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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • I think there’s a few things going on.

    On one side, you have Americans that have deep-rooted anti-intellectualism. You see this as the myriad of anti-woke, anti-vax, anti-science attitudes. These ideas aren’t grounded in anything useful or real, but leaders in the far-right find these attitudes useful in various ways for pushing their cause. I don’t think there’s an actual goal of promoting disease necessarily… it’s more that the further right-wingers can push people into extreme points of view, the easier it is to keep them there. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of drivel in the anti-woke/anti-science sphere today became popular due to clickbait engagement, though, this movement has been promoted generally by the right wing for a long time.

    I also wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some aspect of foreign influence going on as well. Russia has been working for decades at destabilizing the US. The spreading of disease here would definitely work towards that goal, so long as it doesn’t generate a new pandemic that might bite them too.





  • Exactly.

    The right (and foreign powers) have been dumping tons of money to promote and prop up right wing influencers for years. There doesn’t even seem to be a litmus test other than 1) will they move people towards our general direction, and 2) will they regurgitate talking points we toss to them.

    The right have been reaping huge dividends from promoting people in this space. Influencers on the left exist, but are having a lot harder time without access to similar resources.

    The takeaway isn’t to do what the right is doing by promote sleezy influencers… but funding existing and successful influencers left of center, even if there isn’t 100% alignment could have a big impact in this space and help level the field.


  • For everything the conservatives are bad at, they are somehow crazy good at messaging.*

    Their ability to take a positive term, redefine it as something it isn’t, and use it as a hammer is impressive. The reality of “getting rid of DEI” clearly means more discrimination and hiring/firing based on race/sex/etc, but they certainly framed it as “best candidate instead of minority preference”.

    This is a repeating trend. Fake news, Critical race theory, woke, cancel culture, marxism, radical left, et – these are all good examples of the right redefining and hijacking terms or language. It wouldn’t surprise me if they try to do it with the word “democracy” to mean something like “far left woke Democrat ideals”.

    * Just to clarify – “good at messaging” just meaning that it’s effective at being taken up and repeated by a subset of the population. How people listen to and trust the stuff is beyond me.


  • The point? I think he expected the world leaders to come bearing personal gifts and favors. Trade some of the US’s global position and power for his own personal wealth and power? I don’t have proof, but it would be on-brand for Trump.

    He’s also surrounded himself with yes-men and crazy people (e.g. Navarro). He clearly has an elementary understanding (at best) of economics. Money good. China bad. Money go to China bad (trade imbalance). Tariffs keep money here.

    Combine all that with the fact that he never admits responsibility for anything. When China pushed back, he retaliated. When they stopped participating, it leaves us in a stalemate that I believe will hurt us a lot more than them.

    So, I think the trade imbalance is the justification. The goal is likely just personal power for Trump. But he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, doesn’t care to learn, just thinking he’s the greatest being in existence and everything bad is not his fault.


  • I think there’s a few reasons.

    • People are tuned into propaganda. I get exposed to it once in a while and it’s abhorrent. Arguing, yelling, and just a deluge of lies. It pretends to be important. It pretends to be news. But really, it’s more like 1984’s 2 minutes of hate diluted down and stretch out so people can get their fill whenever they want (or for older people, just consume it constantly).

    • For many less politically-involved people, they are still emotionally and culturally tied to their political “team”. For many, it’s easier to just go along with the shifts in the party than to change identity.

    • People are lazy/busy/uninterested. People generally don’t want to learn about economics, history, politics, sociology, psychology, etc. This leaves a huge hole for someone like Trump to say and do the things he’s been doing without his uneducated base calling BS. I took 2 100-level economics electives long ago for my degree and saw right through his tariff lies because this stuff isn’t that complicated.

    • Messaging. The right-wing messaging is mostly half-truths and all-out lies, but they are incredibly effective at getting their messaging out and believed. A lot of it is just repetition, repetition, repetition. The left really needs to get their shit together. I’m not looking for propaganda like the right is doing, but the Dems started loosing so badly because the right would grab an issue like a rabid Chihuahua and just not let go. Benghazi is a perfect example. Fix the messaging – keep is simple and just repeat it forever.





  • This hasn’t been true at any of the places I’ve worked.

    There’s always been some pressure from management, usually through project managers or business users, for urgency around certain features, timelines, releases, etc. Sometimes you’ll have a buffer of protection from these demands, sometimes not.

    One place I worked was so consistently relentless about the dev team’s delivery speed that it was a miserable place to work. There was never time to fix the actual pain points because there were always new features being demanded or emergency fixes required because most code bases were a wreck and falling apart.



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    Edit: formatting







  • First, A lot of the far-left authoritarian users are in other instances, like lemmy.ml. Those communities are easy to avoid and users from there easily identified.

    Second, I can only guess you’re talking about Harris when speaking “a communist and a known war monger”. Speaking as a former libertarian Republican (who left the party when Trump took over), Harris isn’t communist or far left. That’s 100% right-wing propaganda. America’s Democratic party is pretty conservative compared to liberal and leftist parties in Europe and isn’t that much to the left of the pre-Trump Republican party.

    As for the known warmonger, I have no idea what you’re talking about.