Pretty much any book you want to read for free, you can borrow from them. I use it very frequently to grab sections of some book I'm interested in or want to cite but don't have a physical copy of.
They also have awesome documentaries. The Mine Wars is, I think, one I saw not that long ago which was pretty sweet.
I do not donate to them for using all this awesome stuff, even though I probably should.
The entire operation in Gaza has been terrorism this entire time, much more than it is "war." That's why I tend to put the word in quotes whenever I am talking about it. If you stop and think for a second, "war" fits the description of what they're doing pretty badly overall.
Deliberate attempts to prevent food aid to put pressure on the civilian population, and specific destruction of important civilian targets like hospitals and universities, as well as the explicit linkage of an end to Israel's attacks with particular goals like removing Hamas or particular terms in the peace agreement, being key elements. A war against armed opponents that are part of an organized apparatus whether state-sponsored or otherwise would look very different from what Israel is doing.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I wasn’t even thinking in terms of conservatives because I sort of looked at them as a lost cause and who knows what they’re gonna do; I was looking at the contest as where things are going to shake out between “willing to vote” against “nah it’s not important enough to vote what’s the worst that could happen”. But yeah there probably is a contingent of Republican voters who think what Trump says about it is relevant and believable.
Blue MAGA
I think this catchphrase will work in the opposite way that you think it will
I won’t say Lemmy users are immune from this kind of middle school groupthink, but in general I’ve seen the voting patterns and etc work mostly in the opposite direction. Most people are smart enough to recognize it as a tag that the person saying it is dishonest, not a tag that they should not support the Democrats because the person saying it makes an excellent point.
You can't say that everybody polls worse and then agree that Kamala Polls better.
Yeah, that’s fair. What I meant was that everyone except Harris polls below Biden, and Harris is two points ahead. (I am not counting Michelle Obama as “realistic” because that is an asinine and imaginary idea.)
Check out the Ipsos poll for July 1. It’s changed since the one I was thinking of; now Biden is literally the best-polling candidate and equal with Trump in the only recent poll I can find.
I am very curious to know whether this strategy will work on anyone
Like is there anyone who heard about Project 2025 and went “oh no!”, but then Trump said “oh we weren’t serious, we didn’t mean that, IDK even who these guys are” and then they said “oh phew okay back to not voting, I’m sure it’s fine”
It is hard for me to get inside the head of the average American voter so I won’t say that is impossible but it seems pretty unlikely
Constructed entirely from something, at least
I actually have no clue what point you were trying to make in the first two paragraphs.
I believe that you do not, yes. Read it again and think about what I’m saying a little bit deeper.
The main difference in terms of election enthusiasm is the burden of history.
They propped up Trump as a pied piper, ignored progressives and polls warning them Hillary would lose, and started a pre-emptive smear campaign to blame progressives for the loss. Now, they are still contending with the man they propped up, are once again ignoring polls, and I already see the groundwork for blaming this on progressives. So I'm less enthusiastic because I've heard this song before and I dislike it just as much as the first time.
Yeah, this stuff is totally how I look at the election, too. Just how I emotionally feel about it, and whether I’m “enthusiastic”, and nothing about platforms, and talking about all the bad things about Hillary as the reasons why I don’t like Biden.
Voting for Hillary in the 2016 general made me feel physically ill and still somehow Biden this election is less inspiring than she was.
Hey, funny story. So I was talking to this guy the other day on here, and he was so upset about how the Democratic Party had shifted to the right. And he was talking about during the Bill Clinton years, how he and all his progressive / activist friends were so happy about how Clinton balanced the budget, and how great it was to get a young guy like Clinton in the White House, and it was a shame that his legacy got tarnished when Obama and then Biden came in.
And so I was thinking back on like all the activist people I knew in the 90s and how they felt about Clinton and the fuckin balanced budget alongside the WTO and prison population and bombing in Serbia and welfare to work and all that fun stuff, and then contrasting that with how they felt when Obama got elected. And I was like damn, that guy’s story that just happens to match a particular narrative that would be convenient if you wanted to shit on the Democrats sure matches up exactly with how I remember it. Like to a T.
Anyway. I just thought of that story. What was your favorite way Hillary Clinton was better than Biden? What did you miss about her platform, as bad as it was, that Biden managed to make even worse? I am curious.
Poster X: I am super left!
Poster X: Coincidentally I have the exact same strategy recommendations as the New York Times!
Poster Y: Hey you know Bernie Sanders actually doesn’t agree with you
Poster X: He’s just not left enough! Here are some wealthy DNC donors who agree with me!
Poster Y:
Poster X: I think people on the left should not vote! I am super left!
All of the other options that poll below Biden? Every other realistic option that's been polled, that I'm aware of, is below Biden in polling. Polling's not real accurate (to put it mildly) but it is precise, in that you can use a comparison between one poll and another with the same methodology to gauge the relative reality even if you can't see the overall reality.
Kamala Harris polls a couple of percentage points above Biden. She's the only one who does and the only alternative that seems realistic, to me. The other options would represent this gigantic risky clusterfuck to replace Biden at the last minute, just to install a candidate that polls worse, and that after the media just got done shitting all over Biden relentlessly and he had the world's worst debate performance.
Do you not ever ask yourself why the media hates Biden so much that they try to create this reality where -- for example -- replacing him with almost any of these semi-nobodies would be a good idea, when that's not how the people who would be voting feel? That seems like an important question to investigate, does it not?
Or no, you're just gonna go with "almost anybody would be better and I know because X Y Z created that picture of how it works and will play out in my head, and it's definitely reality because they sounded super definitive about it" maybe. IDK. Up to you though. I would be interested in knowing why they are so vigorous about it, though, if I were you.
They don’t actually believe it, in the sense that people usually mean when they say that. The pathology that’s going on may sort of tickle some of the same pathways that provide the “what exists in reality” context for the rest of the brain to make decisions, but mostly what they mean when they’re saying it out loud to other people is simply that it it were true, it would help their team. If you watch the way they behave, it’s very clear that it’s the second thing and not the first.
The development of that pathway and feedback loop between the part of the brain that believes things, and the part of the brain that strategizes what would hurt the Democrats if it were true, is horrifyingly dangerous. It’s at the root of some of the worst and largest-scale atrocities of the 20th century. And now, there’s a whole network of conservative media in the US that can hook in with organized religion and they can work together to explicitly strengthen it, consistently and forcefully, every single day.
If they just “believed” in in the sense that they had objectively arrived at the conclusion that it were true, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as dangerous as the somewhat more subtle thing which is actually what’s going on.