformation
"I think a huge part of the issue is that most folks don’t realize that facebook posts may contain bits of news, but it’s not a replacement for actual news"
It goes deeper than that, it’s really that most people don’t look much further than headlines. I saw this all the time in the UK – something really obviously false got reported but because it was in a "real" newspaper (even if that was something like the Express or the Sun), some people believed the headline – and they never read far enough to see the paragraph 6 admission that they made most of it up.
"I don’t see people loosing their collective minds over National Enquirer… so why the hell do so many people fall for the bs on facebook?"
AFAIK, the Enquirer used to format their presentation in a way that said "come on, you believe this?". That’s been eroded by the likes of Fox and the Daily Mail, which usually try to present themselves as factual sources despite all evidence to the contrary, then you add the network effect of it being shared by a friend or a "friend", and some people fall for things more easily.
Re: Misinformation
"so why the hell do so many people fall for the bs on facebook? Well, I guess people are more likely to believe what their "friends" tell them… even if they don’t actually know these "friends""
Got it in one, I think, FB is somehow more "personal".
One of the great lamentations of philosophers and scientists through the ages has always been that adult people eagerly discard everything they learned from objectivity in a school classroom in favor if what they were casually told in "confidence" by some casual acquaintance in a pub after the fourth pint.
That said the "Weekly World News" also had no shortage of readers who actually believed the garbage in it. Information is a bit like food; some people only consume properly sourced ingredients made by standards. Others again are happy to eat a warm turd as long as there’s enough colorful sprinkles on top.
please
Y’all already [cough] know marijuana kills Co[cough]vid.
The gov-mint just don’t want everyone gettin’ high.
Just stop it.
Don't Ban, label!
I will point out that Techdirt gets lots of information from our favorite forum posters that is just plain bogus.
For some strange reason, Techdirt just leaves it up, but, if you want to see it, you just click on a note that says its garbage.
Twitter took to making warning labels on TFG/Trump’s posts.
Seems to me that’s much smarter than having everyone talking about whether they went dancing or not and whatnot in code. Flagging doesn’t solve the scale problem, but it does address the possibility that the authority (or the crowd) is wrong.
Re: Don't Ban, label!
Labeling can help with some of the scale problem, because it makes false positives less damaging than deletion. Labels could also be attached without positively determining specific information to be false, such as generally reminding people to consult a doctor for medical advice.
Re: Re: Don't Ban, label!
Techdirt labelling is carried out by the people reading the comments. Also, with some exceptions, the readers of Techdirt will carry out their own research and quote references where required. That is an approach that does not work with larger user bases, and if carried out by the site will be subject to all the problems of moderation.
Re: Don't Ban, label!
"For some strange reason, Techdirt just leaves it up"
TD are committed to various things, ranging from retaining the ability to comment anonymously, to not actually deleting posts that aren’t obvious commercial spam. But, they are an order of magnitude smaller than something like Twitter, and different commercial pressures apply.
"Twitter took to making warning labels on TFG/Trump’s posts."
Then, they were attacked for "censorship" or "bias" that still has many people calling for either their destruction or a communist takedown of their platform as a result.
"Flagging doesn’t solve the scale problem, but it does address the possibility that the authority (or the crowd) is wrong."
At some point, you have to consider whether it’s worth the effort of flagging every single post. If you have a single person generating a huge amount of posts that need to be flagged, and the network effect of those posts getting shared and commented upon with further comments needing to be flagged, you might just be better off without the originals.
Re: Re: Don't Ban, label!
Alright, what’s TFG?
Re: Re: Re: Don't Ban, label!
"The Former Guy"
It started as a tongue-in-cheek reference to He Who Must Not Be Named after Trump swamped social media with more bullshit than the annual production of the US cattle herds. What started as exasperated people just referring to Trump as "the orange one" or "the daily screamer" naturally ended up an internet meme.
Not really a good acronym as it also stands for That Fucking Guy, Too Far Gone, Taken For Granted, etc, etc.
Re: Re: Re:2
This is why I use Old 45: It’s not just easier to type out and parse, it’s also accurate in describing his age and his status as a former president.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
I prefer variants of "The noisy orange". Longer to type, sure, but more descriptive by far and I have yet to see anyone mistaking it for anything else.
They ought to figure out how many people really are affected by disinformation spread this way, and how many already believe this shit and just consume it and cheer it on.
These posts and followings don’t occur in a bloody vacuum.
Re: Re:
"They ought to figure out how many people really are affected by disinformation spread this way, and how many already believe this shit and just consume it and cheer it on."
That’s like asking for statistics on how the deckchairs on the Titanic were placed. With 30% still voting Trump and today some 75-80% of republicans still believing in "The Great Steal" it really isn’t relevant what specific falsehoods the individual lunatic believes in.
Especially so given that to those people the narrative is less important than the conclusion it must produce. Prove them wrong about falsehood A in a way they can accept and they immediately swing towards falsehood B which produces the same conclusion they wish to see.
That’s the main issue with these people; They want to own the libs and fear the other and will blindly accept as talking point to support this, any conspiracy theory or unsupported fairytale they come across.
The story of Trumpism is the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, where the adherents just keep explaining away the testimony of their own lying eyes.
Anything can be easy....
When you not only don’t have to do it but don’t even have an idea of how to actually do it. We have seen this with the magical "good people only" demands for cryptography backdoors.
A lot of questions simply don't have a right or wrong answer
A lot of questions simply don’t have a right or wrong answer. Is a virus alive? Is a fetus a living, independent organism? Does, or can, an AI think? Stealing from Chomsky on that last one, and to add to the difficulties discussed in this article:
Ask yourself ‘Do airplanes fly?’ Well, that’s kind of a silly question, right? Of course they do.
OK, so ask yourself ‘Do submarines swim?’
Re: A lot of questions simply don't have a right or wrong answer
Independent? Absolutely not.
Re: Re: A lot of questions simply don't have a right or wrong an
That was poor word choice, I think I was coming at it from the way believers see it as a fully realized independent soul, I should have said something like ‘separate’. A fetus is a parasite, very dependent, there certainly is a right answer there.
Re: Re: Re: A lot of questions simply don't have a right or wron
Ding ding ding. Have a cookie.
I have used tumour in the past, but parasite is far more accurate!
Re: Re: Re:2 A lot of questions simply don't have a right or
It’s very useful. It will drive most believers and pro-lifers livid, they’ll yammer about a parasite can’t be the same species, but really, only a special exemption can preclude the term from applying to fetuses. And, it’s irrelevant if a fetus is a separate organism–another, individual human being. No one should ever be forced to harbor a parasite against their will. That’s a position it’s hard to argue against.
Re: Re: Re:2 A lot of questions simply don't have a right or
Both terms are loaded culturally, which makes it hard to discuss with people who have already, incorrectly, decided that a 6 week old fetus is the same as a viable infant.
Re: Re: Re:2 A lot of questions simply don't have a right or
"I have used tumour in the past, but parasite is far more accurate!"
It really isn’t. Pretty far down a pregnancy term what you have is most accurately described as "a wart".
Which if you want to be nitpicky about it is basically a nonmalignant tumor. "Parasite" is a loaded term and as inaccurate a use as "infant".
Re: Re: Re:3 A lot of questions simply don't have a right
Is it not a parasite because it isn’t a separate organism? I somewhat agree, that’s one of the reasons it’s a useful argument, if they’re going to insist it’s a another separate life, another whole full living person, then it would necessarily be a parasite. If you look at the development of the fetus, the whole time, fetus and mother are in a rather fierce battle over resources, it wants far more than is good for the mother to allow, she wants to be around after birth so she can have more babies, the fetus doesn’t care if mommy is used up and can’t have more or even if she dies [that’s generally, for species requiring lots of child care it’s going to be complicated]. It seems like there’s more to it than a tumor, which is tissue with genetics that have gone rogue, but it’s not something the host/mother actually wants to live, preferably without getting killed in the process.
It’s meant to be loaded, those insisting it’s a separate life need the jolt.
Re: Re: Re:4 A lot of questions simply don't have a r
"It’s meant to be loaded, those insisting it’s a separate life need the jolt."
Sadly the only jolt they’ll get is the one where they realize that not only are you a blasphemous heretic about to burn in perpetuity for your sins, you are also a dangerous anti-life sociopath justified to be kindling in the next firebombing…
We’re talking about religious fanatics here. You can’t deprogram them with facts or emotive arguments. You can only set them off.
Re: Re: Re:5 A lot of questions simply don't have
“Why would I want to be in heaven, when all my friends are down in hell?”
~Sonata Arctic’s/Kings of the North
Re: Re: Re:6 A lot of questions simply don't
Well, with heaven allegedly full of christians and religious people, who would want to go there?
Re: Re: Re: A lot of questions simply don't have a right or wron
"believers see it as a fully realized independent soul"
Which is a hell of a thing to think about when you start talking about things like natural miscarriages and decisions where you have to choose between the life of the baby and the mother. The latter is thankfully rare, but it’s a thing that stops the discussion from being addressed.
Re: Re: Re:2 A lot of questions simply don't have a right or
Actually they just waive it off with “god works in mysterious ways”.
:facepalm:
Re: Re: Re:2 A lot of questions simply don't have a right or
" things like natural miscarriages"
It’s REALLY a hell of a thing in 2 ways. The percentage of miscarriages is something like over 60%. And the really ugly bit is how lots of christians say unbaptized means your future is hellish, so they’re saying god condemns over 60% of babies to eternal torture before they’re even born. That kind of belief is insanity, don’t matter the DSM has exceptions for religiosity, it’s amusing that it does.
Re: Re: Re:3 A lot of questions simply don't have a right
"And the really ugly bit is how lots of christians say unbaptized means your future is hellish, so they’re saying god condemns over 60% of babies to eternal torture before they’re even born."
One of the main reasons for the herd of US morons seeming impervious to reason is because the puritan bent of protestantism has compartmentalization as an absolute necessity. After growing up trying to reconcile the utterly inhuman tenets of their faith with the idea that God is still – somehow – good and his wrathful rules don’t apply to anything they root for, because <invented reason here>, they have become naturally adapted to persistently ignoring anything outside of their chosen narrative – facts, science, their own lying eyes…
most
Mis info is mis understanding.
We have to make a designation of differences.
Mis interpretation
Mis representation
Mis this and that and every other meaning,
WITH A BLATANT LIE.
Still waiting for someone to Sue a family that Didnt get the Shot, that can be Shown infected Another persons family.
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Disentangled
Yes, Disentangling Disinformation is not as easy as it looks!!! Since there is no sucha thing as disinformation, then disentangling it is hard! In fact, it is impossible.
Any other made up terms you are having trouble disentangling? How about hate speech another imaginary term (see Supreme Court, then see First Amendment).
Hope this helps!
Re: Disentangled
"Since there is no sucha thing as disinformation"
It takes going really far down the rabbit hole of the alt-right to come up with the idea that lies do not exist.
