volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
There's the running question of how #Harris could be managing to perform so badly that she can't run away with the election against such a broken candidate as #Trump.
Well, the interview last night answers the question: she's either incapable or unwilling to connect with half the country.
That interview would have been a slam dunk for a competent candidate. She blew it, providing a TON of fodder for #GOP speakers to bash her, and they're having a field day pointing it out today.
The #DemocraticParty is to blame here. By skipping consultation with their voters and instead jumping right to this obviously weak candidate, the whole country is now saddled with this mess.
Well, I guess we'll try again in four years.
@MusiqueNow you say he's innocent, but court after court reviewed the guilty verdict, as they must in the US, and didn't find substantial evidence that it was incorrectly decided.
That group of politicians does the public no favors undermining the justice process like this.
Unscathed? She is getting roundly hauled over the coals today with criticism from the left and the right from that performance.
In fact, the performance is seen as such a disaster that even Trump supporters are begging people to watch the interview in full. It was that damaging.
@Nonilex he didn't cut off answers, he cut off non sequiturs that avoided the question, as he tends to do in his interview.
Depressed Harris to actually answer the questions instead of wasting time with more more of the deflections that she's become pretty criticized for.
@Nonilex but she looked like she utterly melted down and was not only unable to answer the questions but actively refusing to answer the questions put to her.
Yeah, she reached a new audience, but boy she looked bad and unable to do the job. That's not a good thing for her.
@yuribackinthehood@kolektiva.social
Well the weird thing is that we agree on the facts, but what you're expressing above deviates from the thing that you just said.
You described the owners, so the fact is they own the property, so we have the same perspective on that. And then you described violations of their property. So they're being violated, just in the story that you tell.
There's no propaganda there, there's just the story that you're telling, the perspective that you're laying out.
So I'm agreeing with you and highlighting that violation.
@mishi@kolektiva.social
Make-believe problems? Harris confirms that the border is a problem.
She's been emphasizing that a lot lately.
@stanstallman you started off so well citing sources, but then you just made a bunch of claims without citation.
@yuribackinthehood@kolektiva.social No, that's not how that works. Capitalism is not built on colonialism, arguably the two are in conflict as colonialism undermines the process of building capital, destroying the investments people have made in the areas that are being colonized.
So you're confusing not only apples and oranges, but apples and, I don't know, people who eat apples. The two are opposites.
And from there you go on to refer to some tired lines that are pretty unrealistic, backed up at best by analyses that are all too often based on misunderstandings of how modern finance actually works.
For example, confusing cash on hand with estimated valuations of property that isn't on the market. Huge difference. And yet a difference that is regularly overlooked by sensationalized headlines and politicians trying to score points.
The rich are hoarding the resources? No. Why would they? They lose out if they hoard the resources! Under capitalism, the rich have worse standards of living if they hoard resources, and that's exactly why they don't in the real world.
Even though special interests love to play that card.
It's not real, and it wouldn't make sense if it was, if you think about it for a second.
What's a rich guy going to do with a truckload of bauxite in his living room?
@lovelylovely as an American, I actually spend quite a lot of time listening to international reporting about the US in part to see why they come to the perspective that they come to.
And reporting from outfits like the BBC on US events is actually pretty awful. It really constantly misses things like the differences between how the US government is set up versus parliamentary systems, how the parties function, how the voting system functions, and that's not even getting into details about what happens day to day.
As I listen to such international reports, it's not surprising at all that the US is baffling to people overseas: The reporting that so many overseas are being exposed to is just outright ignorant as to how things happen in this country.
People overseas are confused because so much overseas media reports stories that are confused.
@HamonWry Oh we should be clear, Trump was convicted for falsifying business records, and his main excuse seemed to be that he was too damn stupid to understand business records.
So what's the point of paying more hush money? Well, if the guy is so damn stupid that he screwed up those business records in the first place, well he's not the brightest of guys about whether to pay more hush money or not.
If only we had been portraying Trump as this level of loser for all of these years, he might not be even close to becoming president again.
@HamonWry Oh we should be clear, Trump was convicted for falsifying business records, and his main excuse seemed to be that he was too damn stupid to understand business records.
So what's the point of paying more hush money? Well, if the guy is so damn stupid that he screwed up those business records in the first place, well he's not the brightest of guys about whether to pay more hush money or not.
If only we had been portraying Trump as this level of loser for all of these years, he might not be even close to becoming president again.
@realTuckFrumper If you watch the clip, the MSNBC host here misrepresents what actually happened in the clip that they themselves showed.
The Fox News host didn't refute what Harris said, and so no, it wasn't a selective edit as a way of refuting it. And he was clear about that. Harris ignored that, though, and she went off as if she didn't understand what was going on.
The host was clear, this was Trump's response in an earlier interview. That's it. And the host tried to clarify that to Harris because she didn't seem to understand that the first time for some reason, but she steamrolled ahead.
And then MSNBC tries to frame it as if they caught something happening, but that's not what was happening in the first place, so it doesn't portray MSNBC in a great light either.
@yuribackinthehood@kolektiva.social
Well no, if they are taking property from someone else, violating that person, that's an entirely different situation.
When these people are violating someone else's rights, that's violence against that person, not against the violators.
Those people committing the violation of others, they're capable for that, for what they're actually doing. They're in the wrong.
The property owner didn't make these people homeless. He can't be held responsible for what he didn't do. It gets into these silly double negatives where we're talking about how he didn't not give these people housing, and so what he didn't do contributed to their situation, whether he could have or could not have done the thing that he did not do.... And it's just jumping through hoops at that point.
Let's help these homeless people out. Let's help provide them with housing. Seems like a good idea, a very pro-social action to take.
But at the very least, let's not indulge their violation of another person for what he didn't do, and thus escape accountability for the ones who probably should have.
@yuribackinthehood@kolektiva.social there's no landlord of a person who doesn't have a place to live.
You'd be punching someone for something they didn't do, punishing someone for something they didn't do, and that's really worth emphasizing.
It shows how off base such responses are, how they tear down instead of building up, and don't end up helping anyone in the end, they just hurt, just harm.
And it can end up having negative consequences on exactly the people that you probably want to be helping.
@EconUS anyone thinking that Texas can possibly represent the entire rural South really doesn't understand the diversity of the South.
@yuribackinthehood@kolektiva.social you say a system is what it does, but then you go on to describe not what the system does but these abstractions that go beyond what the system does into proposals about motivations and ideas of the future and, well, really borderline conspiracy theories.
Yeah, I agree that a system is what it does, and I would emphasize that very point, but then I emphasize that you're not actually following through with that approach here.
@noodlemaz Yes, exactly, so that's why it's so important to identify where the actual harm is coming from.
Just for example, a physical attack from the police absolutely needs to be dealt with by laser focus on the police, holding them accountable for doing harm, fixing the police, and I wouldn't want any distraction from that by trying to blame homelessness itself for the harm.
All too often the abstract ends up distracting from responding to the literal when that needs to be what we do to move forward and improve things for everyone.
Plus, sitting down with opposition is also a way to sharpen your own skills in general, to practice answering the charges of the opposition in other venues where the people may be more receptive and more interested.
Arguably that's part of why Vance came across so well lately. He's fielded the same opposition exchanges dozens of times, so now he's polished at handling them.
It was a mistake that Harris has not had that exercise, particularly with the lack of primaries through which she would have been forced to work out.
@virtualbri but they do that whether or not she sits down for Fox News, so that doesn't make a difference.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
