PhilipTheBucket

In fairness, it is very precisely and exactly the Nazi rendering of the death's head from the SS uniforms. I don't think it's a "Nazi tattoo" any more than some Hindu temples with backwards swastikas on them are now retroactively covered in "Nazi symbols." I completely believe his explanation, among other reasons because some of his private communication has been exposed and literally 0% of it is Nazi and a lot of it is violently anti-Nazi. But their argument that it's a Nazi symbol is technically accurate, I think.

You don't have to die! The article is right there to read. The lie is that he is a Nazi, the article has a bunch more explanation, but basically, there's no reason to think he is a Nazi and several compelling ones to think he is not (which the people who are doing the freakout about the tattoo are willfully ignoring).

People aren't actually saying he's a Nazi. Well, most of them aren't, some are. Most of them are just saying he has a Nazi-adjacent tattoo (which he does) and it's a HUGE problem (which, given his politics, it isn't.) They are carefully staying away from the question of whether the death's-head tattoo actually means he's a Nazi, because it has an answer which isn't the answer they want to portray.

I am talking about comments threads like this one: https://lemmy.zip/post/51555751

Search for "Blackwater". There's ONE guy (with an argument which, while I don't agree with it, at least seems like a coherent thing that an average Lemmy person would come up with logically to me, exactly what I was talking about in my scenario one). Then, look around at the comments and the absolutely screaming tide of people running up and down wanting to talk about the tattoo and also casually using a wide variety of logical fallacies while they are doing so. It's weird.

You forgot one of the best. A lot of these are kind of funny, but there is a certain amount of stupid sounding legwork that the attorney is obligated to do that they may slip into doing too much of just by habit. It's like the cops ask "And did he have your permission to punch you in the face? Did you consent to that?" They just have to cover the elements of the statute.

Anyway. From memory so the precise wording is not verbatim (I think this one's from a divorce trial):

Attorney: And did you ever have sex with him in Salt Lake City?

Witness: I'm not going to answer that question.

Attorney: Did you ever have sex with him in Miami?

Witness: I'm not going to answer that question.

Attorney: Did you ever have sex with him in Key Largo?

Witness: No.

Not yet but I'm sure that's coming

Related:

To me, just dealing with the Lemmy reaction to Platner, by far the most telling indication that the obedient Lemmy freakout about him was fake news was how focus-group-driven it seemed. There actually are reasons to criticize him that I could see a Lemmy-minded person seizing on. He was in the US military, for fuck's sake, he almost certainly shot a whole bunch of people in service of the American empire. Why the fuck weren't they screaming about that? And I'm sure there are things you could cherry-pick out of his Reddit history that would be sure problematic (the Jacobin article lists some of them, as well as some Reddit posts that partially exonerate him for having been in the US military at least in my opinion).

But anyway, it is none of that. Nothing along the lines of what the average Lemmy user seems to me like they would have as a reaction if you just surprised them on the street, described Graham Platner in 100 words, and then asked what his pros and cons were. It's all this focus group driven "Did you hear he had a SECRET NAZI TATTOO? Yeah I'm sure he just never noticed in all the years, just another lying politician pretending to be progressive like all the rest, he's as bad as Bernie, etc etc blah blah." It's the "tan suit" "invented the internet" "Bernie didn't call it a genocide" type of picking one objectively accurate fact that looks pretty bad if you light it from one very specific angle, and then banging it like a fucking snare drum relentlessly from that exact angle to try to attach it to whoever it is indelibly.

To me it is incredibly notable that it's all that second thing and none of that first thing.

Boy, that sure is relevant to what I was even saying (leaving aside the issue of factual correctness lol)

saying western media is “free”

I didn't say they thought Western media was unfree. I said they don't like free media. They constantly claim that everything they don't agree with is a CIA psyop, they call Wikipedia "Natopedia" and when I ask them what media I should pay attention to instead (Al Jazeera? RT? SCMP? TASS? Venezuelan government press releases? Something! Tell me what you would accept as something that couldn't immediately be discarded as "biased."), they don't answer. They just want someone in authority to tell them what is true, and not to be allowed to examine it. That is what I am saying.

I am very aware that Western media is not free, although it still has a degree of freedom to it, unlike the governments they celebrate. What I am saying is that they don't want it to be free.

and our elections are democratic for the people

Same thing. This criticism of yours has a lot more validity, the systems of politics in the US are significantly less free than the media (which itself is already pretty un-free depending how you look at it). That's besides the point of what I'm saying though. I am saying they don't like elections. Their heroes are people who seized power with guns and then shot their political opponents.

https://lemmy.ml/post/37946007

Being from the US, you'd think they treat the current situation in their country in a mature way, pointing out the actual fascist from the White House - while this happens in, like, a bunch of their posts, mostly, if you think this way, you're DEAD WRONG. They spend most of their energy pointing out how bLuE aNd ReD aRe ThE sAmE and how oBaMa aLsO dId X sHiT tHaT tRuMp DiD aNd YoU tHe LiBs WeRe OkAy WiTh ThAt (oh, and not to mention the meme about how the No Kings protests are actually a CIA psyop or some shit. Yeah, if you go out and protest for a cause is not because you're fed up with all that shit you see in your daily life, it's because the intelligence told you so).

The other fucking wild thing is that, now that people are in the streets and time is actually ripe for some sort of genuine political upheaval in the United States, 90% of their political agitation energy is spent... being angry within the bounds of the accepted "blue" / "red" dichotomy.

Careful boys we got some deep thinkers on our hands lol

Sweet... now make the same meme but with the lever labeled "capitalism" / "communism" instead

Edit: I tried to go and do it, but (a) I'm pretty sure I am still banned anyway (b) the quality of memes in !memes@lemmy.ml made me lose my will to live before I got there. This is honestly like "right-wing humor," in the US except for some reason there seems to be a population of people who are eating it up and eager for more and to make more of it themselves. I am honestly confused about who the fuck these people are and what's wrong with them...

I think it is nitrates. I mean, I am sure there are other preservatives that are harmful but nitrates is the class of chemical that usually is what is killing people in this context. Almost any type of "processed" meat is going to give you significantly elevated risk of cancer if you eat it regularly.

It's not the communism that appeals to them. It is the authoritarianism. They don't like Western democracies, elections, free media, and so on, not for the reasons they claim (because those things are dishonest fakes put up by an authoritarian structure, although those things are partly that also yes). The reason they don't like those things are because those things are anti-authoritarian, and they like and feel more comfortable with authoritarianism. They don't criticize the authoritarian governments because they like that way better: An official party line that is the allowed way to believe, backed up by force and deception to enforce the will of the correct faction and expand its rule over the enemies.

Once you realize that, a lot of the inconsistencies in what they say suddenly become resolved, and all of a sudden it all makes total sense.

Needs a blank space instead of the fourth caption. Don't keep selling after the close.