…I mean, as if we really needed further evidence of you being completely unhinged…
“ gotten a few things wrong”
More than a few. That’s part of science, get it wrong until you get it right.
They can’t even accurately tell us how well the vaccines work. 98%, 80%, 92%…
“most recently in May when it lifted its recommendation that people wear masks indoors, an event that was followed by a surge in COVID-19 cases”
Which may be parallel and not corollary.
The delta mutation is far more easily spreadable.
Early opinion is it definitely can be spread by vaccinated people.
But we’re at the point where I’m starting to lean for personal Liberty.
If you aren’t vaxed yet, by choice, (meaning no underlying medical reasoning in abstaining) I’m leaning towards do us a favour and die.
Franklin has a few good, somewhat conflicting, ideas.
The first being that giving up liberty for security is foolish.
But
Another is liberty requires responsibility.
If you aren’t vaxed and aren’t masked and get sick and fall over? Oh well.
Re: Re:
"They can’t even accurately tell us how well the vaccines work"
Yes, they can. They can’t give a solid, unmoving figure based on the many different variables at work, but that’s also not how science actually works.
"Early opinion is it definitely can be spread by vaccinated people."
Yes, vaccinated people can still be carriers. This has never been in question.
"If you aren’t vaxed yet, by choice, (meaning no underlying medical reasoning in abstaining) I’m leaning towards do us a favour and die."
Do you want new variants that may infect both the immuno-compromised and the vaccinated? Because unfortunately, they don’t die instantly nor do they not leave behind a viral legacy.
"Another is liberty requires responsibility."
Yet, the streets seem to be full of people who demand one without the other.
"If you aren’t vaxed and aren’t masked and get sick and fall over? Oh well."
I have no sympathy for that person directly. However – the people they came into contact with during that time, some of whom may not be able to have been completely protected (yes, this includes the vaccinated, no vaccine is 100% effective – for any disease)?
The problem isn’t that the idiots are dying from their own actions. The problem is the other people they affect.
Re: Re: Re:
Yes. But here the righties have a point.
It’s somewhat hindering if you tell a person already hesitant to take the vaccination that they should take it and keep on using masks, there’s a point where people start to question the whole process.
And that’s not good.
You need to remember that not everyone has your help others mindset. Especially here: regardless of party.
And when it comes down to ‘how does this help me’ there needs to be enough pro in that direction to make the task worthwhile to the rest of the population.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"But here the righties have a point."
Not really. All evidence is against them, the only problem is when politics is applied to a place where it doesn’t belong. There are issues where politics are involved related to the pandemic, but the disease itself and how to deal with it shouldn’t be there.
"It’s somewhat hindering if you tell a person already hesitant to take the vaccination that they should take it and keep on using masks"
The science is sound, and many countries that haven’t suffered as much do that without an issue. Furthermore there’s no rights being affected when you are asked to wear a mask any more than they’re affected when you’re asked to wear clothes.
There are some honest vaccination hesitancy reasons, but if it’s because you think that the speed of adoption is some deep state conspiracy or because someone told you a fiction about mRNA that depends on not understanding its relationship to DNA, you don’t actually have a reason.
I accept personal choice, I just don’t hear that many reasons for opposing it that aren’t based in some magnet nonsense or other clear misinformation.
"You need to remember that not everyone has your help others mindset."
I’m well aware of that, sadly. What’s sad is that if people had spent more time just doing what was correct rather than fighting against the measures so far, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
There are many times in modern Western history where people have done what was right rather than what profited them personally. I’m sad that this was not one of them, and we are paying a heavy price for it.
I notice that you didn’t address the reasons why efficacy rates can change, I’m just tired of reading "guy mocked vaccines and COVID on social media for 12 months, then got scared on his deathbed" stories. Even if that guy asked for it, how many people did he affect that didn’t.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
“ All evidence is against them”
Exactly.
So rather than treating them like children (left) or selfish (right)
…
Maybe address them in a way that still calls them human: since they won’t drop fast enough to ignore them.
Re: Re: Re:3 Re:
"treating them like children (left) or selfish (right)"
They are both of those things – they are acting like adolescents who can’t do anything unless they get something out of it personally. It shouldn’t have to take them and theirs getting directly infected for society to do the most basic thing to stop a global pandemic.
Sorry, there is a point where wilfully ignorant children have to be treated as such. That point would be that their inability to grow up and make basic decisions risks the people who are capable of being adults.
I’m tired of a number of things in the last 18 months or so, one of them being the idea that the rest of us should have to treat people with kid gloves when they decide that their petulant toddler tantrums override the basic freedoms of those around them.
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Re: Re: Re:4 Re:
That’s exactly the wrong response. Because it comes across as very me over you. Us over you.
Use factual numbers and I’m admit where they’re right.
Sure, the vaccinations are directly or indirectly but correlatively the cause of of 3,000 deaths. Out of 320,000,000.
Or was it 300, I have to scroll up and find my source again.
Sue, there’s a potential link to autism. 1:500,000,000.
Ish.
Rather than downplay and run away, admit it, give figures, and move on.
Dr flip-flip could easily solve this problem with a 90 second response.
‘My fellow Americans, I am before you today to admit what you already know. We are changing our guidance as evidence evolves.
The Chinese originated Covid 19 virus is unlikely any we’ve encountered in the past and we are making decisions based on evidence as it comes to us”
They you get the whole, ‘he’s not lying he’s just human and makes mistakes’ response.
You take the conflict out by admitting the conflicts up front.
Re: Re: Re:5
The childlike adults who refuse to get vaccinated don’t give a fuck about “the numbers”. You could tell them the numbers every day; they wouldn’t care. They care about themselves and the stories they can tell themselves—stories reinforced by a right-wing media bubble.
“I’m not getting vaccinated because they said on the Fox News that we’re gonna have to get new passports just for going to the grocery store!”
“The vaccines were developed using aborted fetuses and that’s a sin against God, so fuck that vaccine bullshit.”
“Marjorie Taylor Greene said wearing masks is the last step before we’re shoved into the ovens by that filthy socialist Nancy Pelosi.”
The whole reason that anti-vax bullshit even became a thing is because one egomanical asshole lied about a link between vaccines and autism. Parents with young not-yet-vaxxed kids saw the study being paraded around and thought, “well I don’t want my kids to catch the autism”. And that’s how we ended up with fucking measles outbreaks in the U.S. for the first time in decades. It’s how we ended up with people “just asking questions” but never looking for the answers, only a story that can comfort them like a parent reading a fairy tale to a child. And it’s why, even though the study has long been debunked for the bullshit that it is, the narrative remains: Cold facts alone don’t beat stories.
You can’t tell any story that will ever convince these pitiful shitheads that they’re wrong. For them, about the only thing that will convince them—and even this isn’t foolproof—is for the tragedy hit so close to home that it makes them question everything. You can easily find stories of people dying of COVID-19 whose previously unvaxxed family members later got the jab because “I never thought it could happen to [dead relative]”. They’re selfish in a way that has been reinforced by their upbringings and their media bubbles.
Right-wing/conservative/Republican leaders have been railing for so long against masks and vaccines and COVID restrictions that any reversal of such positions might look like a betrayal of their beliefs—and their constituents. It’s why Ron DeSantis isn’t going to pass any COVID restrictions even as COVID deaths in Florida rise: He knows doing so could cost him his governorship when he goes up for reëlection. It’s why Lindsay Graham didn’t push more heavily for people to get vaxxed even after he revealed he caught COVID-19: He doesn’t want to get bombarded by hate mail.
The selfish Lost Boys and Girls who refuse to grow up won’t be convinced to grow up by a cold recitation of statistics. The only things that will work on them at this point is a family death or an outright whopper of a story like “you better hurry up and get vaxxed before all the Democrats and the Antifa take ’em all and give ’em to [insert racial slur of your choice]”. The anti–COVID vax crowd doesn’t care about facts; if they did, they would’ve already gotten vaccinated.
Re: Re: Re:6 Re:
“I’m not getting vaccinated because they said on the Fox News that we’re gonna have to get new passports just for going to the grocery store!”
I’m not sure how a passport that says vaccinated that’s semi-voluntary would make a person not want to get the shot. If anything it would increase uptake.
There are people in congress pushing such a thing.
And guess what: I totally completely agree.
“ railing for so long against masks and vaccines”
Against vaccination? No. Point out where right media sources (not the unrelated q or cult nazi fucks) arguing against vaccination. As a general point of topic.
“ even as COVID deaths in Florida rise”
You mean 2 went up to 3 type of rise?
“ The vaccines were developed using aborted fetuses and that’s a sin against God, so fuck that vaccine bullshit”
Good, go lock yourselves in church and sing till you can’t breath and die.
Same for every other idiot that believes that crap.
I don’t know if it’s true or not. If it is it’s a good case of recycling sounds like a good idea.
Re: Re: Re:7
Man, for a Trump voter, you really don’t get it. The Trumpist/anti-vax crowd see vaccine passports as a way for the government to track who’s been vaxxed and where they’re going in preparation for the “next Holocaust” or some shit.
InfoWars has regularly railed against the COVID-19 vaccine. Say whatever else you will about that site, but it is part of the right-wing mediasphere.
On the 24th of July, the 7-day average of COVID deaths was 39 deaths. One week later, that number had bumped up to 58 thanks to an additional 409 deaths. In fact, the number of COVID deaths in Florida had been averaging in a downward trend through most of the year, with a sharp downturn in springtime after the vaccine became available to the masses. But after the 4th of July weekend, the averages started going up again thanks to an increase in deaths.
As far as the number of cases go, they follow a similar trend: After spiking in January, the trends generally started sloping downwards. After a bump in March and April, the numbers trended downward again and even levelled out in June. Then the 4th of July weekend came and went, and now the number of cases (and the weekly average) is back to nearly the same levels as in January.
If you want to mock the severity of the virus, you can do so elsewhere. Here, it will be discussed for what it is: a deadly disease that can ruin or take lives.
All of the vaccines were partially developed or tested using fetal cell lines, which are cells grown in a laboratory that descend from cells taken from elective abortions in the 1970s and 1980s. Some people will consider that to mean “aborted fetuses were used to make the vaccines” and reject the vaccines for that reasoning. Those people are idiots, and even the fucking Catholic Church—of all organizations!—has said as much without actually saying it by saying “yes, Catholics, you can go get the vaccine”.
Re: Re: Re:8 Re:
“ Trumpist/anti-vax crowd see vaccine passports as a way for the government to track who’s been vaxxed and where they’re going”
That’s kind of the point. You need a passport to go places.
No passport no tracking… and no entry.
“ Man, for a Trump voter, you really don’t get it.”
You really need to join the world outside of the left wing fodder you read. Because I’d guess less than half the Republicans even know what infowars is.
The far right alt right whatever has never been part of the ‘American Right’ political system beyond a rare occasion of showing up somewhere.
Every time we someone like the Green person you keep talking about, you scream “see told’ya”. But they’re nothing more than a blip.
