891–900 of 1001 posts
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So far the current admin has been very successful in obliterating all the soft power the US built up through the decades.
Because that softpower spread a toxic culture, that has poisoned western civilization from within?
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> And no, saying things like “read his tweets/NYT/whatever yourself” is not evidence It actually is evidence. Just not conclusive beyond a reasonable doubt. I suspect you're not going to get the better responses that might actually convince you. 1) because you're clearly being argumentative (nothing wrong with that) but primarily 2) because the people smart enough to read through the bullshit and construct an argumen…
You are saying that basically we do not have to hold anyone to any standard because (1) it’s hard, and (2) it’s enough to use prior behavior and common sense to deduce the conclusion. Great! If the US government explicitly stated their goal of promoting racist ideology, then it should not be hard to find a video clip of a video conference, a published policy memo, or anything of the sorts, that states this. Not an in…
No, you have completely misunderstood.
> it’s enough to use prior behavior and common sense to deduce the conclusion.
Yes? It's not a difficult concept that you can use pattern recognition to predict how someone, or something will behave. It works especially well the more moving parts there are. The more moving parts, the more likely you are to find conflicting bits. So in that case, if you want to predict or explain the root cause of the behavior, you're going to need to use heuristics.
I really enjoy my friends description: He explained is as "I don't actually believe that Trump is a foreign asset. But given there's no daylight in between his behavior and the behavior of a foreign asset; you can just assume he is, and his decisions make sense." Feel free to substitute racist for asset if you'd like. The point is, your demand for magical proof is a red herring, you can predict correctly without it. Thus it's useful to describe them by the way they behave.
Technically, I guess you don't need to, you're arguments are a perfect counter example, about how you can just ignore the parts that make you feel icky, or conflict with what you assume you understand. Most people you talk to will not be able to perfectly explain the ideas they hold so if you want to learn what they might have to teach, you need to make some kind of attempt to engage with them, even if in the end you find you still disagree, you're very likely to learn something. But given how transparently you don't want to, I thought it might be nice to point out how obvious it is to anyone who might have something useful to explain, that you're just looking to get off on the one sided argument.
> and you want me to accept it? I’m sorry, but it sounds like BS.
I personally don't care what you accept. My reply wasn't attempting to convince you of anything. Just wanted to point out how obvious it is you're not even trying, just for the slim chance that you actually might want to.
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So you're saying if a teacher decides to use a book in class that's wholly inappropriate for the age group they're teaching we should ban the teacher, not the book? I suppose that makes sense. But if the book in question is still available in the school library for any 7 year old to read or check out isn't that still a potential problem?
Is it? Just because it's inappropriate for one age group at a school doesn't mean it's inappropriate for all age groups.
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> there's bad censorhip (Iran, China, Russia), and there is the good censorhip I understand that you're being facetious here, but this is literally true. Words kill people sometimes, and in the same way that my right to swing my arm stops where your nose begins your right to say whatever you want stops where my safety begins. Or to rephrase it, nobody can have free speech at all if others are allowed to threaten your…
I would be very interested in hearing some of these words capable of killing. I have only heard of such words in fiction so I am quite surprised to learn they are real.
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You say it as if influencers are something bad. If they spread democracy, why would they be bad?
No my point is that the idea that the protests aren’t organic is deeply fucking ignorant and gross. It’s this whole line of thinking that everything turns on US action in the world, which is how 19 year olds think after they read Howard Zin or some essay by Chomsky for the first time. It’s unserious on top of robbing a lot of brave people of their own agency.
Scott Bessent, at the WEF [0], explained that:
> President Trump ordered treasury and our OFAC division, (Office of Foreign Asset Control) to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked because in December, their economy collapsed, we saw a major bank go under, the central bank has started to print money, there is a dollar shortage, they are not able to get imports and this is why the people took to the streets.
So it is organic insofar as the US is working hard to water and nourish something. This has been a huge push to destabilise and unseat the Iranian regime, the idea that they didn't have some people involved in the protests is hard to countenance. It'd be incompetence of the grossest variety. Technically possible? Yeah. A reasonable prior? No.
[0] https://youtu.be/TieI8GBcwTo?t=1760 & I got that from some random @ https://the307.substack.com/p/scott-bessent-again-boasts-tha... who has other choice quotes.
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American culture can access Europeans at any time. Europeans consume American culture daily.Just to clarify. Website banned are often hostile propaganda or extremists. This is only cringy lousy provocation for appearance of moral superiority. Coming from a government notorious for spying on it's citizens it seems pretty ludicrous.
Europe should just create their own social media companies where the government can act as a moderator of content then.
At the same time, I do not understand how what you wrote is in any way relevant to the topic.
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It might do that too , but access to information is just so utterly critical, and exponentially moreso in circumstances where government brutally cracks down on it, as we saw in Egypt during the Arab Spring and we're seeing in Iran presently.
Will it work when the US government is the one cracking down, banning interviews, etc?
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And truth.
> And truth. The world is yet to find a single piece of truth coming out of the Trump administration. I mean, shall we discuss how Trump claims the Epstein files exonerate him when he is reported as directly, deeply, and personally involved in every single gruesome aspect of the criminal organization?
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That is a problem with no other country caring as much about free speech, not with the US having an anti-censorship program.
We have free speech here in the UK. We can record police doing their job and publish it without getting shot in the head. For now.
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It computes quite well. > It was a 2021 case involving Andy Grote, a local politician, that captured the country's attention. Grote complained about a tweet that called him a "pimmel," a German word for the male anatomy. His complaint triggered a police raid and accusations of excessive censorship by the government. A police raid for calling a politician a dick. Let it sink. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-onlin…
A little bit like a country's leader calling for the death penalty for a decorated pilot and astronaut who reminded service members of their duty to reject unlawful orders.