as a person that came from the 3rd world country and new in fediverse environment, i genuinely would like to know about this.
edit: thanks for the replies! sorry, i literally don’t know the reason since i’m not a western lol. twitter/x is too biased especially when musk openly supports trump so i came here and seeing fediverse is mostly are harris or biden (when he’s still up for the candidate) supporters. don’t know about reddit tho, i only use reddit as a forum for linux and programming stuff.
I think a lot of the people on Lemmy came from Reddit when the whole API thing happened. It was pretty much a boycott. I assume most of the people who cared enough about that to leave were mostly left-leaning.
That’s why I’m here, at least.
Edit: not sure about Mastodon, though
Reddit chased away the Trump supporters before the API thing happened. When it did, some people like me who are classic-liberals and libertarians also came over. After all, Lemmy is an inherently libertarian platform even when its users aren’t. When I express a political opinion objectionable to leftists, I get several times more down-votes than up-votes but I do get up-votes.
Lemmy is an inherently libertarian platform
This is an interesting perception, because if you mean American libertarianism then this doesn’t really make sense. Lemmy’s creators are communist and intended it to be anti-corporate. It is designed in a decentralized manner specifically to avoid situations where companies can own and profit from it.
The kinds of platforms I would see as being libertarian (in the American sense) are the diaspora of privately owned social media companies.
American libertarian just means embarrassed Republican nowadays.
The idea of federation isn’t communist
The idea of preventing private ownership and rent-seeking of communication platforms is.
Not all libertarian-leaning people are on board with corporatism; IMO freedom is for people, not businesses.
I respect it but if you’re American and trying to take the word back, I’m afraid you’re a little too late. It’s a political party now and they’re all-in on corporatism.
I’m sure even non-Ameticans can tell the difference between an uppercase and lowercase letter L.
Almost no one pays attention to the big-L Libertarian party. Ron and Rand Paul got some attention on the national level but they weren’t even members of the party (while in office) and the party itself has never been politically relevant.
I think these days the word is associated more with Silicon Valley techno-libertarians (a group I identify with). These guys favor the free market over government regulation (which isn’t really relevant to Reddit) but they’re also very sympathetic to free-as-in-speech open-source software.
Silicon Valley techno-libertarians (a group I identify with)
I hate to break it to you but these are definitely the worst ones. It’s what the Gadsden flag waving canned food and gun hording preppers turn into if they end up with tons of money. These are the morons that build bunkers in New Zealand and try to brainstorm ways to keep their post-apocalyptic security guards loyal to them with remote-detonated bomb collars or holding their families hostage.
The preppers are different because they want to be left completely alone. They don’t see any acceptable role for government in their lives. I don’t think they’re being realistic. Freedom isn’t free, as the saying goes.
The techno-libertarians are much more engaged with society and do see a role for government, even if that role is small and (at least according to some of them) bizarre by conventional standards. I’m not going to deny that the bunker-building types are involved in the movement. I often don’t agree with the weirder people involved, but I like that techno-libertarians are willing to hear people out and judge their ideas rationally rather than shunning them for being weird.
(I think I might have a bunker built if I was rich enough. The expected utility of it is higher than that of, say, a second yacht. Human guards are a dead end. Probably the best thing that can be done if civilization totally collapses and you manage to get inside is blowing up the entrance so that anyone who wants to get to you has to move a thousand tons of rock first. You probably won’t ever get to leave, but it’s better than what would happen if you did.)
Maybe you should look into why we have those regulations. - an actual libertarian
What makes you an actual libertarian?
If it’s libertarian it’s libertarian socialist. There’s no property or capital on here, posts get boosted by collective voting, not based off your following or account. There’s not even an idea of karma, your account means basically nothing here. A capitalist libertarian social media would be something like nostr or what bluesky is claiming it’ll eventually do where you completely own your account and your following and you can use that social capital as you wish.
I think this is an example of where the left-right axis isn’t the most adequate way of viewing things. The Fediverse in general is anti-authoritarian. You can be all the way from a far-left anarchist to a far-right anarcho-capitalist and still be anti-authoritarian, just like both tankies and nazis are authoritarian.
