I’ve been consuming a lot of political content on both sides lately, but there’s one thing that seems to be common among the Republicans. They always point out Kamala’s shortcomings as a way to justify Trump’s right to be president. They constantly bring up Kamala’s wavering stances on fracking, the fact she hasn’t been to the border, and a lot of other stuff. And i just think to myself “okay, so what? She’s lied. So has Trump though”. Why are republicans making it sound like Trump hasn’t lied even moreso than Kamala?
Maybe the things Kamala lies about are so terrible? I really don’t know. Maybe I’m just too biased. Am i missing something?
That’s what they’ve done for like 8 years now, it’s the foundation of Whataboutism. No matter what you pin on Trump, they’ll jump on some other real or imagined wrong, no matter what it has to do with the conversation, and use that as justification for anything that Trump has done or will do. It’s just a way to sidestep or confuse the issue.
- “Trump is literally talking about becoming a fascist dictator.”
- “Yeah, but in the 12th century, Genghis Khan killed like 20–40 million people, that’s what we’re facing from Chi-na, they’re going to slaughter everyone if we don’t do anything about them and their takeover of China-store Kamala, she’s bought and paid for!”
- “WTF is wrong with you?”
It’s so widespread though which is what baffles me. Even political commentators i used to follow when i was still a young conservative make arguments like this. Surely they can’t all be this dumb.
Surely they can’t all be this dumb.
After a few decades following American politics you’ll realize that yes, yes they can all be that dumb.
Just have a general conversation with your most conservative neighbors about basically anything and you’ll quickly learn that there’s nothing they don’t have an opinion on and their level of ignorance is… Impressive.
Like, dude, you’re 60+ years old and you think hurricanes are a conspiracy‽ The point where they lost their mind was long ago.
Sooner or later you can’t help but wonder if they ever had sanity or they just faked it long enough to have a career/survive until retirement.
Yeah, I remember almost 20 years ago, an older dude telling me that jet fuel can’t melt steel beams, and giving me a copy of a movie called Zeitgeist on CD-R. That dude would be in his 60’s or late 50’s now.
Before that, people like Art Bell made a living on AM radio late at night with things like the Taos Hum and UFO’s and paranormal stuff.
Like, a lot of early US settlers got sent there because they were batshit crazy and a danger to society. The Puritans were kicked out of England, and then they were kicked out of the Netherlands of all places, how does that even happen, before they ran off to America and did a bunch of crazy shit. We think of the “Salem Witch Trials” with horror and then sing “Land of the Pilgrims’ Pride” without batting an eye, who do you even think the Pilgrims were?
So a bunch of criminals and wackos settled the United States, and when they got too crazy for their village, they just moved west, killed the native men, fucked a bunch of children, and made another crazy village. Pocahantas was like 12. And then if someone got kicked out of that village for being crazy, rinse and repeat until you get shit like Mormonism in Utah and Branch Davidians in Waco Texas and bombing the Olympics and speaking in tongues and sponsoring genocide through Biblical Tourism of the Holy Land.
America is a land of crazy people who have been rewarded for generations for being batshit crazy, and have an ability to not see things clearly in front of their face. This is really nothing new.
The things you’re saying aren’t necessarily untrue, but through a lot of the 20th century, immigrants and their children accounted for more than half of America’s population growth. A lot of us aren’t descended from the batshit OGs but from people who made perilous journeys in search of a better life, so goes the lore (and of course the people who were kidnapped and brought here in bondage). Your point stands, but there’s a whole lot of different crazy here besides just settler crazy.
The repeal of fairness doctrine played a huge role in terms of how we got here
Which was the goal.
Oh, most definitely.
Surely they can’t all be this dumb.
They are that dumb.
Surely they can’t all be this dumb.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
–George Carlin
“Nothing is wrong with me. My eyes are open! You need to do your own research and learn the truth. Not from any mainstream sources though, nor any of these so-called experts. Just listen to trump and he’ll set you straight. FOX news reports it like it is. Then you’ll know the truth!”
The strategy is “Never Play Defense”.
The purpose of your post is to “beg the question” and launder a false premise that “she lies” as if the Republicans had any meaningful claims to make in that area. They don’t. Your core position here is flawed.
