#electability fallacy

[ssruis]

Having negative fun right now. Previously unheard of levels of 😑 being reached as we speak. Does someone want to take pictures of a 360 view of tsukasa’s stupid emu5 costume so I can be released from this self imposed prison.

[tomorrowusa]

Looking for a Republican who is moderate on abortion???

Then definitely forget Nikki Haley.

It's a no-brainer: You don't get to be the GOP governor of South Carolina nor a member of the Trump administration by supporting reproductive freedom.

Paul Waldman at the Washington Post shines a light on Haley's views and how she'd act as president. (emphasis added)

[A]nyone tempted to believe Haley is a moderate on abortion should be warned: She isn't. Haley's approach is likely to be adopted by the GOP presidential nominee — even if that person isn’t Haley herself. But that will be just as misleading because no Republican administration will seek a moderate course on abortion. It will adopt an extreme right-wing stance in ways that right now are being ignored. [ … ] Haley, meanwhile, delivered lines she uses frequently, calibrated to sound sensible and sympathetic: "Don’t make women feel like they have to decide on this issue," she said, "when you know we don’t have 60 Senate votes" to overcome an inevitable filibuster of a national ban. She argued that legislation should focus on areas of potential "consensus," such as a ban on late-term abortions and allowing medical personnel to refuse to participate in procedures they object to. [ … ] Haley is on record supporting a national ban, even if she acknowledges it wouldn’t pass. That means her real plan is to enact a series of steps limiting abortion access, leading up to a national ban as soon as Republicans have the votes to enact it. [ … ] The judges President Haley would appoint would also not be abortion moderates; they would almost certainly come from the Federalist Society’s judicial pipeline to guarantee their conservative bona fides, especially on abortion. Even if she wanted to appoint moderate judges (and there’s no indication she does), it would trigger a revolt within her party. In fact, it’s unlikely anyone she appoints to any high position in the federal government with an influence over health care would be pro-choice.

No Republican president in this century has appointed a US Supreme Court justice who supports reproductive freedom. Despite the soothing double-talk we hear from Haley, she would be no different.

Supporting reproductive freedom means voting Democratic in federal elections and never missing an election. If there are any moderate GOP office holders left in DC they would only tell you so in some back alley after scanning the area for listening devices.

So let people know, starting now, that a vote for Republicans (including Nikki Haley) is a vote against a woman's right to choose.

[gender-euphowrya]

i seriously don't get how any country can call itself a democracy without having classes dedicated to teaching how politics work in its schools

[visenyaism]

Gortash redemption wouldn’t work because he does not give a fuck about growing or improving or breaking the cycle he’s putting fireworks into teddy bears for refugee orphans because fuck ‘em. He’s cooked. Ketheric thinks he’s too far gone the sunk cost fallacy already has his hooks in him. It’s over. Orin though. Six months of secure attachments to people who see her as an individual, an introduction to art mediums that are not finger painting with intestines, a trip to the circus (fun), regular exposure to the sun, and a blunt later and she is picking up trash by the river and voting in municipal elections.

[tpwrtrmnky]

debate

[ID: 4-panel "pills that make you green" comic.

Panel 1: A light blueish grey stick figure is talking to a green stick figure.

LBG: "Hey I think the way you debate could use some refinement."

Green: "Oh?"

LBG: "Yeah like maybe check out Dischorse, they're pretty good."

Green: "Dischorse? Didn't they say-"

LBG: "Yes they did but don't worry about that just watch a debate."

Panel 2: Green is sitting at a computer setup with two monitors. On the left monitor is a logo that reads "Disc Hors", without the e, showing a horse head emerging from some kind of disc. On the right is a social media app.

Green: "Well, time to learn debate tactics I guess."

Panel 3: A stick figure with a horse head is slamming their hands into a table while a long chat (transcript below) flies by on the right.

Dischorse: "Look, CouchTruther69, we've been over this already. If your only source is a ten hour rant video then you don't have a source. No, no. Don't try to change the subject again, yes you're trying to change the subject. Behave."

Panel 4: Green continues watching, with the monitors in front of them.

Green: "It's four hours of this? I mean if they're getting paid to do it, sure. Not for me though."

Dischorse: "No, listen to me. We've been over this. That was already debunked ten minutes ago-"

End ID.]