As a libertarian liberal, what communities would you recommend? I’m sad there’s not a more active free speech community on this platform. The reddit one is such a gross conservative circle jerk rn.
I used to call myself a “left libertarian” but to be frank, after learning more I’ve found that “anarchist” fits far better. And there’s a lot of interesting content out there that I enjoy. I’m not sure who all .world has defederated, but the solar punk instance is always great, our mods are great (Midwest social), some people may find them abrasive, but those are people who maybe don’t understand that when you play in someone else’s home, you play by their rules.
Also: blahaj, beehaw, and even hexbear is usually entertaining, even if I have some disagreements with them.
The point is, there’s a lot out there, depending on who you’re federating with.
I don’t have anything to suggest on Lemmy. There’s so little activity that I participate in every community where I see an interesting post, except for those communities which are specifically for people with some particular set of beliefs which I don’t share.
If you’re looking beyond Lemmy, there are are the comment sections of the SlateStarCodex/AstralCodexTen blog and the blogs it links to as well as some associated forums and subreddits. You’ll find plenty of liberal libertarians and the comments tend to be polite and high-effort, but keep in mind that a dedication to free speech means that people with opinions that can’t be discussed elsewhere participate too. It’s a bit much for me sometimes.
My experience as well. Though I avoid political munis these days.
I left Reddit because of the pro-genocide mods
There’s only one way you can support Trump today.
You either refuse to acknowledge all the terrible things he’s done, or you approve of the things he’s done.
People who refuse to acknowledge, are going to look at all the “fake news” on this site about His Oranginess, and quickly decide that it’s nothing but propaganda and go somewhere “more reliable”.
Those who agree, stick around a little longer. They will argue and defend the horrible things, because they think there are more like them that will come out and back them up as a fellow defender of
racismmisogynyhomophobia“Good old family values”. But they will be downvoted to oblivion and have trouble finding a friendly voice. Eventually, they too will go where they can have a more comfortable discussion with people who are as terrible as they are.And ironically enough, if you went to Truth Social, and asked why there weren’t more Biden/Harris supporters there, they’d give you the exact same answer in reverse.
We had an opportunity years ago to fix this problem. Long before Trump ever showed up on the scenes as a political individual. We needed in schools to be teaching how to pick out real news from fake news. How to pick out fact from propaganda. Hell out to read a newspaper properly.
How to logically pick a part in argument. We chose not to. We as a society, decided not to put our money towards that. Now people read a headline, and based purely on the headline, make a statement such as “throw the guy in jail for the rest of his life for that one “.
I sat on a jury trial. It was a murder trial, if you went purely by what was in the local newspaper, you would’ve seriously questioned why the guy didn’t just take a plea deal. If you sat in that courtroom day after day, listening to it you’d realize this is a lot tougher than what you realize. we had a hard time figuring out if the guy was even in town at the time of the murder.
But for those that weren’t involved in the trial, they’re convinced the guy belonged in jail for the rest of his life. Because people didn’t sit down and really read the newspaper and ask important questions. Because we don’t hold our journalists to a higher standard and force them to give all the information And tell both sides of the story.
I have no idea how you solve the problem anymore. Because at this point, even if you tell the complete truth about any given politician, no one‘s going to believe what they’re reading anymore because there’s another so-called journalist out there saying the exact opposite and people say well I don’t know what to believe then. And can’t figure out how to critically think about this and ask questions.
Here in Lemmy we are guilty of the same sort of thing, same as over at truth social same as over at Twitter same as over Facebook.
As a society, I’m sorry for the language here, we are well and truly fucked.
I truly don’t know what the answer is.
Also sidenote 10 bucks says somebody comes back with a stupid comment of well since you don’t know what the answer is obviously you’re just saying that we shouldn’t do anything and just give up.
If you’ve never watched the movie 12 Angry Men, do yourself a favor and watch it. You are going to love it and it has everything to do with your comment.
Thanks for the recommendation
Neglecting public education is really going to keep biting us in the ass.
