#KnowNothing#CardiB is too stupid to realize that NOT voting for #Biden is a vote FOR #Trump, and that her boycott of #Election2024 could be her last — She might not get another opportunity to vote EVER.
Some thoughts to those inclined to take the word of 'respectable' public figures (who are actually authoritarians and even génocidaires), and to those who have grown cynical of all lying politicians:
There used to be a concept called 'leaving hostages to fortune', in which public figures learned to avoid making promises or offering falsehoods that were vulnerable to thwarting/exposure by future contingencies.
Under the assumption that having your lies exposed or rash promise invalidated would be potentially career-ending, it used to sometimes be reasonable to operate on an epistemic criterion of "embarrassment", where we could increase our level of trust in a statement made by a public figure if it (a) wasn't currently able to be confirmed but (b) it seemed obvious that they would get caught out for lying if it were not true. I.e. "They wouldn't lie about that, right?"
However, the information landscape has profoundly shifted in recent years. (Or has seemed to for some people. See below)
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#Putin, #Trump, #Netanyahu, #Modhi and other recent authoritarian strongmen (#Orbán, #Erdoğan, #Bolsonaro, etc) have discovered just how effective the #FirehoseOfDisinformation is in an age of deliberate political dysfunction, polarised electorates, microtargeted #disinformation and the general milieu of ecocidal late capitalist societal crumbling ('the Crumbles'). Their supporters generally either never hear about the debunking, reject all evidence that conflicts with their commitments (#IdentityProtectiveCognition), or don't care and openly embrace #authoritarian doublethink (cf #MAGA, widespread #Israeli support for increased violence in #Gaza, #Russian troll farmers).
"Along with that sector of the electorate which seems detached and uninterested in our fate as a nation, we also have the problem of collective denial. American political elites who have the resources to be fully informed about the devastation Trump 2.0 would cause are among this group."
"Not wanting to accept the reality that the GOP has become an autocratic party and supporter of White supremacist violence, they lose time hoping futilely that a return to the before times is possible."
"America faces an even more fundamental challenge as the 2024 elections approach: For too many voters, nothing seems to matter. And I mean nothing. Donald Trump approvingly quotes Russian President Vladimir Putin and evokes the language of Adolf Hitler, and yet Americans are so accustomed to Trump’s rhetoric at this point that the story gets relegated to page A10 of the Sunday Washington Post."
"Joe Biden presides over an economic 'soft landing' that almost no one thought could happen, and his approval rating drops to 33 percent—below Jimmy Carter’s in the summer of 1980, when American hostages were being held in Iran, and inflation, at more than 14 percent, was well into a second year of double digits. (Inflation is currently 3.1 percent—and likely will go lower.)"
"In 2011, a poll found that twice as many Americans knew that Randy Jackson was a judge on American Idol than could correctly identify the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court."
When this Tory government is toppled, the Bojo regime must be brought to justice.
We now know that it was Johnston/Hancock policy to allow thousands to die rather than give support to the NHS. They cannot be allowed to walk away from this.
Two news stories in Deccan Herald on the same day show why #Bangalore is doomed due to horrible #corruption & #apathy from its politicians & councilors 😭:
"Democracies don't have to die at the end of a rifle. They can die when people are silent, when they fail to stand up or condemn threats to democracy. When people willing to give away what's most precious to them because they feel frustrated." Joe Biden Sept. 28, 2023
Comment: abortion & erasure of transgender persons I predict will the key wedge strategies in Republican culture wars leading into the 2024 U.S. elections : noise, disinformation, & identity politics to (1) to divide the electorate, & (2) through information overload induce apathy & dissuade voters from participating / voting - allowing enough of their supporters to elect GOP candidates. ...
Just reading a Wikipedia article on the Nazi occupation of France. There is a heck of a paragraph quoted from "Occupation: The Ordeal of France" (1999) by Ian Ousby:
"There was no sign of public opposition to (anti-Jewish laws), or even widespread unease at the direction in which events were heading ... Many people, perhaps even most people, were indifferent. In the autumn of 1940 they had other things to think about; later they could find little room for fellow-feeling or concern for the public good in their own struggle to survive. What happened to the Jews were a secondary matter; it was beyond their immediate affairs, it belonged to that realm of the 'political' which they could no longer control or even bring themselves to follow with much interest."
This is surely something of what we see today with people saying they don't like to "get political" when a clear human rights violation is brought to their attention.