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Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

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Re: Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

#81

Post by geofft »

ansible wrote: post #43

I'm glad they halted that. But it reduces the common area we can even discuss anything going on this week in politics. Taking a step back... We've got these two sides. Regardless of the merits, each side believes they know the truth, and that the other side is delusional. And it is easy enough to engage with your media outlets of choice, and get your beliefs reinforced. How can we have a meaningful discussion as a na…

I think the idea that the "sides" are roughly equally balanced is a false narrative pushed by the smaller side. Obviously "hang Mike Pence" isn't an appealing idea to anywhere near 100% of Republican voters, and I would wager it's appealing to just about 0% of non-Republican voters.

What you're seeing is that the amount of yelling is roughly equally balanced, but you can't extrapolate from that to what all people actually believe. Obviously you won't find common ground for every single person, but there is common ground for 80-90% of them.

A few more bits of information:

- There's Mike Pence himself, the actual vice president of the United States, and his unwillingness to go along with the worldviews of those who have by now concluded he needs to be hanged.

- Mitt Romney, the actual Republican presidential candidate in 2012 (who won 47% of the popular vote), has been pretty strongly opposed to the idea that Trump secretly won / would have won, to the coup, etc. Previously he marched in Black Lives Matter protests and voted to convict the President in the impeachment trial last year. (Romney also created Romneycare, the model for Obamacare, even though if you listen to how loudly people yell, it seems like half the country opposes it.)

- Georgia elected two Democratic Senators. More generally, the Voting Rights Act was gutted in 2013 and several states are actively engaged in gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts. The fact that you see Republicans roughly tied with Democrats doesn't indicate that Republican policies are equally popular.

And, again, the "side" that advocates for "hang Mike Pence" is hardly the totality of the Republican Party.

So what can be done?

I think the highest-impact thing is to help out efforts to re-enfranchise Americans and end gerrymandering. The work coordinated by Stacey Abrams in Georgia is a good place to start, for instance. Regardless of what party or policies you support, if you believe in democracy, getting elections to be more representative can only be a good thing. And in particular, if you're right-leaning but worry that the Republican Party is going too far, making it so that the party has to compete by convincing centrists instead of being able to rely on extremists will be good for the party.

Re: Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

#82

Post by jimbokun »

ansible wrote: post #43

I'm glad they halted that. But it reduces the common area we can even discuss anything going on this week in politics. Taking a step back... We've got these two sides. Regardless of the merits, each side believes they know the truth, and that the other side is delusional. And it is easy enough to engage with your media outlets of choice, and get your beliefs reinforced. How can we have a meaningful discussion as a na…

> No set of agreed-upon facts?

That's just not true.

There are good statistics on the number of deaths and positive tests for Covid.

There is a reliable and agreed upon process for counting votes in the states, and plenty of avenues to dispute those counts, and a court system that has heard every single complaint from the losing Presidential candidate and made clear rulings based on the evidence.

What is abundantly plain from this week, is there is a very large number of people who clearly just wanted to bash some heads and break a lot of stuff and threaten more violence. They felt untouchable and that no rules applied to them.

These people have zero interest in finding objective truths about the world. They just enjoy the feeling of power over other people and they use words in whatever way thinks will increase that power, regardless of any connection to the truth.

Re: Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

#83

Post by virtual_void »

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #71
virtual_void wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still false equivalence. BLM Didn't use violence to achieve their goals. Quite the opposite they were consistently attacked by police dressed up like the army, heaving people off the streets. Where were the police in DC? This wasn’t a protest it was a violent attempt to overthrow. Call it what it is indeed.

>BLM Didn't use violence to achieve their goals. I don't know how you can reconcile cities being burned, statues toppled, police stations being overtaken, parts of a city being declared an autonomous zone with "violence wasn't used" but whatever, discussion is clearly pointless. I will re-state my claim: this is a battle, and in a battle all that matters is punishing your enemies and rewarding your friends. When you…

Perhaps saying there was no violence is overstating it but it was a very different scale with very different intent abhorrent in either case.

People are undoubtedly angry because they are seeking to be treated equally. To not be murdered by the police. There’s still such an astonishing amount of injustice and yet they didn’t try to overthrow the government.

The crux of my argument is that these two groups are not comparable. One seeks equality and the other seeks to go against democracy and attempt a coup. This is what i mean by false equivalence.

Re: Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

#84

Post by matwood »

netcraft wrote: post #57
ansible wrote: post #43

I'm glad they halted that. But it reduces the common area we can even discuss anything going on this week in politics. Taking a step back... We've got these two sides. Regardless of the merits, each side believes they know the truth, and that the other side is delusional. And it is easy enough to engage with your media outlets of choice, and get your beliefs reinforced. How can we have a meaningful discussion as a na…

What is the two sides exactly? There is a group that has produced no evidence for their claims and is threatening and acting out violence - is that one of the sides? There is a point in which a particular group is no longer acting in good faith, and is taking advantage of the tolerance and ability to have discourse. https://kottke.org/17/08/the-paradox-of-tolerance

Yeah, I finally had to stop having discussions with MAGA family members because the complete lack of good faith. Because they are family, I would listen and then spend time reading their sources and gathering facts and information to have a real discussion around, and as soon as their beliefs in a topic were challenged they would fall back to 'what about Hilary's emails' or Hunters laptop. It just became pointless to have a discussion.

