Fair point. I guess I’m not immune. I was protected from that kind of propaganda by the armor of wise and empathetic family members, and their ability to educate and lead by example.

Some of us do seem to be immune to the propaganda, though. I’ve heard so much anti-union propaganda. I’ve heard so much anti-Socialist rhetoric, anti-woke bullshit, etc. I was educated and employed in a red state.

Yet, here I am telling you that Socialism is the truth. Unions are awesome. I support just about any marginalized groups rights. Many of my friends and family feel the same even though they were educated and indoctrinated in the same system.

There is a lot more to it than just propaganda. I would say that tribalism plays a larger role. When someone is born into a conservative family, surrounded by conservative citizens, it becomes a lot easier to just agree with the status quo in the area to fit in. I can tell you, from my experience, that I was not very popular in school, due to being a dirty leftist with empathy.

I will say that my immediate family is not religious, not conservative, and they are very open minded, loving and empathetic people. This is probably the main reason I was immune to the propaganda.

I have read about them, but the crossover between people who voted for Trump and AOC is so small, though. Its nowhere close to the total 71 million who voted for Trump.

Maybe a percentage of those votes were because of this, but you can’t actually believe that 71 million people voted for him because he somehow represents the working class better than the dems would. The vast majority people who were protesting the dems not representing the working class, did so by not voting or voting 3rd party, not by voting for Trump.

99 percent of those people voted for Trump because of 3 reasons: Racism, Misogyny, or ignorance. There is a fourth group of rich voters who voted for him to line their pockets, but they are a miniscule portion of his votes. This fourth group mostly just invests money to encourage the racist, misogynistic, and ignorant ones to go vote.

This will involve educating people out of their neoliberal positions and ideas but it can be done.

As I get older and meet more people, I find this goal harder and harder to reach. People are dumb.

I think it starts with a smart and leftist, populist candidate, who can convince the dumb ones amongst us to follow them blindly. Then they will be educated by seeing how better things are for them under leftist leadership.

Bernie, like you said, was basically trying to be this for the US.

For real. Dudes got 15-20 years left on this Earth, at the maximum. Stopping Trump and actually making sure he is charged for his crimes would be quite the footnote in the history books. I can’t imagine being that old and passing an opportunity like that up, but then again I am a simple prole.

Putin will probably have him killed if he doesn’t follow the plan, but I have a feeling Trump wants to follow the plan regardless.

Putin/Russia doesn’t have this power. I don’t get the conspiracy that Russia is controlling the US government, when the shitshow in Ukraine has shown the incompetence of Russia on a grand scale. If anything this power dynamic is the other way around. The US has way more power and resources to make Putin disappear than Russia does to do the opposite.

I do think you are correct that Trump just want to be allies with Putin and follow his plan. I don’t think there is any coercion involved in this except maybe financial and diplomatic benefits to Trump. (for example, election interference/social media psyops)

Basically, if Trump wasn’t on board with this and allowing this conspiracy to happen, then Russia wouldn’t even be relevant here.

hit that one RFK fan we have on Lemmy with it

Idk why, but this made me laugh so hard. I know I have seen the elusive Lemmy RFK fan in a thread somewhere.

I am close to the same age and something feels different now. The Trump administration is many levels of degenerate beyond the Bush administration. Even Dick fucking Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris FFS. I think Trump is pretty far beyond neocon, unfortunately. Just straight up Fascist.

The Neocons may have started rolling this snowball back then, but it is an avalanche now.

Assault and battery are tools used by terrorists in terroristic ways, though. It can be both.

This isn’t on the same level of terrorism as a whole group doing the terror, but it’s still terrorism by definition, because it is politically motivated. This kid assaulted this old lady in order to terrorize her from exercising her political rights.

I didn’t see anyone claiming otherwise. Still, I would bet money that polarized/partisan voting is a much bigger issue with Republican voters.

This is the larger problem, in a nutshell. The fact that we have nations being led by people who believe in their own fairy tales, so much that they believe everybody else is inferior. This isn’t just a problem in Israel/Palestine, obviously, but having two of these groups so close to each other really puts a magnifying glass on the danger of non-secular governments. Israel literally believes it has the support of God itself, and its a powerful fuel to their genocide.

I think if we are to survive as a species, one of the humps we need to get over is the existence of all these fairy tales, and the division they create. The fairy tales may have been useful at one point in history, but they have long overstayed their welcome.

I mean, if both are killing innocents, but one is killing innocents on top of being racist, it’s pretty obvious that the racist one is worse. A kindergartener could check that math.

The problem is people who have the perspective that you vote against the worst candidate rather than for the best one, in my opinion.

Have you somehow not heard of “first past the post”? The people who have that perspective, with regard to the US presidential race, have the correct perspective.

Third party votes don’t matter in FPTP. Until that changes, a vote for third party works in the Republican candidates favor, thanks to FPTP, plus the electoral college.

In the timestamp he is shooting a cz75 at 200 yards. It still penetrates a pretty thick slab of wood. I still wouldn’t want to be at the end of it. Plus, there are some rare freaks who can put some rounds on target at that range is all I was trying to add, really.

Wasn’t trying to completely invalidate what you were saying by any means, just saying it isn’t so cut and dry is all. In most cases, what you said is true for sure.

There is this video where a guy shoots a target with a pistol from 200 yards, freehand, somehow(I timestamed it). It shows that 9mm carries a pretty good amount of penetration power at that range still, surprisingly.

I don’t think people would care about any of this nearly as much if he didn’t represent a party that claims all of these things are ‘ungodly’, and the same party that negatively attributes this kind of behavior to the LGBTQ community, while actively trying to erase their existence. I think it’s important that people call out the hypocrisy.

I don’t think the app that he used really matters as far as the criticism goes, though if it was Grindr it would’ve been even more hurtful to his career, as most of the people who were going to vote for him would be extremely bigoted against that.

Athathination.

If there is any conspiracy here, I would be more likely to believe the one where JD Vance was a plant whose goal is to sabotage Trump’s campaign.

Although, I still think it’s most likely that they are just incompetent idiots, and aren’t sabotaging themselves on purpose at all.

Bernie has been pretty consistently progressive throughout his whole career, unlike almost any other politician. He stayed true to his convictions, and his opinions were so progressive for his time that he was ostracized for them. So his opinions are still held in high regard amongst the younger generations who are more progressive than their parents.

Also, I haven’t heard anybody say that we shouldn’t listen to older people, just that they shouldn’t be running for President. Almost everybody would agree that he is too old to be running for the Presidency now, even most of his supporters, and probably Bernie, himself.