OBJECTION!

This thread has made me realize that while I was watching the hearings on it purely for comedy aspect, there were actually people out there being like, “Yeah that makes sense.”

Love it when the government takes away our stuff. Please, take away more of our stuff. Love me that security theater.

If you don’t like the app, just don’t use it. Nationalism is a hell of a drug.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with data security and everything to do with other social media companies lobbying to eliminate a competitor, using anti-China sentiment and fear-mongering as a justification. It’s all about the money.

I’m gonna have to admit to stealing that line from Dimension 20

Because he’s rich and powerful and laws are just threats made by the ruling class, which he’s a part of. The law is primarily a tool of class warfare and as such is only enforced consistently and in full force against the working class. Very occasionally, one rich person pisses off enough other rich people to be subject to it, but you have to be extremely bad at the game for that to happen. The more rich people are subjected to the law, the easier it is to be subjected to the law yourself if you’re rich, so generally you’re better off looking the other way while they do illegal shit so that you can get away with your own illegal shit. Plus they have the resources to fight you, so it means picking a costly battle.

I think the phrase is, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

The economy had been trending upwards under Obama, and it peaked under Trump. If you’re a Keynesian, you might gripe that Trump increased spending when the economy was doing well rather then saving for a rainy day. Then, the rainiest of all rainy days hit with the pandemic, which shot spending through the roof. That caused rapid inflation that became most noticeable after Biden came in. Most Americans either don’t pay enough attention or attribute cause and effect to more or less random factors, so the experience is, Trump economy good, Biden economy bad.

Second, skepticism of the government is a facet of American culture, fed into from the national mythos regarding the Revolutionary War, by anticommunist propaganda about how the government doing stuff makes things worse, and also from experience with getting disillusioned from politicians not delivering on promises and the government generally not acting in people’s best interests. Kamala comes across more as representing the political establishment, and her messaging doesn’t tap into that dissatisfaction or contrarian nature.

Third, people feel like they’re getting fucked, and Trump offers a clear, simple narrative of who is fucking them. And the narrative scapegoats people at the bottom of the social structure, who are least able to push back against said narratives, and who already have negative stereotypes about them. If you’re not going to do that, then you either have to tell people they’re not getting fucked, or you have to blame the people who are actually doing the fucking, who are at the top of the social structure, who are most able to push back against your narrative. Imo, in order to employ the latter strategy most successfully, you need a sense of solidarity, a sense that everyone is included in your movement and you won’t allow anyone to be scapegoated or sacrifice anyone for your own advancement -and it’s kind of hard to do that with the whole genocide thing going on.

One of them talked about a Marxist who will get rid of Israel within 2 years and wants to defund the police and give everyone healthcare and provide transgender operations to illegal immigrants, and the other talked about a person who hates the US military, admires China’s handling of COVID, and wants to defund the police and pull out of NATO, and I just wish I knew the names of either of those candidates because they’re both way better choices than what we’ve actually got.

I hate them.

A crackpot who is connected to the CIA and a known source of misinformation and fake news.

Well, for starters, I don’t blindly believe anything people say about it.

Now they say that. They also lied and said that they weren’t asked any clarifying questions, when the linked comment proves that they very clearly were. They’re just trying to backtrack their unreasonable claims after the fact to make the response they got seem more disproportionate.

Especially anything tankie related.

Y’all will believe literally anything with zero evidence of it means making people you don’t like look bad.

Hell, I had a few members tell me that I was part of the evil capitalist elite because I had a job.

Anytime a person claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link to it, they are lying or misrepresenting what happened literally 100% of the time.

https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/chinese-genocide-of-uyghurs-in-xinjiang-continues

According to Adrian Zenz,

https://thediplomat.com/2024/04/erasing-memories-concealing-evidence-chinas-efforts-to-obscure-the-uyghur-genocide/

provided to UHRP by scholar Adrian Zenz

Whoopsie! That’s already two. It was easy to find those because they were already pointed out to you (along with several other of your sources) in the thread that you’re complaining about.

