Objection

How is that relevant?

Because you're trying to argue that it's something that has a direct material impact on the average person. Again, as always, you're getting distracted by moralizing, "This should be an issue" but that's not what we're discussing. The fact is, regardless of what people should or shouldn't care about, regardless of how bad a given event is or isn't, the fact is that people care the most about things that materially impact them or people they know personally. Inflation, therefore, is more important to the average person than January 6th, and if you go on and on about Jan 6 while failing to address their economic concerns, you will lose. Again, like what happened.

If you don’t already think the damage done to American democracy on Jan 6th doesn’t, by definition, have an impact on the average American then you have some other grave issue in your “philosophy”. If you just don’t care about democracy because you’re some kind of brainlet tankie then RIP, waste of time.

Again, it's not about what is important or what I think is important, you're getting distracted by moralizing. It's about understanding reality as it is. And reality as it is is that people care about things that affect them in direct, material ways more than things that don't, and January 6th had no direct, material impact on the vast majority of people.

You can whine all you want about how people "should" be more concerned about it, but all you're doing is railing against the realities of human psychology. It is what it is, not everyone cares about the stuff you care about, even if the stuff you care about really is genuinely important. You might as well complain about the laws of physics, maybe the universe would be better if the second law of thermodynamics didn't exist, but that doesn't really matter, because you can't change it, and, similarly, you can't wave a wand and get people to stop prioritizing their direct, material interests.

Understanding and adapting to what voters actually care about is what allows you to win elections which is what allows you to take power and address the concerns you have and keep the other side out of power. It doesn't matter what you think is important if you can't win.

I don’t remember you citing anything that falls into the criteria,

COVID misinformation in the Philippines? The rampant lies leading up to the Iraq War? Those things fit your criteria.

Also, don't try to pretend that you're only excluding historical examples, you're also excluding recent examples, because "Trump isn't representative of America." Who knows what you'll exclude next, maybe Bush isn't representative either because he lied and that contradicts your worldview.

Also very funny to me that you'll exclude history from like 40 years ago but cite history from 80 years ago (WWII) as still relevant.

Then stop saying stupid shit if you’re not making any substantive points? What’s the point of saying they don’t do shit to you because they’re not in a position to do so? wow, thanks for the enlightening insight.

If you were able to shut down the hyper-partisan moralistic urge to constantly opine on who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are long enough to actually listen to anything I'm saying and look at reality as it is, then you'd understand my point. As it is, you've missed it completely.

I'm not interested in discussing, like, who's more likely to get into fucking heaven. Christ. It's completely and totally irrelevant to the conversation.

If one person has a gun pressed against my head, and another person doesn't, then I'm more concerned about the guy with the gun against my head than the other guy. Maybe the other guy is a worse person, maybe the guy with a gun to my head volunteers at the soup kitchen every day and the other guy kicks puppies, but my concern is removing the gun from my head.

What I'm saying is that American billionaires have a gun to the head of the American people in a way that Russian billionaires don't. And your response is to talk about how the Russian billionaires are bad people and have guns to other people's heads. Irrelevant to the conversation.

Bro, this isn’t about YOU

Yeah, it's not about me specifically. It's about my class, which has the same material interests as me. If you want to write off my class because it's "not about us" then, you know, good luck in the next election.

If you want to objectively compare how each government treats their own population

I don't, thanks. Why would I? I'm interested in pursuing political objectives that help me and my class. I'm not interested in evaluating each country moralistically and then picking a team to stan like it's football or something.

People even died to this shit.

Yeah? What percentage of the population?

Oh wow, I’m so glad that the serial liar “disavowed” it and then proceeded to install the minds behind project 2025 into government and speed-run the implementation of its policies.

Again, this incessent need for partisan moralizing. There was no way to prove to the American people that he was going to give government positions to the people behind it. I don't like Trump, I didn't vote for him, you can stop constantly trying to convince me he's a Bad Man.

What we're talking about is not morality, it's the factual question of why Trump won. For that purpose, his character is only relevant insofar as it affects public opinion of him.

Dems/Kamala highlighted various points of the project

Which parts? I need specifics since you just tried to claim that January 6th was an issue that had a direct, material impact on the average American (lmao!) so I don't trust you to make that evaluation.

Maybe you should respond to the specific comments you take issue with? The OP and most of the comments are more focused on the fact-checking.

January 6th is not distinguishing on policy, it's another example of focusing on character in a way that doesn't have any direct, material impact on people's lives.

Project 2025, Trump disavowed, and I don't recall democrats really focusing on specific points from it that would materially impact people's lives. Telling people to read a 900 page document that Trump claims not to support is not enough, no.

That's not what I said. I said that the things you mentioned about him don't affect the average person's life in any tangible way, not that his actions in general don't affect them.

Perhaps, if the democrats spent more time focusing on those tangible things and distinguishing themselves on policy and less time focusing on his personal character, they might have had a chance.

