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[–] 204 points 2 months ago (12 children)

The secret hidden in this article is that talking about the cost of living, cost of groceries, cost of gas resonates across party lines stronger than any culture war distractions. The way to bring down fascism is to simply talk about how expensive things are and why there is no help.

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  • [–] 103 points 2 months ago (9 children)

    Also to not use ANY of the conservative buzzwords they have conditioned them to hear and associate with certain things. Also don't say anything related to all their Thought Terminating Cliches.

    Don't say: Socialism, Communism, Capitalism, Immigrants, anything LGBTQ, anything economy, anything equality, anything related to DEI, anything they fixate on.

    Instead, use actual basic terms and explanations without using the shortcut words that they have been conditioned/brainwashed with. It's a minefield, but can be done. Don't say the economy is bad, say the cost of food is very high and I wish we had better pay or cheaper prices. Don't say you want democratic socialism, say it would be great if medical costs were fair and we had more help with everyday things we all want and need.

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  • [–] 59 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    For all of Trump's bullshit I credit his grade 3 level speaking with most of his success.

    The man speaks like an adult talking to a 5 year old (intentionally or not) and the American electorate responds to that.

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  • [–] 42 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    This has been my biggest takeaway of the past ten years. The electorate wants more social democratic policies, but they are afraid of the name. Fox News has made the mention of "social" anything or "liberal" anything toxic to a not-insignificant portion of the US population, and calling these policies by their generally agreed upon designations (be it from political science, philosophy, or academia), that group will just shut it down because those words just trip something in their brains.

    Anecdotal as it may be, I got my MAGA mother to agree that a single payer healthcare system was better explaining in small words what "a common sense, good system" would look like. She was totally on board. Will she vote for "Medicare for All," now? No, because "that's socialism!!!!!1!1!!1," but an identical program that got explained was "just common sense."

    In the end, I've found that MAGA people fall into three camps: bigots, idiots, and the selfish. Bigots will never be reasoned with; they're there to hurt people. The selfish are too rich to benefit from any good policies. Idiots, though, can be reasoned with, but you have to reason with them in the language of a 10 year old. It sounds condescending (and to a degree it is), but it's the only way to get through to them.

    It seems insane from an outsider's perspective, but I think that we could get some European-esque policies passed in the US if instead of using "normal" terms, we use super mega-deluxe 'Murican cowboy names and just play into the quirks of American culture.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago

    Oh man, spot on.

    Bigots and selfish really are both lost causes, good news is those 2 groups are a tiny fraction of the overall US population. Maybe 5-10% each. The 3rd group you named I 100% agree are idiots, but it isn't like they are idiots in all aspects. They are just politically and maybe empathetically / emotionally idiots. They fell for an absolute moron's very obvious lies and grifts. They fell for the most basic political cons. They fell for the same lies and grifts he has been doing for DECADES where he uses people and throws them under the bus at the end of their usefulness. He makes deals and doesn't pay. He gets support and doesn't hold up his end. He sells things with a promise that never comes true. Not to mention he is in the Epstein Files more than Jesus is in the Bible. Not to mention the 34 felonies. Not to mention all the bankruptcies. Not to mention all the laws he violates. Not to mention the insurrection and treason. Not to mention his corrupt ties to foreign governments and powers. Not to mention the pile of red flags with his character and behavior. AND THEY FUCKING SAW ALL THAT AND VOTED FOR HIM ANYWAY!

    Yeah, in their daily lives they may be a smart farmer and know how to grow crops well, they may be a smart business person and know sales and management well, they may be a smart person and know a dozen difficult skills and be smart in many other ways.

    But with politics and empathy, they are absolute bottom of the barrel, blind as a deaf bat morons and it is embarrassing to see just how gullible and dumb they are and it would be absolutely hilarious if it weren't for the fact that we have to be in the same boat as them.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (4 children)

    Can we coin new words to mean the same things, or would fox news ruin them too fast?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Fundamentally, I think trying to shortcut and use terms to consolidate and represent a complex idea is broken.