So you go as far out of the way you as you can to come up with something slightly related to the party
For all your logical choices, FNC, NYP, Etc, nobody is against the vaccinations.
And as far as I can tell the Florida death rate is fake news.
Actually the spike was just the 4th, and settled back down by the 5th
<div class="bingwidget" data-type="covid19" data-market="en-us" data-language="en-us"></div>
<script src="//www.bing.com/widget/bootstrap.answer.js" async=""></script>
Or type Florida covid deaths into Bing for the live chart.
“ Here, it will be discussed for what it is: a deadly disease that can ruin or take lives.”
You high on something? Where did I mock the virus??
Re: Re: Re:9
You keep telling yourself that as people like Madison Cawthon, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Donald Trump win elections. A comforting lie is more of a security blanket than the discomforting truth, after all.
No, they’re not. They’re slowly becoming the new normal of American conservatism. Liz Cheney called out Trump’s lies and got all but booted out of office for it (and she may lose her next election, assuming she runs for office again). The GOP isn’t a “moderate” party any more—and while it isn’t as extreme as some people would love it to be, the party isn’t exactly shy about courting the kind of people whom you consider “a blip”.
They’re not working hard to tell people to get vaccinated, though. No right-wing outlet is. They’re too afraid of getting the kinds of hate mail and death threats that anti-vaxxers already level at left-wing outlets and “leftist” personalities.
I got my numbers from the New York Times. Do you really want to go on record as saying they lied about those numbers, and if so, can you offer any credible evidence that proves they lied?
Ahem:
“Oh, is it just one extra death?” That’s how I read that line. It comes off as you mocking the severity of the virus by implying that a small rise in the number of deaths is nothing to worry about. I believe any number of deaths from COVID-19 is something to worry about. You appear to think otherwise. If I’m wrong, by all means, correct the record.
But given how you’re all “it’s less than a percent of a percent!” when talking about deaths vs. infections, I don’t think you will, you sociopathic son of a bitch.
Re: Re: Re:10 Re:
Madison Cawthon, is questionable. But appears to be a bigot
Marjorie Taylor Greene is just nutz.
Aside from election questioning, trump did nothing alt right.
Any “bigotry” was intentional misquoted or out of context nonsense.
It’s just as fantasy as bleachgate.
“ Liz Cheney ”
Claimed trump was responsible for the riot despite never calling for violence and reiterating peaceful(ly) multiple times in the previous speech.
The party disagreed with her opinion. And she got ejected.
“ isn’t exactly shy about courting the kind of people whom you consider “a blip”.”
Where did a National Republican say anything beneficial to recruit:
Whit suprematists
Multidimensional lizard believers
Flat Earthers
… etc. Your far right anarchists, who’s goal is do dismantle government?
Where and when?
“ Do you really want to go on record as saying they lied about those numbers…” again?
I just did. And linked above for you to use.
“ It comes off as you mocking the severity of the virus by implying that a small rise in the number of deaths is nothing to worry about.”
That’s not mocking the virus. It’s mocking the stupidity of a state with such low daily death rates being told they should lock down everything.
“But given how you’re all “it’s less than a percent of a percent!” when talking about deaths vs. infections, I don’t think you will, you sociopathic son of a bitch.”
Less than 3500 people in the US died of directly or indirectly due to the vaccinations.
How does my supporting the vaccinations equate to infections or the virus at all, other than being a vax for the virus at hand????
Now I wonder if you just some how made a mistake in your above comment based on how bizarre, even for you, your fight is here. But did you make a mistake or are you just that loony.
Re: Re: Re:11
I dunno about that, but he is a lying asshole who has aligned himself with the Trumpist ideology and Trump himself in the hopes of extending his political career.
And yet, she holds public office while being a QAnon nutter, a serial harasser of people with whom she disagrees politically (e.g., AOC, David Hogg), and a Trumpist.
Like I said: Even if they are a “blip”, they’re still in office and still representing the GOP. That isn’t meaningless and you know it.
Do I really need to post the copypasta with all of Trump’s quotes from that speech and the context in which his followers heard them? Because I’ve done it enough that you should’ve gotten the picture by now.
And the fact that Cheney called out Old 45 on his bullshit is what got her demoted within the party. The GOP is more than willing to cover for a seditionist bastard like Trump even if it means chasing out moderate conservatives who (accurately) believe Trump is a seditionist bastard.
He separated immigrant families and kept them in concentration camps. (Call them “internment camps” if it makes you feel better, but they’re evil all the same—regardless of who started them and who currently keeps the policy in place.) He called for violence against those who protested his rallies, protested police brutality, and basically protested anything he was in favor of. He defended the white supremacists who marched on Charlottesville as “very fine people”. He treated antifascists/antifascism as a worse threat to the United States than violent white supremacists—which runs counter to what the FBI says. And he did far more than “question” the election results, judging by that phone call to Georgia election officials.
Donald Trump was, at best, a prototype for an alt-right POTUS. That he was too goddamned incompetent to pull it off doesn’t mean an alt-right populist with dreams of turning the United States into a fascist state and the competency to pull that off can’t win an election. Hell, after four years of Donald Trump, more than 70 million people thought “yeah, we need another four years of that”. With the right candidate, under the right conditions, a more competent version of Trump could absolutely win the presidency.
If that doesn’t scare you, remember this: You were one of the assholes who voted for Trump. Considering how you voted for an incompetent fascist, what’s stopping you from voting for a more competent one?
“We don’t have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don’t have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let’s say, China in a trade deal? … When did we beat Japan at anything? They send their cars over by the millions, and what do we do? … When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically. … When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
If Donald Trump didn’t get more than a few “white power” types on his side by insulting the rest of the world on the day he announced his candidacy, there’s plenty more quotes like that one floating around.
And that doesn’t even get into how he continues to act like he’s going to get back into the Oval Office soon with the help of jackasses like Mike Lindell and treats meetings with political allies like he’s trying to run a shadow government.
Nobody really needs to say much to get them on the side of conservatives because the kinds of gullible assholes who get lulled into believing those kinds of outlandish conspiracy theories lean to the political right more often than not.
Militant right-wing nutjobs don’t want “no government”—they want a stronger government led by a strong conservative who is strong enough to rule everyone with a strong iron fist.
At the Capitol on the 6th of January was a start, or did you not hear the “hang Mike Pence” chants during the “tourist kerfluffle”?
Sounds like it to me.
I guess people getting infected with the virus and suffering potentially long-term (and possibly even life-long) health issues from COVID-19 is just an “eh, we’ll think about this a few years from now” issue to you, huh~.
Deaths and (especially) infections are on a rising trend in Florida, if not the entire country. That you’re being so flippant about this after more than a year’s worth of this bullshit—after millions of infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths—makes me believe you’re mocking the virus. You’re not taking this pandemic as seriously as you should. I hope, if only for your sake, you don’t have to take it as seriously as having a breathing tube shoved down your throat by an overworked underpaid nurse who watched three other people die of COVID before she got to you that day.
But you do you, dipshit.
Re: Re: Re:12 Re:
“ Do I really need to …”
Nope. Anyone who got anything else other than what was said is a piece of crap between the liner that deserves whatever punishment they get.
The rioters should be tried for every aspect of the act they committed.
Then again I think people who go looking for something not specifically said should be beaten to death with wet noodles.
“ And the fact that ”
Yada yada partisan talking point.
“ He separated {illegal} immigrant {potential} families and kept them in” [holding facilities] holding facilities used by the previous administrations and currently used beyond capacity by this administration.
Given the volume of child sex tourism and child sex trafficking from mexico, Brazil, and Columbia,”… no id? Better safe than sorry!
“ He called for violence against…”
No. Nowhere did he say go use violence against protesters, even the many protestors who break the law.
“ He defended the white supremacists who marched on Charlottesville as “very fine people”.”
Absolutely bullshite
He defended those on both sides. He called out the white shites for what they are.
Not wanting historical statues destroyed doesn’t make a person anything other than someone who doesn’t want historical statues destroyed.
“ judging by that phone call to Georgia election officials”
More fake news. The call where he demanded the missing votes be found.
fascist:
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism[1][2] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy~Wikipedia.
Where you see that in trump is beyond me.
“ We don’t have victories anymore. ”
Wait, a factual recounting of failed trade that put’s America last is white supremacy?
Using your methodology Louis ‘kill the crackers’ Farrakhan is a white suprematist.
And save the far left McFail for someone willing to eat crap and be told it’s gold leaf.
issue to you, huh
Just like the vaccinations, the benefits of the many outweigh the few.
“ I hope, if only for your sake, you don’t have to take it as seriously as having a breathing tube shoved down your throat by an overworked underpaid nurse who watched three other people die of COVID before she got to you that day.”
Given that I made the choice to get the vaccination, and use a mask to this day…? That’s highly unlikely.
“But you do you, dipshit.“
Yep. Always have and always will.
Re: Re: Re:13
Maybe he never explicitly said as much, but he continually implied that violence against protestors and anti-Trumpists was acceptable. Hell, even on the 6th of January, he implied that violence was the only way for “strong” patriots to save the country from “weak” politicians who were doing their duty to American democracy. He never truly condemned violence as a part of Trumpist ideology; all the times he threatened to send in the military to quell protests also have to count for something.
And then there’s this, via the list of Trump’s atrocities from McSweeney’s: “May 30, 2020 – For the second day in a row, Trump condemned people across the country who protested the killing of George Floyd, threatening them with ‘vicious dogs’ and ‘ominous weapons.’ ”
Donald Trump revels in violence. He loves watching it being inflicted upon people he dislikes and disagrees with, especially if he can watch it in person. If anything, Trumpism is a political ideology of violence—physical, psychological, and political. Its namesake proves as much: He doesn’t care who gets hurt so long as the “right people” get hurt by “his people”.
To be clear: That means he defended white supremacists, since white supremacists were the ones marching in Charlottesville before counterprotestors showed up.
No, he didn’t. And he never forcefully decried white supremacists with the same fervor with which he decried antifascists. If anything, his low-key “well they’re kinda bad I guess” approach to dealing with white supremacy that often equivocated the long-standing threat of white supremacist terrorism to the vague threat of antifascist violence (which only ever really seems to happen in the presence of fascists…) gave white supremacist groups all the cover they needed to operate basically out in the open.
If they’re defending statues dedicated to people who fought (and died) for the Confederacy, they’re defending monuments to slavery, white supremacy, and betrayal of the United States. They should know damn well what they’re defending—and I guarantee that the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville knew exactly what they were defending when they marched to defend those statues.
(FYI: Those statues are no longer on public display in Charlottesville because those fuckers got taken down and driven out of town by the government. And in a lovely little historical “fuck you”, the statue of “Stonewall” Jackson left with its back to the South. Suck it, racists.)
Yeah, there’s one question you need to answer here: What missing votes?
