volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@janisf but the machine is us. We have the votes.

No I see the marginal accountability that dumped Biden. It's just not enough. He lost the support of some of the elite so he got dumped, but when he needs to hold them accountable to the whole party, not just the elite.p

@dougiec3 The good news is it doesn't really matter if they accept it or not. We don't rely on losers accepting losses.

A lot of people seem to forget that.

Trump is not president today even if he doesn't accept that reality. It's still reality under our system, and it would be ridiculous for it to be any other way.

@gearhead and I would reply that you need to grow up and realize the bigger picture.

The Democratic party nominated this flawed candidate and threatens to grant Trump the win on the basis of assuming that they would get our votes regardless of who they nominated. They could have nominated someone better, and maybe they would have if they didn't think they were entitled to our votes.

It's not a rhetorical slap in the face. It's a call for Democrats to do better as a party to serve us better, to serve the country better.

Statements like if the GOP succeeds your right to your opinions is doomed, that's just propaganda, it's nonsense and it's being used to try to trap our votes

The party should have had a legit primary process to capture the democratic outcome. The powers that be in the party made the choice to skip it and go with this bad candidate instead.

For the sake of future elections, we should not reward that.

It sucks that they did that, but they need to be accountable for the loss of votes.

@DJ_2280 and the reason it doesn't matter is because the manifesto has been roundly rejected on a bipartisan basis.

@ChemicalEyeGuy it is not at all true that Donald Trump took away the freedom to have an abortion.

That's simply false.

@johnzajac you misunderstand.

@libramoon since the other justices can do whatever they want, it's troubling to see this story going around that promotes the community that Roberts is controlling them all.

That's the problem.

So many people are getting that message and repeating it on social media, but it's outright false, it's something of a conspiracy theory when we could really use a lot less of those.

@EtherNRhum I would say a huge part of the problem is that vast swaths of America disagree on what the facts are, and so people seek solutions to try to bridge that gulf.

Trump came to political relevance as so many sought a useful idiot to fill that void. One bit of evidence of this is the studies showing that the groups that backed him themselves don't agree with each other. They just all wanted to find an empty vessel to use.

So it's an enormous problem that so many people have disagreements about the factual reality, and so far the US has not shown any real progress in trying to reconcile those misbeliefs within the population.

We can go farther down the rabbit hole into the causes for that, but the main point here is that Trump is an effect, not a cause. If you pay attention to his voters they tend to gravitate toward ideas sometimes weeks before he bothers getting around to expressing them.

They tell him what to say and believe, not the other way around.

@LoreleiArmstrong well that's factually incorrect.

@janisf in that case you really just need to stay out of politics in general, just don't engage with it at all, if you can't stand to be fully informed then as I always say just go read a book under a tree.

We should not be beholden to politics. They should work for us not the other way around. And if they're not working out for you just go live a better life without getting involved in the fight.

But, if you're not up for the whole fight, then yeah, it's going to screw with your head to be only half in

@Nonilex

@EMCBerlin I think it's really important to point out that articles like these mislead the public by equating not taking money from people with taking money from people.

That sort of accounting gimmickry makes for good headlines but misleads the general public.

This is why so many people have lost faith in journalism, because people notice.

@MaxPow3r11 so far it sounds like conservatives are pointing out that this assassination attempt was already illegal, so Biden just needs to enforce the law.

That there already is gun control.

@CStamp no.

If you think that there is a man to blame for J6 then you have been misled about what happened that day, you have bought into a conspiracy theory that doesn't make any sense.

You should stop falling for those people.

But either way, the answer is no.

@Kierkegaanks oh my concern is that you are actually supporting Putin's side. I'm specifically replying to be anti-Putin.

I'm troubled that you are playing his game.

So shall I call you putinbot? Because I really wish folks didn't support the guy like you are in your commentary.

We can discuss this this if you'd like, or maybe you are just going to be a bot and spread your propaganda and that's that.

@johnzajac why not just change humans?

I think that's the sort of question that has been asked out of hubris throughout history and generally doesn't work out very well when it's tried.

Why not build power plants with perpetual motion machines to turn the gears? Well, turns out it just doesn't work, that's the harsh reality.

We are stuck with humans that like to like things, that will pursue the things that make them happy. That's just reality, for better or worse, and we really have to work with that, we can't fix them to make them different, to make them conform to our ideas of how they should be.

Even if that would make us happy, even if we would like to pursue that because that is the thing that makes us happy, which,... you see what I'm going for here.

@pratik specifically what Republicans threatened civil war?

@Kierkegaanks question begged.

To clarify, the big question is about seeing Russian drinking songs or whatever. So so many people jump right to that conclusion when that's actually the question on the table.

@Nonilex propublica is a really slanted publication that relies on clickbait these days.

It would be much more useful if we focused on the way that doctors are getting the laws wrong and setting up special interest groups to promote their own ideas, that are kind of off the wall in the first place. They need to be called out for that.

Doesn't make as good a story, though, so propublica focuses on the conspiracy theory type stuff, letting them off the hook.

It's not good for society and propublica needs to be called out for the sensationalism that they make their money on.

@Kierkegaanks The problem is, a whole lot of people have really weird ideas about what a trump presidency would mean to the Ukraine, just as they had really backwards ideas about what a Trump presidency would mean to nato.

It ends up being an exercise in question begging.