GarbageShootAlt2

I think that Trump 2 is starkly different from Trump 1. I maintain my interpretation of Trump 1 and happily await someone explaining to me a basis for predicting Trump 2's methodological shift. I personally really struggle to understand it unless it's truly that his brain was broken by losing in 2020 and he became the Joker. Perhaps it's just that the actual fascists finally were able to figure out how to more effectively control him/convince him to cooperate, since he was notoriously unruly and refused to defer to allies who knew what they were doing (and this is part of what made him so much less threatening from a long-term standpoint than he could have been, not that he didn't present problems).

Looking at the context of this conversation (why are you even back here? why did you even remember it? did you think this was a great chance to gloat about how Momala would have made everything okay?) I think it's more productive to try to understand how Republicans generally have taken this hard right shift, and it's not because Trump is a wizard who can make everyone do what he wants, we have seen him come into conflict with the Republican establishment many times before, but they are backing him on a lot of the more fascist policies (with the exception of some of the courts). It's also worth noting that the Democrats, infamously Schumer, are extremely capitulatory to him, and obviously some fascist policy was done under their lead, like with Gaza, but remembering discourse from when I was writing, I can infer that you were arguing that the extermination of just the Palestinians was the lesser evil, so I guess that doesn't matter. Anyway, my original point is that the threat isn't coming fundamentally from Trump, but from the Republican Party and neoliberalism generally, and I see no reason to think that is less true now.

In my personal life, I've actually been really pleasantly surprised to see former "lesser evil" types realize that the Democratic Party needs to be destroyed because they are ultimately collaborators with the Republicans who will never, ever actually solve the problems producing fascist threats (and also do really awful things in their own right). I think they learned the correct lesson from the last several years, but of course diehards remain and will act like this is a moral victory for them somehow, when Kamala was adopting Trump 1 policy and even worse and Dems keep saying "we lost, I guess we weren't reactionary enough" and shifting ever-further right.

I truly hope that one day you realize that the Dems are more opposed to genuine leftism than to Republicans and have and will work to suppress it while protecting the Republican establishment. If you truly hate Republicans and not just Trump in particular, you need to look beyond the Dems and beyond the tip of your nose (a single election cycle).

This newspaper has a hard on for downplaying north Korean aggression.

Such a fucking chickenhawk you are. "Aw, these authors want to BUST MASSIVE LOADS all over KOREAN STRONGMEN. They want to be TOPPED by KIM JONG UN!" literally just because they want the peaceful reunification of their nation instead of a war for the US to have effective control of a land border with China.

This author makes every possible attempt to downplay North Korean aggression, blaming it on SK or the US every time.

From what you share I see quoting activists and trying to defuse stories that seem very improbable because there is a long history of SK and US media just making shit up about NK and it being gobbled up uncritically. But please, tell me about unicorns and state-mandated haircuts, it'll be a good use of both our time. The kids eat the rats and the rats eat the kids.

Edit: Oh, but to answer the main question I missed:

It’s gotten to the point where Korean intelligence officials are telling reporters to hold off on relaying reports about North Korean troops from Ukrainian officials until they receive third-party confirmation

Because it's talking about intelligence officials talking directly to reporters, my feeling is that it's an anonymous source, though it should definitely have made this clear.

That would be irrelevant because it's not SK's "free press," it's their government agents issuing this warning.

Seoul is right in the headline.

And in the article (right at the top, repeatedly) it's not SK press, it's SK intelligence agents saying this. The headline wouldn't say "Seoul" and then have it be a private entity; "Seoul" is a metonym for the SK government. People only conflate individual institutions with the government when it's China and some Chinese business does something stupid but not illegal.

It just makes you sound like a dweeb because "disinformation" is the dem-aligned version of "fake news". I don't have the slightest interest interest in your life story.

What you're describing is a low consciousness of politics, whether due to desperation, poor education, or whatever else, since those moment-to-moment experiences generally could productively be described as political.

My argument, and you might actually sympathize with it, is that the only fundamental difference here is the media screaming at people about this nonstop. Seriously, lineral people who like to fancy themselves as "staying up to date" with political goings-on are basically in an abusive relationship with the media that complete contorts their ideas of the past and future to promote the "this is the most important election of our livetimes" bullshit that they've done three elections in a row now. It's not what the politicians are doing, it's this screaming from the media that is frankly wrecking the mental health of the people who listen to it regularly.

I actually do remember what it was like before then and a few months into it starting, whatever you might say of my decision making, I just disconnected for two years because I already hate Trump and don't need a thousand headlines a day that ORANGMANBADORANGMANBADORANGMANBAD. It ended up being a good opportunity to learn about politics from a historical perspective and get some distance from this shit (and ultimately, that was a major factor in my becoming a communist, but we aren't here for that).

Perhaps you're conflating "the electoral dog and pony show" for "politics" then, because if you were "deeply poor," it's hard to imagine not dealing with politics. Easy example, the cops are a pretty political institution, acting as the agents of establishment powers. Hell, the enclosure of the commons and the resultant practically monopolistic effect that landlording has is also pretty political, liberals just don't talk about it (other than Adam Smith).

That's a silly argument. Biden (aside from being an unrepentant segregationist!) acted as an active agent of white supremacy, and Kamala would have too, just like every President has.

As an aside, it wasn't the majority of the population. It wasn't even the majority of the voting-eligible population. It was like a little over a quarter, I think.

Conversely, other social media have been also known to suppress the right and protect the left

Where the hell are these socialist social media sites supposed to be? Are you going to say that it's Lemmy, like that's a comparable example?

Rights are not handed to us by God or by Nature, they are legal constructs, created by people. They are not immaculate or immune to criticism or alteration on the basis of what we think would be better for human society. White supremacy must be smashed to its very core, and part of accomplishing that task is making sure it's as difficult for white supremacists to recruit and congregate as we can possibly make it.

It's bizarre idealism to think that opposition to white supremacy will be overcome with no loss of enthusiasm or membership, that any interference actually has zero effect and we're just better off letting them do what they want.

It was still a white supremacist country under Biden and all previous Presidents and it would have been so under Kamala. This isn't something that gets changed by elections.