    If you have never encountered the concept or had it explained, then it's some black box. What does "I support DEI policies" mean at face value. How do you parse that sentence if you've never heard the acronym?

    "It means diversity, equity, and inclusion" doesn't clarify anything. Diversity of what, specifically? Who is being included in what? How do we measure equity?

    Especially for people who have been conditioned to think that you don't qualify for diversity if you're white.

    The lesson isn't that we need new terms to rotate through to stay ahead of media. The lesson is we need to speak to the actual fucking meat of the matter.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Yes and no. Yes, we should explain actual policy stances without saying "this is single-payer healthcare" or "wealth redistribution" or whatever phrase causes conservatives to shutdown. However, there still needs to be a name for shorthand purposes. It's like a pronoun in language. It gets tiring fast to keep using a person's name rather than saying "she/he/they/etc." and that causes its own issues.

    Ultimately, the outline of a solution I can see is to advocate for "common sense" reforms and explain them (first at a high level so anyone can get an idea and then at finer detail later on). Call the policy something 'Murica-esque that any truck driving, gun totin', farmer from Texas would get behind. Then stay as far away from what the rest of the universe calls the policy and deny that it's what the policy is. Those who know, will know and not care or roll their eyes, and the disengaged will go for it. For example, "This isn't socialized medicine! It's my own idea! The American Patriots Help Each Other Be Healthy policy!"

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    "Fluffy Kitty Cat calls themselves a Zorbloxianist, but that's just because they're too ashamed to say what they really are: a socialist."

    Even in cases where people aren't just trying to come up with another word for socialist policies, they still get accused of being socialists. There's a whole narrative of environmentalists secretly being socialists, using the environment as a cover, there's people calling Joe Biden a socialist, etc. The Democrats have been doing everything they possibly can to avoid the label for at least the past 40 years and it just doesn't work, it's how we got into this mess in the first place.

    Imo there's no shortcuts. Embrace the label, and say, "Well yes I am a socialist, and what's so bad about that? Here's what we socialists believe and why." And when they try to say socialism means this or that you can push back on it and have some credibility in terms of what socialism means because you've accepted the label. That's what Mamdani actually did, and it worked.

    If you deny being a socialist, then you'll be expected to denounce it, and then the other side is free to say, "Socialism is when you eat babies" and if you try to say "That's not what socialism means" it will be met with, "Well if you're 'not a socialist' then why are you defending socialism?" And if you agree, then you're validating and strengthening the boogeyman, and if socialism is the most horrible thing ever, then it's just a question of who can look less like a socialist, which will always be the right.

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  • [–] 184 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Ah, common clay of the new west

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  • [–] 107 points 2 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 120 points 2 months ago* (7 children)
  • [–] 56 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    It's crazy how the emoji made me read that with an Italian accent.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    but, specifically, Brad Pitt's Italian accent from Inglourious Basterds

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  • [–] 81 points 2 months ago (9 children)

    I think I understand the bizarre train of thought, something like:

    1. Democrats don't care about my interests.
    2. Democrats are socialists, because the TV said so
    3. This guy doesn't sound like other democrats
    4. That must be because he's not a socialist, like they are.

    I know rationally that running on material interests can cut through culture war bullshit, but it's funny to see how it gets rationalized when it does.

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  • [–] 45 points 2 months ago* (6 children)

    Don't forget " oh he's Italian, so he is white" was probably a decent amount of their piggish thinking

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago

    Funny thing is, there are at least a couple Middle-Eastern comedians on r/StandupComedy who made jokes about how the audience must be confused when the ‘Italian’ man on the stage starts talking about his Lebanese, Palestinian or Iranian background.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    It's insane that it works because these people are so dumb

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago*

    I'm not going to argue they're not dumb. But I think writing people off as dumb is a dead end. Trying to educate people in mass will never work, and honestly is scary. Re-education should chill everyone's blood.

