Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 181: We Are Seeking (An) Asylum

(+) Yeah! (+)

xp1337 posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Honestly, I find the attitude of a lot of Democrats to bury their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge what Republicans are doing to be quite distressing.

Pretty sure Democrats acknowledge it.

CHIP, DACA, now this.

And they immediately folded on DACA. Or rather, first they raised the stakes by starting a government shutdown and then they folded, by ending before the start of work on Monday morning without winning any concessions from Republicans. That's worse than just folding to start with.

I think Trump lying is similar. If you react the same way to the 1000th lie as you do to the first, with surprise and outrage, is that really acknowledging that he's a liar? No! If you really accepted that he is a liar, the 1000th lie would be a big nothingburger.
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MalcolmMasher posted...

They continue to beg Republican Congressmen for help and make appeals to their better natures, over and over and over, even though this never ever works. In between crises, they make zero effort to reach out to voters who might vote for them if Democrats actually tried to win their votes instead of writing them off as deplorable.

So, you think that Democrats have too high an opinion of Republican congressmen, too low an opinion of Republican voters?

Yes, basically. It's not necessarily that they have too high an opinion of Republican congressmen, it's more that they don't understand what Republican congressmen see their job as, which is to be zealous attack dogs for their constituents. It does no good to treat with the attack dog; deal with its owner and you might get better results.
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Apparently Trump is no longer listening to Mattis:
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1009179445289107456
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red sox 777 posted...

And they immediately folded on DACA. Or rather, first they raised the stakes by starting a government shutdown and then they folded, by ending before the start of work on Monday morning without winning any concessions from Republicans. That's worse than just folding to start with.

They shouldn't have folded like that, no. But that's also not what we're talking about. I said that Democrats are well aware of the Republican's party recent trend of taking - and even making - crises as hostages to try and get what they want. The Democrats have often not dealt with it well, yes, but that's not what we were talking about.

red sox 777 posted...

I think Trump lying is similar. If you react the same way to the 1000th lie as you do to the first, with surprise and outrage, is that really acknowledging that he's a liar? No! If you really accepted that he is a liar, the 1000th lie would be a big nothingburger.

Who is "surprised"?

Outrage is still acceptable depending on what the lie is about. For instance, his current gaslighting about how it's the Democrats' fault and he doesn't want this policy. That is worthy of outrage.

But a bunch of his other lies I just laugh at because of how obvious, trivial, and petty they are. What you're suggesting sounds a lot like normalizing it and just going "oh. well, that's just what he does. oh well lol." There's a scale here.
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Jakyl25 posted...

Zero Orange Dictators Issue Any Cages act

I know cruz's dad would support that act.
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Outrage is better directed at bad actions, like this policy of separating children from their parents. Getting outraged over each and every one of Trump's lies (I'm not saying you do this, but there is lots of anger directed at practically all of Trump's daily lies), is exactly what normalizes awful policies when they happen. Because when liberals are outraged every single day, what is normalized is the idea that liberals will be outraged at Trump no matter what.
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red sox 777 posted...

Because when liberals are outraged every single day, what is normalized is the idea that liberals will be outraged at Trump no matter what.

Is this your position or someone else's?
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A corollary to this is that people who lack credibility with a group of people shouldn't be the ones presenting a case to those people. I am fairly confident there are a couple people here who evidently really dislike me who I could influence to attack basically any position, no matter what it was. All I would have to do is take that position and make a trolly argument supporting it.

Now, I don't really care about influencing those people one way or the other, but other people like the New York Times, CNN, etc. persist in trying to influence the very people with whom they have no credibility. The result is that they do influence the people they are trying to influence - to vote the opposite of what they wanted. With every "calling out" of Trump's minor lies or puffery, he gets stronger and stronger.

If Democrats actually take back the House this Fall, I'll admit that I'm wrong on this, or at least that this isn't as big a factor as I think currently. If Republicans win again, I hope that eventually Democrats will reconsider their strategy before we have to suffer the worst things about one-party rule.
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Kenri posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Because when liberals are outraged every single day, what is normalized is the idea that liberals will be outraged at Trump no matter what.

Is this your position or someone else's?

Mine.
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I dunno, I think you can be outraged at both the policy and his cowardly attempts to have it both ways by trying to pin the blame on the Democrats.

