3mo ago

For Republicans, truth is... honestly overrated

100 comments

I don't think the audience Vance's message is supposed to resonate with cares about being fact-checked, or facts in general.
Trump doesn't care if he's being fact-checked because facts don't matter to him, and his voters have the same outlook.
- It's actually worse.
  The core MAGA people are utterly convinced that 'fact checking' is literally the moderators lying to prevent Republicans from saying what is actually true.
  They are way, way, waaaaay down the rabbit hole of the lugenpresse, I mean fake news, that basically any time the figures they adore/worship are ever fact checked, well actually that is evidence of a vast liberal media conspiracy against them.
  They actively despise fact checking, and when it happens, this triggers their conspiracism harder.
  The reason why Vance made a show of crying about fact checking was partly due to personal anger/embarrassment/whatever, but the other part is that he knows that complaining about it is appealing to core Trump voters.
  
  And the fact that Lügenpresse has even come up at all is freaking wild. That's something which should send a chill down the spine of anyone with even a whiff of understanding of modern history.
  That they're down the rabbit hole about it should be impossible. The whole idea should have been political suicide. I take it as evidence of the extreme control years and years of Republican propaganda has on its constituents. They not only vote against their own interests, but they now actively stand against democracy. Absolutely insane.
  
  This is exactly what they are saying on a few conservative subreddits I saw today. That the moderators fact checked him about migrants, then when he tried to explain some detail that explained everything they cut his mic.
  As if Vance hasn’t famously been lying about the topic for weeks and endangering a whole community.
  
  I'd say it's even worse than that. Part of the culture on the right is that "yeah, it's a lie but that's fine". Even proving they lie beyond a shadow of a doubt doesn't dissuade the core, because they have been conditioned to take lies in stride, so long as it agrees with them.
  You have Vance going on and saying the lies are necessary because unless they lie about Haitians and paint them as barbaric savages then people will fail to recognize them as the barbaric savages that everyone knows "those people" really are, even if the facts don't support that. That maybe they can't accurately state how they are savages or they can't support it, it "sounds right" and that's good enough because surely they are up to something like that, because they are "those people".
  You have people in their camp like Scott Adams spinning things as "directionally true", again, they may not be actually true, but common sense tells everyone Haitians are bad people, so it's good enough.
  Speaking of common sense, Vance said during the debate that experts are explicitly people to disregard and to follow that "common sense". Expertise, research, honoring the facts, all these are bad things because "common sense" knows better (so long as "common sense" agrees with whatever Trump camp feels, if your "common sense" disagrees, well then you don't have common sense or you are somehow evil).
  Like the one "outright lie" they caught Walz in, that 35 years ago he was in Hong Kong in August instead of June, Walz seemed genuinely ashamed about that pretty mild scenario. Meanwhile Vance just effortlessly carries on without a hint of caring about being called out on anything.
- JD Vance actually said that it doesn't matter because, "It's how it feels."
  This mirrors almost exactly what the Alex Jones staff said during depositions. It didn't matter if they had facts. What mattered is that the alternative felt true and they would report on that.
  
  I think Lindsey Graham said the same thing after the RNC back in 2016. It's been going on forever, but that's the first time I remember one of them saying it out loud. Paraphrasing, "I'm a politician. You can have your facts, I'll take people's feelings every time."
  
  Kellyanne Conway, senior member of the 2016 Trump admin, wanted people to look into Trump's heart for the truth:
  You can't give him the benefit of the doubt on this and he's telling you what was in his heart, you always want to go with what's come out of his mouth rather than look at what's in his heart
- Facts are a variable to some. These types are always trying to bend things around and back peddling when they encounter a situation that they can't lie their way out of. Fact checking is to them unfair since their made up facts/lies should be okay as far as they are concerned.

I wish Walz did better at calling out ALL of Vance’s bullshit. Vance said, “we as republicans need to do better to earn your trust on bodily autonomy.”
It doesn’t take much effort to say bullshit. If you want to have more trust, then don’t get rid of the only thing protecting women’s bodies!
- Honestly to me Walz looked so exasperated/disappointed that he was dealing with such a dumbass and his followers.
  
  I got that feeling too. He was in shock a few times.

