Objection

You said “nobody could’ve predicted that Trump would put project 2025 heads into government”. So shove your forgiveness up your ass you tankie clown. Don’t patronize me.

That's a lie. Link the comment where you think I said that.

This is just a dogshit tankie take.

I guess Bernie Sanders is a tankie now 🤣

Trump filled his cabinet with billionaires and was supported by the richest man on earth. Nobody cares about this “blame the rich” nonsense, evidently.

I already explained this. When the options are, "You are struggling, and the reason you're struggling is minorities" vs "You're not struggling, it's all in your head, the economy's doing fine actually," people are inclined to listen to the narrative that tracks with their lived experience. If you want to actually compete with that narrative, you need another explanation of why people are struggling, ideally a simple one, and that's where a leftist narrative is necessary.

Ah yes, I know that in your world of non-existent morality this would’ve had an easy counter. But shitting on your current boss by making up nonsense about how he actually did things poorly (when he didn’t) doesn’t come easily for people who are more genuine/honest than you

The idea of Kamala Harris being more genuine/honest than me is too absurd to even take offense at, it's just hilarious.

I guess you got what you wanted then. Kamala chose to fall on her sword and "do the right thing" and now you can pat yourself on the back for being on the side of the good guys while the right takes power and fucks up all the stuff you claim to care about. If we keep getting such "noble" people, then the right's dominance is assured for the foreseeable future. How important is stuff like Ukraine to you, really, if you're fine with that result? Seems to me you're fine with them being sacrificed as long as your side keeps it's hands clean.

Not that it would even "dirty her hands" to simply offer some kind of policy. The Biden/Harris administration was constrained by a divided government, she could've said they wanted to go further with stuff but were held back. Is that not the truth?

Also, for the record, my position is not that morality doesn't exist, just that you have to set it aside when assessing the world as it actually is.

Also, isn’t the obvious answer to anything Kamala could say “why didn’t you do/push for that policy as the vice president?”

Because the vice president doesn't have much power? Obviously.

Engaging in and furthering the decay just to win isn’t the way to go. Clear out the trash so that democracy can actually function. Ridding ourselves of this dogshit disinformation environment and returning to normal politics isn’t “idealist”, we’ve been there not too long ago.

Yes, we were there not long ago. And then we proceeded from that state into this one. Even if we could somehow return to that state, the root causes that pushed us into this one would still remain.

But you don't seem to have any actual plans for achieving the change you want in the first place. You just seem to want politicians to fall on their swords for no reason so they can be heroic martyrs and you can revel in your "correctness" about things. I guess I owe you an apology, when I tried to explain to you what could've been done differently in order to win, it was under the assumption that you actually wanted to. If you just want to whine about things not being the way you want them to, idk what to tell you, you do you ig.

my class interests

spare me the tankie cringe

Lmao. Even just talking about class is tankie, apparently.

If I’m just comparing how shit the Russian gov is vs the US gov, your interests aren’t relevant in the first place.

I'm not, and that wasn't what the conversation was about.

Why stability/security in the West/World is vital for prosperity and won’t be possible unless Russia is defeated

"Defeating Russia" sounds extremely destabilizing. Do you genuinely want to eliminate the country through military force? That's completely insane, they're a nuclear power, you'll end all life on earth. There will be no "security" "stability" or "prosperity" in a nuclear wasteland.

So possibility A is a nuclear wasteland, possibility B is just letting them have the country and going on with our lives. I'll take option B, thanks.

Yet you think it was super difficult to predict Trumps relationship to Project 2025 lmao.

Never said this, you're lying. What I said was that it was difficult to convince voters to connect Project 2025 to Trump.

I'll forgive your lie because it seems like you're genuinely incapable of distinguishing between those two propositions, but if you continue lying about what I said, I'm walking away. Lies are a pet peeve.

Tell me, how do you know that supporting Ukraine properly doesn’t result in Russia’s defeat in, say another year

Because of my assessment of the situation. It's a stalemate, there's no realistic possibility of them reclaiming all their lost territory in the next year. Russia will win a stalemate because they're more materially invested in the conflict than the US. Eventually, the US will get bored and stop caring about it, Russia won't.

or that surrendering them doesn’t result in death camps all over Ukraine for years?

How do you know Ukraine winning wouldn't result in death camps all over Ukraine for years?

Yes, because they’re heavily brainwashed by foreign and right-wing propaganda. Just waiting for you to finally concede this basic fact.

Sure, some people are, but the broader trend is people following their perceived material interests.

The fact that the candidate outed himself as a senile removed should have the material impact of shifting votes to the opposition.

