No, it’s not socially acceptable. Yes, I wish it were.

Like, does this mean you are afraid of other people you don’t know judging you, or that you or your friends find it socially unacceptable?

Either way that seems to be more of an individual problem rather than a social one. I am physically affectionate with my friends and have never been confronted about it by a member of the public , not that I would really care if I were. People be dumb, I’m not going to let someone else’s projected homophobia dictate my friendship.

Which is why the rest of my commentary addressed the party, its leadership structure, and its voters…

Okay, so you are conceding the point about the democratic party making a "real"effort about wages then?

think that’s grossly oversimplifying things, to the point where I’m not even sure it’s worth investing more effort in a response.

Entrenched encumbrancey is a fairly simple well known issue in American voting… I think your just just avoiding the argument.

think the problem with arguing against a metaphor is that it’s grounded in how you, specifically, see the problem. I simply can’t argue against how you see things, nor do I intend to try.

Lol, as opposed to what? Do you sincerely think that what you believe to be the problem is anything other than a belief? I’m just being honest and not trying to make it seem that my views represent the only realistic depiction of American politics.

give human beings way more credit than that, especially in aggregate. The exact same could be said about you being influenced by some kind of outside group

You think the American people collectively came up with the concept of third way politics? It’s been a theory in politics since the 50’s, was popularized in the 80-90s in Australia and in America by Bill Clinton.

I’m sure you’d argue that your beliefs are sincere and informed by evidence and experience. If you’re taking the position that your beliefs are legitimate, but everyone else’s beliefs are influenced by propaganda, then you and I are seeing the world very differently.

I’m not coming up with political theory…of course my beliefs are influenced by others people’s ideas, so are yours. The idea of political discourse is engaging in those ideas with others to better understand them.

not sure this is worth either of our time anymore. Best of luck.

Probably should have known better when you didn’t even bother to read your own sources. Go kick rocks.

I mean, if you’re a Congressional representative in a non-leadership position and you can’t get past the filibuster, I’d argue drafting a bill to address a problem is just about the best you can do. So yes, I’d argue that’s doing a very good job. I don’t hold it against the bill drafter that they have to deal with institutional inertia and a multi-party, bicameral federal bureaucracy.

Right, but the argument is about the democratic party as a whole not the few individuals with no power within the party that are doing a good job.

In that regard, the true question is, do those powerful Democrats represent the center of gravity of the voting population that put them there? Or, more simply, is the average Democratic voter centrist or progressive? If the average Democratic voter is centrist, then we could argue that these leaders are simply representing the will of their constituents.

I don’t think it’s that complicated. With the two party system the main hurdle is just securing the support of the DNC. Once you’re established the choice is the incumbent or a conservative. So I think most elected officials may have represented their constituents level of progressive ideas at the time they were first elected. So in a party where we claim to be progressives, the elected officials are conserving the status quo of when they were first elected 30 years ago.

In short, there are more voters who agree with the moderate wing of the party than who disagree with it.

I get that, but I tend to believe American politics has the propensity to have the cart lead the horse. If the cart spent over a decade screaming at the horse that Democrats are the reasonable party, and reasonable people have to make concessions to conservative to make that progress, no matter how unreasonable those conservatives are…then of course a large portion of the constituents will still hold those beliefs in the long run.

Third way politics was not invented by the democratic constituents, stop the steal was not invented by conservative constituents. The unfortunate reality of America is that most of the people voting are being influenced by the leadership of political parties instead of the political parties being influenced by the constituency.

rest of my sources show very real and very public pushes for measures that could meaningfully address the stagnation if they were passed into law. If effort is what people are clamoring for, there seems to be no shortage of it.

I think that’s a fairly subjective interpretation. Is a bill being written and endorsed by part of the party an indication of “real effort”?

I think the problem a lot of people hold, myself included, is that the democratic party lacks the leadership that turns “real effort” into law.

When republican leadership lays out their political agenda their whips make sure that their members in the Senate and the House (to a lesser extent post Jan 6) toe the line. If you don’t make the party’s position a priority then you lose your committee memberships, or are passed over for funding.

I think the problem is that the DNC leadership’s only qualifier is seniority, so the “progressive” party is being helmed by ancient millionaires who were only really progressive by comparison during the regan era.

They seem to be blaming Democrats for the fact that Republicans exist and are intransigent.

I can see your point, but this also ignores the fact that a lot of powerful Democrats are basically center right on the political compass and have been effectively captured by corporate interests, and have been for decades.

You could argue that their commitment to third way politics has caused the current political situation where conservatives feel confident enough to be this intransigent in the first place. I personally feel that democratic leadership would rather have someone like Trump in the Whitehouse than someone like Bernie Sanders.

It’s in the article you linked as a source… Did you not read it?

As the figure shows, average real wages rose sharply at the onset of the pandemic, but that’s because the bottom dropped out of the labor market when millions of lower-wage workers lost their jobs. Average real wages then fell sharply in the pandemic recovery as many of those lower-wage workers returned to work, pulling down the average.

The problem with economic studies is that they are usually made by people trying to argue one point or another, it’s not the same as scientific study where proving or disproving your hypothesis is an academic benefit either way.

It makes it easy to quantify, something unlike “wages out pacing inflation”, you just have to redifine some terms, and then something like thousand of lay offs becomes a net positive instead of a bleak reality.

Furthermore, wage growth has been beating inflation for the most recent 12 months.

Man, the way they calculated this statistic is so misleading, and counter intuitive to the claim it’s ridiculous.

The only reason for “real wage growth” is shown as outpacing inflation is because they aren’t counting people who lost their job because of COVID as a loss of income, but as someone exiting the job market.

