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
volkris
boosted
@abesamma Blocking a whole network because we don't like one account seems a bit weird to me though. I don't want to be cynical but I get the feeling some people were itching for a reason to block Bluesky and ICE provided that.
I dislike ICE heavily (and this is an understatement), but if nothing else them being on a common network that is *not* X provides many of us an opportunity to tell them they should reconsider their alignment, rot in hell or whatever else we want to communicate.
US politics, ICE, Bluesky
@miaura which is to say... They would be welcomed on fediverse.
That's just how fediverse works. Yeah, anybody can dislike and want to silence anyone else and promote divisions in the network based on their ideologies, and the different segments will all be different segments of fediverse.
What you're saying doesn't really make sense.
Yeah, a lot of servers might cause ideological parts from other servers based on this stuff, that doesn't mean ICE isn't welcome, it just means that fediverse is built around servers blocking content from other servers that way.
Really, there's no more "Welcome to fediverse" statement than having them dive right into the normal drama around here.
Trump has a small but loud core base that are so deep in an echo chamber that they will sing his praises and vote for him no matter what. But it's relatively small.
Actual electoral success required a coalition that included a lot of people outside of that base, and a lot of people that were just giving the guy a chance. He could have brought them over to his side, but instead he alienated them. It was an unnecessary failure, just like his lost court cases.
Trump and his base cherry pick indicators just hand waving away all of the failures, but in the broader picture he's alienating more and more of the folks that he needed to actually hold on to power.
His activities of the last couple of weeks have only made him look even more unhinged in the eyes of those outside of the echo chamber who don't understand it at all.
@julian Fediverse has no meaning?
I see a whole lot of people that aren't admins, just run-of-the-mill users, who attach meaning to that term, using it easily.
@SouthBaySwingLeft More importantly, stop reelecting the same ineffective candidates that didn't reign in ICE when they could.
No, Bluesky is not a Nazi bar. That's the wrong analogy. It's a communication system.
It's more like the phone system or the internet, or heck the municipal water system. It provides a utility, not some bartender chatting up each patron.
And that's even more so for a distributed social media system. That's the trade-off, without a centralized authority there's nobody to enforce their set of rules on all.
It's important to realize that Trump's people blindly believe they are on the right side too winning bigly, no matter how many signs there are that they are pretty weak if not already underwater, and they will continue to act like a giant movement for as long as they are legally in power.
A group that realizes that it's failing will alter course. Trump's base is out of touch, though, so they are forging ahead.
As usual we should be emphasizing what losers they are to pierce their echo chambers. No easy task, to be sure, but can be done. Unfortunately, too many of us run around as if the opposite is true, though.
And so we feed their egos.
#PJMedia headline: Democrats Are So Screwed and a Former Obama Advisor Just Proved It(the headline itself is a message, of course)#USPolitics
Well yeah, that's how you deal with trolls. Don't feed them.
Gingrich is right, the #Greenland push IS just a bunch of noise, and the best way to sideline #Trump is to point out what a stupid and empty effort it is. He's trying to make waves, get a reaction with the noise, and if you react, THAT is what will have impact.
Unfortunately so far we have pushed the ball by reacting to his noise. It plays into his pattern.
Trump's an idiot who spouts noise. How we react to that noise is up to us. The more we call that out the last impact he will have on the world.
This really isn't hard: someone in #Greenland just needs to scribble on a napkin in crayon that #Trump's in charge now, congratulations big guy, you got it, have a little award show I guess, and then get back to normal business.
All of these meetings and diplomacy are lost on him. You just have to indulge him for a second and he'll wander off.
The nice thing about the US system is that we hold individuals accountable for their own actions. I think this is an advantage over parliamentary systems for example.
So not all in Congress are spineless? Well okay, but we can judge each one to see whether we should reelect them based on their performance. How does your particular representative act?
So I really don't care how they posture, I want to see whether they are voting to make Congress work. Democrats could have taken over the speakership already, they have the votes with just a couple of Republicans from the slim majority.
But they tend to be pretty spineless since they haven't.
@PaulDitz based on what do you say they know they are losing?
@johnlogic The problem is that it's up to the people that we elected to Congress, and we elected ed and reelected really crappy congresspeople.
We should stop reelecting these same people as they fail us over and over again.
So long as we elect these people we are getting the government that we voted for.
@ike problem is a lot of these representatives basically sanction the activity through their ineffectiveness, and we reelected them.
There's not much point riding to them, it doesn't really make a difference.
We need to stop reelecting these folks.
But have you seen your Democrat options? A lot of them have been completely ineffective, basically giving a rubber stamp to what's been going on.
volkris
boosted
#ClayAndBuck: these gender communists are using jargon against us #USPolitics #SCOTUS
@ChrisMayLA6 He doesn't mean anything because his brain is spaghetti, so he just just vomits out words because he gets him attention.
And hey it worked with you!
Trump doesn't mean anything. He doesn't know anything he just gets on TV cameras. And then his own base can't agree on what any of it means, and that is the most important clue of all that he doesn't mean anything.
@solarbird You're giving Trump too much credit.
You say they know that of course, but honestly I don't think they do. They just don't know anything.
They're morons that don't know what they're doing. They're just following the idiots who are saying nonsense on talk radio.
Trump only controls one of three branches of one government among so many in the USA.
It's really important not to feed into Trump's megalomania.
No, not really for Trump. He's just following the winds of mainstream conservative media like always.
Remember, anything Trump says follows stuff going around mainstream conservative media about a week prior.
This is significant because it identifies the problem as being in the general population, not Trump himself. He's just the symptom.
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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