volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@drahardja sounds like you've been pretty misled about stuff that happened during Biden's term.

No, SCOTUS didn't decide that a president is immune from prosecution. Quite the opposite, the ruling specifically called for prosecution to continue as it sent the case to continue in the lower court. So much for immunity, it promoted prosecution!

But what the case did say was that Biden could not act like a fascist prosecuting people for invalid charges. The ruling was against Biden overstepping his power illegally.

When you get the facts of the Biden administration correct, it's a very different picture.

And he was rejected because he abused his powers in office. It's not that Biden should have used his power to stop Trump: it's that Biden did use his position in ways the public rejected setting the stage for a Trump comeback.

@adwright again I'm pointing out that your approach isn't going to convince people who aren't already on your side. It comes across as a nutty conspiracy theory, which I bring up to point out that a whole lot of nutty conspiracy theories are based on literal fact.

There are a whole lot of flat Earth conspiracy kooks out there who correctly point out that they're just stating fact, even though they're jumping from fact to weak conclusions.

All of this musk is a Nazi stuff can be counterproductive, taking the attention off of the guy and his misbehavior and instead putting the attention on the guy yelling Nazi.

@londubh No the US would challenge a hitler-like figure. The US itself was built with protections to guard itself from such a person.

We are not in uncharted territory here. We know exactly how the machine works to address these concerns.

We just have to learn about them and make sure we elect representatives who will put them to use.

@bobboyle Elon Musk is a troll that likes to get reactions out of people.

Congratulations, you gave him what he wanted.

@emptywheel.bsky.social

I don't think you quite got to the right conclusion.

You're still talking about choosing different symbols to elevate, choosing between symbolic issues, worrying about attacking one symbol and allowing a different symbol or interpretation to rise up, and at that point it's still just rolling in the mud. Maybe a different part of the mud patch, but it's still just rolling in the mud.

That's not the way to win the contest. It plays into their strategy.

The way to win is to ignore all of this and focus on substance. Did Musk make a Nazi salute? Who cares! Let's talk about the actual content of executive orders released today. Let's talk about substance.

You're being drawn into their rabbit hole and fighting a complicated argument about interpretations of symbols, and that just distracts from talking about matters of solid fact that actually impact people substantially.

@adwright firstly, keep in mind that the way you phrased that reply, you sound pretty crazy. You should be aware of that if you want to actually convince anyone of anything.

But to the point, you can oppose the guy by saying he's a toxic troll, and that would cover everything that you're complaining about. If you start going down this road of trying to prove his Nazi motivations or whatever, well now you are painting yourself into a corner where your arguments are a bit out there and you'll need a lot more proof to defend them... but why? You end up undermining your position by choosing a tougher row to hoe.

He's a troll. Let's eject him as a troll. That's enough to get to the conclusion.

@unusual_whales It's so funny how many Biden spokespeople said over and over that there was no such freeze on weapons.

And this is how they lost.

@danwentzel they could say that, but it would be undermining democracy if they make such an announcement.

The democratic process elected Trump. I'm sorry the DNC put forward a candidate who was so bad that she lost to a convicted felon who lies all the time, but they should probably do better.

In the meantime, while they're working on fixing their own house they should not undermine the rest of the country by refusing to engage in the governmental processes.

They should build up, not tear down.

@ewolff you know you're playing into his hands with that sort of thing, right?

He tries to get reactions out of people, and oh look, you gave him the reaction he was looking for.

Somewhere he's really enjoying being in your head.

@adwright He's well known to be a troll.

Why go any farther than that?

@pluralistic see this is the key captive users and no constraints? That's a contradiction. If the users are captive that's a giant constraint!

No, this is the nonsense that people post around here about BlueSky, and we should identify the silliness.

In many ways that platform is better than this one, and it's worth recognizing that, not fighting against it with arguments so don't really make sense.

@debacle No, BlueSky is out there and distributed. It's not centralized or walled.

In fact this is one of the beauties of it, it takes down some of the walls around instances here on this platform.

It's LESS of a walled garden.

@pluralistic

@BlueBeachSong but does she celebrate the functioning of the government that she has sworn to uphold?

@tehuti88 The most important thing is to realize that the president only implements the laws passed by Congress. THEY are really the source of the problems, and we keep reelecting the same congresspeople that fail us over and over again.

We need to stop. We need to boot out an awful lot of congresspeople and not let them escape accountability by pointing to the other branch of government.

Nothing's going to improve so long as they keep passing bad laws.

@left_adjoint I would just emphasize that the main thing people can do about the federal government is be careful about who they elect as representatives.

So often people are so obsessed with the presidency that they don't even know that they are reelecting representatives that are promoting the exact situations that they regret so dearly.

You're right, drinking down despair is not useful. Educating yourself on what your representatives are doing might just be, though, because you might find out you're re-empowering people that are failing you.

@TCatInReality I imagine at least some labor officials are familiar with the story of killing the golden goose...

@JackTheCat Well that's not true.

That's not how the federal government works, and if Whitehouse really believes this, if he's not just lying to the public, then he really should not be senator.

@JackTheCat@mastodon.scot Well that's not true.

That's not how the federal government works, and if Whitehouse really believes this, if he's not just lying to the public, then he really should not be senator.

@Bad_Banner What?

Trump and his supporters have embraced policies of supporting legal immigration.

On the other hand, Democrats ran a candidate so terrible that she was beaten by a felon who is roundly regarded as an untrustworthy lying scumbag.

So yeah, people who voted for Trump can certainly be proud of immigration in their family history. I would encourage them to talk about that because it builds up norms that support immigrants, which seems very healthy.

And Democrats need to get their acts together.