Trump’s phone call to Georgia election officials wasn’t a plea to find actual missing votes. (Those “missing votes” would have to come from somewhere, after all.) It was to find votes that didn’t exist, claim them for Trump, and give him the win in a state that he lost. If he or anyone else had compelling and credible evidence of any actual “missing votes” in Georga, they would’ve shared it by now. But they didn’t. So they haven’t.
The phone call was a naked attempt to subvert democracy. I don’t know how anyone can listen to that phone call and think anything other than “Donald Trump actually tried to get Georgia to lie so he could win the election”. Well, other than brainwashed dipshits like you who think Donald Trump is still the best possible choice for leading the United States.
He did everything he could to route his agenda around Congress so he didn’t have to worry about all that pesky opposition from the Democrats. He continually declared that Article II of the Constitution gave him the power to do whatever he wanted. He continuously threatened to use military power to quell both riots and peaceful protests.
He wasn’t a competent fascist, but if you think he wouldn’t accept being an American Emperor in both name and deed, you’re out of your fucking mind. You’re also out of step with your fellow Trumpists, who would love to see Trump become a dictatorial godking who rules the country with an iron fist and hurts those who deserve to be hurt.
No, it isn’t. But ripping on foreign countries (and by implication, their people) for stealing jobs that the U.S. government allowed to leave the country and implying that foreigners are coming to take over the country—to erase its culture and its identity—is throwing red meat to the white supremacist “America First” crowd. It’s Trump telling them “it’s okay to hate foreigners—I hate them, too”. The actual economics of those trade deals is ultimately irrelevant; that he sees them as putting “America last” (as you put it) is enough.
…fucking what
…fucking what
…what the actual fuck are you even talking about here
Your chances of dying from COVID-19 after being vaccinated are low, sure. But they’re never zero.
So maybe stop treating the virus like it’s the flu and citing statistics with the kind of calculated and callous disregard for human life that you seem to share with Old 45, hmm?
Re: Re: Re:14 Re:
“ Maybe he never explicitly said as much, but he continually implied ”
What is it with people looking for things not there?
“ threatened to send in the military to quell protests”
Or, restore order to our or control looting and vandalism.
And if you have a problem with the White House security dogs and armed police…? So protecting the president is bad but protecting congress is good?
“ That means he defended white supremacists”
No… he did not. He condemned the racists yet acknowledged there were good protesters in both sides too.
“ If they’re defending statues dedicated to people who fought (and died) for the Confederacy, they’re defending monuments to slavery, white supremacy, and betrayal of the United States.”
Because none of the other issues that caused the war matter to you. They do matter to others.
And the statues are not your property to destroy.
“ They should know damn well what they’re defending”
Yes. The rights of states to self govern. The rights of states to make individual agreements with foreign organisations.
The right to representation on taxation.
The right to sovereignty.
Slavery was one of many reasons.
“ So maybe stop treating the virus like it’s the flu and citing statistics with the kind of calculated and callous disregard for human life that you seem to share with Old 45, hmm?”
Where did I treat the virus like the flu? Your off on some non-existing tangent that’s entirely in your head.
Re: Re: Re:15
Your inability to grasp subtext and hear the same dogwhistles that your Trumpist brethren can hear isn’t my problem.
Do you really think he would’ve stopped there? Do you really believe he wouldn’t have used the presence of the American military in American cities to quell peaceful protests of police brutality and the corruption of the Trump administration? If you do, you’re a bigger dope than I thought you were—because you’re far, far, far, far, far too trusting of Donald “I alone can fix this” Trump.
I don’t, and I never said I did. Stop shoving words in my mouth that didn’t first come from it, asshole.
Again: One of those sides was full of white supremacists and defenders of the white supremacist nation-state known as the Confederacy. By calling them “very fine people” and eqivocating them with the people marching against racists, racism, and the monuments to slavery-upholding seditionists, Donald Trump implicitly defended white supremacists and their ideology. It wasn’t until days after his “very fine people” comment that he offered a limp-dicked forced-sounding condemnation of white supremacists and their ideology. (And it sounded like that because he knew damn well that he needed their votes in the midterms and 2020.)
Every leader of the Confederacy said upholding the institution of slavery was either the sole reason or one of the primary reasons for the formation of the Confederacy. It stands to reason that the War to Preserve Slavery (i.e, the Civil War) was fought primarily to preserve the “tradition” of treating Black people as lesser beings who were put on this Earth to be enslaved.
You have consistently quoted statistics about the death rates of COVID-19 that make it sound like it’s barely even anything to worry about. You underplay the number of deaths as if this is some “normal” disease that kills on the same level as the flu in an average year. Your cold recitation of such facts make you sound like an anti-vaxxer, an anti-masker, or—worse yet—Old 45 when he was saying that the virus was going to magically “go away” even as COVID-19 death rates rose at rates even he couldn’t ignore forever.
You’re doing a shitty job of looking like you take COVID-19 seriously as a threat to public health. Maybe consider showing some fucking compassion, you property-humping sociopath.
Re: Re: Re:16 Re:
“Your inability to grasp subtext and hear the same dogwhistles that your Trumpist brethren can hear isn’t my problem”
No, it’s there’s.
People who find nonsense where it isn’t are their own issue. Be you a supporter or detractor.
Numerics and Bible code fall there too.
“Do you really think he would’ve stopped there? “
Yes
“Do you really believe he wouldn’t have used the presence of the American military in American cities to quell [violent protests and riots] of [problematic but rare] police brutality”
“I don’t, and I never said I did. Stop shoving words in my mouth that didn’t first come from it, asshole.”
That’s the context of the ”threatening them with ‘vicious dogs’ and ‘ominous weapons.’ ”
It was specific to people who entered White House grounds.
Maybe look for context in you left leaning source.
“One of those sides was full of white supremacists”
Included a parallel protest
“defenders of the white supremacist nation-state known as the Confederacy”
Or, maybe they just respect our history should be preserved.
“By calling them”
Them being people protesting wanton destruction of historical monuments:
“Donald Trump implicitly defended white supremacists and their ideology”
Maybe if you ignorantly lump preservation of art, monuments, with supporting white supremacy.
“limp-dicked forced-sounding condemnation of white supremacists”
Because stupid people couldn’t figure out that he was sorting the groups. Much like you do when you say rioters aren’t representing BLM.
“primary reasons for the formation of the Confederacy”
Correct. Without that uniform issue it would have been multiple states fighting the north and each other.
“You have consistently quoted statistics about the death rates”
Yes,m. That’s factual evidence of where we are.
“make it sound like it’s barely even anything to worry about”
If that’s what you think your a funny funny man.
“You underplay” no.
I simply don’t exaggerate.
“make you sound like an anti-vaxxer”
Vaxer. No. I’ve always supported the vaccinations. If anything I trust them more than the corrupt medical groups that can’t see the arse from the shite.
“an anti-masker”
You a fool if you think that. Given how strong I supported use of a correct proper filtering mask.
How I called out dr dangerous research right on this site for not tells people the truth about masks. 100% of the truth.
Not supporting a mandate is very different from being against.
And every time I say don’t mandate it’s in line with a comment that you should use one by choice and you should use one that has proper filtration.
“You’re doing a shitty job of looking like you take COVID-19 seriously as a threat to public health.”
It’s far less a threat if you get the vax.
“Maybe consider showing some fucking compassion, you property-humping sociopath.”
Now if only you had that conviction when the progressives want to throw humanity under the stone for the Earth of next century.
How about complex, truthful, accurate information?
Re: Re: Re:17
Subtext and dogwhistles are about understanding language—both how it’s used and how it can be coded to mean more than it says. Let’s look at a quote from Donald Trump on the 6th of January to see what I mean:
Rhetoric like Trump’s doesn’t need to explicitly call for violence when subtext and dogwhistles can do the job for him. He doesn’t need to say “kill Mike Pence”; he needs only to say “if Pence doesn’t do the right thing, we’re all that’s left to stop the steal” and let his followers come to a conclusion that was suggested by his own rhetoric. Like I keep saying, it’s a mob boss tactic that keeps him away from direct liability for the actions of those he (knows he and his fellow speakers) incited.
ha-ha-ha-ha-haaah, fuck you
The vast majority of protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death were peaceful, and those that turned violent did so—far more often than not, mind you—after either police provocation or the work of outside provocateurs. I condemn the riots, but let’s not act like things were totally violent before the MRAPs and SWAT teams showed up.
No, it didn’t. The group protesting the removal of Confederate statues in Charlottesville was filled largely with out-of-town white supremacist groups who were testing the waters to see if out-in-the-open white supremacist marches and outwardly visible racism was going to be acceptable in the age of Trump.
After Trump failed to condemn the white supremacists in the strongest possible terms (and don’t tell me he did or you’ll be a fucking liar), they figured out that yes, they were going to be okay so long as they didn’t preach (or commit) violence.
That’s why we have museums. Statues that glorify the seditionists who left the Union to preserve slavery shouldn’t be in public spaces where they can been seen as an almost masturbatory celebration of men who fought for the defining ideal of the Confederacy (i.e., the state’s right to treat Black people as property).
What history is being preserved by celebrating the Confederacy, anyway? It was a failed nation-state that was falling apart at the seams even before Sherman began his Pyromania tour. It dedicated itself to treating Black people as beasts of burden. Nothing about the Confederacy is worth celebrating in a way that we need to keep statues of men like “Stonewall” Jackson erected in places with significant Black populations.
Preservation is why we have museums; celebration is why we have statues in public places. It’s one thing to have a bust of a Klan leader in a museum; it’s quite another to have that same bust in the halls of Congress. (Until its recent removal, anyway.)
And preserving the placement of statues dedicated to Confederacy “heroes” and Klan leaders (some of whom could fall into both categories) is supporting white supremacy. The Confederacy was founded on the ideals of white supremacy, after all.
No, he was eqivocating them. When he said there were “very fine people on both sides”, he was saying that the white supremacists were equally as good as the anti-racists/antifascists. That’s why people called him out on that phrasing: He was saying that there was no difference between white supremacists protesting the removal of monuments to white supremacy and people protesting the white supremacist bullshit.
(That’s also why he offered that limp-dicked “white supremacy is bad, mm’kay” response a few days later that sounded like he was reading it at gunpoint, which he always sounds like when he’s reading something he doesn’t want to read.)
Can you definitively prove that all of the rioters were absolutely 100% supporters of the Movement for Black Lives or that their actions were done in support of that movement? Because from where I sit, you can’t. And from where I sit, the majority of people protesting in favor of keeping the statues in Charlottesville were out-of-town white supremacists—including the murderer who killed Heather Heyer.
Nice to see you finally admit that the Confederacy was formed to preserve slavery and uphold white supremacy.
You do, but not in the way you think—you understate to the point of ridiculousness, to the point where you sound as callous and sociopathic towards COVID-19 victims as Old 45 did.
And yet, every time you understate the threat of COVID, you sound like an anti-vaxxer who thinks “why bother when it kills so few people” a week before they’re on a ventilator.
