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
FWIW I've never been able to figure Lemmy out, How it works, how to engage with it, etc. And so I have no idea why this thread is showing up in my home feed.
Lemmy is weird.
He is doing his job. The members of the House don't want to be in session right now because of what's happening in the Senate, so Johnson's job is to reflect what the representatives want to do.
This is literally him doing his job. I think a lot of people are confused about what his job is, it is to represent the will of the chamber, and that's exactly what he's doing here.
Regardless of your opinion or my opinion, his job is to do what our elected representatives want done. They don't want to be in session, they want the Senate to figure its stuff out, so Johnson is bound by his job to keep them out of session for the moment so the Senate will figure its stuff out.
@Oma_Trisha_F The ball is in the court of the other chamber right now.
The Senate is gridlocked, and there's nothing for the House to do about it.
Calling the House back into session would do nothing to change that situation. It would probably make it worse, it would encourage the gridlock.
This is a problem for the Senate to resolve, not one for the other chamber to interfere with and make even more complicated.
Absolutely! I agree with you completely!
And that's what I said, #Johnson serves at the pleasure of the House, so these conspiracy theories about him protecting Trump don't really make sense. He owes the House, the entire House, his labor. He doesn't owe it to Trump.
Sounds like you're on my side, my man.
@volkris @SeanCasten You're not arguing in good faith here. Johnson owes the *entire* House his labor.
If his focus was on protecting Trump then he would have pushed for legislation that would have done so. He didn't, he repeatedly refused to do what Trump wanted.
No that conspiracy theory is ridiculous. His actions confirm that he wants to stay Speaker and not get replaced by the House for violating the consensus that they should get government reopen.
The House will come back into session. It makes zero sense to say that he is protecting Trump here, because this will happen.
The Speaker of the House acts on behalf of the entire membership and is subject to replacement at any time should he not reflect consensus in the chamber. His motivation is to reflect the wants of the membership or else he'll be unseated.
That is his motivation.
As for why the House in general doesn't want to come back into session, it is to pressure the Senate to stop blocking government funding and pass the bill that they sent over earlier.
Should the House come back into session it would signal that they aren't serious about their own legislation.
The Epstein file issue is pretty ridiculous, the files might not exist at all, and even if they do exist, it's an executive branch matter in the end. No, that is a stupid distraction if you know how the US government is set up.
It's a conspiracy theory, and not an especially interesting one.
@SeanCasten maybe Mike Johnson is Speaker of the House, and his role in the Congress is larger than an obsession with this one guy.
Maybe he's just not as tunnel focused on your thing; maybe his job is larger than that.
It is.
@realTuckFrumper What results should they reward though?
@bikejourno Trump's a moron and doesn't know anything about what's going on. That's how he ended up getting convicted of felonies, he doesn't understand how the world works, so he ends up liable for prison time.
But he didn't blow $20 million up Milei's ass. The treasury engaged in a currency swap.
volkris
boosted
#BrianKilmeade, on #Trump killing alleged drug boaters: If he went to Congress for permission they'd ask for proof that these guys were guilty, and OF COURSE he can't prove it! What proof could there be? So silly! US intel told Trump they were guilty, and that's all we need to know! #USPolitics
Did you just misquote the report by dropping the word "potentially"?
That makes a HUGE difference!
“President Trump is a *potentially* dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy”
I think this misses how Trump thinks.
So little regard for how it would feel to his countrymen? He seems to think his countrymen love this! He has a ton of regard for how his countrymen would feel; the problem is that he's surrounded by people who shield him from knowing.
#Trump operates in a very shielded and coddled world, and that's key to so much of what he does.
So often his actions are a reflection of his being intentionally shielded from facts.
That description is completely, factually wrong about how the process works, even about what *air* is.
Sotomayor seems too busy writing a little dramatized fiction into the record of the Court than actually considering the law before her.
@ike I think it's more that he wants his ass kissed by people he thinks have more power and prestige.
He just likes being sucked up too by what he considers to be a fancy CEO instead of someone he's told is an unpopular politician.
Folks trying to find some kind of long-term plan in all of this seem to be giving the guy far too much credit.
@realcaseyrollins part of it could be mutual animosity with them misunderstanding us and a lot of us emphatically not wanting them around.
But I think a lot of it is also them not particularly caring about this platform in the first place.
So both fire and ice
Yeah, that has been consistently the only solid thing Trump has had to say about the war.
Everything else was just talk, whatever words he could try to string together in the moment between the personal insults.
#BrianKilmeade guest, accidentally admitting something:Trump's policy on the #Ukraine war has been consistent: the war wouldn't have started under...
@broVbro bad news: the president is in charge of enforcing Historic Building protections.
@zeph not normalized--denied.
Genocide in Gaza is so strongly rejected that folks went out of their way to deny that it was happening.
@vivtek well, if anything they're the legal teams that developed the legal record, and the ones bringing the case before the Court, that bear that responsibility.
Courts are to rule based on the information set before them in the case, and it looks like lengthy detentions weren't part of the record.
@docdieterlen more to the point, maybe voters will remember that they elect congresspeople, and they need to stop electing and reelecting congresspeople who are so ineffective.
We voted for this crap. So many just don't know.
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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