No, you’re just asking dumb shit for the sake of asking it. The West just isn’t shitting out propaganda on its population the way Russia is, it’s not hard to understand.

A KGB agent visits America and meets a CIA agent, and says, "I'm so excited to learn from the American methods of propaganda!" The CIA agent responds, "What? But in America, we have no propaganda!" KGB agent slams on the table and says, "Yes! Exactly like that!"

I already cited numerous examples of US propaganda and dinsinformation which included ones that fit your arbitrary criteria of neither too recent nor too old. There's also shit like this recruitment ad that's pretty open and explicit about manipulating public opinion. Also like we explicitly have psyop divisions. It's also just a completely absurd idea, we don't do propaganda because, what, we're "the good guys?" Not how the world works lol, incredibly naive take.

They don’t because they’re not in charge of your fucking country.

Please stop telling me things I just told you. Literally in the part you quoted and were responding to, I said, "because they’re not in a position to do so."

But they do all that shit and worse to their own population.

But I'm not part of that population.

Again, you're misunderstanding me. I'm in no way claiming a moral difference between Russian and American billionaires, I'm merely pointing out that the more direct enemy of the American people are the set of billionaires with the means and motive to exploit us, namely, American billionaires.

Which might explain why you’re so blissfully ignorant of the Russian scourge.

More importantly, it would explain why Americans in general were always bound to lose interest in the conflict and give up on it, we just had to waste a bunch of blood and treasure on the conflict pretending otherwise first.

I should add the caveat- by all means critique him, correct anything false he says

Great, that's what we're doing here, so no problem.

Yes, because being an "oragutan rapist criminal coup attempter" doesn't actual affect the average person's life in any tangible way. Inflation does. Not hard to understand why he won, as they say, "It's the economy, stupid."

Even under clowns like Trump, the US press is more free than Russia’s.

Which again raises the question of why Russian propaganda is so much more effective in the Western media environment where they can't censor things or control shit than Western propaganda is. See, you're distracted by a need to say, "Russia is the bad guy" that you're losing sight of the actual question.

I wouldn’t use the trash that Trump pulls as valid examples of how the West acts

Other than that, try not to fetch US examples from the cold war

No present or historical examples then, got it.

When did the US reform and change it's ways? Did a president stand up to the CIA and tell them to cut it out? Which one, when? Was anyone in the intelligence community held accountable for their actions and actually punished? Who, when?

Or did the US stop doing evil stuff right around the window of time where documents would not yet be declassified?

Putting aside all of that, even if I accepted your absurd constraints, I also raised points that fit your criteria, regarding the war in Iraq. Things that track with a consistent pattern of behavior before and after.

Russian kleptocracy aligns more with its population and doesn’t represent the interests of the rich?

I never said anything like that. What I said is that Russian kleptocracy is less directly opposed to the interests of the American people than the US kleptocracy is. The Russian oligarchs don't suppress our wages, bust our unions, and gouge our prices, not because there's any kind of moral difference but because they're not in a position to do so. The American oligarchs are the ones with both the means and motive to hurt the American people, they are, therefore, the primary enemy of the people, moreso than Russian oligarchs are to us. It's not about one group being morally superior to another.

Because they’re destroying democracies in your region.

In "my region?" My region is about as far away from Ukraine as it's possible to be on planet Earth.

I'd estimate, maybe half a percent? Might be too generous.

But the group of people we were talking about about being influenced was Americans, so it would be fairly natural to assume that I was talking about them influencing our own population, or that I was leaving it ambiguous. If you wanted to jump to the conclusion otherwise, you should've clarified.

I have no idea why were're limiting "propaganda" to "bot farms" which aren't a particularly effective form of it. Every US media outlet has a vested interest in falling in line behind what the president wants because otherwise they could be refused access to things like press briefings, something Trump is especially blatant about. The US media was fully supportive of the Iraq war and published countless lies promoting it, the NYT made up a story about "mass rapes" claimed to be conducted by Palestinians to justify the government's support for the war, going back further, into periods where we have access to declassified stuff, the US government literally had a mind control program called MK Ultra specifically about trying to brainwash people.

Of course, it has also conducted misinformation campaigns in other countries. Recently, the US government was spreading COVID/vaccine disinformation in the Philippines. During the Iranian coup that ousted democratic leader Mohammad Mossadegh in favor of a right-wing dictator, the CIA admitted that it had taken control of virtually every newspaper and media outlet in the country, used to manufacture discontent. If they can stuff like overseas, then they can do it at home too.

Furthermore, these intelligence agencies have interests that are more directly contrary to the American people than the Russian government does. They represent the interests of the rich, and the US rich are the most direct and primary enemy of the US poor. And yet, I never hear any libs express even the slightest ounce of concern that the most well funded intelligence network in the world, with an atrocious historical record showing that they have both the means and motive to suppress democracy, might be something to be concerned about. We should only worry about a less well-funded, less connected intelligence community with less directly opposed interests, because, what? They're foreigners?