[Chat transcript:

very dark off-white: horse they did a logical fallacy get them. orange: outside is so cool. God damn. games workshop fenrisian grey: horse your take on the season finale of Bexing Mech Politics was reprehensible, I've never seen media literacy this bad. blue: Thoughts on chromomedicalism? I think we should consider it. the imperceptible idea of a color known as "man": hi everyone moss green: If the election comes to microtransactions child versus immortal jeff, I'm voting with violence, actually. fishmoder37: why is everyone in this chat chromatic? where are my grayscale dischorsites at? cyan: lol purple: lmao red: speaking of, when's horse going on hue replacement therapy? in square brackets: user red has been banned for prime directive violation. blue: horse wouldn't look good anyway.

end transcript.]

Start - Previous - Next

[eyrieofsynapses]

To get into nerd territory for a second: most "trolley problems" are a breed of logical fallacy called a false dilemma. Logical fallacies are basically flaws in reasoning, and you'll see them used A LOT in political campaigns. They're good at getting your attention and making you feel a certain way, while completely distracting you from the actual point. False dilemmas are pretty common: it's black-and-white thinking, "us against them," "only one of us can be right" etc. So in some cases, yeah, politicians (or corporations) will use false dilemmas guised as "trolley problems" to get our attention and make us think irrationally.

Except OP is right. Not every trolley problem is a false dilemma. So while it makes sense that our knee-jerk reaction is to say "well, that's impossible, that's a false dilemma!", since we're so used to people using that argument to mess with our heads, the trolley problem is still useful. It's still true to life. Yes, we can't let ourselves be tricked into thinking everything is black and white. But no, you can't always choose your favorite shade of gray, either.

The point of the trolley problem isn't to say "what's the best option?" It's to say, "what's the better of two awful options?" And sadly, right now, our world is full of awful options with very few truly good options. (No ethical consumption under capitalism, right?)

Okay let me try this one again. The Trolley Problem sets up a scenario that sucks to be in. You either kill one guy, or you kill five guys. Nobody likes these options. We all don't want this be happening. That's kind of the point. It's a moral quandary. It's supposed to feel bad.

Now, according to a recent post floating around on tumblr, choosing either of the two options demonstrates "learned helplessness" and makes you a neolib sheep. The only correct answer, the post states, is to reject the question altogether. (Or to change the parameters of the question to include an option that saves everyone, thus eliminating the moral quandary.)

It sounds nice, doesn't it? Fuck this bad situation, we control our imaginations, so let's imagine a situation that doesn't suck. Hah! Bet you didn't think of that!

Here's the problem. Even though I think most situations generally have at least one solution that is both Feasible and Not Terrible, I have to admit that there are some situations (as in, not zero of them) where all the feasible options are unpleasant. This is a natural consequence of living in a world where A Lot Of Things Suck.

But if shitty situations do exist, even if it's super super rare, then it's not unreasonable to ask, "How should we make decisions when we find ourselves in a shitty situation?"

This is the beginning premise of the Trolley Problem. It says, "Hey what if you were in an unambiguously shitty situation? There are many shitty situations, so let's imagine one that is contrived enough to get everyone on the same page regardless of political affiliation, AND really emphasizes the key parts that I want to discuss."

Tumblr says "let me stop you right there. What if instead...we imagined a different scenario that wasn't as shitty?"

Well, okay, but then we're not talking about the same thing anymore. That doesn't actually count as an answer to the problem, you're just changing the subject to a completely different thing.

Tumblr goes on to say, "Exactly. That's the only thing you should ever do when confronted with an ethical quandary. Frankly the fact that you are willing to even consider a scenario that sucks suggests that you are fundamentally incapable of considering less shitty scenarios."

I just want to say I think that's bullshit. I don't think every problem is a trolley problem, but I do think that some problems are a trolley problem. And I think that those problems are worth discussing, even though they don't feel good. The trolley problem exists as a framework to discuss those problems.

Maybe our aversion to difficult decisions has an impact on our ethical reasoning, and maybe we should actually question how our ethical standards hold up under the weight of that aversion. So maybe moral quandaries like the trolley problem are worth discussing. And if you don't want to engage with the quandary, then don't - you don't have to concoct a whole essay about how the quandary is inherently morally bad.

It's possible that what you really want to say is that it sucks when people treat certain situations as trolley problems, when those specific situations actually do contain unambiguously feasible and unambiguously perfect solutions. I would agree with that.

But like. Let's not pretend that you can reduce all of ethics down to unchallenging black and white moralism.