I still find the fact that the ultra auth-left instance hexbear.net is the most republican instance on the entire fediverse extremely amusing
- Not surprising. Tankies are fascists with leftist aesthetics.
- It's always matter of time before some radical nationalists and radical socialists talk to each other, come to the realization that they actually have a lot in common and then decide to work together in a single nationalist socialist organisation. The inevitable backstabbing comes later.
  Edit: I had written national instead of nationalist.
- How do we know that fact? I am curious. Maybe I missed something. Thanks
  
  we don't know for a fact, but I've spent some time on a lot of instances and they were the only ones telling me to not vote harris and instead vote trump
- Hexbear... Authoritarian... Can I have whatever drugs you are taking?
  
  as an anarchist I can say one thing: they don't like anarchists
  also they're stateist and all stateists are authoritarian, why do you think they defend russia and china in online arguments?

Saying this is a no-brainer is essentially in and of itself, a no-brainer. But yet, here we are, frustratingly attempting to educate leftists and undecided people on the dangers of “protest voting” and how cataclysmically dangerous it is to assume that you know better without ever seeming to possess the ability to simply just prove it.
We have the receipts. We know damn well what is going to happen if Trump is allowed to win.
And if you think you’re teaching someone a lesson with your withheld vote, I’ve got news for you-
A LOT of people are going to be hurt. And the ones you think it will be, the ones you’d want it to be- won’t be counted among them.
I promise you this.
- Couldn't tell democrats to try and please their demographics instead of republicans. No, the left vote is "owed" to democrats no matter how much they turn their back on those voters. And then y'all wonder why people are disillusioned with politics.
  
  Well, when your entire political view is based on unsubstantiated rhetoric, I’d imagine it’s probably pretty easy to arrive at such a conclusion.
  No vote is owed, my friend. That’s just something you all seem to like to tell yourself so that your smug arrogance has a semblance of purpose.
  And trust me when I say this:
  No one is wondering why you’re disillusioned with politics… disillusion- of course, being the keyword here.
  Enjoy watching from the docks while rest of us pull this ship into port without your help.
- If both sides are the same, then drag thinks the "both sides" must be the Democrats and the Leninists. Because those are the two groups who say they're leftists but do little to help others. Drag agrees with the non voting leninists on a factual basis, and also thinks they're complete fools on a practical basis.
  
  Who’s drag?

Is it just my imagination, or did that weasely fuck spend the entire time Walz was talking trying to do a Jim Halpert look at the camera?
- Probably because it played so well for Harris.
  
  That's because she was genuinely baffled. Vance was just faking.

This needs to be a billboard.
EEEEEEVERYWHEEEERE!

I’m no fan of Vance, but if you’re going to put Walz’s office in there, you have to include it for both of them.
- Couch Fucker JD Vance
  
  Couchfucker Jeffery Dahmer Vance
- Everyone look out, it's the fucking meme police lmao. 🚨
- I don't know that owning Vance Refrigeration comes with a title.
  
  What line of work are you in, Bob?

Can someone please fucking explain to me how people are saying Vance won this debate?
- On reddit the bot propaganda message is that Vance won the debate. I guess the answer is Russian interference
- The bar is as low as not shitting his pants as badly as Trump did in his attempt and he cleared that with flying colours.
- This video breaks it down fairly well: https://youtu.be/9Xb9LU4OoHw?si=sNUoXhJvbYh_5m1R
  
  Downvote for the young Turks
- if the event organizers lied it makes it more or less a draw
  
  They didn't though...

Every time republicans mention mental illness in this country ask them if they are just scapegoating or how much money they would be willing to put down in the budget to ensure everyone had access to mental healthcare
- Oh that's an easy one. Its 100% a scapegoat because there is no fucking way in hell they don't use the term "mental illness" without thinking either.
  A) They need to bootstrap themselves out of mental illness
  B) Something Something Euthanize Something
  Because they are 100% uninterested in fixing stuff, its just a shell game of placing blame elsewhere and doing nothing about anything ever.
  
  and doing nothing about anything ever.
  THAT is a VILE defamation! They are putting so much effort into siphoning all the wealth they can carry into the pockets of themselves and their cronies and here you are claiming they are doing nothing! Do you think those super-rich-tax cuts propose themselves? The permissions to legally destroy the planet for money are granting themselves on their own? NO! There is a lot of work going into robbing entire generations of their future for maximum profit while at the same time distracting the general public and indoctrinating them into believing that it's all being done for their benefit. And I will not stand for anyone claiming that the trumpian kleptocrats are lazy and "doing nothing".