Again: When you understate the threat of COVID, you sound like an anti-masker. And in case you forgot, Trump was himself an anti-masker—and largely remains one even after catching the disease.
You do realize what “public health” means, right? The whole point of mask mandates isn’t to punish people for some perceived slight against politicians or God or whatever—it’s to make sure everyone is doing their part in trying to stop the spread of a deadly virus. Too often do people like you focus on the freedoms offered by society and ignore the responsibilities we have towards that same society—responsibilities like trying your hardest to avoid being a disease vector for a deadly contagion like COVID-19.
Of dying? Sure. Of getting “long-COVID”? Not so much with the certainty there. As I said before: Your chances of dying from COVID-19 after being vaccinated are low, sure. But they’re never zero.
…fucking what
make some fucking sense when you talk, dipshit
context is a thing, look into using it
Re: Re: Re:18 Re:
“ and how it can be coded to mean more than it says”
And finding codes that don’t exist is the art of conspiracy
“Our country”
Yes. America belongs to America. Our country, not France or anywhere else.
“ We will not take it anymore”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4xmckWVPRaI
“Democrats winning elections”
His misguided belief the election was fraudulent
“Well, what the hell else could he and his followers do to “stop the steal” when the election results were already in the process of being certified?”
Protest.
“when subtext and dogwhistles”
Are wholly the beliefs of people who think they see them.
“ha-ha-ha-ha-haaah, fuck you”
No thanks.
“and those that turned violent did so”
Yes. They did. And the violence was massive. Often lasting for days, weeks…
“was filled largely with out-of-town white supremacist groups who were testing the waters to see if out-in-the-open white supremacist marches and outwardly visible racism was going to be acceptable in the age of Trump”
I don’t know about largely. I haven’t seen any survey taken about who was there for what.
All numbers are guesses. But even you say largely. Meaning not all.
“and don’t tell me he did or you’ll be a fucking liar”
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides”
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/trump-has-condemned-white-supremacists/
Not just days later. The same day.
“That’s why we have museums. “
And I’d have no problem moving them there.
Ask the people breaking them if that’s acceptable?
“the state’s right to treat Black people as property “
Among other things but you’re a one issue type person.
“celebrating”
Remembering
“He was saying that there was no difference”
Sure, you believe the Bible code exists too right?
“response a few days “
Fact check: same day!
“Can you definitively prove that all of the [protestors] were absolutely 100%” neo nazi white suprematists?
Majority isn’t 100%
“Confederacy was formed to preserve slavery”
Never denied that. But the secessions individually were about far more.
“understate the threat of COVID”
Covid is a minimal threat to anyone who is vaccinated.
“anti-masker”
Supporting choice doesn’t make me choose a side.
You should use a proper mask.
And yes, a nearly useless disposable mask is better than no mask. Too bad nobody puts it that way.
But I’m not going to stand there and yell like a fuck at every person who doesn’t use one.
I chose, to walk away from them.
“mask mandates”
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”~Franklin
Choosing to use a proper mask is a good thing. It protects you and others.
Forcing it is an violation of personal liberty.
Re: Re: Re:19
“For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as American as apple pie have always had to be watchers, to become familiar with the language and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for some illusion of protection.” — Audre Lorde
The whole thing with “coded” language is that the way it’s used by conservatives gives it a meaning it may not have to others. They can talk about race without actually talking about race; those who know what to listen for will hear it in the usage of the words. (To wit: The usage of “thug”. Whereas it is racially neutral in its dictionary meaning, conservatives often use it as a dogwhistle for “violent Black people” regardless of whether the Black person being called a thug was actually violent.)
The codes exist. You need only know them, and it’s not hard to find those codes if you know where to look. (And that’s only one example.)
In Trump’s world, America belongs to “real Americans”. The question would lie in how he defines “real Americans”—and the truth of the matter is that he would likely say “people who support me”, a group that is overwhelmingly white. Calling America “our country” in front of an overwhelmingly white group of conservative voters is more coded language: “You own this country, not the [racial slur]s.” He knows what to say to feed the fragile egos of his supporters—of people who feel like they’re losing “their country” to people of color, be they legal citizens or undocumented immigrants, and want to take it back.
Then shut the fuck up and educate yourself. Or shut the fuck up and don’t. Either way, shut the fuck up about shit you know nothing about—your opinion will be irrelevant and you’ll be diving into a conversation in which you’ll be out of your depth.
I never said “all the pro-Confederacy protestors were white supremacists”—as in, they were specifically part of white supremacist groups. I said that by marching to protect Confederate statues, they were marching for the cause of white supremacy. That some of those protestors may not have been part of white supremacist groups doesn’t change the fact that they aligned themselves with those groups on that day.
See the key words there? They’re “on many sides”. Rather than condemning the white supremacists alone for their violence and their hatred, he equivocates the counter-protestors—the anti-racists and antifascists—with the white supremacists. It’s him going “see, everyone sucks, so no need to condemn any one ideology or the other”. It’s a subtle message to his white supremacist supporters: “I’m not gonna call y’all out directly without shitting on the people you hate.” (I know you can’t understand subtext and coded language, so I guess I’ll need to spell that out for you every time.)
Combined with his “very fine people on both sides” bullshit, it’s proof enough that Trump was never willing to condemn white supremacists separately from any other group and white supremacy separately from any other ideology. He wanted to keep courting their votes without seeming like he was doing that. The whole “I condemn all violence on all sides” bullshit was his way of doing that.
I’m sure it would be, except in many cases, nobody wanted to move them out of public view—especially conservative politicians who wanted to court the votes of those who support monuments to seditionist losers. That’s why the statues got torn down: People didn’t want them in public view any more, and direct action was the only way to make that happen.
I’m not sad that those statues got broken. If anything, I say all monuments to the Confederacy need to be taken out of public view and put in a museum—preferably one that accurately tells the history of the Confederacy and its defense of slavery.
Every Confederate leader—all of them—cited slavery as the primary and most important reason for the creation of the Confederacy. Any other issue was either tangential or incidental to slavery—and that includes the economy.
We can remember the Confederacy without putting up statues in public places to memorialize the people who fought for a literaly white supremacist nation-state. Those monuments aren’t for rememberance—they’re for celebration, for glorification, for literally putting the Confederacy on a pedastal.
I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about, but it’s clear you don’t understand the concept of coded language vis-á-vis political rhetoric and subtext.
Never said it was, so stop trying to shove words in my mouth. Again.
But it is still a threat, and refusing to treat it like one makes you an asshole. After all, contracting COVID-19 even while vaccinated means you can still spread the disease to others—including the unvaccinated.
Refusing to support a measure that would help prevent further public health backslides does, though.
How do you know I don’t? How do you know if I can afford one, or even find one where I live? How do you know if anyone living near me can do the same? The whole point of wearing any kind of mask that isn’t a sheet of notebook paper or a paper towel is to lessen the possibility of spreading COVID. Even N95 masks don’t decrease that possibility to zero, and just like with condoms and sex, any protection is better than no protection at all.
Neither do you, for the most part. All you do is whine like a child about how everyone isn’t wearing the right mask.
Neither am I. There’s no point. I mean, I don’t want to get killed by one of those anti-masker fucks—either by COVID or by them pulling out a gun and shooting me in the fucking face.
That quote doesn’t scare me. What liberty, what freedom, what inalienable right is being lost to mask mandates—I mean, other than the “freedom” to become a disease vector and infect anyone within literally spitting distance?
Like I said: You keep sounding like an anti-masker, regardless of whether you agree with them. You’re putting up their arguments, regardless of whether you realize it. Get some fucking self-awareness, you ignorant trashpile of a person.
Re: Re: Re:20 Re:
they were marching for the cause of white supremacy“
And I say that’s bull. I don’t care what the statue or monument is. Be it a Confederate soldier or Buddha’s statues in Afghanistan.
It’s bad form.
“ How do you know I don’t?”
You said you did. So I know you do.
You can be used as an abstract for the general population.
“Afford”
Well if you can’t you can’t, mandate or not.
As I pointed out: any mask is better than no mask.
“ that isn’t a sheet of notebook paper or a paper towel”
Well, I’d say those are still better than none at all.
“ N95”
Stands for 95%. Not 100%
So obviously.
“ Neither do you, for the most part. ”
What I complain about is the medieval attempt of a mandate.
“ right is being lost to mask mandates”
The freedom to breath the air and not our own breath. The freedom to not be placed in a restricting device.
“ Like I said: You keep sounding like an anti-masker”
No, what I sound like is what I am. A person who thinks masking is a good thing. And that mandates are bull.
Those who don’t use a mask will be far more likely to die. And I don’t give a damn if they do.
Knowing, for a fact, that the covid virus is smaller than the pores of most masks and the fact that as such there’s minimal safety from them I have no intention of demanding you put a mostly useless piece of paper on your face.
It’s one thing to tell people they should use this, and if not use these, and if not any protection is better than none.
Demanding they go out and buy a mask of any sort and use it, when it’s of minimal efficiency to begin with?
No
BTW:
Tossing around playground insults lowers the value of your commentary.
It makes for the perspective of you being a spoiled crybaby brat.
Re: Re: Re:12 [ copy pasta ]
If that context includes quotes from the other folks on that platform who more directly called for war upon the U.S. government, then I think you probably need to post that enhanced version. I suppose if you got really ambitious, you might even try to include some context which we can use to distinguish the speeches of Trump & Company from treason.
The U.S. Constitution provides a definition: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
So, good luck finding something to distinguish Trump and friends’ call for an attack upon the U.S. government, featuring armed replacement of the U.S. flag over the Capitol with a “Trump” flag, from treason. For that matter, good luck distinguishing the acts of the armed crowd who overran the Capitol from acts of treason.
Re: Re: Re:13 [ copy pasta ]
“ Trump and friends’ call for an attack”
Didn’t happen. There was no call for an attack. Trump said peaceful more than once.
As for the rioters, prosecute every one of them for crimes they committed.
Re: Re: Re:14 [ copy pasta ]
Going by your post history this is not a particularly convincing statement coming from you.
Re: Re: Re:15 [ copy pasta ]
I don’t really care what you think.
I may not call it insurrection, but it was a riot.
And they should be prosecuted for the verifiable crimes they actually committed.
Do the crime do the time.
Re: Re: Re:14
A direct call? No. But as I’ve mentioned before, nobody needs to make a direct call when they can use dogwhistles and subtext to fire up a crowd full of people drunk on performative patriotism and prone to violent outbursts. To wit (and emphasis is mine):
I emphasized those bits because they’re important in understanding the language being used that day. Look at the verbs and verbal phrases used in those quotes, especially in the bolded parts. They’re all in line with the idea of ginning up a crowd already prepared to “fight” (literally and metaphorically) for Donald Trump. And speaking of Old 45…
…I’m going to break out the copypasta one more time. In the context of the quotes above and the entire insurrection, I hope this will be the last time I need to break this out for you.
