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
A lot of the country regards California as a basketcase, promoting bad policies and demonstrating extreme mismanagement.
At the least the governor is a very polarizing figure.
My claim is that he got a boost by the indictments. The graph shows an uptick around the indictments, arresting the downtrend in his popularity.
I mean this stuff is widely reported and tracked among conservative media, which is largely what matters, but you can also see it reflected in the RCP tracker...
It seems to me his message was the opposite of inciting violence, telling people not to react, to hold, and not to do anything that could be portrayed as aggression.
Outfits reporting that he's inciting violence through a tweet saying not to get violent are misleading their readers.
https://twitter.com/RepClayHiggins/status/1666978397027803142
Wow, if a person is looking to the Supreme Court to establish rights, they're really not understanding the design of the US government.
No, the Supreme Court is not there to establish any rights. That's a job of the democratic process in the US representative government.
The Supreme Court merely recognizes the rights established by the other branch, is beholden to the other parts of government.
Propublica really does a disservice misinforming the public about key issues of basic civics.
So the headline is a bit misleading: it's not that Congress *can't* touch Jack Smith but that with partisan control split between the House and Senate they will almost definitely refuse to pass legislation that might interfere with his work.
So NOT the result of a right wing wanker. Just people watching what they want to watch.
I think you just haven't been engaging with the conservative world to watch how it's been changing course to back Trump after the indictments.
Spend more time listening to them and you'd see this process playing out.
Just to cite one indicator, you've seen how many Republicans have signed up to run against Trump? That's because his position was so weak as they made their plans and brought on campaign support.
Trump's recent surge toward the presidency wasn't supposed to have happened, and the folks running against him are hoping it's temporary, but with more indictments he's only gaining that much more backing for his presidential run.
Yay..
Sounds like you have not been listening to mainstream conservatives lately.
If you tuned in to talk radio in the last year all of the major conservative radio shows had been throwing Trump overboard before the indictments.
At this point they are trying to figure out how to deal with him being back on the playing board when they know that he's a liability but because of the indictments their audiences are pushing for him to be president.
The guy was over. All of the mainstream conservative outlets we're talking about him as a relic from the past. But these moves reinvigorated him, exactly as he would like, and making him a real possibility for being president again.
I know, it's infuriating to listen to mainstream conservative outlets, but I do it so other people don't have to. And yeah, they were all dunking on Trump as a hasbeen until this reinvigorated his presidential run.
If you listen to polling or mainstream conservative media you would get a very different picture.
Trump's launch of his reelection bed was met with a very striking thud. Mainstream conservatives spent weeks talking about how it was a letdown, how this guy was not worth paying attention to anymore, how he was yesterday's news.
And now these developments have turned him into today's news, breathing life into his struggling campaign.
So many conservatives were happy to be done with him and to move on. But thanks to these prosecutions he has a legitimate chance of becoming president again.
Yay.
Ha, through letting him have a good shot at being president again? No thanks.
He had two years wasting away on the golf course and his polling numbers weren't looking particularly good except for these renewed efforts that get him back into the headlines.
We were done with him. He was on his way out. But apparently we decided, no, we want to keep him in the story, to keep him a threat to our system of government.
It didn't have to be this way, but it is the choice that Biden made, so okay.
The thing about the limelight is that the person wanting the light isn't in control of it. It's not his choice. We are the ones who decide for ourselves whether we want to keep giving Trump attention or not, playing his game or not.
And so with this prosecution our society is choosing to give him more attention, and we absolutely don't have to, but we are choosing to give him more attention and promote his re-election bed, validate his story that he is selling to his voters, and we are voluntarily choosing to make it more likely that he becomes the next president.
I think we should really think twice about doing that.
We should really think twice about whether we should keep giving the guy that attention and potentially power.
Personally I would rather this story end with him wasting away sadly on a golf course, ignored, crying about it, not being a martyr with his claims confirmed. But that's just me.
I still think that people are overstating the criticality of this.
If Trump heads off to play golf in obscurity, probably being pretty disappointed and not having the limelight anymore, that is a better outcome than some of the alternatives, including his being reelected president.
This is a tricky situation.
Well that's why the US legal system has appeals.
US Politics
Whataboutism?
@J12t@social.coop
Sounds reasonable.
US Politics
We've already seen Trump get a significant spike in the poles and seen Republicans lining up to support the guy in response to charges being leveled against him.
Again, do you want another Trump administration? Because this is how you get another Trump administration.
Yeah Biden can choose weather or not to prosecute Trump. That such a prosecution makes it more likely that he becomes president is definitely one consideration that Biden has to weigh has he considers whether or not to move forward with prosecution.
Like I said above, personally, I think Trump does more damage as president than he does out on a golf course crying about his own obscurity.
US Politics
The president is entirely free to choose to prosecute or not prosecute based on whether he believes it's for the best. Prosecutorial discretion is part of the job of leading the executive branch.
Every single day in this country there are crimes that aren't prosecuted for a whole host of reasons.
Executive branch officials are given the authority to decide which cases to follow and which cases to let go based on all sorts of factors before them.
So yes, Biden absolutely could choose not to prosecute Trump on the grounds that we don't want to validate his victim narrative and promote his presidential ambitions.
That's one of the responsibilities of a president.
US Politics
Well just to underscore what I pointed out before, this prosecution supports his bid to become president again.
Personally I think that would be a pretty big loss.
Which direction is the bigger loss, to allow Trump to go play golf and fade into obscurity, or to have him back in the White House?
I think this link might help answer your question.
ActivityPub has a lot of different moving parts and different platforms may implement different subsets of the standard. Fundamentally maybe it is basically different UIs, but still it's different UIs working with different parts of the standard.
So here is an example of how one platform, Mastodon, translates parts of the standard into its interface.
For example, the document shows that what Mastodon refers to as a toot is what ActivityPub refers to as a status (or something like that, this is from memory).
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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