I understand why you're frustrated, but you've got to realize that the presence of resources that can break you out of bad thinking doesn't mean it's easy to break out of bad thinking, nor does it absolve those who duped you into the bad thinking in the first place. Cults work for a reason.
Just as an example, consider how hard it is to:
This is just a smattering of ways a path out of broken thinking can be more fraught than it looks. There are plenty more, so even in cases where these specific ones don't apply, that doesn't mean the person in question is intentionally ignorant or malicious.
If you're angry, be angry. I don't judge that whatsoever. I only ask that you be angry at the people deliberately trying to make everything worse, rather than the those who they're tricking. Get mad at the influencers, not the audience.
I agree. My problem now is that people like Tlaib were who I looked to for how things could change, and yet here they are enabling worse instead of fighting for better. I can't square that circle, and it means I'm losing one of the last bastions of hope I had for a better world.
I agree with your second paragraph, and find your third to be understandable (though I would contend that propaganda has been a problem for a long time now and wasn't made meaningfully worse by tech, just different). Where I lose you completely though is this comment's first statement.
Neither of your other points stated here back up a lack of empathy. In fact, they counter it, as you've provided two far better things to get mad at. I hope you haven't abandoned empathy because it didn't change minds, because empathy isn't supposed to be contingent on getting people to agree with you.
I'm aware. My point was that this wasn't a majority even besides that. Not sure why you seem to be phrasing this as a counterpoint, though, given that it reinforces my comment?
I said most of what I wanted to say in this comment, but I'd like to take an extra moment here to point out that you are currently making excuses for fascists.
Putting it bluntly, I don't give a flying fuck how many people voted for Trump – which wasn't the majority, by the way, since not everyone votes – there is no amount of votes that makes "doing fascism" okay. Trump is not a force of nature. He does not get absolved of blame. This rests on his shoulders more than anyone.
I'm so sick and tired of this gleeful throw-people-under-the-bus attitude that effectively dehumanizes people because they "voted wrong," as if there aren't millions of people among Trump's voterbase who were effectively tricked by an entire network of con-men and grifters. As if there isn't a giant oil-baron-funded media machine working tirelessly to convince people of a smorgasbord of lies.
I find it disgusting how easily you and others with similar takes will cheer on the suffering of your fellows. And let the Republican Party off scot-free in the process. Because apparently blaming a bunch of people who – let's be real – by-and-large don't pay attention to politics is apparently more important than blaming the people who're deliberately engineering mass suffering. Not to mention how you're currently partaking in schadenfreude over a problem that's affecting many people you ostensibly agree with and care about! Everybody in America has to deal with the consequences of this bill!
Nobody in the U.S. voted for censorship or for fascism, save an extraordinarily scant few terrible, terrible people. If you decide that vast swathes of people "deserve this" all because of that few, I don't think you ever actually wanted to help anyone so much as you wanted an excuse not to have to care.
The thing is, AOC herself spoke out against this bill according to this article. And I really, really want her to explain this one, as much as I do not expect that she will.
I don't know how in the world I'm expected to have any faith whatsoever in our governance at any level when even our ostensibly most progressive voices aren't willing to block blatant garbage like this.
Update: Welp, late today this passed the House overwhelmingly, 409-2. The only two nay vote were from Republicans Thomas Massie and Eric Burlison.
Hey yeah can anyone fucking explain to me why AOC and Rashida Tlaib voted yes on this dogshit?
She was not an option for vice president.
So that's the set of options you were talking about, okay then. That was not clear.
In all honesty though, my response was somewhat motivated by the articles' defense of Shapiro, which felt less than honest considering how poor he is on the grand scale of things regarding the ongoing genocide. Given your response to ranandtoldthat below though I suspect we don't really disagree much on the Atlantic's not-so-great reporting on the topic, though.
attacking the least genocide friendly of the options
What options? Who does that set include? Because if we're talking all Democrats, then I think people like Rashida Tlaib are significantly better than Shapiro. His two wins are "supports a two-state solution" and "strong disdain for Netanyahu." but beyond that, it's pretty bad. Personally, I don't find much faith in his good statements either, since his actual actions are counterproductive to either of those two views.
I made this post three minutes ago???
Update: He's alive after all.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen has met in El Salvador with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.
SAN SALVADOR (AP) — Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Thursday evening in El Salvador, coming face to face with the wrongly deported man after two days in the country pushing for his release.
The Democratic senator posted a photo of the meeting on X but did not provide an update on the status of Abrego Garcia, whose attorneys are fighting to force the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S.
[...]
Van Hollen’s trip has become a partisan flashpoint in the U.S. as Democrats have seized on Abrego Garcia’s deportation as what they say is a cruel consequence of Trump’s disregard for the courts. A federal appeals court said Thursday in a blistering order that the Trump administration’s claim that it can’t do anything to free Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador prison and return him to the U.S. “ should be shocking. "
Republicans have criticized Democrats for defending the prisoner and argued that his deportation is part of a larger ef
Many of the comments here provide salient criticism you've chosen to ignore. I don't know why you're even here anymore if you're just going to fight everybody and plug your ears when they call you out.
Accusing people of bad faith without reason just because they disagree with you is one of the most disingenuous things you can do.
My opinion of your posts here was already low. This has not helped.
There's also something of a middle answer: Trump & co. don't know where Garcia is because they haven't tried to find him. Why would they? They don't care, and neither does El Salvador.
Several months back, we had a user who would post articles about China almost every day, to several places across Lemmy. They did this for months straight, and eventually some other users showed up for a bit just like them. It took a lot of pushback for them to leave.
It was frustrating as hell, because suddenly I 1) couldn't avoid hearing about China when I went on Beehaw, and 2) started to reflexively ignore any articles about China because I couldn't trust them anymore. They were almost exclusively negative, they'd get posted ridiculously often, and occasionally they'd just be outright racist in the tried-and-true "we considered this acceptable/ignorable until it happened in China" sense. You don't listen to people who post like that. Months after they left, I finally started to be able to actually take headlines about China seriously again, and it was nice!
And now here's you, starting up almost the exact same posting pattern those users had. I don't know if there's a Lemmy instance somewhere that just has a bunch of folks like you and you keep wandering over here, or if you're one of those users back with new account. I barely care which it is. I just really don't want this shit back.
Please go find a hobby.
A statement issued by the Chinese Film Administration (CFA) on Thursday, which we’ve translated using Google,
I'm sorry, what? Is machine translation considered valid journalism now? I'm not saying the translation was outright wrong, but Christ this is sloppy.
definitely isn’t permission for the administration to deport anyone they want with no due process.
I suspect this administration will do it anyways.
In part.
It can't go unacknowledged that bigotry was very involved in the outcome of 2016.
Harris flip-flops on building the border wall
Noting that the title of the article is not terribly good, as the funds in question have already been appropriated for the purpose of the wall and are not new, and are in fact part of a "compromise" bill that also includes funding for asylum lawyers. Not that I want a compromise bill, or don't think she shouldn't push for better, but it's hardly big news.
That said, the real problem lies at the end:
Zoom in: Beyond embracing the bipartisan bill, Harris' campaign has portrayed her as an immigration hardliner in ads.
- One Harris TV ad frames her time as California's attorney general as that of a "border state prosecutor," and includes images of the border wall.
- In another, Harris' team highlights her support of boosting the number of Border Patrol agents.
- Most of Trump campaign ads have attacked Harris for the Biden administration's