Basically “wages” increased because the majority of people who lost their jobs were low income earners, leaving more white collar jobs to represent wage earnings.

Cognitive dissonance" is when a person’s behaviors don’t match their stated values or beliefs. It’s basically a fancy word for hypocrisy as it relates to argumentation / debate.

I don’t think thats the definition of cognitive dissonance. It’s just holding two conflicting ideas at the same time, so your behaviour is by default not aligning with your ideas, because it’s impossible.

I’m not seeing it in @bolexforsoup@lemmy.blahaj.zone’s argument here.

I think the cognitive dissonance lies in the fact that they state no one should be subjected to that behavior, but they are arguing in favour of a person who is perpetuating the action upon others.

whether or not Conservatives deserve suffering

Right, but they were the only person who brought in the concept of “deserve”, it’s a strawman argument.

Deserve implies some sort of ethical construct to judge the justification of the action. When in reality we are not choosing wether or not this action is being done, just witnessing it.

Cognitive dissidence"

Yeah, for some reason my autocorrect really like dissidence over dissonance. But I’d say that’s a fairly pedantic point to base your argument.

Lol, didn’t get the sarcasm?

So the written word doesn’t contain nuance or implications? It’s never open to interpretation?

Man, can you fucking read? The written word contains nuance and implications, but you can’t interpret it from someone’s writing that is devoid of it…

I can’t say I don’t like lord of the rigs, and then expect people to assume my reasoning is nuanced, or that my statement may spur any further implications.

That’s certainly a take. I am not going to be as dick-ish as you though and call you idiotic.

I think we just have interpretations of what I have said. People are allowed to have nuanced opinions. Maybe, idiotic isn’t an implication of being dick-ish to me?

dick-ish

No one deserves to be called a dick. Be better.

Well, this would be fine if you weren’t attacking other people’s interpretations…

Usually when people witness a criticism they want to know the logic behind that criticism.

People mean more than what they literally wrote sometimes. Yet for some reason when we are on forums people pretend that doesn’t exist

I think that’s because the whole point of forums is to express your ideas through the written word. Expecting people in a forum to interpret your argument with nuance when you express none is idiotic.

I don’t really think so, otherwise they probably would have said it. I think you’re just utilizing loaded terminology to suit your argument.

It would be like seeing the guys from jackass injure themselves in a stunt, and then accusing people who witnessed it of being callous for not being sympathetic. “No one deserves to break their penis for entertainment purposes!”… Well, okay, I guess that’s a nice platitude. But that guy was swinging his dick at an angry bull, and no one was making him do it.

“Deserved” is a subjective qualifier though. It doesn’t really mean anything without reference to an ethical framework for context.

Saying I deserve a doughnut, basically means I want a donut unless there’s a specific context that alludes to why you should be rewarded with a doughnut.

That’s okay, people are allowed to have differing opinions. I was just curious about the extent of your world view. It seems to invite internal contradictions, or at least rely on a hefty amount of cognitive dissidence.

For example, if no one deserves that type of treatment, what does the person committing or enabling those acts deserve?

If they deserve a punishment, why not the one they laid upon others? Is it because of the nature of the treatment is somehow worse than other punishments? If it is worse for some reason, why do they deserve better treatment than what they serve to others?

In your view, does anyone “deserve” mistreatment?

Because being mangled by the machine you helped build to mangle people, kinda just seems like poetic irony.

There’s a difference in victim blaming via " what was she wearing" and someone knowingly walking into a lions den while wearing a meat dress like Lady Gag.

It would be a little different if she didn’t actively work to empower a person whose platform revolves around harassing and silencing women who have been sexually assaulted.

Being a bad person does not mean you give up any assumption of basic human dignity.

People who take people’s dignity in an inhumane manor do not themselves deserve to be treated with basic dignity. That’s just inviting a paradox of abuse.

Yeah… tbf pretty much every news outlet post 9/11 went completely insane.

Absolutely not. We must push this further, every year we need older and older candidates. I want to defy God and enthrone a leader who will live longer than Abraham.

Vote for Immortal Mummy 2024!

It’s been a long time coming, this has been fermenting since the GOP embraced the tea party movement. They thought they could maintain their hierarchy over the extremist in the party by handing out committee membership, and until Trump came along it was working out.

It will be interesting to see whether the old guard will pull rank, and clean out the freedom caucus from important committees, or if they are just going to throw the towel and hand the party over. Either way, it’ll be interesting, the GOPs largely remained politically capable due to their previous ability to whip the house members into compliance with the speaker.

are you seriously implying that NPR is scared of which party is in the white house?

I think media personalities have to follow the guidance of editors and producers, and I think those editors and producers can be influenced by things like donors and funding. I’m not sure if I would characterize that as being scared.

I feel that a rather extreme accusation that warrants a lot of proof.

Lol, I’m not making a court case. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, mine is that npr is mainly patronized by center right WASP.

I would more easily believe that things you saw were more of a result in a change in American politics, that the media was slow to react to. This is the first president and party that is believing and spouting conspiracy theories and outright lies, with a huge percent of their voters believing them.

Not old enough to remember the Bush years?

Our government has been struggling dealing with this unexpected twist, so it only makes sense for journalists, or anybody involved in politics, to now know how to deal with this new setting and take time to adjust their plan of action

It may feel that way, but I’ve been through this rigamarole more than once. Similar excuses were made for the media complicity to the invasion of iraq…we just haven’t ever had the wool pulled over our eyes like this before! Selectively forgetting the bay of pigs and the Gulf of tonkin.

That could be true nowadays, I haven’t listened to them since the Trump administration. I don’t really think it makes up for it though. If the journalist only has the spine to stand up to the GOP with a Dem in the Whitehouse, then I don’t think they should be on air.