Here’s a tip - when you post a source on this subject, press “Ctrl+F” then type “Zenz,” and if anything comes up, don’t post it. Obviously, I can’t expect anyone to actually read their sources before posting them, but is 6 keystrokes really too much to ask?

I have a rule that anytime anyone says something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they are lying or mischaracterizing it literally 100% of the time, and that rule has proven itself yet again.

I found the thread and you had several people read your links and go through them in detail. Most of what they’re claiming is traced back to crackpot Adrian Zenz.

As I said, if you go there and say wrong things and then can’t back them up, they’re going to be rude to you. Citing Adrian Zenz is one form of not being able to back up your claims.

Do you have a link to that conversation? I’m interested in what your proof looked like.

If you say something wrong about something they care about and you can’t back it up, they’re going to be rude to you.

I can’t speak for Hinduism, but this Wikipedia article goes into some of the history of Buddhism in regards to sexuality. Generally, sex of all kinds, whether heterosexual or homosexual or sex with celestial beings, was seen as another one of the 10,000 things that could distract one from the path - but otherwise there was nothing particularly immoral about it. Monks and nuns generally had to follow rules that prohibited both, in order to remove distractions, but those rules were never meant for the general public, aside from the precept against the “misuse” of sexuality, which is ambiguous but thought to refer more to things like SA.

When we’re talking about modern China, or the present day state of other historically Buddhist countries, it would be reductive to say that their current attitudes towards homosexuality are a product of religion, because it ignores more recent events and currents, and other historical factors. China was also historically influenced by Confucianism, which was more homophobic, but it was also influenced by a bunch of other philosophies, and today it’s not very religious at all. Japan was historically very gay, and the 11th century Tale of Genji has a bisexual protagonist fucking everybody.

However, every historical tradition had to adapt to contact with the West during the age of colonialism. China at first tried hard to cling to its traditions and stubbornly refuse to adapt to new, Western ideas, but the “century of humiliation” happened and they realized they had to adapt or die. Japan was not directly colonized, but they still had a massive revamping of their society with all these new ideas coming in. Every country in Asia has a story like that. And then you have another 100 years of stuff happening after that.

China’s modern day homophobia does not come from a place of “The Buddha said this was bad,” rather, it comes from seeing homosexuality as a Western invention, and a symptom of “bourgeois decadence.” Sadly, such brainworms are common in many socialist countries. There is a stereotype many people have that gay people all live in cities and spend all our time partying at nightclubs, because that makes for better TV than the reality does. Ironically, there are many countries in the world that once had their own more tolerant traditions that were replaced with Western values during colonialism, who now hold those values up as their own against more progressive, modern day Western values.

Lemmygrad.ml and Hexbear.net

I wish we could have a higher level of discussion, with an expectation that claims should be supported by evidence. Less ad hominem and conspiracy theories about everyone with a different point of view being a bot. And much less “I heard someone from [group I dislike] say [comically evil thing],” being accepted purely off hearsay with no source.

I think lemmy unfortunately inherited some toxic reddit traits in that regard. If you make something up, whole cloth, that tracks with what people want to believe, you get upvoted, if you make a case with strong supporting evidence but it doesn’t fit with what people want to believe, you get downvoted - it’s circle-jerk-y.

Also, people just seem generally incurious about the world and it’s rich, diverse history, and just want to rehash the same talking points over and over again. Too many big communities are focused on news or current events, not enough on broader historical context or philosophical discussion. I don’t really want to rehash the same discussions about the US election over and over again for the thousandth time. When history is discussed, it’s at a meme level, with a handful of historical events being referenced exclusively, oversimplified and weaponized to own your political opponents. The world is filled with color, depth, life, and wonder, but when site culture is so focused on scoring points, the result is everyone’s too guarded and defensive to appreciate that.

I’d much rather read people randomly gushing about some special interest or rabbit hole they went down, or even just rambling thoughts about whatever, compared to the latest story about the latest thing and discussions where everyone knows where they stand based on their camp. It gets boring.

Right, because you’re doing zero analysis of the economic or political structures involved and playing fast and loose with terminology.