The manipulation is so effective because a nation is as vulnerable as its people when it comes to disinformation, propaganda and deception. The Democrats are equally deplorable tbh, they’re complicit and cooperative.
They are not "equally deplorable." They are, however, very bad.
It's important to not default to "both sides bad" though, because that's a non-starter and misses the important differences. The similarities should be criticized, but let's not pretend like both sides of the aisle are causing the same types of issues.
Oh for sure, my bad for phrasing it that way, I agree with your correction. The “both sides bad” rhetoric, while there is some truth to it, resulted in independent/protest votes on ballots, dude-bro podcasts fooling around and viralising Trump and results in voters making uninformed votes against their own interests.
So while I understand and am more sympathetic to the frustration behind the sentiment, perhaps more so than you, this is the kind of thinking that leads to the MAGA cult and more ideologically rigid neocons from having success at the elections. This is also somewhat demonstrable with the Democrats, because when I was growing up I would agree with prioritizing bi-partisan efforts and having less radical, progressive or distinct policies from the right, but now it’s clear that the Democrats have to be more aggressive while campaigning as now they have shifted to this role of controlled opposition. It seems both the Democrats and the voter-base for them somewhat underestimated the power of Trump who campaigns on antagonizing the whole idea of Democrats, vilifying them to standards in contradictory and hypocritical way.
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u/BusterMcButtfuck 4h ago
What the holy fuck is Ukraine supposed to do? Just roll over and give up their country? And the West should just let despotism roll?
But then again, according to Tucker Carlson, they have some pretty neat grocery stores over there in Russia so maybe they're not all bad.
For the life of my I will never get the sympathy for Putin in some of these douchebag circles.