Yes, trump is worse on all accounts. Always. Put him next to just about any living human being, save for the ones who’s pants he drools on, he’s worse. Without anything close to an equivalence.
I wasn’t laundering any false premises. I was only stating the fact that she has lied. I don’t doubt this because she IS a politician after all. The examples i used are things which the Republicans have brought up as “lies” which i acknowledge, and i assumed everyone also acknowledged. Of course, you’re free to disagree but I wasn’t trying to launder any false premises here.
You just acknowledging the blanket false claims, generalized “lies” and that framing is laundering their false premise. You conceding some sort of an equivalence and saying “so what, she lied” is further laundering their BS. If this wasn’t intentional, I’ll hear you out, but you need to then know that you’re being used as a puppet here then and unintentionally parroting what they’d like you to be saying. And, you should go add a note to your original post clarifying, if you’re sincere.
I will ask you this, “What do you ACTUALLY know here?” You mentioned lies about fracking, sincerely, what are you referencing there? If you don’t have specifics at hand, and you have to now scramble to look something up and double down, time to admit, again even if unintentionally, you are laundering republican bs.
Here I’ll help you:
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Harris did not make her personal position on fracking clear during her only debate in 2020, the general election’s VP debate against then-VP Mike Pence (of “Hang Mike Pence” fame)
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Harris never explicitly stated a personal position on fracking during that debate. She said that Biden, running for president with her supporting as VP, would not ban fracking if he was elected president.
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During the 2020 VP debate, Harris said, “Joe Biden will not end fracking,” and “I will repeat, and the American people know, that Joe Biden will not ban fracking.”
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Back before that VP debate, When Harris was actually running in the presidential primary on her own and could reference her own views on fracking directly, the furthest she came was “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
There is no promise there. No lie told since. You can be in favor of something that isn’t politically feasible at a time, or feel you personally have more to learn. You can say something akin to, “that sounds like the right thing to do, but I’ll need to think about it more” that’s the measured stance of a thinking person.
So what was the lie there? Or again, were you laundering the republican’s bs propaganda to try to normalize the idea that " EVERYBODY just lies, man… so trump ain’t so bad I guess…" - intentionally or unintentionally.
Is that what you wanted me to say? Look man, I’m not a Conservative nor am i even American. Like i said, I’ve just been following the US election, and have been engaging in media from both sides. It’s possible that i have been “tricked” by the Republicans, but i was simply asking a question while both making some assumptions and stating a fact. And with the fracking:
Here’s her saying she is 100% in favour of banning fracking.
Here’s her backtracking on that
So clearly your claim “Harris did not make her personal position on fracking clear…” is false.
Also, where did you get the “everybody lies, so Trump’s not so bad i guess” from in my post. If you go back, and put on your reading glasses to see what i wrote, you’ll see that i was asking why people bring up Kamala’s “lies” when Trump is even worse of a liar.
Backtracking five years later isn’t strictly the same thing as lying. Five years is enough time to learn new information, and she’s being upfront about the change. I’d be more concerned if she were saying right up until the election that she’s going to ban fracking, then suddenly refused to do so as president.
Fair enough then. These are the criticisms I’ve heard from people on the right though. I just wanted some clarification. Thanks!
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the ones whose* pants
I hesitated there, thanks. Do you feel confident with that spelling in this instance? Knew it felt off, but was sort of swimming in my head trying to decipher proper and didn’t want to stop to look it up at that moment.
Who’s = who+is.
Only whose is possessive, always.
There are three practical reasons Trump does this:
- Deflection: Trump doesn’t have an affirmative platform. As a populist strongman, Trump’s platform is situational and entirely based on what his supporters want to hear in any given moment. If health care is in the news, Trump will say his plan is coming in two weeks (it won’t ever come). If immigration is in the news, Trump will say he will build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it (he won’t). But what’s even easier? Focusing on the shortcomings of the opponent’s platform. Any time this works, Trump saves himself an opportunity to be put under the microscope.