    To me, it's that they don't have time to investigate further. They've adopted the R is good, and these talking points mean R mental model.

    And that's a problem that has scalable solutions. Four day work weeks. National holiday for voting. Increased paid time off for vacation and sick leave. Medicare for all.

    These all give people their time back. Time to think about things other than how they're feeding their kids this week.

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  • [–] 72 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Got the math wrong but the answer right.

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  • [–] 59 points 2 months ago

    These people would wholeheartedly believe 2+2=5 if the Party says it.

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  • [–] 56 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    I've also heard of such a "conservative" calling for the nationalisation of Google in order to save it from socialism.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    ...wh...what? What are the inner workings of that person's brain...

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  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago*

    If you look at it very superficially, the "logic" is not actually that hard to follow:

    1. Socialism is bad
    2. Google is doing something the person considers bad (be nice to minorities, LGBT or something)
    3. The person therefore thinks Google is being taken over by socialism
    4. Trump is anti-socialist
    5. Person trusts Trump
    6. Trump is the government
    7. To stop Google from its evil socialism, the government should step in and take over

    As long as you're unburdened by the slightest inkling of what socialism actually is, this line of "logic" makes some sort of sense.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I think there was a movie called Red Zone Cuba where the moral was everyone had to give their money and businesses to the US Government in order to stop communism.

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  • [–] 37 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    I mean.... Ill take all of this type of brain-dead I can get

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  • [–] 35 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    I'm surprised this misconception isn't more common. Conservatives constantly run on reducing the cost of living (despite doing the opposite), so someone actually vowing to do it with a plan in mind seems perfect for this lot

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  • [+] -15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Yup, instead we all get strung up on not welcoming "racists" in our tent. Economic issues should be the main focus of the left!

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  • [–] 34 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    The reason race is divisive is because Democrats, as a national party, refuse to run on economic issues that would endanger their corporate donors. In the absence of economic policies that would improve their lives, white people will vote for racial grievance every time.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 months ago

    Yup, corporations have truly become the enemy of the people. Just look at the obscene payouts from the tariff debacle. With my conspiracy hat on, I think that was the goal all along. A lot of these companies will have record profits this quarter because they get money from the taxpayer to cover the tariffs that regular consumers already paid. Insanity

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  • [–] 34 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Well, it seems like the propaganda and defunding schools worked as intended. These are the vote-cattle the right are working towards.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago*

    Don't take this badly, but in my experience, formal Education doesn't teach people Skepticism (the real deal, not the Denialism that morons have whilst thinking they're being "skeptics"). It also doesn't at all train people to be self-aware and spot when it's an emotion (fear, wanting to belong, even hope) making them want to believe something rather than cold hard logic.

    My formal Education is in Science and Engineering, and whilst education in those areas does push you more towards a more analytical kind of thinking and an as objective as possible measuring of things, most higher education out there is in soft "sciences" at best, or even just the kind of domains were the main required expertise is in convincing people, so the very opposite of being as Objective and Logical as possible.

    From my observations even some people with higher education in a Sciences or Engineering domain are gullible cattle when it comes to politics, mainly because they don't engage it with logic and the way of thinking they use in their professional life, but rather with tribalism (which is emotional) or just straight raw emotion (like anger or fear) and thus are stupidly simple to control and pretty much self-convince that whatever the propagandists want them to believe is true even when the most basic analysis of it immediatelly shows inconsistencies.

    TL;DR Whilst better and more Education somewhat improves people's resilience to propaganda, even the highest levels of Education in highly objective and analytical domains won't make people immune to this shit, since people are controlled via emotional subconscious cognitive pathways, not logic, and even highly intellectual people who WANT to believe something will find some kind of seemingly "logic" explanation to conclude that which they want to believe is indeed so.