Something like half of US adults can’t read at a sixth grade level.
If we took some of the idiotic venture capitalist “it’s cat gifs on the block chain” nonsense and put it into education and infrastructure, we’d be so much better off.
I don’t really know how to get from here to there, either. Give me magic powers to Thanos snap away some people, maybe?
I have no idea how you solve the problem anymore. Because at this point, even if you tell the complete truth about any given politician, no one‘s going to believe what they’re reading anymore because there’s another so-called journalist out there saying the exact opposite and people say well I don’t know what to believe then. And can’t figure out how to critically think about this and ask questions.
Reverse cargo cult.
We needed in schools to be teaching how to pick out real news from fake news.
Obviously there are issues with education in this country but it’s always an easy scapegoat for these kinds of issues. Plenty of states have skills like this in their common core, I would venture to say you’re incorrect on that point.
Fair enough I graduated in the early 90s at that time we didn’t have it. At least not at the level that I felt that we should’ve. If I’m wrong on that, then I apologize.
No worries, you just hear a lot of misguided criticisms of the education system a lot of which are based on anecdotal experiences. I wish everyone would keep tabs on what kids are learning and have a more hands on approach to curricula.
So what you are saying is I should be volunteering for the geography classes to help reinforce the flat earth ideals? 😁
Oh fucking christ, a flat-earther. You people are even worse than the fucking round-earther scum on this platform.
I swear you people will never accept a velociraptor-shaped earth, prolly cuz your brains just aren’t big enough to process the geometry.
Edit: I really hoped the /s would not be necessary…
Did you miss the incredibly obvious joke?
You either refuse to acknowledge all the terrible things he’s done, or you approve of the things he’s done.
This is two ways. You literally said either / or.
No! I have been defeated!! I now have no choice but to vote Republican! Damn you, Orbituary! <Fist waves dramatically>
How did you get that from my comment?
It’s all good. Just having fun.
The brackets were implied by OP.
I.e. “one way: (be ignorant || approve)”.
Our three weapons are…
Not sure who down voted you. Or even why
Reddit’s early days were also far more left leaning then they eventually became.
When you have a small niche of nerds who enjoy discussing topics and ideas, then far right wing points will get downvoted to hell because they are, quite frankly, dumb, divorced from logic and the real world, and don’t stand up to actual critical scrutiny.
Reddit got more right leaning as it grew and expanded into the general population and more dummies started upvoting dumb posts, then got more right leaning when right wing political orgs took notice and started trying to influence it, and now seems even more right leaning because they’ve changed their algorithms to prioritize controversial comments and posts that get people angry because it boosts engagement.
While very true, dont discount apathy and lurking. I may have made 15-20 comments on reddit for tge 10+ yrs I was on the platform. There were so many ppl 1. That typically someone else would respond. Two reddit descended into ppl who just want to argue semantics. Here without the karma farming people have more genuine responses
Over on mastodon on the other hand… I get the feeling people brought some of the negative aspects of twitter over there. Still overwhelmingly positive but I tend to get more info on lemmy now than mastodon Imo
I don’t think there’s any less karma farming on here. People still look at their up and downvotes, and I don’t think there was a legitimate industry for selling high karma accounts on Reddit. Not one that would make a difference at scale anyways.
The problem with Mastodon and Twitter is structural, it’s based around following people, not topics. It is inherently problematic because a) personalities and status get elevated over the logic of the argument, b) following people instead of topics inherently feeds people’s egos in a problematic way, and c) a given person can use their followers problematically (brigading, etc). On Reddit / Lemmy by following decentralized topics it eliminates or reduces most of these effects, though the mods controlling each subreddit can exercise some of the same influence.
The problem with Mastodon and Twitter is structural, it’s based around following people, not topics.
I’ve long thought this but infrequently find other people who think the same!
On here (and reddit, rip) and most forums, I don’t really look at the user name. I just read the content I think that’s a better setup.
People still look at their up and downvotes
You can turn that off in the UI. I did that and it mostly makes the place more tolerable, though I do find myself peeking sometimes.