It's cult like. I can't imagine supporting any side or politician like these people do.

Re: Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

#85

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #76

Like probably most people in the discussion here, I think I’m smarter than the average person, and can discern the truth from multiple conflicting claims. But a little introspection shows me that no, this isn’t really true. I’m not hunting down original sources for everything I think I know, I’m mostly relying on gatekeepers (experts) to tell me what is true. Unfortunately, in social media, everybody gets to be an ex…

You are right. No one person can know everything about everything. Heaven's know I defer to experts if I know I can trust their opinion. The issue is trust.

And US has about only one institution left that people seem to trust. Military. It does not bode well for the fate of the republic.

Re: Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

#86

Post by adnzzzzZ »

ericb wrote: post #72
adnzzzzZ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think it’s fine to lump those people together as domestic terrorists. You can do that, but after many people in power and including in this site supported BLM riots earlier this year this rings hollow. It's clear most people don't care about violence being a limit given that violence was used tremendously throughout the entire year in all those protests and supporting them was the trendy position among the elites,…

Reasonable people don't defend violence in either case . You are you defending violence with whataboutism. And advocating for Machiavellianism. Gross.

What's gross is people defending the burning down of small businesses during a pandemic.

Either way, reasonable people who don't defend violence in either case are irrelevant, because things happen through violence regardless. What are you going to do about it when a horde of BLM rioters comes for your business and burns it down? Have a peaceful conversation with them about how much you don't think violence will solve the problem? No, you either have a gun or you don't.

Re: Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

#87

Post by geofft »

skosuri wrote: post #60
ansible wrote: post #43

I'm glad they halted that. But it reduces the common area we can even discuss anything going on this week in politics. Taking a step back... We've got these two sides. Regardless of the merits, each side believes they know the truth, and that the other side is delusional. And it is easy enough to engage with your media outlets of choice, and get your beliefs reinforced. How can we have a meaningful discussion as a na…

For the last twenty years I thought things would eventually just come back to center. I’m not sure anymore. It’s possible it’s as follows: One side will win. History will be written by those winners. Pick your side and fight for it?

I think this is true, and I think this is also the historically precedented answer. The partisanship in Europe in the early 20th century was not resolved by debate or belief, it was resolved by war and more generally political realignment. The vast divide between capitalism and communism was resolved by cold "war," by two superpowers aligning one with each and declaring the opposing ideology a security threat and then trying to starve out the other.

I think we can avoid another major war, but I don't think we can avoid one ideology winning and one losing.

Re: Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

#88

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

duxup wrote: post #48
ansible wrote: post #43

I'm glad they halted that. But it reduces the common area we can even discuss anything going on this week in politics. Taking a step back... We've got these two sides. Regardless of the merits, each side believes they know the truth, and that the other side is delusional. And it is easy enough to engage with your media outlets of choice, and get your beliefs reinforced. How can we have a meaningful discussion as a na…

I don't know what to say to people who want someone else killed...

You say nothing. You just be happy they are stupid enough to say it in public and see if they end up on LEO radar. I am sure threatening VP is treated with same severity as threatening P.

Re: Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

#89

Post by InvaderFizz »

blakesterz wrote: post #58
ansible wrote: post #43

I'm glad they halted that. But it reduces the common area we can even discuss anything going on this week in politics. Taking a step back... We've got these two sides. Regardless of the merits, each side believes they know the truth, and that the other side is delusional. And it is easy enough to engage with your media outlets of choice, and get your beliefs reinforced. How can we have a meaningful discussion as a na…

> We've got these two sides. Regardless of the merits, each side believes they know the truth, and that the other side is delusional. You're partially right. We have at least two sides. One side is CLEARLY delusional. Fueled by conspiracy theories and lies. We also have other sides, but the two sides that get the most attention are the only sides that matter. We have one side that is most definitely delusional, other…

> One side is CLEARLY delusional. Fueled by conspiracy theories and lies.

Which set of conspiracy theories? The crazy ones that Trump was a Russian asset and everything surrounding that nutbaggery for four years?

How about the current nutbaggery from the other extreme that this election was stollen through voting machine manipulation, ballot stuffing, discarded Trump ballots by postal workers, etc.

It's hard for me to get upset at either side when it all looks so insane.

Re: Twitter Confirms It Halted 'Hang Mike Pence' as a Trending Topic

#90

Post by quest88 »

ansible wrote: post #43

I'm glad they halted that. But it reduces the common area we can even discuss anything going on this week in politics. Taking a step back... We've got these two sides. Regardless of the merits, each side believes they know the truth, and that the other side is delusional. And it is easy enough to engage with your media outlets of choice, and get your beliefs reinforced. How can we have a meaningful discussion as a na…

There are more than two sides.
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