- Deflection: Manipulating the media works. Trump knows that the more ludicrous things he says about Kamala, even if the media then starts to talk about how he’s wrong or fact-check him, the focus is still on the thing he said rather than Kamala’s platform. It’s subtle, but it really does focus the media effectively on whatever he says, and use his frame of that issue as the media’s frame.
- Filling the echo chambers and other spaces. We’re in our own echo chambers like never before. Trump says these things so that the people in the right-wing echo chambers have a plausible response to Kamala’s policies, or even just need filler for their broadcast/websites/Facebook groups. Ultimately there is only so much media people can consume every day. If Trump has filled all relevant supporter spaces with his own opinions & framing, there is no time or energy left to explore other opinions and framing.
Why are republicans making it sound like Trump hasn’t lied even moreso than Kamala?
Because it works with their idiot base.
It’s just what you do when your side doesn’t have a justifiable platform on it’s own merit: See: All the people who keep telling us to ignore all the bad stuff corporate dems do because Trump would be worse.
IF you could actually run on things people liked, you’d talk about that and perhaps only call out your opponent’s opposition to the things you support or show how they might be lying about claims that they want similar things.
But when your core platform is “let rich people keep doing what they want,” you have to find ways to deflect from that.
Both American political parties do this often. It’s much easier to attack your opponent for their transgressions than it is to prove your own aptitude and it seems to be just as, if not more, convincing to the average person. I don’t think this should be particularly shocking.
One party does it based on reality and the other based on whatever they made up that is getting traction with their userbase.
If only that were true
Vance literally said this. “I will make up whatever story is needed to draw attention to a subject that is important to my
votersdonors”I wasn’t suggesting that Republicans don’t do this
I never really cared for politics until very recently, so i always thought its discourse would be grounded in logic and not logical fallacies. So i am quite shocked.
Sorry that the reality is that most humans who are pursuing power are doing it simply for powers’ sake because they’re self-centered garbage.
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Douglas Adams nailed it down in 1980.
IMO the best feature of democracy is not that it results in better selection of who gets to lead, because it doesn’t really - the vast majority of the electorate is not educated in the sorts of things they’d need to be educated in to make truly good decisions about this. The best feature is that every few years we “throw the bums out” and put a new batch of people in charge.
I used to be kind of ambivalent about term limits, I figured it was kind of suboptimal to have to get rid of a leader who’s doing well at some point. But with the size of the population of most democracies there’s really no constraint on the pool of perfectly adequate candidates to draw on. I’m starting to think that “one and done” might be an even better approach, at least for the highest levels. Make it so that there’s no motivation whatsoever to cling to power. Do the same with congressmen and senators, perhaps. Let them prove their capabilities with a political career in local politics, where it’s less important if someone ends up with some kind of corrupt fiefdom because the higher levels of government can keep them in check.
I absolutely agree, a lot of this can be mitigated by the right kinds of regulations…
Bear with me a minute, this goes pretty far back…
https://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/3370
But in 2007, the New Zealand government launched a wiki to allow NZ residents to help define the language of a new police law bill, to ensure there was a more equitable way to get people involved, and it’s been kicking around in my head for a long time.
We could reduce congresspeople to figureheads who just vote on bills if we really built a big system like that around every bill that comes to congress, always letting citizens be involved. Of course, it would require rigorous controls, tight security, and likely need you would need to provide photo ID/Social Security number to be able to access the site to prove you’re a citizen and not a foreign actor. However, if citizens had more clear access and control to drafting laws, a lot of what incentivizes congresspeople to take bribes from lobbyists would be taken away because now the lobbyists have to lobby involved citizens on changing the language. Lobbyists can’t just write corporation friendly bills for congresspeople when the citizens are directly involved in drafting bills to their final form.
Also, fucking Version Control on bills for fucks sake. I want names attached to each sentence in every bill that is put before congress. No more of this “sharing the blame” shit by not attributing who wrote what part of each bill. Fucking own it, the tech has been there to monitor this since the 70’s.
Sortition has the same benefit.
At one point it was more grounded, but that was before Rush Limbaugh.
You should try reading actual political theory. You’ll find that western politics isn’t and has never been grounded in reality. It does not have a material basis and as such it gains support primarily through the people’s emotions, especially fear and anger.
