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
@jack_daniel Oh he was definitely Democratic in his voting record after his stroke.
So that's not the solid correlation.
He only started moving toward the right after he was getting better, and after Democrats got really dumb with their political strategies, shedding support, seeing Trump get reelected, and having voters award the political branches to the Republicans.
He's not, though. Trump is not particularly engaged with the world, he only knows what his handlers tell him, so he's probably not even aware of this stuff.
Conservatives aren't shaking in fear. They don't care.
In fact, conservative campaign offices are already mining this stuff for out of context clips they can play in their next campaign commercials.
They welcome this. These protests are playing into their hands.
And I wish y'all wouldn't support them like that.
@anna_lillith so the key is to start cutting them down and using them for housing material where they can keep the carbon sequestered!
@light Oh yes, quite a lot!
And it's already been happening.
Already for the last week Trump supporters have been talking about these upcoming protests as illustrating how out of touch their opponents are (their words, not mine) and how generally irresponsible they are.
Today I'm listening to numerous speakers saying things that are going to be used in sound bites for upcoming campaigns, everything from standing politicians not seeming to know what the laws in front of them are through general notions of priorities of the left that don't really resonate with most of the country.
There is going to be videos of people in inflated costumes with political candidates saying, is this really how you want your country governed? With the sense that these protests show non-seriousness of democratic candidates.
And to be clear a lot of it will be dishonest. I imagine even this week there will be politicians from the right floating stupid ideas like, we had to spend a ton of money to pay for security for these protests. But, that kind of messaging resonates with a lot of people.
Yes, there is a ton that is optically bad.
These protests might have felt really good to the participants, they might have been a great party, but on the whole I expect that they will have worked against their cause.
@light No it looks to me like he absolutely did!
That doesn't make him a king, though, because he's still subject to oversight from the people that we elect to Congress. We elected and reelected and reelected a bunch of congresspeople that backed his move.
That doesn't mean he's a king; that means we elected a bunch of people we should not have elected, and we need to stop reelecting those people.
A lot of these people going out to these stupid protests are going to go ahead and reelect the exact congresspeople who are supporting Trump's illegal actions.
So what's the point.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters are going to use optics from these protests in their campaigns to win over voters to their side.
Yeah, Trump is violating laws like so many presidents do. It's up to us to elect congresspeople that will will stand up to him, we don't, so we get what we voted for.
We need to change. These protests are if anything promoting this really bad status quo.
No I think you have that wrong. The right was able to use Ferguson protests and BLM as a talking point, and that helped get Trump reelected.
These protests are feeding into right-wing rhetoric. I know that's not the intention, but that's the reality. These protests don't look good to the general public, and politicians are able to use them in their campaigning against progressive causes.
That is just the reality of media.
Are you kidding? A whole lot of the blue politicians got us into this, and reelecting them only continues the mess that our government is.
Vote blue when blue gives us someone worth voting for.
Otherwise blue is only making things worse.
@cdarwin If the president thinks his rule is absolute then he wouldn't bother with the courts. But he is.
So all of the politicians trying to buy into that line, they're just lying and manipulating to public.
We need to stop reelecting these ineffective liars.
Listening to #C-SPAN covering the #NoKings rally in DC, #BernieSanders is giving his speech and completely misrepresenting what the legislation before the Senate includes.
Can somebody please poke Bernie and have him actually read the legislation that he is voting against? He's holding up funding for the federal workforce, holding up all of those paychecks, based on his misunderstanding of what the legislation actually says?
He is a very powerful person who is harming a lot of people and putting it on display right now. Maybe it's time for him to retire. Maybe other powerful people need to stop propping him up.
But mainly, we need to call out powerful people like Sanders who are really doing a lot of harm to a lot of people here.
If he's unable or uninterested in understanding the legislation that he is supposed to be working on as part of his job, then he needs to step down, not promote misinformation to his echo chamber at these silly protests.
I don't know why anybody takes #BernieSanders seriously. He's been completely out of touch with reality for years.
Right now he is complaining about the shutdown of government that he's been voting for. Has anybody told him how his votes work? Does he care what's happening in reality?
It's like his handlers just stand him up so he can spout rhetoric that they benefit from.
The state of #USPolitics...
Being opposed to kingship remains an easy test to pass.
The issue is not being opposed to kingship. The issue is that people can't agree about the facts of what is happening on a day-to-day basis, so they can't agree on whether there is a king.
Everybody is opposed to kingship. Arguing about that is pointless. Or worse, it's used to promote bad things.
The disagreement is in who is being a king, factually.
@cdarwin It's not up to Trump.
Senators are holding up progress on funding, not Trump.
Wrong branch of government.
More importantly, stop reelecting the same ineffective representatives to Congress.
The rest of this is just an act of going out and having a party. If you go and reelect the same folks who have failed us in Congress, none of this matters.
@everton137 other way around: it's relatively decentralized because it doesn't centralize around instances.
BlueSky decentralizes down to the users, and that fosters an attitude that makes it more attractive than having to rely on the dictates of the people running the instances.
No, Trump is not in utter panic. He doesn't even really know what's going on in the world, so why would he be?
The people surrounding Trump wouldn't tell him what's going on if it would put him into a panic.
That kind of report is just echo chamber talk. It is as divorced from reality as Trump is.
DC #NoKings speaker being broadcast on #C-SPAN:
They say we are living in an echo chamber, but [goes on to say a bunch of ignorant stuff proving that he is living in an echo chamber]
This is why the whole event is so silly. It is an expression of the echo chamber, really proving the point and buttressing the arguments of their opposition. They are playing into the hands of their opposition.
@chad What lies have you heard them spreading?
And what data do you have about how popular the movement is?
From what I've heard Republicans aren't so much lying as just ignoring it.
The answer is that people have completely different sets of beliefs of what is actually happening in the world as they believe whatever stories are circulating in their own echo chambers.
For example, in this case a whole lot of people believe that it's not still continuing. Their sources of news simply report that it's not continuing, so they believe it.
This is a common pattern these days. They (whoever "they" are) simply operate with a set of information that doesn't quite match with reality, but given that set of information, it makes sense.
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
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