😑

I don't know why I'm bothering. It's always this "should" nonsense. It's completely irrelevant to understanding voter behavior.

It did not have the impact you want it to have because people vote according to their material interests, and Trump's various antics did not make them change their minds about which candidate was in line with their material interests. Because they were directly, materially affected by inflation, and not by "Trump dancing."

And how exactly should Kamala distance herself realistically from the administration she herself was in? Do you think you can come up with some gem of an insight that all the top advisers failed to see? Cool

Of course I do. Those "top advisors" are the same incompetent morons that bungled the Clinton campaign.

You have to provide an alternative explanation to the right's narrative. When things are bad, people look for who to blame, the right tells them to blame immigrants, while liberals tell them not to blame anyone because things are fine, actually. It's no wonder people go with the narrative that actually tracks with their lives experience of material conditions. The solution, the way to answer the right's narrative, is to blame the rich, the billionaires who are hoarding wealth and price gouging and who were (in part) actually responsible for inflation. The democrats don't want to do that though because they would risk alienating their rich donors.

Even if they weren't willing to do that, Kamala was directly asked what she would do differently than Biden on the economy and had *absolutely no answer," which was an extreme political fumble. Saying virtually anything would be better than that. She is a terrible politician with poor political instincts, which is why she bombed out of the 2020 primaries despite being the frontrunner.

YES I AM. I’m not sure why you insist on pretending the current state of US politics is a normal reality that people are meant to just conform to

What I'm saying is that reality and the current state of US politics should be recognized for what it is. And it's impossible to do that if you keep injecting your ideas about what should be into analysis of what is.

where you can still calculate what the right move is or isn’t according to any kind of rules that make sense.

Because you can. You just have to view things through a materialist lens rather than an idealist one.

Not sure why you think this hyper-cynical teenage view is any less of an inane and immature lens than “saturday morning cartoons”

"People persue their own interests" is not a "hyper-cynical teenage view" lmao.

I never positioned the conversation as being about who is exploiting YOU more though. You keep inserting your own personal interests as if it should be the compass when comparing the US and Russia, idk why.

Again, it's not about me, it's about my class.

And it's not a "compass for comparing the US and Russia." Compare them all you like, it doesn't concern me. What does concern me are, you know, my class interests. If you want to ask me to set aside my own interests in favor of your opinions about morality, then you have to make the case for why I should.

“We should abandon it because it’s going to be abandoned anyway” is circular logic nonsense.

No, it's seeing the writing on the wall. I don't control public opinion, I can't change the fact that people are losing and will continue to lose interest in Ukraine, that's just a fact of life. And given that that's going to happen, the best thing to do is to cut losses as soon as possible.

The point should be people realizing that it’s best, even just for their own self-interest, for Ukraine to win.

Then make the case, because you haven't. All you've done is talk about how they're the bad guys and pulled out an unrelated example from 80 years ago that's resulted in disaster every time it's been used as an example.

You have no idea if supporting or surrendering would result in more or less deaths.

Of course I do. I mean, to the extent that it's possible to predict any events. It's the deaths from surrendering versus the deaths from surrendering plus the deaths from however long the war keeps going.

The moral fiber of politicians for example, is and should be a concern because it does have an impact in pHysiCaL rEaLiTy.

Even that statement is missing the point. "Is and should be a concern." You can be concerned about it all you want, but we're talking about how voters will and have behaved, and their behavior has clearly demonstrated that an insufficient number of people care about such things for it to be decisive. Should they care? I don't care whether they should care.

To clarify, sure, Trump's character has an impact on material reality once elected, but we're discussing voter behavior, which doesn't necessarily see that connection or care as much as they perhaps should. But how much they "should" care is an altogether different question from how much they do care.

Oh really? was it Kamala that ranted about Haitians eating pets? danced for 40 min onstage to ave maria and ymca like a senile kook?

Did those things have a direct, material impact on broad segments of the population? Maybe some Hatians faced more discrimination and were alienated, but that's a hell of a lot fewer people than were affected by inflation, so the impact it had on the outcome of the election was probably negligible.

She shouldn’t have to distance herself from the Biden administration because the administration objectively did a good job.

And there you go again. Whether she should or shouldn't have to is irrelevant, you're drifting off into "ought's" again. Regardless of whether she should have had to, she did have to.

It’s really hard for you to admit that people are just uninformed

I already said that they were ages ago. In fact, I was the one who first pointed out that "a wave of global inflation caused incumbent parties in many countries to lose elections." You only assume I can't "admit" it, despite me explicitly telling you it, because you can't wrap your head around the fact that *even though they were uninformed, Kamala still failed to make the case to them." Again, unless you can wave a magic wand and cause uninformed voters to become informed, you're just complaining about how reality works.