[qqueenofhades]

i registered to vote for the first time ( i feel old) now that im an adult but my state has closed primary elections which i was wondering if you have an opinion about. my initial thought was that its bad because i had to register democrat (rather than my states green party which represents my beliefs more) just so i could vote between democrat candidates, which feels like being pressured into supporting the weird pseudo two party system we have. but then i looked it up and apparently a reason for this is so that people from opposing parties wont purposefully mess up the votes just so that their preferred candidates have an easier time winning, and i think that makes sense too. but is that actually the reason theyve closed it or is it just to force us dem/republican?? cause it feels strange

Okay, look. I respect the fact that you're a young person, and I appreciate that you have not only registered to vote, but plan to vote in the primaries, so I don't want to lecture you too much. That said: I am taking you out for coffee, I am sitting you down, I am looking into your eyes, and I am urgently telling you the following:

The Green Party is a scam. It is a scam. It has existed for decades in American politics as an empty shell corporation weaponizing the good intentions of young people like yourself, because all it theoretically stands for "it's good to save the planet maybe." Which is not something that any non-insane person seriously disagrees with, but there is no world in which that cause is actually furthered by registering/voting Green (you mentioned that you did vote for Democrats, which -- good, but listen to me here, youngun, okay?) It ran Jill Stein in 2016 to siphon more votes from HRC, and this election it plans to run Cornel West, a pro-Russian tankie who positively equated Bernie and Trump, as another spoiler candidate. It does not stand for "protecting the planet" or America in any real way. It has never elected a single senator or congressman, let alone a president. It stands for empty performance/grievance political theater by those people who feel too morally superior to vote for/affiliate with Democrats, often because the internet has told them that it's not Cool or Hip or Progressive enough.

If your main priority is climate/the environment, you're doing the right thing by registering as a Democrat and voting for Democrats. (Also: the adjectival form is Democratic. It is the Democratic party and Democratic candidates, otherwise you sound like the Fox News host who wrote a book literally entitled "The Democrat Party Hates America.") They are the only major party who has in fact passed major climate legislation and have made environmental justice a central tenet of their platform. As opposed to the Republicans, whose Project 2025, along with the rest of its nightmare fascist prescriptions, openly pledges to completely wreck existing climate protections and forbid any new ones, just because we weren't all dying fast enough under their death-cult rule already. That's the main logical fallacy I don't get among both the Online Leftists and the American electorate in general: "the Democrats aren't doing quite enough as I'd like, so I'll enable the active wrecking ball insane lunatics to get in power and ruin even the progress we HAVE managed to make!" Like. How does that even make sense?

On a federal level, the Greens have contributed nothing whatsoever of tangible value to American or international climate policy/legislation, environmental justice, or anything else, because as noted, they don't have any elected candidates and mostly focus on drawing voters away from Democrats. There might be plenty of good candidates on the local or city level, which -- great! Vote away for Greens if they're available, or the only other option is a Republican! But on the federal/primary level, please understand: once again, they are a scam. There is no point in affiliating yourself with them. You're welcome to register Green and vote Democratic, if that makes you feel better or if you prefer having another label next to your name, but once again, I'm telling you in my position as a salty Tumblr elder that they have done nothing but harm to the causes they claim to care about, because "environment" is such a nebulous priority and has demonstrably been hijacked to stop the American government entity, i.e. the Democrats, that is actually working to improve on it.

As for your question: nobody is "forcing" or "pressuring" you to vote in primaries. By your own admission, you made a conscious choice to register as a Democrat in order to vote for Democratic candidates. If you were just a regular registered voter of whatever party affiliation, you would vote in the general election for whatever candidate the primary process produced. But if you are sufficiently vested and committed to that process that you would like to have a say in who is running under that party label, it is not unreasonable that you would register as a member of that party. Nobody has twisted your arm behind your back and made you do so; you are taking a considerable level of initiative on your own. Likewise, open primaries can be both a good and bad thing. This falls under the "the political system we have is flawed, but we can't magically pretend it doesn't exist and act according to our own fantasyland versions of reality" thing that I keep saying over and over. So yes, if you want a role in shaping the Democratic candidates who emerge from a Democratic primary process, you will usually register as a Democrat, and nobody has forced you to do that. It's that simple.

Likewise as a general programming note: I'm trying to cut back on politics a bit right now, because I don't have the spoons/bandwidth/mental health to deal with it. I apologize. So if you've sent me a politics-related ask recently and haven't received a response, I'm not deliberately or maliciously ignoring you; I just am not able to handle it as much as usual and will have to put it on pause. However, I feel as if this is important enough to be worth saying, so, yeah.