There's a reason I explicitly stated I didn't want to get into the discussion you had the other day with a bunch of people about his Germany crime statistic lie:

1. It was happening concurrently with the audio coming out and that issue was immeasurably more important to me.
2. It just didn't seem worth an argument over. Yes, he is lying about it. Yes, it further evidence in the "he's a racist" pile. Neither of those things was new information. Things to cite in future discussions regarding that, sure.
3. tbqh i found your position in that argument untenable
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red sox 777 posted...

Now, I don't really care about influencing those people one way or the other, but other people like the New York Times, CNN, etc. persist in trying to influence the very people with whom they have no credibility.

ironically i agree with you a bit here

just not in the way you mean

The NYT has notoriously been trying to appeal to Trump voters to downright boggling levels. The mainstream media in general has increasingly been shutting out Democratic voices for Republican ones. Their obsession with feeling they have to treat everything "equally" no matter how absurd one side/position was. So affording equal time and weight even when it is absurd to do so. Such as equating Clinton's E-Mail scandal with everything Trump did.
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red sox 777 posted...

Kenri posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Because when liberals are outraged every single day, what is normalized is the idea that liberals will be outraged at Trump no matter what.

Is this your position or someone else's?

Mine.

Okay, well it makes no sense. Why does liberals being upset at lying imply that liberals will be upset no matter what, to you?
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xp1337 posted...

I dunno, I think you can be outraged at both the policy and his cowardly attempts to have it both ways by trying to pin the blame on the Democrats.

There's a reason I explicitly stated I didn't want to get into the discussion you had the other day with a bunch of people about his Germany crime statistic lie:

1. It was happening concurrently with the audio coming out and that issue was immeasurably more important to me.
2. It just didn't seem worth an argument over. Yes, he is lying about it. Yes, it further evidence in the "he's a racist" pile. Neither of those things was new information. Things to cite in future discussions regarding that, sure.
3. tbqh i found your position in that argument untenable

Your reaction to that tweet sounds eminently reasonable. Attacking that tweet can only help Trump. Among Trump statements, it is quite innocuous in that there is an entirely plausible way to read it which would render it as not a lie at all, just imprecise (you can disagree about that if you want, I really don't want to argue about it). Many Trump statements are ridiculous on their face and some of his actions are terrifying. Unlike the statements, the actions are not always bad or outrageous, and the ones that are should be targeted.

If there were more liberals who publicly condemned the travel ban and the separation policy, while talking about how tariffs, say, might be good, they'd get a lot more attention from the public. Now, if you are someone who disagrees with Trump on every single action - and you would even if a different person had implemented the same policies - guess what? You are very very far from the center American voter. If you want to win, the best thing you can do is keep quiet and let others do the talking who can do a better job of appealing to swing voters.
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xp1337 posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Now, I don't really care about influencing those people one way or the other, but other people like the New York Times, CNN, etc. persist in trying to influence the very people with whom they have no credibility.

ironically i agree with you a bit here

just not in the way you mean

The NYT has notoriously been trying to appeal to Trump voters to downright boggling levels. The mainstream media in general has increasingly been shutting out Democratic voices for Republican ones. Their obsession with feeling they have to treat everything "equally" no matter how absurd one side/position was. So affording equal time and weight even when it is absurd to do so. Such as equating Clinton's E-Mail scandal with everything Trump did.

And none of that works. None of that actually improves their credibility with the right half of the American public. It's also pretty transparent, so if anything, it makes them even less trusted (They're only pretending to be fair! They're trying to make it seem like the emails is the worst thing Hillary is guilty of, while they say Trump did all these horrible things. If they were fair, they'd dig up all of Hillary's big crimes!)
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Kenri posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Kenri posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Because when liberals are outraged every single day, what is normalized is the idea that liberals will be outraged at Trump no matter what.

Is this your position or someone else's?

Mine.

Okay, well it makes no sense. Why does liberals being upset at lying imply that liberals will be upset no matter what, to you?

Because puffery is not the worst thing in the world. There are many things in the world much worse than puffery. If you are furious about puffery, it stands to reason that you would be angry about all the things worse than puffery.
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red sox 777 posted...

Kenri posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Because when liberals are outraged every single day, what is normalized is the idea that liberals will be outraged at Trump no matter what.

Is this your position or someone else's?

Mine.

Anyone recall how Republicans acted under Obama? Is there perhaps, a precedent for the minority party to be outraged?
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red sox 777 posted...

Now, if you are someone who disagrees with Trump on every single action - and you would even if a different person had implemented the same policies - guess what? You are very very far from the center American voter.

