Jon Stewart examines the choice undecided voters are facing in the 2024 election: Kamala Harris, who has an impressive résumé and specific policy plans, versus Donald Trump, whose vision, consistency on issues, anti-labor ethos, and militaristic posturing are at odds with the caricature his followers have created for him.

  • ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I don’t particularly think his supporters matter, as they are mostly sheep and not one of the main facisim roots.

    It’s the fact that more than half of America’s entire media apparatus is entirely behind Trump.

    They dominate airwaves and have entire control over several local information ecosystems allowing them to brainwash entire populations with wall-to-wall propaganda that is completely aligned in its message of refuting and obfuscation of reality.

    Regardless if the people are racist, scared, simple minded, trained to blindly accept specific authority or whatever, is mostly irrelevant in a society with journalistic integrity, and a non-corporate/private interest owned media.

    It’s no surprise that some people believe outrageous, impossible, contradictory, claims when every reality authority available to you exclusively tells you coordinated lies.

    • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Reagan’s FCC overturning the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 is to thank for this. He and Nixon oversaw an incredible amount of societal and governmental sabotage. Quite the legacy.

      It’s so much worse now, with these corpo propaganda outlets pretending that both parties are legitimate political parties representing people and not just fundraising/grifting organizations.

      • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        Kamala should out the fairness doctrine back in its place, hell, add it to the constitution. I know this will require Congress too, well, get it done.

        • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          Maybe…to tell you the truth, I’m not sure if the Fairness Doctrine fits this world anymore. You’re right though, while the president can light the fire, it will ultimately be up to Congress to actually do something about it.

          Right now corporate news agencies are just mouthpieces for our corporate overlords who buy all of the politicians in order to further enrich themselves at our expense. It’s literally robbing us on a national scale. The less facts people understand, the easier it is for them to pull the wool over our eyes and gaslight us into thinking this is a normal, acceptable situation. Clearly this is not sustainable.

          We do need some kind of regulations for news to actually be considered news, and to serve as a mechanism to make them deliver factual, useful information to viewers. Not entirely sure what that would look like tbh.

    • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.winOP
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, mainstream media is shitshow atm. ABC news fact checked Trump’s BS during that debate and people lost their minds. Why? Because truth doesn’t matter? Now CBS refuses to fact check because they are cowards? They are the GD news. Their job is to literally inform the public of the truth.

      It really feels like we are literally watching civilization flushing down the drain and there is nothing that can be done about it.

      • Bone@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        They did do some fact checking tonight. Not sure it matters overall, based on what you said. Reality can be ignored and rewritten.

    • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I’ve said it before. Misinformation exsits in all information. You will be hard pressed to find any common distributor of information to not have any errors. The thought that you can simply be fed only truth with out having to think critically is a fallacy. You can blame the media for existing but you can’t make it not exist. It’s people, who have principles, ignoring those principles because we’ve allowed that to be acceptable behavior in the states.

      Stop asking, “can you believe trump did this thing.” Start asking, “would you do this thing that trump did.” Don’t waste your time on petty shit. Stick with the obscene shit. “Would you grab a woman by the pussy?” “Would you sexually assault a woman.” “Would you call immigrants animals?”

      Their only response will be, that’s not true, and right there they have nothing to do but refute reality. A shared reality is the most basic principle of having society and them ignoring what we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears is not them having a different set of facts. It’s pure fantasy. It’s antisocial behavior, and tell them that.

    • Gonzako@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, I haven’t heard of ANYTHING Harris. Yes this guy keeps showing up in all my feeds

    • where_am_i@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      It’s very interesting that you think his supporters are sheep, and all people around you upvote you at a 100% rate. (you received 0 downvotes after calling at least 40% of your countrymen sheep).

      Coincidentally, his supporters on their social media post how Kamala voters want the end of the country. With a 100% upvote ratio.

      Now, tell me, if I’m an outsider with no horse in this race, and no way of objectively measuring the reality by living in the country of question, what should I think?


      While you gather an answer to that question, I’ll be of an opinion that 100% of Americans are complete morons and sheep because they’re unable of having any reasonable democratic process or a political discourse for two years every four years (cuz it’s “election” time).

      • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        “Sure, you all call Heaven’s Gate a cult, but everyone in Heaven’s Gate says they’re not a cult. How am I, an outside observer, supposed to know who is right? Clearly everyone but me must be morons.”

        • where_am_i@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          “Everyone says those 100 people are a cult” is different from “Half of the population of a country call the other half a cult and vise-versa”.

