Vice-President Kamala Harris

even 2p2 mods can fall prey to propaganda.

in the COVID Lancet Letter, a scientist trying to stimy investigation into his **** convinced some other scientists to put their name to a letter saying it was racist to suggest covid plausibly leaked from a lab.

for raising questions on the letter's citations and offering good faith reasons why it plausibly could've originated in a lab, i received multiple infractions and my misinformation was promptly scrubbed

Spoiler

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What ? He was already super famous.

I still don't think he was even serious when he first ran for president. It was just free advertising for his brand.

be careful, posting dms is a permabannable offense, one mod sent me an explitive filled dm not too recently, i believe with the hopes that i'd post it and then get banned

fwiw, i think td was acting in good faith at the time

i say this as someone who believes it came from a lab and always felt that was a strong possibility it was lab created and covered up

• there are wholesale markets in every city in china, but you can't say that about coronavirus labs
  
  
• there were never any bats for sale at that market (99.9% of chinese meat diet is pork/chicken/beef/lamb - same as us)
  
  
• the wuhan coronavirus lab worked specifically with bats
  
  
• labs have been creating bat borne coronaviruses for some time - here's a 2015 nature article talking about how risky that is simply because there's a good chance of humans being infected with them https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2...
  
  
• with other outbreaks, china was applauded for their swift reactions and local officials who failed to report or even cover up earlier outbreaks out of fear it made them look bad were removed from office and even faced jail time - this drove the message home that if your town/city/etc is facing an outbreak then report it upward immediately and let them handle it
  
  with covid, the opposite happened, early reporting of it was silenced - no mayor of wuhan was punished later either, meaning that either the national government was directing them or they already were running the show themselves
  
  
• no studies into the origin ever went anywhere, whereas with other stuff they were so thorough that they'd found the specific village which got infected via a specific bat cave
  
  
• china did not censor any of the wildly popular online blogging that it was in fact created in a US lab and brought over to the US as a bio weapon - it's quite possible that was official propganda as well - stuff like that, whether or not they were behind it directly or just allowed it to flourish without censorship was a huge departure from the past where they kind of kept the crazies hidden away - it's just pure speculation, but i think a big reason for this is they wanted to get ahead of future "lab virus" accusations with a "of course it's a lab virus, that's because you made it your lab to attack us" - idk, just spitballing
  

but... i was outright shocked by the incredibly incorrect and outright racist stuff coming out at the time - for example, the word wet market is not a real word, it never was - it was a bureaucratic term used only in singapore where the government operates in english but people speak other languages at home and thus awkward and strange words and usage emerges there such as deciding that any market which sells perishable goods is a wet market

under that singaporean term, costco and whole foods are also wet markets

so to suddenly start using this obscure and niche term only found on bureacratic excel sheets in singapore as a widespread and commonly used word to describe all markets in china was just insane and it came about strictly out of racism because wet market inherently sounds gross and unclean

those markets are the same around the world, just check out NYC's fulton fish market - open air fish sitting on blocks of ice - it's not the hermetically sealed appearance we're accustomed to for the retail markets

so that was just the minor stuff

i'd also see tons of outright lies posted

this video is taken down every few months but always reappears, only 131 views on this one so it was harder to find, but at one point an earlier version of it had tens of millions of views and was one of the top search results

it's very clearly southeast asia and not china, if you watch it carefully, you'll even see some signs which are in indonesian i believe - but you get the gyst, everything nasty and disgusting out there was repackaged and labeled as wuhan and it got the views

there was also a hoax where someone created a fake letter from a japanese scientist that working in wuhan was disgusting and unsanitary and they clearly made the virus - despite that the scientist in question repeatedly told the world that he did not write that letter - it still was widely reported

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/fa...

so i get where he was coming from, it was coming from a good place as most of the "lab created virus" were either outright racist or tin foil hat wearing conspiratards - sometimes both

^ thanks for the context. seems that'd be more a reason to infract people pushing the dominant "wet market" theory? i'd repost the original stuff i got cited & scrubbed for if it didn't derail this thread further, but it was not racist. just pointed out 1) the lancet letter citations didn't say what they purported they did, 2) the advanced GoF work the lab did with bat viruses.

tin foiliness is subjective and i hope one lesson learned from the debacle is to not forbid all speech on a given issue just because the topic's been associated with trump and his lemmings. it results in uninformed conspiracists doubling down harder thinking truth's being suppressed, while righteous NYT readers are sheltered from competing claims that could change or temper their views

back on topic: harris picked the right VP and you could see she knew it watching that speech. dude is a down to earth breath of fresh air

this one really hits close to home

while abroad, i was under the impression that qanon was a really niche and obscure thing that only the extreme crazies were stupid enough to follow because my interaction with america was through conversing with friends back home and reading the legitimate news like washpo and nyt

as a result, i almost never heard about qanon other the occasional odd reference online, and only much later did i learn more and the majority of my information on it came from the nyt podcast on it called rabbit hole - which is amazing btw, highly rec listening to it
https://www.nytimes.com/column/rabbit-ho...