Early Reddit was very libertarian, you would not believe how big Ron Paul was. It went more to the left once it got a mainstream audience
We don’t take kindly to folks who don’t take kindly 'round here.
Most likely your instance is defederated from all the nazi-adjacent instances 🤷
Yeah. It’s the advantage but also disadvantage of the Fediverse. If you’re on the wrong instance you won’t even notice that certain ideologies are right out blocked by the instance owner. This can go into all political directions. You wouldn’t even notice this happening unless you do research on which instances are blocked by yours.
Personally I’m cool with that. I don’t think daily exposure to actual fascists is good for one’s head. And I wouldn’t mind .ml getting the axe too (though I’m not gonna be the one pestering my instance admin about that) because Tankies are equally as draining.
That’s the thing. On one hand I like not being bombarded by the shit opinions but on the other I like being informed at what the talking points are (to a degree) because I find that keeps me sharp against the opposition. When I read or hear about conservative viewpoints, I only think about how obtuse the logic is so it’s not something I worry at all about affecting my mindspace so this might not be a solution to everyone.
I’m still torn on the topic since it’s nice to not give a platform to obviously shit ideals since that’s how the misinformation spreads but I still wonder if there’s an even better protocol out there we haven’t been able to even comprehend yet.
“Without echo chambers, the weak trump supporter gets bullied and humiliated, leaving defeated and confused back to his herd. Nature is beautiful. “
David Attenborough, maybe
Closer to reality than you think. He did a parody narration of “the MAGAs”.
Haha are you implying that Lemmy isn’t an echo chamber?
It definitely definitely is.
But it’s not a Trump echo chamber, hence their absence.
It’s insane. I left reddit because I thought it was an over-moderated echo chamber with too much corporate influence. Lemmy is somehow an even worse echo chamber and it didn’t need corporate influence to see it happen.
There are plenty of Trump supporters here. Every comment from someone who implies one shouldn’t vote for Harris because of the Israel-Gaza war is likely someone trying to suppress Democrat turnout. Single issue voting is the only way the GOP ever win.
The Gaza posts always make me laugh because they completely ignore that Trump would just glass Gaza.
The only reason Trump hasn’t showed how terrible he’d be on Gaza is because he isn’t president right now.
Another brand new account posting the same tired bad faith party lines.
Everyone who doesn’t stand behind me absolutely is my enemy.
Op here’s one ^
Sorry pal. Harris gonna win.
I genuinely don’t care.
Have you stopped to consider that labelling someone as the “enemy” is parlance mostly engaged in by conservatives? Progressives don’t usually think in those terms. To a progressive, you might be ignorant, misinformed, misguided, deluded, xenophobic, racist, or engaging in bad faith, but you are rarely the “enemy.” Even Trump himself although perhaps though of as an “enemy of democracy,” is not a personal enemy. Your response using that metaphor serves to highlight the conservative mind set of making it personal, and harboring an anger so deep that political disagreement is grounds for personal animosity and even violence.
Some people cause so much harm that, fuck it, they’re enemies. It doesn’t matter that Adolf McHitlerface had a terrible childhood. Overwhelming violence was a legitimate mean to put an end to his action.
You won’t be able to fix everyone, and not everybody with a terrible life becomes a fascist.
Trump doesn’t care that you have an open mind and are willing to try to change him. Give him the chance, and he’ll let you know what he thinks of your good nature.
I’m not dehumanizing him. He’s not the antichrist. He’s in fact terribly human. But not all humans deserve rehabilitation, especially when they’re actively causing harm. When a terrorist shoots people at a concert, it’s absolutely OK to kill them to prevent innocent deaths.
It’s OK to take a stance, sometimes. And you don’t always need to be very civil about it.
I like how you’re so high up on your horse that not only does is your team too good to have enemies, you can doublethink away any use of the term as impersonal.
The US had a 2x mortality rate of Canada. 6x higher compared to South Korea, 10x of Japan the first two years of Covid. Even going with the lowest number, about 500,000 Americans could have survived with even marginally competent leadership. One that might not have…
- Disbanded the Pandemic response team Obama set up.