I don't really think so. At least not as far as you are making it out to be. But then I have always heavily, heavily disagreed with what you seem to portray as "swing voters" and its most evident when you try to relate it to posters in this topic.

My position, for reference, is that due to the electoral college you have a situation in which if you take a look at the current swing states as a whole and isolate and compare them to the overall electorate you find that you're talking about a group of voters that are proportionately more white than the general electorate. In a vacuum, this benefits the Republican party as their party is far less diverse. It also means that a swing state voter is probably going to be more inclined to be conservative than the average voter. This is on top of the fact the Electoral College already distorts the electorate into making rural voters (again, advantage Republicans) more powerful than they would otherwise be.

The media plays into this too. When they talk about the "working class" its unsaid but almost always means the white working class.

Now, granted, you can say that this is the board we're stuck with right now and so even if its distorted the influence of voters, you have to play that hand but generally speaking I'm usually not that interested in talking in those terms unless we are very specifically talking about election strategy and while I guess you usually approach most/all discussions here from that perspective... I (and I suspect most of the topic) doesn't. That may change as elections approach but I mean... I'm not interested in some purely detached analysis of how x action will effect the election on a lot of these issues. I can probably get into that mode if asked but it's not my default most of the time.
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You could say, that the focus on the emails betrays a lack of understanding of why people hate Hillary so much. The emails are just one reason among many, and not a big reason. I don't think Trump even spent much time attacking Hillary on the negligence issue regarding using a private server. He attacked her by attacking the cover-up and by building the suggestion that maybe there was something really embarrassing within the emails like promises to big banks.

If the NYT wants to reach out to conservatives, they need to hire actual conservatives who know their audience. Running a bazillion pieces on Clinton emails won't cut it.
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red sox 777 posted...

If the NYT wants to reach out to conservatives, they need to hire actual conservatives who know their audience.

They did.

And had to immediately fire them when anyone else did even the most trifling look into their past statements.

Also, you seem to be presenting a problem to which I don't see a solution. The media's purpose isn't (or shouldn't) be to report what its audience wants to hear but the truth.
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red sox 777 posted...

Because puffery is not the worst thing in the world. There are many things in the world much worse than puffery. If you are furious about puffery, it stands to reason that you would be angry about all the things worse than puffery.

first of all stop saying puffery

second of all i'm not sure you actually know what puffery means?

third of all just call it lying
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xp1337 posted...

red sox 777 posted...

If the NYT wants to reach out to conservatives, they need to hire actual conservatives who know their audience.

They did.

And had to immediately fire them when anyone else did even the most trifling look into their past statements.

Also, you seem to be presenting a problem to which I don't see a solution. The media's purpose isn't (or shouldn't) be to report what its audience wants to hear but the truth.

If they can't hire conservatives who don't have a history of hugely embarrassing public statements, that's a sign that they don't have any conservatives among the editors or whoever is doing the hiring. It's as if they are picking people who sound conservative and controversial, without really evaluating their skill as journalists. Think about it from the perspective of a conservative reader. The NYT finally hires a conservative.....and it turns out he supported restoring slavery? That demonstrates what they think of me! That does not help the NYT's credibility, and the only advice I can give is, get some more conservatives high up in the editorial staff.

I agree that the media's purpose is to report the truth. But it can't credibly do that if the perception is that it is biased and trying to cover that up. This isn't impossible - the Associated Press and Reuters have a good reputation because they stick to the facts. Fox News and MSNBC don't have good reputations but they are still doing better than the NYT and CNN because they display their bias openly and proudly, which allows viewers to fairly easily adjust for the bias. The Wall Street Journal is the very rare publication that both editorializes AND is seen as relatively unbiased by both sides.
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red sox 777 posted...

If they can't hire conservatives who don't have a history of hugely embarrassing public statements, that's a sign that they don't have any conservatives among the editors or whoever is doing the hiring

lol
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red sox 777 posted...

It's as if they are picking people who sound conservative and controversial, without really evaluating their skill as journalists.

You sure you're still arguing against my position?

I mean replace "journalist" with "politician" and look at the current state of the Republican party and its recent nominees at various levels.
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Kenri posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Because puffery is not the worst thing in the world. There are many things in the world much worse than puffery. If you are furious about puffery, it stands to reason that you would be angry about all the things worse than puffery.

first of all stop saying puffery

second of all i'm not sure you actually know what puffery means?

third of all just call it lying

Puffing puffins puffed that they were the best puffers in the whole world, until they watched Fox News and saw Donald Trump puff. Here's two examples of puffery:

"This is the best microwave you'll ever find. It heats the most delicious leftovers in the world."
"We are going to build a wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it."