Sadly, both will resonate equally with their bases. Although I think they Walz had a better performance, I don’t think this debate changed anything.
- According to the numbers, it didn’t.

To be fair, if we think about the bigger picture and not just abortion, unless US States disappear then people's rights will continue to vary quite a bit depending on their geographical location in the same country, including their body autonomy...
- But the federal government is allowed to say "Alright, this is the baseline for rights. Go from there."
  
  That's a minimum though, some States will offer just the minimum, others will offer much more
- States rights have always been about allowing one group of people to have the power to oppress another group within a state and without federal intervention. It’s why Democrats tend to focus on federal policy and Republicans are obsessed with things like states or parental rights.
  Picking up your point, I believe that reform should extend to the point of dissolving states and creating provinces instead, all under central government like nearly every country on earth.
  
  Look at Canada, provinces don't solve that issue either
- It's helpful to have a sort of pyramid in government for the sake of balancing the workload (someone managing foreign policy shouldn't be bothered to give a shit about a pothole in Utah) but what we could do is not burden states with these kinds of things and kick it up to the federal level. For a while it was, and it was stable and consistent, but now it's not and that's the mess
  
  So long as States are allowed to provide more than the Federal minimum you're still opening the door to having people with different rights based on their geographical location though...
  Let's say healthcare is now 100% public and managed or forced on States by the federal government but medication isn't covered, you could have one State saying "alright, that's dumb, we will handle medication coverage then" and now living right across the State border means that you're paying for insulin or private coverage while your friend in the next town over doesn't know how much either of those things cost because it's all paid by taxes...
  I'm using that example because something similar happened in Canada (one province decided to create its own medication insurance policy while it was an handled by the private sector in the other provinces).u

"Facts are gay." - some Republican.

The sad truth is that for nearly half of American, Vance's statement would resonate with them.

I believe we need to abolish the presidency in the near future and distribute the powers to the House and Senate. Powers of government to the House and Powers of State to the Senate, with some fudging for checks and balances, like house passes laws and Senate has to intervene to veto them with some qualified majority rules like the EU has.
I believe this has to be done because it's pretty clear that a system with a single powerful leader inherently puts all the strain and division of the nation into that leader, especially when there's no recourse when public sentiment turns against that leader except for voting them out, if that's even an option to begin with.
A dual-parliamentary system with some restructuring of the House and Senate would go a LONG way in venting a significant amount of the pressure that has built up under our elected leaders as of late.
Also replace the singular supreme court with a sortitionate bench that's drawn randomly for each case that rises to federal jurisdiction to shoot jurisdiction shopping dead.
- But who would lead the executive branch then and how would you ensure that they are reasonably separated from the legislative branch?
  
  I would suggest that abolishing it is impractical, however it needs to be reigned in a lot. There are a few circumstances that call for the decisiveness of a strong singular authority, but not many. These "executive orders" have been nuts and shouldn't be such a routine thing.
  
  There would be no independent executive branch, the very concept inevitably endangers democratic systems by creating a person with a lot of power who inherently is going to view any disagreement of course of action from the people's representatives as an obstacle to be gotten around.
  Or have you missed all the headlines about the over reliance reliance on executive orders over the past decade and change? Not to mention how the fiat veto was never intended but instead the result of Andrew Jackson just deciding he didn't have to give congress a reason why their laws were being treated with the same energy as shit that was at a minimum arguably unconstitutional up to that point.
  The independent executive is a leach that parasitically sucks power away from the elected representatives of the people, and imposes "checks" on their powers that not only are entirely unneeded, but actively endanger the health of the republic.
  Everywhere that's tried american style democracy since the US formed has collapsed in dramatic fashion, everywhere else that's gone with a parliamentary system has at worst had periods of endangerment, mostly caused by a parliamentary leader trying to get the powers of an american style president, gestures wildly at Orban and Erdogan
- Might as well start from scratch at that point.

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