• 1 Post
  • 42 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 18th, 2023

help-circle
  • Part of the issue is that Donald Trump isn’t using these words in any factual sense, but in a purely rhetorical sense. He is utilizing them as boogeyman terms to scare people away from Harris. It doesn’t matter that’s it’s not factually correct because average people don’t know otherwise.

    That brings me to the other part of the issue, which is fascism is notoriously difficult to pin down. Umberto Eco talks about this in his essay Ur-Fascism. He notes that fascism isn’t actually dependent on one or two attributes, such as complete totalitarianism, or support of capital, and doesn’t necessarily have a single religious philosophy. He notes historical examples of things like anticapitalist fascism, religious fascism, atheist fascism, etc.

    Still he notes 14 qualities that are typically associated with fascism

    • The Cult of Tradition
    • Rejection of Modernism
    • The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake
    • Disagreement is Treason
    • Fear of Difference
    • Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class
    • Obsession with a Plot
    • The Enemy is Both Strong and Weak
    • Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy
    • Contempt for the Weak
    • Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero
    • Machismo
    • Selective Populism
    • Newspeak

    Much of these are relevant to Trump’s campaign, even more than I had anticipated. Definitely give it a listen or check out the Wikipedia page, it’s a worthwhile half hour just to hear the perspective of someone who actually lived through Italian fascism.













  • Dude, just because someone thinks another Democrat has a better chance at beating Trump doesn’t mean they are a “both sider.” Nor does it automatically make them an idiot. That is just reductive and dismissive on your part.

    No one is saying Biden is just as bad as Trump, or Democrats are just as bad as Republicans. We’re saying Biden doesn’t have a chance at beating Trump and we need a stronger candidate.

    They’ve got a candidate that can literally be criminally charged and it won’t matter. We’ve got a candidate who voter will stay home for because he’s old. That’s a huge problem.


  • Exactly, we all know Trump has said lots of pedophilic things, but unfortunately there is no hard proof ( yet – I’m fairly convinced there is some, out there), so a prosecution couldn’t really do anything.

    But it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. The dudes a convicted felon. It doesn’t affect his electability. Yeah, the news should report on it. But they can’t call him a pedophile outright, and anything short of that just bleeds into the rest of the unsavoury reports about Trump for the past 10 years. Republicans just don’t care, or believe its all some Democratic plot or some shit.

    Meanwhile, pressure from Biden’s own party for him to step away from the nomination? That shit is wild (in terms of news story), it’s legitimate, and it will get clicks. Any self-interested news organization is going to report on that, because it’s what is going on, and it is juicy.

    Pandoras box has been opened, Democrats can’t just ask voters to shut their eyes and ignore the drama. Something needs to be done. Joe Biden has tried to alleviate the pressure, but it didn’t stick. We’ll have to see what happens at his new conference today, if it isn’t him stepping down, already.


  • Because that’s what Democrats in Congress are talking about? Because that conversation has historical and political implications for Democrats? Because donors are dropping support for Biden daily? That shit is pretty important news when it bears weight on who is going to be the Democratic nominee. How could they not run those stories? That’s not to say the mainstream media is some completely benign institution, or that it isn’t going to go against it’s own interests (ie, profit, or making money in general), or that every article about this situation has been warranted (like, any that call for people to not vote or vote third party are definitely in service of Trump’s campaign). It absolutely serves corporate interests, which align with its own, for the most part.

    But Trump being a convicted felon and yet-to-be-convicted pedophile has zero implications for Republicans and, evidently, his chance of winning the election. His electability isn’t tied to his morals. We learned this in 2016. Whereas some Democrats have standards, some have fears of their own electability if they double down on Biden, and others believe that sending Biden against Trump is political suicide for the Democratic party. I’m not sure how any of that is the media’s fault.