Here's two examples of lying:

"This car passed its emissions inspection two weeks ago."
"When I said open borders, I was talking about energy."
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xp1337 posted...

red sox 777 posted...

It's as if they are picking people who sound conservative and controversial, without really evaluating their skill as journalists.

You sure you're still arguing against my position?

I mean replace "journalist" with "politician" and look at the current state of the Republican party and its recent nominees at various levels.

I'm not sure that I'm arguing against your position. I don't think we really disagree. As you say, my focus is mainly on elections. I am sore at the Democratic Party in general for not thinking about elections more, because they are not doing their job to put a check on the Republican Party on a bunch of things where I want them to.

And yeah, the Republican Party had a big problem with this recently. That's why all their people lost to Donald Trump. But the GOP quickly adjusted, possibly helped by its primary system in which most states are winner-take-all and first past the post, and there are no superdelegates.
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Republicans should not be pandered to. Not with the assholery they've done the last several years.
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red sox 777 posted...

"This is the best microwave you'll ever find. It heats the most delicious leftovers in the world."
"We are going to build a wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it."

The first is puffery and lying, the second is obv BS but it's not puffery and not really a lie either until you inevitably can't deliver.

anyway maybe the issue is that you have an exceptionally low bar on what you consider to be dishonest
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I guess my bar is that something is a lie if a reasonable person could be deceived.
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How much of America is reasonable, to you?
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Kenri posted...

How much of America is reasonable, to you?

The 65% who aren't liberal......

Okay, not really. Let's say 80%? I'm quite sure that the majority of Trump supporters don't believe his "lies."
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You're willing to wager that of the roughly 260,000,000 reasonable people in the US, none of them believe Trump's lies? That's a lot of confidence, I'll admit.

It sounds more like you just excuse certain lies arbitrarily by passing the blame somehow to the people who hear them, as if it's only a lie if you fall for it.
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I said "the majority of Trump supporters"
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How many hardcore Trump supporters have you talked to, Red Sox? Im in a Right Wing Facebook group with over 10,000 members, and even posting the most blatant lies I get dozens of comments calling it fake news.
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red sox 777 posted...

I said "the majority of Trump supporters"

You said 80% of America. I only need to find one person out of that to beat your "if a reasonable person can be deceived" metric, which is already much an incredibly strict definition of what constitutes a lie (since, again, it's a definition that somehow removes the liar from the equation entirely).
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Kenri posted...

red sox 777 posted...

I said "the majority of Trump supporters"

You said 80% of America. I only need to find one person out of that to beat your "if a reasonable person can be deceived" metric, which is already much an incredibly strict definition of what constitutes a lie (since, again, it's a definition that somehow removes the liar from the equation entirely).

That's not really the right way to evaluate that one. If a person is deceived, it means they aren't being reasonable (at least for that moment). If you find my definition of what is a lie to be unfalsifiable, that's because it is. It's a definition. It is not a statement of fact. By its nature it is not falsifiable.

The 80% figure is a statement of fact and is testable. But it's a distinct statement from the definition, and was not made with any precision.

My definition is actually less strict than the traditional definition of a lie, which I would think goes something like, "a false statement made with the intent to deceive." If something won't deceive a reasonable person, then it's fairly hard for it to be made with any intent to deceive, whereas it's easy to see how a statement that might deceive a reasonable person might be made without any intent to deceive on the part of the speaker (because he believes it to be true).
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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

How many hardcore Trump supporters have you talked to, Red Sox? Im in a Right Wing Facebook group with over 10,000 members, and even posting the most blatant lies I get dozens of comments calling it fake news.

They call blatant lies fake news?
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red sox 777 posted...

If a person is deceived, it means they aren't being reasonable

red sox 777 posted...

I guess my bar is that something is a lie if a reasonable person could be deceived.

this is some metaphysical shit, can you unpack this a little more for me

red sox 777 posted...

If you find my definition of what is a lie to be unfalsifiable, that's because it is.

also this was not the issue i was having, quite the opposite
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If you point to a person and ask me, is this person reasonable, my answer is, I don't know. Now tell me that they don't believe a false Trump statement, and my answer is still, I don't know. But tell me that they do believe a false Trump statement, and my answer becomes, no, that person is not reasonable. You see what I'm saying?