Here’s some easy reading to get you started
- The Communist Manifesto[Text][Audio]
- Blackshirts and Reds[Text][Audio]
- The Principles of Communism[Text][Audio]
- Introduction to Political Economy[Text]
I don’t expect to shove books like this in your face and actually have you immediately read all of them. You may not be at the part of your political developement where you have any motivation to do that. So here are some youtube channels that cover the material in them and apply that material to modern reality in a more easily digestable way. These are great resources that can teach you a lot but they are not and should not replace reading actual political theory. In my experience these helped develop my understanding of political economy to the point where I had sufficient motivation to read that theory.
None of these people get everything perfect all the time but they are generally good in my experience. Best of luck learning.
Appreciate the recommendations man. I’ll be sure to check em out
Just out of curiosity is there any reason, you’re aware of, that you went for “Trump and Kamala” as opposed to “Trump and Harris” when you wrote your post? I’ve got no clowns in this circus so it’s a genuine question.
No reason at all. It just sounded better in my head
Seems reasonable. After I posted I realised that “Donald and Harris” would be a meaningless word-soup in my head for a few seconds if you’d gone with that instead.
Not OP, but boomers, you never refer to them as their first name, it’s always Mr. or mrs. Last name. Genx started the trope of 'Don’t call me Mr. X, Mr. X was my father. Genx started the trend of calling everyone by their given name that stuck with millenials and gen z.
I was sitting at the doctor’s office and overheard an old man claim Harris was so stupid that she couldn’t figure out how to use a vacuum.
It broke MY brain trying to wrap my head around that one.
Some people choose to belittle others to make themselves feel bigger rather than strive to be better.
Republican supporters eat, sleep, and breathe contradicting thought. It’s baked into their worldview (looking at you, Christians).
Removed by mod
Wow, you’ve gotten worse.
They know what’s going on, they know what they’re doing. They just don’t care, they like Trump they just can’t argue their case and don’t care to.
It’s the opposite everytime someone criticize Kamala, her defenders can’t stop bringing trump in the picture
Unfounded accusations are not the same as proven Loes by Trump either. And the Trump team constantly fabricate lies Kamala told. Not saying she has not, or the truth is more nuances than a soundbite.
Generally speaking, a politician considers their voter base to either be the stupidest motherfuckers on the whole planet, or the most gullible. More often than not, it’s the former
I’m trying to summon my inner Ben Shapiro here. This isn’t my opinion but my understanding of what he has said on the subject.
While Trump lies a lot, he’s fundamentally a bullshitter, which is different. A liar knows the truth but chooses to deceive, whereas a bullshitter doesn’t care about truth in the same way. When Trump says something like, “We’re going to withdraw from NATO,” he’s often expressing a sentiment or creating leverage rather than making a literal commitment. He treats politics like business deals, where you start with an extreme offer, then meet somewhere in the middle. He has argued that in the case of NATO, for example, this approach worked: other member states did increase their defense spending (though the war in Ukraine played a role too).
So, the point is that Trump’s statements should often be taken as rhetorical posturing - ways to push for certain outcomes - rather than literal promises. From a Republican perspective, his actions during his first term ultimately aligned with their goals, which explains their relative tolerance of his exaggerations. In contrast, they see Kamala Harris (and Biden) as engaging in misrepresentation that has led to policies Republicans find harmful, so there’s a greater focus on what they see as her inconsistency between words and actions.
That is a lot of mental gymnastics even for Shapiro.
When Trump says he is going to withdraw from NATO it isn’t 4d chess he is playing. He is not a mastermind of anything. Rather he says and does what he is told to by his handlers.
He is not a businessman in any respect unless you mean a failed businessman whose image was rehabilitated by a reality TV show called the Apprentice.
If he had never touched his daddies money and just left it invested he would be several times wealthier than he is now.
He is perhaps the perfect person to destroy the presidency though which he has done a decent job at. You must understand the real goal of the conservatives is to prove our government is failing by making it fail.
This is a perspective i have never seen before. While his methods still seem underhanded. It at least provides some logical basis as to why people still support Trump in spite of his lies
It’s a stretch to assume they’ve thought it through to this degree.