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  • [–] 33 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    So the way to make them vote for socialists is to talk about costs. Looks like an easy win.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    That, and just say what you're going to do, rather than labelling yourself.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago*

    I always think of taking the angle of "people can call me whatever they like but I stand for these principles -" is always the right approach. Labels are much easier to subvert in people's minds than actual plans of action.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 months ago

    Republicans voting for Democrats because they don't watch Fox News and thought he was a super Republican? I hope I never runs into these weirdos.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah, for most people politics is like the winter Olympics. They genuinely have no idea what's going on unless it's repeated ad nauseam over and over again or it gets slipped into some other media they're consuming.

    They're also terrible at spotting what's fake or untrue.

    It was fine when during their evening tv watch they got commercial promos for the top evening news stories each ad break, but those days are gone.

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  • [–] 21 points 2 months ago

    Goebbels, in essence: “If you want to make it in propaganda, you have to repeat the same trite phrases over and over again, no matter whether intellectuals contradict you and refute you. You convince scholars with clever arguments, and the masses with simple ones.”

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    They’re also terrible at spotting what’s fake or untrue.

    It's not a small feat when it does feel like every fucking person on TV is lying to you constantly.

    From NPR to the Houston Chronicle to BBC News One to the Joe Rogan Podcast, it's just mountains of bullshit and lies and jingoism and native advertising.

    It was fine when during their evening tv watch they got commercial promos for the top evening news stories each ad break, but those days are gone.

    Go back 30 years, and you still had this shit. It was just pitched to the Median Voter rather than some rarified hot house of partisans.

    You still had John Stossel with his crypto-libertarian bullshit and Tucker Carlson screaming at James Carville on Crossfire, but always over something totally incidental. People like Rush Limbaugh and Rachael Maddow hadn't quite gone mainstream yet. Jon Stewart was confined to the back corners of a cable news comedy channel. FOX (the whole damned network, not just the news channel) was just getting off the ground. Everyone agreed gay people shouldn't get married, but women should be allowed to hold a credit card.

    Everyone agreed Iraq had WMDs and Cuba is being run into the ground by Nazi Communist Fidel Castro and China is a backwards hellhole where Tianamen Square happens twice a day.

    Now you've got Controversy as the focus of news rather than Consensus. So if CNN says the sun rises in the East, Newsmax will bring on Laura Loomer to tell people the CNN anchor rapes puppies, so don't believe them. And if the WSJ says the economy is booming, sixteen podcasters will release episodes about how we're a decade into the New Great Depression You Just Don't Know About.

    People believe crazy shit because there is no consensus reality anymore.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    Because lying gets more attention than the truth and we live in an attention based economy. Human attention is now the commodity that every tech overlord is fighting over and they amplify the influencers that get the most eyeballs and earballs hoping their platform will be at the top. That means the most unscrupulous and bombastic liars are shoved in our faces because those are the ones that rally engagement from both fans and haters. You can farm more engagement by being a piece of shit than by being a smart, interesting, or good person. Also, the media is totally complicit in this and will happily prop up these schmuck podcasters by tirelessly writing articles criticizing them. They cannot help but participate in the meaningless twitter feuds and gotcha online culture because that's what most people consume.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 months ago

    Not just American.

    Have you seen the news of the Italian 4 year old girl who died from diphtheiria, a disease for which there has long been a vaccine (mandatory in Italy, even) and which hadn't been seen in that country for more than 3 decades due to vaccination, but her parents thought that vaccine gave autism to that kid's cousin so didn't got her vaccinated.

    Curiously, the mentioned vaccinated cousin also got infected and survived.

    A young child literally died because her parents were gullible braindead morons who (doubtless via Social Media) got fed the same shit that's fed to American braindead morons and actually believed that even though it originates from a country which is a postcard for Idiocracy.

    Well, guess they did indeed made sure their child won't ever have autism ...

    (All this shit makes me so fucking furious!)