[ahem]
The following are quotes from Donald Trump himself; they come from his speech on the 6th of January, just before the insurrection:
Now, I’m sure you want to mention all the times he brought up marching peacefully and whatnot. Don’t bother; I’ve skimmed enough of the transcript to know those parts exist. Instead, I want you to read each of those quotes, and notice some of the verbs/verbal phrases he uses: “stop”, “save”, “fight”, “take back”, “get tougher”, “show strength”, “protect”. Then look at the overall gist of those quotes: “we’re fighting to stop the steal”, “we have to get tougher on the fraudsters”, “we’re here to save democracy”, “we need to do something about this”.
He isn’t explicitly calling for violence, no. But between his planting the idea that his “patriots” must stop the steal by showing strength and doing “something” about the Democrats/“weak Republicans” to save the country, his talking for months about how the election would be fraudulent only if he lost, and his continual(ly rebuked) efforts to overturn an election he lost both electorally and popularly, those quotes—his words—become a form of his mob boss–esque stochastic terrorism. He didn’t need to directly call for violence; all he needed to do is make his wishes known and let his followers do the rest.
Take a bunch of people who have already been manipulated by right-wing media and Donald Trump into believing the election would be/was stolen. Tell them that the literal last line of defense against the stolen election is a Vice President who has already sworn himself to the duty of his office (i.e., to confirm Joe Biden as the President-elect). Gin them up further by referring to them as true patriots, telling them to toughen up and show strength, and implying that they alone can save American democracy itself. What do you get as a result of all that?
You get an insurrection.
…
…and I was gonna stop there, and let that be the end of it, but I’ve been thinking some shit over and I think this would be the ideal time to say this to you, Lostcause.
You are a Trumpist. I don’t mean that in the on-the-surface meaning of “you voted for Trump”. No, you’re a Trumpist on a much deeper level: Like all other full-throated Trumpists, you refuse to criticise Dear Leader for anything (of any significance, anyway).
I regularly rip on Democrats—the same people I vote for, the same party of the Big Two with which my political ideology most closely aligns—because I recognize their failures. The DNC, by and large, is filled with cowards who are too afraid to aim for the stars in re: political policy because they don’t want to alienate (read: piss off) conservative voters. They’re the party of upholding the status quo until it’s way past time to do something about it—I mean, how many of them are actually fighting right now for a liveable wage for the working class. Hell, for all the fawning I do over AOC (and not without merit!), I recognize that she might not have the best approach to winning over more moderate Democrats who are afraid to step an inch outside of the middle of the Overton Window even as it’s being dragged to the right.
But you? You don’t level nearly the same amount of criticism at Donald Trump—even though he definitely deserves it. You’ve defended him with the fervor of a religious zealout; every time someone even remotely rips on Old 45, you’re right there to tell that critic how they’re completely wrong about everything and should shut the hell up about Dear Leader. You’re trapped in a cult of personality and you’re too goddamned ignorant to realize it.
You need more self-awareness. Hell, I’m well aware that I’m wasting my time and energy on you, but at least I’m willing to admit that. When are you going to admit that you’re unwilling or unable to criticize Trump for his myriad failures as a president and his attempt to subvert American democracy—or even ask yourself why you’re doing everything short of literally kissing the ass of a man who would sooner have you killed than give a shit about how you’re metaphorically kissing his ass?
Re: Re: Re:15 Re:
Well, again neither Trump nor his son called for violence anywhere in that speech.
I’ve called out Trump for the few cases where I see issues.
His changed position on abortion after accepting it as a right most of his life.
His illicit use of prayer and “god” in speech.
Moving the US embassy may have been the Correct move. It it wasn’t politically wise for the regional situation.
He should have brought troops home earlier.
Etc. But we have a different opinion on what is a “failure” or cause for criticism.
Sure he could have stuck to it with the China issues. He didn’t.
He could have pushed the wall faster and harder by overturning environmental concerns.
He could have rolled out RealID via executive order and discretionary funds.
He could have added Ukraine to the list of State Sponsors of Genocide.
He could have declared all national monuments national treasures thus making their destruction the more serious crime it is.
He could have continued negotiations with North Korea. Create a status of consistency that would help build the country into a modern country with a set at the international table: greatly benefitting their people.
There’s lots he ‘could have done’.
But there’s lots of good he accomplished as well.
Common for every president.
You don’t have to look far to see me bitch about Republican stupidity.
And trump had his share of face palm moments.
But Biden hasn’t been any Better.
Other than inheriting the vax from the Trump admin?
He’s negotiating with Iran, rejoined the pointless Paris agreement, stopped, then restarted, then stopped the border wall.
He shut down the building of the fuel line that could have brought us energy independence.
He’s bussing and flying covid infected border jumpers all over the country in the dead of night.
So…
Re: Re: Re:16
They didn’t have to. Again, I ask you: Look at the language used—the verbs and verbal phrases that hint at violence—and think about how that speech would be received by a crowd that’s been told they’re the only ones who can “stop the steal” and “save America”. That crowd was ginned up on the idea of political violence as a solution to the “problem” of the 2020 election results. Trump and his fellow speakers did nothing to quell the latent bloodlust; if anything, they made it worse with rhetoric that played to the crowd’s shared idea of “we’re patriots and we’re here to save the country.” A mob boss doesn’t need to explicitly say “have this guy killed” to his goons for his goons to get the idea and kill the intended victim anyway. You once again prove that you’re unable to grasp the concepts of subtext and political dogwhistles.
That’s sort of my point: Instead of continually criticising him for his myriad failures as a leader, a politician, and a human being, you stick to a handful of things you can weakly call out and say “see, even I don’t think he’s perfect”.
There’s plenty of significant shit I can call out Obama and his administration on: the ramping up of drone strikes, the refusal to completely close Guantanamo Bay, and the refusal to withdraw completely from Afghanistan are but a taste of the issues with his time in office, and if I had time to research, I’m sure I’d find more. I voted for him twice, and even I don’t think he was as great a president as you think Trump was.
Mainly because your ideology is so closely aligned with Trumpism and modern American conservatism that you likely see anything going against that ideology as a “criticism” to be dismissed instead of used as a data point in retriangulating your ideology.
“Oh sure, he could’ve gotten the wall faster if he had said ‘fuck the planet’; that he didn’t is a failure.” That’s you. That’s you right now.
No, there really isn’t. The best thing he did in his time as president was sign off on the COVID relief checks to boost the economy (the one thing he had going for him until the pandemic), and he had his name attached to the first two so he could assuage his gigantic ego.
Yes. Yes, I do.
You’ll never admit that any of the obvious ones (e.g., injecting disinfectants, “very fine people on both sides”) are on that list, though.
He hasn’t completely ignored scientists and experts—if anything, he’s gotten out of the way of people who know what the fuck they’re doing, as opposed to Donald “I alone can fix this” Trump.
I agree that Biden is a chump—hell, I knew he would be a chump even as I voted for him. But after four years of nepotism and insults and disinformation and outright fucking ignorance (willful or not) on the part of the Trump administration, Biden being a mere “meh” of a president is more than acceptable to me.
I don’t see the issue here if it results in fewer nuclear weapons and whatnot on the part of Iran.
Yes yes, you think climate change is a giant hoax created by Big Solar and Big Wind to smear the name of Big Oil and Big Coal and create clean energy to ruin the global economy from the inside out. We get it.
Yes yes, you think the wall—and not fucking around with Central and South America to destabilize governments for the sake of installing America-friendly dictators and autocrats (for starters)—is the only real solution to our immigration woes. We get it.
(Honestly, I’m surprised you haven’t called for the summary executions of undocumented immigrants yet.)
Yes yes, you think energy independence is more important than the potential for an oil spill that could devastate ecosystems upon which both humans and animals rely. We get it.
And here I thought you said you didn’t listen to right-wing media outlets like Fox News. Why must you turn this comments section into a house of lies?
Re: Re: Re:17 Re:
“myriad failures as a leader, a politician, and a human being”
I see very few things. I’ve called what I remember.
I won’t debate covid response though.
He shouldn’t have down played it in the early days, any more than Dr Dr should have dismissed masks to hoard them. Since we’re in total disagreement about closures there’s nothing else to discuss.
But feel free to point out his failures that I didn’t mention.
But if some nut decided to riot based on what trump said? They have more issues than just rioting.
Yes: some speakers used rhetoric like hat could constitute incitement and I’m not defending them.
Trump, however did not. Even closing out with Peaceful!
“…and even I don’t think he was as great a president as you think Trump was.”
Sad; I probably hold Obama in higher regard than you do.
“Mainly because your ideology is so closely aligned with Trumpism and modern American conservatism “
Hardly conservatism.
I believe we should be conserved with our country first and foremost. Our citizens first and foremost.
And I believe an armed citizenship is a plus.
That’s generally where it ends.
“That’s you right now.”
All they did was slow it down. I support the wall. It was a principal voting motivation.
Fact check: Obama supported border security including fencing/wall as well.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p4hY1KDdozQ&feature=youtu.be
So did H Clinton.
“injecting disinfectants”
Intentionally out of context bull. And you know it since I’ve quoted the discussion text and linked it directly to a reply to you.
And sides I already said just above.
“He hasn’t completely ignored scientists and experts”
Ignored? No. I watched him lambast them for stupidity.
Disposable Paper masks don’t protect the user. They’re of minimal protection for others.
Shutdowns despite vaccinations?
Use a mask after vaccination?
Oh, that’s right: you think I should need a mask now to protect the dump alt anti Vaxers who think it’s religious and the dumb far left inner city minorities who think it’s some sort of experiment or death drug.
Ignore how many dems said they would trust a vax developed under Trump: who brainwashed a countable population of liberals to believe the vax was bad.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5f60cc29c5b65fd7b8550ef9
You conveniently forget that Pre-VP said she would take a vaccination developed under trump.
“Yes yes, you think climate change is a giant hoax”
Oh, I’m the “asshole” making stuff up? I think the last time I used hoax was in the early 2000s. At a time when there was zero reliable data.
Or all my comments about renewable energy being useful ONCE we have the system in place. Or how we should start creating a path to get there and stop throwing around deadlines with no plan?
“and not fucking around with Central and South America to destabilize governments”
Fuck that. We shouldn’t be involved in anyone’s politics except our own!
“solution to our immigration woes”
No, the wall stops illegal crossing.
The woes are a completely understaffed and underfunded immigration system.
“summary executions of undocumented immigrants”
Why would I do that?!!? They’re still human beings. I’d just send them back to their home country.
“Yes yes, you think energy independence”
Yes, you think the remote chance of a spill and even more remote chance of a large damaging one in a state of the art line is not worth severing ties with west Asian dictators.
We get it.
“Why must you turn this comments section into a house of lies?”
You deny Biden is relocating border crossers? You deny that hey are not properly testing them as they come in? You deny catch and release?
You deny facts?
Re: Re: Re:18
No, you see exactly what you want to see and ignore everything else.