and having seen it casually referenced a few times and listened to that entire pod, i thought i knew about some obscure and unknown thing that most americans were unaware even existed

i come home to usa #1 and just run into qanon discussion non stop - and importantly, a lot of people throwing around qanon terms/ideology while claiming to not be aware of it (because they know better than to claim they read it outright, much like how many trump supporters were not so open about it until after he won the election)

so yeah 100% on that - was absolutely shocked to learn how common and widespread that had become and pretty much only know because i stray enough away from my normal social settings to play 1/2 occasionally at the casino 😀

I agree they are acting weird. There are hypocrisies and contradictions they hold which are already stretching them to the max. My theory is they disdain anything which threatens this fragility. To act like it's such an achievement to get a woman president of color on one hand, then to openly support the fascist ethnic cleansers in Israel on the other, has to be something like having a split personality. They cannot be conscious of their contradictions and react emotionally when confronted about them.

The policy arch spanning both parties is as real as the bipartisan votes cast by Congress on most any measure of significant material impact. BTW the house parliamentarian asked me to say hi.

This sounds a bit more informed than "Whatever party of my parents raised me to like should rule the country".

I guess for you all people are Democrat solely based on one issue which is Israel .
But it’s ok you believe trump would be less « genocidal » then democrats .
It’s « weird » but it’s ok .

This shouldn't be a mystery.

I've observed two different types of "they're both the same" posters here. There are those who, as you say, are single issue voters, or perhaps just a few issues. They see neither party makes the progress they'd like, so they write them both off. I can sort of get that. What I have trouble with is when they then decide they won't vote or lift a finger to make any change to the existing system, and instead just rail against not only both parties, but anyone with the temerity to support either one. They're certainly free to do that, but it shouldn't be surprising when they get pushback. And then there are others who like to use the "they're both the same" argument as nothing more than an excuse to hand wave away shitty things their candidate does, and it should be obvious why that gets opposition.

Fair enough.

Of course.

Probably so. But I also think there is far too much attribution of deeds to malice rather than incompetence, or even just different (and sometimes misguided) viewpoints.

Fact is , this is not true, again unless the issue for you is exclusively "rich people and corporations shouldn't rule the country".

Rich people have very very very very different opinions among them of what should happen politically, on most things INCLUDING taxation, workers rights and so on.

There are very rich people who don't want to help Ukraine for example. There are very rich people very pro entanglement with China, and very rich people against, and very rich people in the middle.

The are very rich people who want a federally mandated maternity leave. Very rich people who want to abolish the cost basis reset of stocks at death. Very rich people who want trillions to be spent "for the climate" and others who would want to abolish all climate related regulations and state intervention, and many in the middle.

And so on and on.

Some of the richest people in the USA right now are ex-wives or relatives of wealth creators who embraced the most radical leftist positions on many things (both Gates and Bezos ex wives are to the very far left of the american median voter, and each of them own tens of billions).

You and people like you simply don't like the idea that they get to call the shots much more than normal income people. That 1 is not worth 1 in politics, in social affairs.

But 1 is never worth 1 in any society in human history.

When wealth isn't a very relevant discriminating factor, other elements are, and you still end up with extreme inequality in influence of political outcomes, in every single human society in human history. It can be charisma, or perceived wisdom, or fame or whatever, still exceptional inequality in how much someone opinion on what should be done matters, and how much someone else opinion matters.

You are at war with human biology not with the "mono-party"

I read that during covid stay-at-home lockdowns in Minnesota, Walz created a "life of others" setup where people had a hotline to call to denounce purported violations of the order by neighbours.

Is that true?

Sorry, I was trying to make a joke. I think there is a huge idiot class with advanced degrees in our society that thinks exactly the way I posted.

I would suspect that NY Times readers are some of most propagandized people in all of human history. I think it is right in Edward Bernays book on the subject that the most propagandized people are those that read the most. The only people who have a defense against propaganda are illiterates.

The class of people I am talking about has the most easily manipulated opinion and we see this all the time. Not that differing opinion to the NY Times is not also highly manipulated but they don't seem to change their opinion quite as drastically. A big part of that though I imagine is the scientism of the NY Times. Painting a thin varnish of scientism on opinion so that when the opinion does a 180 it is conflated with the process of new evidence from a scientific experiment.

No need to clarify, this was evident from your post. A reply to your post was just a convenient soapbox to stand on.