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  • [–] 28 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Clearly the education system is getting too much funding. Somebody cut this waste.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    It's the economy stupid. Trump won on the economy. Mamdani won on the economy.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

    Yup, The problem I'm seeing is there is a strong faction that controls prices but also leans right? This war with Iran should cause fuel prices to skyrocket but because the rich vote right they are able to control them to help Trump.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Yep, it isn’t that socialists and dems run on making things expensive, it’s that conservative ultra wealthy raise prices of goods and services in their very large businesses when dems are in control because they know people will blame dems and not the wealthy who actually set the prices.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago (9 children)

    This is why both politicians and those who have a strong interest in politics need to chill with the jargon and labels.

    People voted for Mamdani because they liked his ideas, his approach to things, not because he was a "socialist". Hell, most people, including me, aren't sure exactly what that means.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (7 children)

    "People don't know what Socialism means" is the worst case of intentional ignorance about things that are completely understandable by people who refuse to look something up since "People in the middle east have been fighting for centuries and nobody understands why."

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (4 children)

    groups that self label aren't exactly helpful for understanding what the label means (see german socialist party)

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Pro-good anti-bad party is the future we are heading ig. Because some dude cant bother to open giant source of infornation right in his pocket.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago* (1 child)

    They're all pro-good and anti-bad in their own words.

    Personally as soon as somebody reduces anything to "good ones" vs "bad ones" I'm immediatelly suspicious that they're either activelly trying to swindle everybody else or they're usefully idiots parroting the shit put out by those activelly trying to swindle everybody else - almost nothing involving humans can be reduced to 2 and only 2 sides, which aren't even ranges but actual absolutes.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 months ago*

    Jargon and labels are part of the way people are controlled - simplify complex concepts down to repeatable simple words and now you can both control the meaning of such soft definintion terms (notice how the meaning of "terrorist" has been moved over time to become "against those in power") plus constant repetition breeds familiarity, thus the very same cognitive paths that transform brand-familiarity into "comfort with brand" and hence favoring it over less familiar brand, are exercised to get people to accept provided political "explanations" & "solutions" using those slogans.

    That said, in my experience if you try and explain complex things to people with enough complexity and completeness for them to understand the subtleties of the subject, they switch off half way (like, I bet, plenty of people reading this post that didn't pass the first half of the first paragraph), so you have to somehow find at least simple metaphors, so not quite down reducing it to slogans but not all that far.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    How do these white trash bootlickers even manage to breathe propely with th3ir "heroes" toying them around like puppets?

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  • [–] 19 points 2 months ago*

    decades of demonizing education, attacking and undermining education by making sure it doesnt teach essential skills like critical thinking and punishing anything but blind acceptance and obedience, the abolition of the fairness doctrine to begin the locking of people into isolated information bubbles, social media and facebook that uses algorithms to maximize profits by serving inflammatory content to vulnerable people to further expand the the right wing information bubbles online with the happy little bonus of it bringing in billions of dollars and thus being a capitalistically selected for behavior of feeding innocent people into the hate machine because right wingers post more, see more ads, and click more ads, because of their constant engagement due to their constant manufactured outrage.

    and, i mean, thats just the tip of the iceberg thats created these people, but I'm not gonna spend an hour highlighting every single thread in this blanket.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    New political spectrum just dropped.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 months ago

    Everyone loves socialism, except for the word itself.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago

    They sure found an interesting way to square Fox News propaganda with Mamdani's campaign promises.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

    This is cherry picked as fuck. They'd rather call their voters stupid (they do it regularly) then admit they are losing them. Obviously conservatives voted wrong because they were tricked by their feeble dumb brains not because Mayor Mamdani had a better platform.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    I wonder how many thought they voted for this guy:

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  • [–] 14 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

    This movie was actually how I was introduced to the Israel/Palestine conflict.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Every time I read one of these I lose a little faith in humanity and that meme quote from that nutty Indian cultist plays in my head

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  • At the same time this increases my faith in humanity. When people aren't propagandized, they listen to the politician and vote in their interests. At the end of the day, they agreed with what Mamadani was saying and that's why they voted for him.

    It doesn't have to be elaborate and sophisticated, what matters is getting the right result.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago

    fleecing the dumb. just happy for the attention.

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