This is also another opportunity for you to realise that morality actually exists and is something to account for.

I never said it didn't. What I said is that we have to be able to look at reality rationally and objectively without our preconceptions of what "should" be true getting in the way of things.

Also, I'm very confused about what you even mean by this or how it's in any way a response to what I said.

The reason you assumed I was trying to carry water for Russia is that you assume I think in the same nonsense terms that you do, viewing geopolitics through this inane lens of "good guys" and "bad guys" like it's a Saturday morning cartoon. In reality, they're all ruthlessly self-interested and neither Russia nor the US has any interest in improving the lives of ordinary people (as I already told you, when I said Russian billionaires don't exploit me only because they lack the power to do so). The correct way to view such conflicts is through the lens of realpolitik.

To give a historical example, in the American Revolution, the revolutionaries were supported by the French monarchy. France's absolute monarchy was less democratic than Britain's, and obviously the French king did not support the revolution because he supported it's ideals. The French only wanted the revolution to succeed in order to weaken Britain. The British colonists lobbied for and happily accepted the French support, realizing that, even if the French king was just as bad as the British king, the British government was the one exploiting them, while they had a common enemy with the French government.

In the same way, I have no illusions about Russian capitalists or the Russian government being in some way "morally superior" or "the good guys," but I also recognize that the American billionaires and government are the ones exploiting me, and are therefore my most direct and primary enemy.

If you want to persuade me from that position, then you need to be able to make the case that supporting the American capitalists/government against the Russians is somehow in line with my material class interests. Preferably without relying on a single historical example from 80 years ago which has been cited over and over again to justify disasterous wars that made things worse for everyone.

And if you can't make that case to me, then you won't be able to make it to a broad audience. And if you can't make it to a broad audience, eventually, you will be unable to get elected on a platform that includes support for it, and Ukraine will be abandoned. And if Ukraine is going to be abandoned anyway, then it's better to avoid prolonging the war for no reason, because it just means more people will die.

You keep repeating this meaningless slogan as if we live in a world where morality doesn’t exist or matter.

Sure, but I'm not talking about anything related to morality. I'm talking about the way the world is and does work, not how the world ought to work. I'd be happy to discuss morality some other time, but when we're trying to understand physical reality, we need to be able to set it aside. But you refuse to do that. You aren't capable of looking at things objectively because you're always immediately trying to inject you opinions about how it ought to be.

Let me know in what way did Trump do a better job of addressing economic concerns given his already shit economic policies during his first term and his inability to communicate any meaningful plans.

He didn't do much, beyond positioning himself as an "outsider" as he does. Mainly, it was less than Trump did it right and more that Kamala did it horribly wrong. Inflation had had a direct, negative material impact on everyone in the country, and Kamala failed to distance herself from the Biden administration, which people assumed was responsible because that's when it happened.

And this is where you inject, "But Biden wasn't responsible," even though that's already been established and it doesn't really matter. People still made the connection and prioritized the issue, in both cases, because of how brains work.

But they don’t genuinely care, because if they did they’d try to be minimally informed. It’s all just based on emoting and slogans, It’s all morons falling for braindead propaganda by bad actors.

Ok then, great, should be easy then. Just be a bad actor and get the morons to fall for your propaganda instead of theirs. Then you can get elected and address whatever concerns you like.

You can complain that voters don't care or aren't informed enough, but unless you have an actual plan to change psychology on a mass scale, you're just whining that the laws of physics don't work the way you want them to.

It’s funny to you because you’re too stupid to know the difference between comparing similar tactics used between Hitler and Putin VERSUS using ancient-ass cold war events to justify a contemporary opinion.

If the cold war is "ancient ass" what does that make Hitler? "Prehistoric ass?"

Completely arbitrary, of the example serves your position is fine, if it serves my position it doesn't count. You're just throwing out anything and everything that doesn't confirm your preconceived beliefs.

Well it seemed like you were very much willing to carrying water for the actions of the Russian state by saying that the US does the same things, if not even worse. Suddenly you have no interest in comparing them? Try having the ability to follow a conversation before engaging in one.

You telling me to "try having the ability to follow a conversation" is pretty rich considering how you're constantly losing the plot and getting distracted by moralizing, like you're doing here. You assumed that my goal was to "carry water for" the Russian state by talking about the bad things the US does. No, not really. I don't particularly care which is worse between the two, at no point have I ever attempted to make that case. You assumed that was my angle, because that's how you see the world, but that's not how I see the world and I've told you that over and over again.

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.