Well, I've been to places with very high degree of illiteracy and can attest that this is not true. But they're at least free from this book.

The arguments against intellectualism and trying to be informed is very common, anyone who is into discussions and debates have heard it ad nauseam. And nobody is free from making mistakes or falling prey to propaganda, so in that sense the argument could in some cases have merit. However, it is more typically wielded as an excuse to accept fringe sources or cling to pet ideas.

You might not understand my objection. We were talking about the morality of voting for Trump in 2024, not Joe Biden. Donald Trump has been held liable in court for sexual assault, is convicted of felony charges in relation to hush money payments to a porn star, ended roe vs wade and has a long history of cheating on his 3 wives. The person he is running against, Kamala has no such record. Regardless of intent your literal words are all too typical of the debate today; the idea that what joe Biden did has any bearing on this election or Trumps insane record is a classic example of false equivalence.

And for good measure youve dismissed those concerns as shallow thinking. In your words I think like someone about to have a one night stand thinks aboit sinners going to hell and that I dont know about climate change and stuff, which isnt even close to true.
I have thought about a wide variety of issues and discussed them with lawyers , high ranking business officials on wall street, scientists, actual people in congress from the perspective of a persecuted minority. Ive thought about these issues a great deal at a very high level.

Science shows men are bad at listening to non heteronormative people and the idea that I am somehow the shallow one based on tone is all too common.typical.

Kamala supporters are way less likely than Trump supporters to support certain conservative ideas in regards to military actions taken by Israeli officials. There’s a whole thread about this. The point is its totally ridiculous to create an imagined scenario where liberals are excited to have a candidate who could be the first woman president who also understands intersectionality from first hand experience as sheep being handed a trojan gift by the new world order or whatever conspiracy youre suggesting that makes all political thought from progressive democrats to conservative republicans the same.

Kamala becoming the first woman president is a big deal, and not something that is shallow to “see through”

I don't think anything can be more cringe! Harris as President would be like having Russel Wilson as President. Folks, lets not do this. We can get through four years of Trump and then get back to sanity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeBGikGa...

Are you still here? I recall you saying you were leaving not long ago. What happened to that?

I would say these people represent the vast vast majority and the truly indifferent self-interested psychopaths are rare. People are a product of their environment. Their morals are relative. They really are drinking the kool-aid. They may feel they’re doing the best they can or the lesser of evils. That may not actually be true but it doesn’t mean they haven’t done a moral calculation that they thought would result in the greatest good.

They’re just normal people. The main difference between high ranking elected officials and the average person is a higher degree of empathy and an ability to communicate and listen to ideas.

Other things like a law degree, or high iq, or wealthy family connections improve your odds a great deal but aren’t requirements.

The reason these officials are viewed as so dramatically different is that other people have lower empathy levels than them and thus dont understand differing points of view as well and craft conspiracies about them.

lol. Even the pro Trump talking points are running on empty.

I won't be happy until I see Trump himself reduced to this level.

Sure. Mine was a long winded description of normal. The point in reference to Deuces take is that normal people can come to all sorts of moral conclusions that don’t make them psychopaths or purely ladder-climbers.

Well said.

I had never thought of it that way before, very interesting. I don't think that holds true for all (not that you said it did), but it probably does for some.

Yeah, I have no idea what that very vanilla promotional video is supposed to convince anyone of. I guess he's hoping for some kind of reaction like 'ZOMG, they staged a call to show how folksy and chummy they are, it would be far better to have 4 more years of Donald because those two are sooo cringe!'?

Except we can't get through 4 more years of Trump.

He is going to be a Dictator on Day 1.

He is going to make it a point to fire all Federal Employees who don't bow down to him and do exactly what he wants them to do (prosecute Democrats, etc.)

He isn't going to hire cabinet members who will be good at what they do because last time he tried that they all hated him (well there are 4 out of 44 who are supporting him in 2024). His cabinet members will now just be sycophants.

He will shut down the Mexican border (which will cause inflation to skyrocket just like the last time he did it)

He will try to get rid of about 11 million immigrants who are here without a green card. Probably including DACA people who were children brought over by their parents. That will also damage the economy and inflation

My guess is that he would attempt to stay on as President with no future elections. He will use the Supreme court's recent ruling on the lack of legal remedy against a sitting President who commits a crime. And the people in his power will only be his supporters. He tried this in 2020 after he lost the election but it failed because the people in power in the Justice Department and Homeland Security came out publicly to deny there had been any cheating done in the election

He will continue to put people on the Supreme court who aren't really qualified.

And finally my guess is that he will lie every single day just like he did the last time he was President.

Why in the world would we want the worst President in the history of the United States to be President again?

Lol, mong considers all those things to be good things.

Because he is a better choice than Harris.