[walks-the-ages]

I see people have decided to start demonizing Gen Z as somehow being uniquely responsible for the rise of Fascism in the USA, "gen z needs to reckon with its radicalization problem" like hey OP! Are you going to "reckon with" the people in OUR generation and our parent's generation doing the radicalizing?

"you are not a morally pure and superior generation come to save the world" LITERALLY WHAT GEN Z PERSON HAS EVER SAID THIS?

Like, excuse me??? You're really so caught up in a fake generational conflict you're gonna claim Gen Z is some monolith claiming moral purity?

You're not gonna talk about how literally all of the worlds problems are shoved onto the next generations shoulders from the day they're born and how we, the previous generations, always forcibly uphold them to rigorous, unobtainable standards or villainize them completely??

Get this shitass post off my dash.

You CANNOT blame the rise of Fascism and more specifically Trump winning the election on Gen Z, we are not playing this shitass game again.

YOUR peers in your age group are fascists.

YOUR peers in your age group are queerphobes.

YOUR generation is not immune to radicalization !

You do not get to sit there and act like fascists, queerphobia, and right-wing radicalization is a unique problem among "kids these days".

Joe Rogan is Gen X born in 1967.

Pewdiepie is a Millennial, born in 1989

JD Vance is another Millennial, born in 1984

Donald Trump is a Baby Boomer, born in 1946.

You gonna sit there and tell me Gen Z have a unique problem with radicalization when the people who are radicalizing them from young ages were born in the 40s and 60s and 80s??

Nope.

Shut the fuck up and stop spreading this stupid fucking post.

Try having a productive conversation where you're not blaming an entire generation ranging from 14 years old to 27 years old for every single one of your problems with the politics in this country.

The oldest members of Gen Z have literally had to deal with Trump their entire adult lives, and the youngest were just 6 years old when he became President in 2016.

Gen Z is not a monolith who uphold themselves as being "morally superior to the ones who came before" and if you honestly believe that then you've already succumbed to your own fucking fallacy of blaming "kids these days"

You do not get to blame Gen Z for Trump becoming president again because you're so desperate for someone to blame.

With more than eight million members of Gen Z becoming eligible to vote in the 2024 Presidential election, a new era is coming in politics: the Gen Z wave. In an independently conducted survey by The News Record, 42.9% of college students who engaged in the survey are registered as Democrat, 42.9% as Independent, and only 14.3% were registered as Republican.

[slavicbee]

My new favourite picture from the Slovak Parliament is this picture of Fico (mafia boss newly re-elected prime minister master of obfuscation) and Šimečka (a relatively tolerable guy the leader of the liberal opposition the bravest man in Slovakia)

Please look at his face I can’t I can’t that is exactly how I would react if Fico was so hard pressed in his ass to avoid answering one normal question honestly because he knows that the truth would reveal what a real scumbag he really is this picture is composed as a romantic painting it is my Roman Empire

Context: Fico was supposed to answer some simple questions in regards to the coalition’s political agenda. Since he is physically incapable of normal answers (because he’s a snide, conniving populist) he resorted into the ad hominem fallacy and started insulting Šimečka. If that doesn’t scream “coward” then I don’t know what does.

Source (x) <- Michal Šimečka on Instagram

[kalessinsdaughter]

Anyone who claims they're a pro-pal leftist, yet won't vote for Harris because they think she's insufficiently pro-pal, proves that they don't give a damn about actual real-life Palestinians in Gaza.

They just care about performing moral purity to impress their equally performatively 'pro-pal' buddies.

It's not even nirvana fallacy at this point.

[hashtagloveloses]

i don't think people understand the insane conditions i experienced november 5th 2020 under. it was an out of body experience for a lot of people but for me specifically:

i was working news, in the year 2020. i spent every day looking at the literal horrors and had become a hollowed out shell of myself by the time the election had came around

an early covid infection and probably that fuckshit job gave me a neurological condition where i was unknowingly put on a psychiatric medication without my consent that is jokingly often called DOPE-amax because of how it makes you zooted out. other than being in the hospital for said condition i kept working in said job the ENTIRE summer and fall of 2020, on this medication, ingesting the brunt of the world's news while numbed to the world, stuck in my house because of covid, protest street curfews, and a diuretic medication that made going in the sun difficult so i could barely even go on walks