The problem with your proposed method of finding a counterexample is that I can't identify whether a given person is reasonable or not. Even if we take the 80% number at face value, it's not possible to tell whether any given person is in the 80% or the 20%. If you wanted me to go through the 320 million people in the country and identify each as reasonable or not, maybe I could do this with infinite time and resources, but even if I did, and you found someone I called reasonable who believed false Trump statements, that still wouldn't disprove the definition - it would just mean that my determination of the person's reasonableness was wrong!

So my definition is unfalsifiable because it is not possible for there to be any counterexamples. That's because it is not a statement of fact. You can evaluate definitions for their usefulness and their resonance, but not for their truth or falsity.
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So the way to evaluate whether a statement is a lie or not under my definition has nothing to do with finding actual people and deciding if they are reasonable and seeing if they believe the statement. You just imagine a reasonable person acting in a reasonable way and see if you can imagine a way in which they could be deceived. And if you can, then you conclude the statement is a lie.

And I'm obviously not saying that Trump doesn't lie. He does, but a large portion of his factually false statements fall more into the puffery category than lying, in my eyes. It's sort of clever, actually, because it makes it easier for him to make outright lies for purposes of deception and having people not catch it because they think it's more puffery.

It's like Democrats are the boy tending the sheep, and Trump is the wolf, but Trump pretends to be a large dog a lot, and approaches the sheep every day. The boy has poor eyesight and cries wolf to the townspeople, and after this happens every day for a while they stop coming. Only it actually is a wolf, that was just dressing up as a large dog, and after the townspeople stop coming it sheds the costume and comes and eats the sheep.
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Red sox you are being semantical AF.

Trump says shitty things. A lot.

It should not be okay that our president says shitty things. A lot.

The fact that we know the things he says are shitty should not excuse the fact that he's saying them.

That's it. That's the bottom line.

We don't care how it gets dressed up and justified. We don't care if murder is worse than "puffery". We care that our president has proven himself to be not honest. And not in the normal president way of being not honest where they speak carefully and don't always say exactly what they mean. But in the literally presenting lies as facts and not giving a fuck as long as it benefits himself in some way.

And it isn't simply because he's a departure from business as usual. Its possible to have a politician who is atypical and have them not be an embarrassment on the global stage.

Not every single thing he does is indefensible, but when is IS doing indefensible shit we shouldn't have to categorically prove all his slight wrongs before we can decry his major wrongs.

Us: goddamn all trump does is lie.

You: nuh-uh, he said the sky was blue once

.

Yes we should be challenged in our beliefs and its important to ask the difficult questions. But for fucks sake sometimes that isn't necessary and we should just be able to cry out with one voice against the utterly monstrous things our president is a party to.

Some how, some way the fact that he has dozens if not hundreds of scandals has created some kind of scandal fatigue and no one scandal can reach the normal conclusion where the perpetrator gets justice served upon them. And when scandal fatigue is not making him bulletproof there are people like you who are going out of your way to defend his sky is blue comments and generally muddy the waters.

Show me someone who is half as racist and corrupt and narcissistic and dishonest as our president and ill show you someone i won't waste my time defending on the rare occasions they aren't lying outright.
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It's good when he gets like this because he's being so awful that more people will stop engaging.
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CelesMyUserName posted...

Nobody bends their words around for Pence because nobody likes Pence.

sephyg loves pence
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Not every single thing he does is indefensible, but when is IS doing indefensible s*** we shouldn't have to categorically prove all his slight wrongs before we can decry his major wrongs.

That's exactly what I'm arguing. I'm telling Democrats to stop getting aggravated by all the slight wrongs, because it is hurting their ability to fight against the big ones. If people haven't figured it out by now, let me say what should be obvious: Trump does not care about liberals criticizing him. He does not care one iota and you won't influence him to do anything by criticizing him. So - if you are as upset about Trump's actions as you claim to be - stop feeding the troll.
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red sox 777 posted...

In between crises, they make zero effort to reach out to voters who might vote for them if Democrats actually tried to win their votes instead of writing them off as deplorable.

how should democrats go about trying to win the votes of swing voters?
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oh my god
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Not me this time
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FD's post needs to be the end of anybody responding to red sox until something significantly changes.
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You think too highly of some of the users around here.
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Oh I'm not saying it will be, trust me. We have a lot of idiots around here.
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https://twitter.com/realsheriffjoe/status/1009173012262744064?s=21

Tomorrow I will be putting out a press release that shows suspicious activity regarding FBI Infiltration of me.

The FBI is inside Joe Arpaio

Im glad I didnt draw that assignment
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