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
@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.
@solarbird You're missing the important part of the sentence, though.
He vows to be a dictator for one day? But the one day is meaningless? No, the dictator part is meaningless, because the presidency doesn't give anybody that choice.
It's not like on inauguration day the elected president fills out a piece of paper saying whether he's going to be a dictator or not. No. By definition, the president is not a dictator.
All of these people running around with their hair on fire are just peddling the same sensationalized nonsense that is just not a part of the US government.
Now, Trump and his allies say that he was joking and making fun of, well, the sort of people who say this sort of stuff. It's probably true, you're playing into his joke, playing into his strategy. I wish you wouldn't fall for him like that.
But even if it wasn't a joke, then he's just more pathetic and more impotent because he doesn't have that choice.
Either way, Trump's a joke. And he needs to be treated that way, because taking him seriously is half of what got him elected.
@evan No, it's kind of a misunderstanding of the global order.
The global order was not set up to end the human rights catastrophe in Gaza and Lebanon, at least not in this way. In fact, such a setup would be unlikely to work at all as it would violate international sovereignty.
So it's the wrong tool for the job.
@samohTmaS you almost got it, but you forgot about the people.
Trump and congresspeople are empowered by the people of the country based on where they are coming from. This is democracy at work.
The election of Trump, and the potential reelection of Trump, and the elections of the numerous representatives is a result of a population that wants those people to represent their interests. So the question is, how has the institution failed those people so badly that they want to elect folks like Trump.
The path back to sanity is to engage with fellow voters and figure out what they want and how we can address them in a sane way, so that they don't feel the need to resort to electing these flamethrowers.
But regardless of all of that, which is more of a long-term question, the president still doesn't have such crazy authorities.
It sucks that the people are feeling so fed up with the system that they are electing people to take down the system, but that's a separate issue.
@adhdeanasl that's not a useful analogy.
Imagine you go to checkout at the grocery store and they start trying to diagnose your medical problems.
Trump is running for president, he's running for a political office, he's not running for a checkout or to be a doctor. So why in the world would you compare him to them?
It's a completely different role.
In our democratic process the people are selecting assholes to represent them and run the bureaucracy of government. If the people want a jerk, well, that's how the system works.
That is so different from any of the other examples that you brought up.
(Pardon my French in the following, but I really want to emphasize this)
Trump is running to be the top asshole, the head bureaucrat at the head of a branch of government. He's running to represent the US population, which by the way, contains an awful lot of assholes.
So why wouldn't we expect him to act like a jerk, to represent a bunch of jerks?
@cedar No homelessness is not violence, and any human who sees it that way really needs a better sense of perspective because they are misidentifying the problem that needs to be solved.
They are not being violated. If they treat it as violence then they will find no enemy to attack. There is nobody doing it to them. There is no face that they can punch to resolve the problem.
To sanction or support the treatment as a form of violence is to promote a perspective that is no good for anybody.
No, homelessness does not look like violence. It looks like a problem of getting someone what they need, it looks like a system that has failed to get someone what they need, and so we need to fix the system.
We should absolutely not buy into the idea that it's violence, since that stands directly in the way of fixing the system that is failing them.
Presidents can't use the military against their political opponents on the ground.
If Trump said he was going to flap his arms and fly across the country, would you take it seriously? Of course not. You would point out that he's nuts.
And that should have the same response here.
Presidents can't do that. So don't take it seriously. Use it to undermine him as ridiculous, not as a threat.
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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