because of sunk cost fallacy i was one of the few people still watching spn by the final season and actually was caught up and still watched it week to week so i had the CONTEXT when november 5th rolled around

the week BEFORE the election, i had been doxxed by jack posobiec the white supremacist and said news job tried to fire me for it, so i couldnt say anything political online, leading to my only outlet being TALKING ABOUT DESTIEL for days at a time to which said employer spying on my private social media accounts performed a WELLNESS CHECK on me because of the amount of destiel i was posting

the week of the election i was obviously working more than usual while being on call for the election results for days at a time so when a friend said "oh my god check tumblr" my first response was "theres no election results on tumblr"

i was taken off said medication that made me zooted out about a month or so before the election (and being doxxed), so i went into that fateful day with a clearheadedness i had not had in literal months

please imagine experiencing destiel putin election night under these conditions

[asgardian--angels]

I don't talk about this much but I'm just going to say it now.

there's something uniquely vile about being the daughter of a father who is a trump supporter. and not just a casual supporter, a full drank-the-kool-aid moon-landing-was-fake deep red neonazi maga crackpot. because I had to watch that change happen over the last decade. my father, an intelligent, introspective scientist, whose brain has essentially turned to mush and critical thinking skills shriveled up and died thanks to that orange rapist.

He has always loved me, supported me to be whatever I want to be, given me the most opportunities he could in life. He taught me to be kind, and forgiving, and to remember that we are all in this together. And now, while still claiming to feel that way, he vehemently, and viciously, spews hateful rhetoric and vitriol against women, against climate change, against democrats, against all the things I am, against the field of study I've dedicated my life, my soul to. We can no longer even have a regular conversation because all he does all day is sit online and watch trump rallies, listen to 'patriot' podcasts, and troll people on forums. He has nothing else to talk about, and cannot be negotiated with. Him and I used to love having sparring matches of wit, picking topics to debate in good faith. Now, any hint of a challenge and he becomes enraged, petty, and belittling. He somehow maintains this hypocritic fallacy in his mind that he is a good person, that he does everything to make my life better, and that humankind must come together to make a better future. Just, not *those* people, I guess, not them or them or them who aren't even people to him.

And I must occupy some gray area in his mind, Schrodinger's political prisoner. Because even though he knows I am a democrat, that I am a woman who will be affected by these laws, that I study climate change in the work that he supposedly supports, I must not be to him, one of 'those' people. I'm not like 'those' democrats, 'those' women, 'those' climate change cronies. Except when I am, because if we argue, if we discuss policy at all, I am just a girl, under his roof, and I have no idea what I'm talking about - because I'm young, because women aren't capable of understanding His greatness, because Elite Academia has brainwashed me into being a liberal. That my mom and I are ganging up on him, constantly, to paint him as the villain when he's only the victim. He's going to elect the man who will save us all, whether we want it or not. Our say doesn't matter, because we just don't understand.

I miss the father I knew. He was always petty, always ready to poke and prod - he hurt my feelings plenty, but I could deal with it. But I felt he was genuinely good at his core, that he tried his best. Now, I don't know him. I don't recognize him anymore. I've imagined so many times what I would say to him if I could give a speech, or write a letter, where he could not talk back and just had to listen. I don't know if I'll ever get that chance, or take it. But I know he has truly no idea how hurt and betrayed I am, and he wouldn't believe me if I told him. He knows no shame, and he does not apologize.

I'm not looking forward to spending the winter at home with him every day for two months. I don't see how I can look him in the eye. And how dare he look me in the eye after fucking me over.

I love my father, no matter what, and that's why it hurts me so badly to see him change into a stranger, and wonder if there was anything more I could have done to change his mind before this transformation completed. Knowing that it's not my responsibility to argue with him to try and make him see reason when he's too far gone and all it does is make me feel like shit, and yet.

I'm sorry to everyone who may relate to this within their own families. It's probably going to get worse. These men will feel empowered to speak their minds and force you to hear it. They try to provoke you, just so they can say you're hysterical or overreact as women do, when you get reasonably upset. Know that you're not alone in this, Trump has truly torn families apart in ways that I don't think will ever heal.

[some-triangles]

Now that everyone's a little less raw it looks like the Takes are rolling in, so I might as well add mine.

The thing that frustrates me is that everybody knows that the democratic party is a bought and paid for centrism machine, but we forget this every time an election rolls around. It's been the most important election of my lifetime, where we have to set aside petty concerns like the social safety net or not slaughtering people in the middle east in order to vote for the lesser of two evils, for the last 20 years. It is a reflection on how eagerly human beings will divide themselves into factions that this continues to work.