You know, I was gonna go ahead with shitting on the rest of your comment. I really could, too. (You deserve it, believe me.) But I’mma forgo that to spend some real time on this specific point. You need to be made to understand exactly how shitty Donald Trump—the man you voted for twice, the man you thought was worthy of running the most powerful nation in the world, the man you believed was a good and decent man instead of an elderly fascist sociopath—really was.
Hell, just to make sure I don’t break the comment system or whatever, I won’t even go beyond the first three months of 2017.
All of the text that follows is from the McSweeney’s list of Trump atrocities, which you can easily find through Google and has sources for every one of these list items. To make this as fair as possible, I picked out only actions and rhetoric that could be attributed specifically to Trump himself during his time in office, and I generally avoided anything having to do with investigations into his businesses and the like. That said, here is a partial list of the failings of Old 45, the single worst president in my lifetime:
Remember, this is merely a partial list of the failings of former President Donald Trump during his time in office. Feel free to make one as comprehensive as the full list from McSweeney’s for Obama or Biden; I’m sure I’ll agree with at least a few of the events that you would consider to be failings or “atrocities” from those administrations.
But I doubt they’d be as long as the list for Old 45.
Re: Re: Re:19 Re:
Well: you sidestepped the section of the post which included where you were flat out wrong or intentionally lying.
Re: Re: Re:20
I see you have no response to the comment above your reply, so I will consider you to be out of your depth in this and any other argument. I will thus avoid trying to metaphorically drown you from now on. Have a nice life, dipshit.
Re: Re: Re:21 Re:
You opted to cut and paste. I gave you a logical reply which takes a bit more effort.
You still missed the rest of the post. Dodging your errors?
At least I stood by what I said. Every president has good and bad moments.
Re: Re: Re:22 Re:
A reply: line by line?
Interesting: you really believed the crap you spout about me did you.
“Alt right” dear leader? What—eeeva!
You still fail to acknowledge your major error on Trump’s condemnation.
That’s what happens when you only look at your choice media and not the source.
It’s true I don’t like your diet sheet rag choices,
It’s not the politics, it the volume of factual failures.
When I see something, good or bad, of major news; I go to the source. The video. The audio. The original text.
That you link to a far left wing blogger to back up your claim there’s some sort of hidden code? Desperate.
Auto correct and typos? It’s ‘cause I don’t care enough to try to proof off the cuff commentary.
I’m not some hill hick. I’m a college educated lower middle class computer tech. That happens to enjoy moonshine and a weekend at the shooting range.
Imzjust as happy to kill my own food, from squirrel to dear to elk to whatever, as I am to walk into a store and buy fresh organic free range beef. Or the occasional tofu fried rice.
I’m an animal rights supporter and environmentalist. I just don’t agree with the method of the progressives.
You’re truly in a bubble if you can’t comprehend your need to class, classify, and group, every single thing, doesn’t always work.
When you’re read to admit your mistakes and faults on the issues: feel free to reply.
I don’t hid behind anonymous. I admit my errors when they happen.
Can you?
Re: Re: Re:19 Re:
January 11
Bad
January 20
Bad
January 22
Irrelevant: private information
January 24
Questionable. Need to review the order.
January 27
Good. He signed a ban blocking people from state sponsors of terror.
January 29
See January 27
January 29
Very unfortunate.
January 30
As is the right of the president to choose his staff.
Not to mention insubordination.
February 1
Very bad
February 2
Very bad
February 4
Not wise, but the ban was upheld ultimately.
February 7
Very bad
February 12
Unwise
February 16
??? And?
February 16
Bad… but the rule was not based on actual evidence, rather than conjecture.
February 20
Better to have resources now and work to better choices than cut off resources with available alternatives in place.
Feburary 22
(No opinion at this point).
Both sides of the issue of non-biological use have good points. And bad.
February 27
One must pay for programs. He chose his method.
Maybe the Dems could figure out ways to pay for things too.
March 3
Unwise. Probably unethical.
March 3
Unwise
March 4
Ultimately, spying was shown. If of a different method.
March 7
Unwise. But nobody in congress wants to work out a good healthcare bill.
March 10
Unwise but within his ability and not the only one to do so from either party.
March 13
Questionable.
March 15
Correct. The judge did not have jurisdiction over the case. As the Supreme Court ultimately decided.
March 16
(No opinion)
I’d have to review his reasoning
March 28
Questionable
March 28
(No opinion) …
March 29, 2017 – The Trump administration removed categories relating to sexual orientation and gender identity from the U.S. Census
Information that is of little use to the government.
March 29
Accurate, they failed the people.
And apologised
March 29, 2017 – Politico reported
Bad
March 30
According to FBI Director James Comey,
Good
March 30
Vice President Mike Pence cast a tie-breaking vote
Good. State’s rights
March 31
Unrelated to trump
April 1
Michael Flynn … gave a paid speech
Questionable
April 2
Not guilty, not innocent.
Bad on trump
April 3, 2017 – Donald Trump praised Egypt’s authoritarian leader President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
Good. That’s what you do in politics.
April 3, 2017 – Donald Trump signed a bill eliminating rules that would have required internet service providers to ask consumer permission before sharing or selling private information
Bad
April 3, 2017 – Donald Trump stopped all funding for the UN Family Planning Agency
Indifferent
April 4, 2017 – Donald Trump’s lawyer revealed the president could withdraw money from the Trump Organization’s underlying trust at any time
Questionable
April 4, 2017 – Using the Congressional Review Act, Donald Trump and members of the GOP rolled back an Obama-era law that required employers to keep accurate records of employee injuries
Bad
April 4, 2017 – Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered the Justice Department to review consent decrees,
Good, review is always good
April 4, 2017
saying the attack had been a “consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution.”
Loaded, but potentially accurate
Re: Re: Re:9 Re:
"The far right alt right whatever has never been part of the ‘American Right’ political system beyond a rare occasion of showing up somewhere. "
Over 60% of republicans today believe that democracy does not work and that voting should be considered a privilege rather than a right.
Almost half republicans believe a time is coming when force will have to be used to change america.
The overwhelming majority of republicans believe in the "Big Steal" fairytale where some glorious and inspired sinister plan by liberal super-ninjas rewrote millions of pro-trump votes on ballots while somehow leaving republicans owning the house on those same ballots.
I’m not sure what echo chamber you live in but it obviously insulates you from the mainstream republicans as well. The alt-right isn’t just part of the modern US right-wing. It’s the majority part. Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Josh Hawley aren’t exceptions – they are the republican norm, put there because they more than anyone else was willing to kiss Trump’s ringpiece and subscribe to the cult of Qanon. When over half the republican party see fit to discard the founding principles of the nation you can’t really claim the alt-right is a minority "blip".
"And as far as I can tell the Florida death rate is fake news. "
You’re trying to tell us the numbers published under actual threat of legal retribution is "fake news"?
Who are these martyrs for the cause willing to jeopardize their professional careers, personal freedom and jobs just to put out the "good liberal word"?
You might want to look into the CDC COVID Data Tracker.
Also, the death rate (just ad notam for both you and Stephen) is less important when it comes to determining how fast the disease spreads than confirmed infection rate (which is persistently up at a sharp angle and has been since ~20th of June). The death toll varies extensively and contains a lot of people who have been lingering for months.
It’s one thing that a guy like Tucker Carlson can walk away from being a blatant liar on camera as long as he claims no one would take him seriously. It’s another kettle of fish for a CDC representative to fudge those numbers. You might ask the inventor of the anti-vax movement what bringing bad numbers to a public study means for your life.
Re: Re: Re:10 Re:
“ Over 60% of republicans today believe that democracy does not work and that voting should be considered a privilege rather than a right.”
Who are you quoting here?
“ You might want to look into the CDC COVID Data Tracker.”
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#state-view
That’s exactly where the above Microsoft script got it’s numbers from.
“ It’s another kettle of fish for a CDC representative to fudge those numbers.”
I didn’t say that. I simply stated if what you stated the NYT said is what they said: they’re wrong, or intentionally wrong.
Re: Re: Re:11 Re:
"Who are you quoting here?"
Pew Research Center; google "Wide partisan divide on whether voting is a fundamental right or a privilege with responsibilities"
"That’s exactly where the above Microsoft script got it’s numbers from. "
And that’s not showing a spike. It’s showing a continuing upwards curve. Once it starts dropping and stays dropped you can call it a spike.
"I didn’t say that. I simply stated if what you stated the NYT said is what they said: they’re wrong, or intentionally wrong."
But the way the CDC numbers gel, the NYT seems to not be wrong.
Re: Re: Re:7 Re:
"Sure, the vaccinations are directly or indirectly but correlatively the cause of of 3,000 deaths. Out of 320,000,000.
Or was it 300, I have to scroll up and find my source again."
You don’t help your own idiotic argument by admitting that you’re making up numbers and too lazy to read your own fucking "proof".
Even if there is some death caused by vaccines (not some 95 year old who happened to die 2 months after vaccination for unrelated causes, actually causal deaths), it pales in comparison to the millions of deaths worldwide that happened before vaccines were available.
The adult choice is to go with the less dangerous option. Part of being an adult is that you have to accept that there’s no perfect choice that leads to zero deaths, so people need to grow the fuck up and do what’s necessary.
"Sue, there’s a potential link to autism"
No, there isn’t. There’s a basic correlation due to the fact that the ages when kids usually get their MMR vaccinations is around the same age as when a diagnosis for autism is first possible. There has never been a causal effect proven.
Stop spreading disinformation in a thread about preventing it.
"You take the conflict out by admitting the conflicts up front."
The conflict is grown ass adults violently opposing basic public health and endangering everyone around them. Fuck them and you for suggesting we need to lower society to their level.
Re: Re: Re:8 Re:
"You don’t help your own idiotic argument by admitting that you’re making up numbers and too lazy to read your own fucking "proof"."
Americans have come a long way since they were able to write about self-evident truths. These days what they come up with is ideas like the whole world being in on the presumptive massive coverup conspiracy meant to make vaccines look vastly beneficial.
"The adult choice is to go with the less dangerous option."
I put it down to figments of a religious paradigm which has somehow percolated into every fiber of US society and tells them that it’s somehow bad to doubt God’s divine plan by taking medication. You know, if He wanted you to live, He’d have made you Covid-proof, or something.
"Sue, there’s a potential link to autism"
There’s not, and you’d know this if you had spent fifteen minutes checking the origin of that allegation. There’s a wiki entry on Andrew Wakefield I suggest you read. Short summary? He was fired and his license to practice medicine revoked because he fudged the numbers in a study so it suggested vaccines could link to autism. And he did that while starting up a shady law firm on the side which would be specializing in litigation to "compensate" the "victims" he invented in his own fudged study.
He was pretty hamfisted going about it too which is why the story became pretty damn public.