          You might feel like it’s “everyone”, because you never hear anything the other side has to say. But I’m reminding you, from a statistical perspective, the weight is really about 50/50. A 60/40 split in your favor is currently outside of a 3-sigma confidence interval.

          • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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            2 months ago

            from a statistical perspective, the weight is really about 50/50

            It’s really not. Republicans have less support from less than 40% of the population, MAGAts are less than 20%. The Electoral College, Gerrymandering, and voter disenfranchisement are the only reason the election is around 50/50.

            If the US election was done by a straight popular vote there would have only been a single Republican president since 1990, and it would have been 20 years ago.

              • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                2 months ago

                That’s talking about the Electoral College and chances of winning the election. I was talking about the popular vote, and specifically mentioned that without the Electoral College Republicans wouldn’t have a chance.

                • where_am_i@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 months ago

                  Please, point out to me, in the methodology of the poll, which is provided at the bottom of the page, where is it stated that 46/49 numbers are some arbitrary chances of winning the election?

                  My reading is that they’re averages of other polls that are polling popular vote, e.g. simply asking “which candidate would you vote for if the elections were tomorrow?”.

                  But, please, I’m happy to be proven wrong.

                  • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                    2 months ago

                    My reading is that they’re averages of other polls that are polling popular vote, e.g. simply asking “which candidate would you vote for if the elections were tomorrow?”.

                    Please, point out to me where it says they have polled the popular vote. I don’t see anywhere that states the question being asked, but I do see the headline: Explore Electoral College scenarios

          • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            You might feel like it’s “everyone”, because you never hear anything the other side has to say.

            Au contraire mon frere. I would posit that nobody that gives even a single iota of a shit about politics in this country hasn’t been exposed to what “the other side has to say”. I’d also venture to guess that the number of people who don’t give a single iota of shit about politics in this country that have also heard what “the other side has to say” is far above zero. There have even been studies (since you occasionally pretend to give a fuck about objectivity) confirming that Republicans who watch Fox News know less about Democrats than Democrats know about Republicans.

            It’s kind of difficult to not “hear what the other side has to say” when half of your news media spends its time interviewing people on both sides of divisive issues such as “the vaccine question” or “is the earth round”, and the other half of your news media openly roots for and argues for Republican candidates.

            • where_am_i@sh.itjust.works
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              2 months ago

              Dunno, gimme a name of your reputable news sources. I’ma take a look.

              Cuz the video in question is as biased as fox news. Just into the opposite direction.

              It’s hard for me, personally, to watch it, even though I do believe it’s insane to vote for Trump. And yet the video is just repeatable cringe. It ads nothing to the political debate, and given that this particular show does pretty much the same material every week I’m not sure how isn’t everyone yet bored of watching it?

              • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Cuz the video in question is as biased as fox news. Just into the opposite direction.

                The video in this post is from a comedy show on comedy network.

                It ads nothing to the political debate

                As you continually do here with your “this adds nothing” and “this wastes electricity” posts.

                If you don’t like the video or the show, here’s an idea: don’t watch it. You don’t live here so it isn’t even really for you, and you don’t seem to enjoy it much from your pissy moany comments.

                Some of us have to live in this country where people make the absurd arguments refuted in the video about Trump, and some of us like to kick back with our feet up and blow off steam with a little mild humor about the absurdity of the political situation in this country.

                • where_am_i@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 months ago

                  You do nothing else but kick back and watch some political comedy. And it doesn’t look like fun anymore. At this point lemmy is an emotional support club.

                  Other than that, I feel you. After I’ve learned that trump got 48% or so of the popular vote (which also somehow won him the election), I’ve forever dropped my plans to move to your beautiful country. Even if career-wise it’s a no-brainer. Tbh, even 40% of the popular vote to that political figure would’ve been too much for my liking.

                  • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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                    2 months ago

                    it doesn’t look like fun anymore.

                    It hasn’t really been fun to live in this country in nearly a decade, and that’s me speaking as someone sitting on the top of the privilege pile.

                    The country is basically 6 corporations dressed in a trench coat.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Now, tell me, if I’m an outsider with no horse in this race, and no way of objectively measuring the reality by living in the country of question, what should I think?

        “Living in the country of question” is not necessary for an objective measurement of reality.

      • Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I see your getting down votes. This crowd doesn’t like to be called out. Americans are sheep. We buy what we are told to buy; we eat what we are told to eat; we believe what we are told to believe but this isn’t unique to America. We definitely do need to do better in our politics. It’s evident every day when there is an unnaturally orange man on the TV and there isn’t a line of Karen’s sitting in front of every courthouse asking to speak to a manager.

        Anyway…