I want you to reflect on that moment of enthusiasm the left collectively had when Harris came on board (do you remember when Walz made that joke about Vance fucking a couch? Good times.) Do you ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

There is a very obvious lesson to be learned from Trump's win here, but it will go aggressively unlearned, because it is not in the interests of the media or the political classes to learn it. The CNN roundtable on how Harris lost because she wasn't pro-Israel enough went out yesterday. Consider how much money is spent on a presidential election in this country - even the nicest, most liberal lobbyists, lawyers, "journalists", consultants and associated professionals have mortgages to pay and mouths to feed.

All I want at this point is a little honesty from the "in my america" lawn sign brigade, a little reflection. All I want is for the next time the democratic party comes around asking for your money, your energy, your attention- just think a little bit about what you've bought from them so far. Think about the current state of the healthcare system, think about who profits from it, think about how much you still spend on insurance and on top of insurance. Think about how the rich get richer under both parties. Think about how this election was decided when business decided they could accept Trump and the democrats were left holding the principles they'd been trying to sell, outbid for them. Tear up the fundraising letters, and on top of that, tear up your medical bills. Kick the sunk cost fallacy out of your brain and admit that this isn't working. I'm not asking you to take the next step, to think about why a message founded on white supremacy and american exceptionalism is so persuasive to so many of us, or why every single person in a position of real power is lying about a genocide that we can see happening on our phones. Just think about where your money has gone and whether there's been a return on your investment.

For those of you who already know what I'm talking about, the story is the same as it ever was. Due to inflation the 20 bucks of mutual aid we pass around should probably be updated to 50, and we should probably find some way of passing it that doesn't involve Peter Thiel, but other than that, business as usual.

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Trump’s love of rolling over opponents through gishgallop is not an arcane secret. Not anticipating and preparing for how the rules of the debate would impact this strategy means either the debate prep was poor or Biden himself could not effectively deal with it.

That Trump would be lashing out with rhetorical weapons drawn from the Apocalyptic New Apostolic universe his followers live full time in is also a predictable thing. There are plenty of people who study this, it’s not that impossible for a Trump larper to get into character and predict some of the esoteric attack lines. Especially since Trump loves to test his material on his crowds and repeats these lines ad nauseam. Anyone who is concerned about the rise of this techgnostic conspiracy culture didn’t hear a single new claim from Trump.

Either Biden was not well served by his debate prep team or it was mission impossible.

That he might need more time to gather his thoughts is entirely fair. Which is why trying to get his zingers off and letting Trump drag him into the mud was a sucker’s game. The pig craves this. It’s his natural environment. Team Expertise Matters was never going to high five Joe for an insult he couldn’t actually get out. Better to take a beat and focus on what matters.

Which of course it’s always very easy to armchair quarterback rather than do the deed in real time.

“This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them. It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective. There are ways to combat the Gish gallop—by calling it out for what it is, among other ways—but Biden retreated to trying to give the three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand. His command of those points was notable, but the difference between how he sounded at the debate and how he sounded on stage at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, just an hour afterward suggested that the technique worked on him. That’s not ideal, but as Monique Pressley put it, “The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.””

— (1) June 27, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

[zoobus]

I know Russian bots were (are?) a controversial topic on tumblr but you guys are seeing the Israeli bots on all the other sites, right? All the super young accounts responding to any and all Palestinian sympathetic posts with vague, borderline irrelevant logical fallacies?

A little concerned that a sizable number of otherwise tech savvy people think astroturfing social media is either a) cumbersome and rare, probably doesn't happen often or b) the delusions of US liberals still reeling from the 2016 election

[spinelessdemsandwhinyrepublicans]

Hey Naomi........

MLK is not running for president.

MLK is dead and has been dead for 50+ years. but if he does ever run for president and gets convicted of paying a porn star to win an election, I promise not to vote for him.

What MLK DID go to jail for  was peacefully protesting for equal rights and parading without a permit, while Donald Trump falsified business records in the first degree (a felony) paying off a porn star with whom he had sex...while his wife had just given birth to his son.

You think you're so smart and clever, yet I think we call this "intentional gaslighting using false equivalence and logical fallacy", but don't let the facts get in the way of your racist, bigoted agenda.

Plus, your guy is also a rapist.

All of this just begs the question: Are you okay?