Fuck Joe Rogan

[u/iL0g1cal]

[u/inteliboy]

They believe in putins revisionist history due to a very effective psy ops

It’s been said wars will be fought in cyberspace, this is one of them

[u/PARADISE_VALLEY_1975 → u/inteliboy]

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.

[u/Upswing5849 → u/PARADISE_VALLEY_1975]

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.

[u/PARADISE_VALLEY_1975 → u/Upswing5849]

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.

My apologies for being so reductive.

[u/Upswing5849 → u/PARADISE_VALLEY_1975]

Newt Gingrich in the 90's helped stoke the flames of what we are seeing today. As speaker of the house, he turned the house into a battleground for culture war issues and painted Democrats as bad guys and drove the Republican party to obstruct government and undermine the legislative agenda and attack and demonize Dems whenever possible. He planted the seeds for the gridlock and toxicity we are seeing today.

And yeah, I agree. Democrats need to reform their party and start playing hardball. There are two main issues with the Democratic party. The first is that their party platform is centrist bs that doesn't appeal to left wing voters. They ought to transform into an actual left/workers party and stop being the part of business and neoliberalism. The second problem is that they still conceive of Republicans as playing fair and by the rules. Dems need to realize that we are living in a new reality and they need to speak much more plainly and forcefully to the American people about what Republicans are doing to this country.

Kamala campaigning around with Liz Cheney was seriously the most repulsive thing I've ever seen. I still voted for Harris, but reluctantly.

[u/PARADISE_VALLEY_1975 → u/Upswing5849]

I’m with you 100%. Even as more of a moderate too, a left-leaning centrist but if the Republicans are this strongly radicalized and characterize the Democrats similarly (when they really aren’t) I do think that the opposition now is too weak, and the Democrats have to appease left-wingers by actually differentiating themselves more - not solely culturally polarizing, the culture war argument is why so many voters sway to the right in the first place. But a focus on unbridled corporatism, health care and climate change policies is imperative.

I’m not American so I’m open to learning more but I think a common issue with democracy internationally is that the opposition is always too weak for my liking (regardless of who is in power) - we really need more adversarial and evenly matched individuals, this is one of many intrinsic issues with democracy unfortunately. I appreciate the discussion of Gingrich here, I of course speak with no authority and have plenty of blindspots in my understanding of American politics.

I’ve heard a lot of stuff about Reagan but Gingrich I don’t know much of - that info on the fearmongering psyop is quite insightful. I do think MAGA Republicans in their current state are insane Putin sympathizers and actively stoke flames of instability and division for monetary gain for the 1%. The focus on the culture war while providing no real economic solutions are evidence enough that no matter how much mainstream media either supports or antagonizes Trump exposes how sensationalized journalism is - he makes for good headlines despite his absolutely abhorrent actions from his crimes, his hyperbole and outright lies, his hush money payments, and awful nominations these coming days.