With his job as researcher and doctor shot he descended into full-time fraud, becoming a "speaker" for the anti-vax movement which to this day ensures he keeps earning a salary for defrauding gullible rubes in another country what he was sacked trying to pull in the UK.
TL;DR? There’s as much a link between vaccines and autism as there is between guinea pigs and space travel. Little correlation and no causation.
"You take the conflict out by admitting the conflicts up front."
The conflict being that of a bunch of man-children so dazzled by fraudsters and hucksters they’re willing to jeopardize their own lives and those of others over, metaphorically, what some asshat told them in a pub.
The rest of the world accepts that the concensus of experts in medicine, worlwide, probably has more of a clue than a con man discredited for trying to turn the suffering of children into a cash crop by abusing his position as an MD to fudge the numbers in his own study.
Those who are already willing to subscribe to the wild idea that every doctor in the world is bought and paid for can’t be helped. Certainly not by treating them as if they are on the same level.
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[edit]
Was meant to go to Lostinlodos. Sorry about that, PaulIT. 🙁
Re: Re: Re:8 Re:
Don’t be an idiot. He made a mistake and said the vaccinations kill.
“Stop spreading disinformation in a thread about preventing it.“
yep, cake’s on you on this one.
Pay attention! You look like a fool this time.
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"Maybe address them in a way that still calls them human: since they won’t drop fast enough to ignore them."
The irony is that when people individually make such long-standing bad decisions as the alt-right has been making, the result is some judge coming along and removing their rights as an adult with verified agency.
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So rather than treating them like children (left) or selfish (right)
We tried not doing that for nearly a year now. At some point, when the ‘righties’ are being this fucking stupid, that’s the only thing left. Let’s face it, these dumb fucks aren’t taking the vaccine to ‘own the libs.’ It’s a contest to see who can be more Trumpy, or in other words, who’s the biggest moron?
Now if that isn’t childish and stupid behavior, please tell me what else I need to look out for. Because if these dumb fucks were my kids, they’d have seen the working end of a belt months ago.
Maybe address them in a way that still calls them human‘
Should we really need to cater to the whims of ‘children’ like this? I’m all for letting them die, which is a viewpoint shared by a substantial population of vaccinated folks. If me not giving a shit about them isn’t sufficient for them to get the point, then nothing is.
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“Should we really need to cater to the whims of ‘children’ like this? “
Yes. Because there’s too many of them.
The vax kills left and the we’ll never die right.
“ I’m all for letting them die,”
As am I. But as others have pointed out here it’s unlikely they’ll die fast enough to starve off mutations.
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Yes. Because there’s too many of them.
Then it’s time to kill 2 birds with one rock. Build a fucking wall and put these dumb fucks behind it. Tell them Mexico paid for it and there’s migrants on the other side who are going to take their jobs.
In other words, lie.
Re: Re: Re:5
…fucking what
…are you seriously trying to say that the vaccine doesn’t kill or that “the left” is “overblowing“ the impact of a highly communicable viral disease that has killed well over a half-million people in the U.S., has killed more than 4 million people nationwide, and has left many millions more with what will likely be long-term (possibly even life-long) health issues
they’re free to test that assumption at their own convenience, as far as I’m concerned
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“ are you seriously trying to say that the vaccine doesn’t kill…”
Oh please: it’s not even 1% or even 1/10 of 1%.
You’ll more likely win the lottery than the vax kill you.
If you really buy into that whole fear of the vaccinations thing you really have no clue about medical science.
Your one of those autism vax lefties? :facepalm:
I thought you supported the vaccinations!
“ they’re free to test that assumption at their own convenience, as far as I’m concerned”
We’re you one of the people pointing out they’ll cause more problems then solve. After I suggested a super spreader anti vax event for all those idiots.
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Tell that to the millions of people around the world who’ve died from COVID.
Oh wait, you can’t. Because they’re dead.
So what? I’d rather not take the chance. If the anti-vaxxers want to test their supposed invulnerability by French kissing COVID patients, they should find a way to do that without putting everyone else at risk of contracting COVID.
Congratulations, you’re talking about American conservatives—a group far more likely than any other in this country to reject science and knowledge in favor of superstition, fear, and anger. That they’ve dug themselves further into that hole is the fault of Old 45, not of Fauci or Pelosi or “The Squad” or any other “leftist” you can think of.
No, and I don’t know how you even came to think that when I didn’t even say anything about autism in my post. But for the record, since you’ll bitch about it if I don’t: Vaccines don’t cause autism and Wakefield is a fucking hack.
Yes, I was. But if the anti-vax crowd wants to get infected so badly that nothing will convince them otherwise, I say they’re free to test their “COVID-19 isn’t a big deal” assumption at their own convenience. “Fuck around and find out” is basically how science is done, after all.
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“ Tell that to the millions of people around the world who’ve died from COVID.”
They died from the virus you nut! Not the vax!!!!!
“ No, and I don’t know how you even came to think that when I didn’t even say anything about autism in my post.”
Well, your on the left of our spectrum and think the vaccinations kill
People. What am I supposed to think.
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…fucking what
Re: Re: Re:10 Re:
…are you seriously trying to say that the vaccine doesn’t kill or that “the left” is “overblowing“ the impact of a highly communicable viral disease that has killed well over a half-million people in the U.S., has killed more than 4 million people nationwide, and has left many millions more with what will likely be long-term (possibly even life-long) health issues
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You’ll you couldn’t make that opinion any stronger.
Re: Re: Re:11
Oh.
Oh!
Fuck me sideways, I need to proofread my posts. That was meant to be “virus”, not “vaccine”. I’m not one of those fuckwits, and if you so much as even imply that I am ever again, you’re not going to like what I have to say about you.
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I figured you made a mistake since you kept defending it.
Water under the bridge.
Back to our regularly scheduled arguments.
Re: Re: Re:11 Re:
"are you seriously trying to say that the vaccine doesn’t kill"
Not in any statistically meaningful way. You’re more likely to die in a car accident on your way to a place avoiding the vaccine than you are to die from it. While I’d love it if people as incapable of logical thought as you would just lock themselves inside to avoid that risk as well, we don’t need to adjust any public health measures to cater to idiotic children.
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Hey self righteous arse,
Look up just one post.
I’m quoting his quote.
“ While I’d love it if people as incapable of logical thought”
…
Nah. I didn’t get the vaccine to hide in the closet.
Coupled with my N95
Masks? No. I’m not staying home to make you happy
Re: Re: Re:13 Re:
Mistakes happen. Look before you jump to fight someone.
Re: Re: Re:14
Exhibit A: You.
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"You need to remember that not everyone has your help others mindset. Especially here: regardless of party. "
Honestly, there was a time when the people driving the question of social responsibility was republicans. In Nürnberg the ones pushing the issue of shared responsibility and accountability was the US.
How the heck did you shrink from proud giants to shrivelled midgets in so short a timespan? When did you, as a people and as a nation, become so small?
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"They can’t even accurately tell us how well the vaccines work. 98%, 80%, 92%… "
Actually they can. What they can’t tell us – right now – is whether the vaccination will be 70% or 100% effective against new strains or to which degree it will mitigate immediate and long-term effects of, say, delta.
What science can tell us – right out of the gate – is that vaccines will keep you alive where Covid would otherwise kill you. That’s not in doubt.
"Which may be parallel and not corollary. "
In the same way that people getting a heatstroke might be unrelated to a sudden heatwave, you mean? It’s possible but incredibly unlikely.
I have good advice for you given your two statements above – never go to Vegas. Avoid any gambling or wagers like the plague. The inability to see the difference between utterly implausible and highly likely is not a good trait to have when putting money on the roulette table.
"Early opinion is it definitely can be spread by vaccinated people. "
Which is why social distancing and masks should be utilized by the vaccinated as well, until we know more details. Mind you, that may be a tougher sell since a vaccinated person wearing the mask right now is protecting mainly the absolute assholes who largely contributed to a 600k+ death toll.
It may help pointing out that there are people who for one reason or other can’t take the vaccine and so the masks are a benevolent gesture towards other than just the visible asshats and fuckwits among the anti-vaxxers.
"If you aren’t vaxed and aren’t masked and get sick and fall over? Oh well."
If the price of that wasn’t likely to include people with compromised immune systems or other medical causes…
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"What they can’t tell us – right now – is whether the vaccination will be 70% or 100% effective against new strains or to which degree it will mitigate immediate and long-term effects of, say, delta."
In other words – initial figures were provided about efficacy against the original strain of COVID-19 based on early trials. These figures have then been adjusted, first for real-world results from the actual vaccination programs, then against new strains that did not exist when the original figures were calculated. These are then adjusted as time goes on, as new strains develop and we get the real world results of how vaccines already distributed are coping against new strains (which seems to be that – as predicted – even when a vaccinated person is infected, they suffer far less severe and long-term effects from the disease).
I’m not sure why some people are confused by things like learning from experience and altering your conclusions based on new information, but that seems to be what we’re dealing with.
"Which is why social distancing and masks should be utilized by the vaccinated as well, until we know more details."
Which, to anyone with the barest knowledge of how diseases are spread, is not surprising. Vaccines are not an invincibility shield, and even if you are personally immune you can still carry the disease to others (this is literally why we know the name Typhoid Mary). These are all tools that we use to ensure that the disease runs out of effective hosts to spread, to mutate and to adapt to measures already taken. You don’t throw out your entire toolbox just because you bought a new multitool that you think will do the work of the rest of them. You test them out first.
This is all depressingly basic stuff to have to explain, but explain it we will, since so many have revealed that they don’t mind if other people die, so long as they don’t have to feel temporary discomfort.
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“ Avoid any gambling or wagers like the plague.”
Hey, vegas is a beautiful oasis. I don’t gamble. I enjoy the occasional game of chance. But if you go in to get rich your a fool.
“ Mind you, that may be a tougher sell since a vaccinated person wearing the mask right now is protecting mainly the absolute assholes ”
Which was generally what I said.
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"Hey, vegas is a beautiful oasis. I don’t gamble. I enjoy the occasional game of chance. But if you go in to get rich your a fool. "
Then you might want to show a little more respect for numbers and statistics than what you’ve shown so far.
It’s not a question that the vaccine is massively helpful.
It’s also pretty established that scientists don’t assign causation unless they’ve manage to rule out coincidence.
Masks help curb the spread. That’s old news and not in doubt.
Social distancing helps curb the spread. That’s also old news and not in doubt.
And the trouble with letting the morons die who currently avoid masks, social distancing and vaccines is that they will be prime incubators for the next few strains and a chief cause of death for those who for medical reasons can’t take the vaccine.
Essentially the situation we have is that the lackwit yokels indulging in their freedom to not take vaccines, not wear masks and not keep a distance are doing so at the cost of exposing other people to greater harm.
This should be as no a go as walking around sprinkling people from a revigator pot is.
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“ It’s not a question that the vaccine is massively helpful.
Absolutely. Never said anything otherwise
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Sure, you keep telling yourself that you’re not on the side of the Trump activists, chumley.