- Undercut the messaging from the CDC because Trump couldn’t handle Fauci having a higher approval rating than him.
- Spewed constant misinformation about everything from bleach, sunlight to ivermectin while professionals were desperately trying to do their job.
- Intentionally dragging his feet on the relief effort because someone told him that it was hitting the cities first and the Democrats would be most affected.
- Goddamn masks. All he had to do was go on TV and tell his little cultists to wear the damn things, and we could have prevented so much of the deaths that came from the original strain/Delta. (Not Omicron)
… Hitler killed less Americans than Trump did. That’s just facts.
The “disbanding” of the pandemic response team is largely misrepresented. I don’t disagree with the rest, or see how it’s at all relevant to the current conversation.
Fascists deserve bashes
Agreed.
You: “Hitler can’t take back office, but we do need to continue the concentration camps. People who don’t want concentration camps are directly supporting Hitler.”
They’re here, anything pro trump is often downvoted, and most things heavily critical of the Dems are also often downvoted.
For better or worse, there’s not a lot of right wing stuff that makes it into the positive on votes.
If you sort new, you’ll see it pop up from time to time.
It’s hard to tell sometimes, but it certainly feels like some political regimes are trying out dropping propaganda here or there into the conversation. I’m sure most of it is from genuine users, but there are some comments that just look like they’re here to stir up dissent.
For better or worse, there’s not a lot of right wing stuff that makes it into the positive on votes.
That is for the better.
You occasionally run into some disagreeable but unobjectionable “traditional” conservative opinions, usually around economics and the governments role in it, but trump shit isn’t that. We can be friends if you think a market solution is viable or better than an entitlement program. We can’t be friends if you think a significant portion of your fellow citizens are vermin or that we should just let terrible problems continue or get worse.
The window has just shifted so far that literal objective depictions of reality are described as “left”.
It would be nice to have some opposition, though. Even if most “conservative” media right now is little more than xenophobia, or cult worship, there do exist sound arguments against the typical internet-left positions. I don’t have a solid enough read on what comes through New in the fediverse to say whether any of that is being submitted and just downvoted off everyone’s feeds, or if all that’s being submitted is the average conservative media junk.
Still, political spaces without opposition/diversity invariably degenerate into purity contests, and circle jerking.
No, there’s really not sound arguments against them. That’s why nobody ever hears sound arguments.
Stop assuming ghosts exist because you saw a picture frame on the wall move when a large truck went by…
No, there’s really not sound arguments against them.
That’s like saying there are no trade-offs to any policies; it’s simply not true. I’m as left as they come (not American left, British), but failing to admit there are flaws or sound arguments against left-wing ideas is very ignorant.
deleted by creator
Not what I said, is it? The person said there are no arguments against “the typical internet-left positions”; which I disagree with. If such positions were infallible, they would always succeed. All policies have trade-offs.
I didn’t mention “right … sound points” or their representation.
Actually it’s my b as i confused another posters point up the chain for yours, sorry
Nonono, you misunderstand the political landscape.
Something having downsides IS NOT the same as the claims being made against things. If you think conservative politicians are arguing in good faith, you simply haven’t been listening.
There really are not sound (conservative) arguments against them.
If you do not agree, you do not know enough. Period.
If you do not agree, you do not know enough. Period.
Lol. Your arrogance is astounding.
Your pride in ignorance is pathetic. Perfect example of why public education is critically important to fund, and to fund properly.
Conservstives cling on to old, stupid ideas that are in the process of being proven wrong. Again and again and again and again.
But you go ahead and defend that hill that brought us golden gems of wisdom like “Trickle Down Economics”, private, for-profit prisons, and a lack of regulation so companies can dump what ever they want in to rivers and the ocean…
The difference to Reddit et al is that votes don’t generally matter a huge lot in here. And you can easily hide them.
However Lots of places love to call those pointing out flaws in democratic policies trump supporters unfortunately
You haven’t seen any of the “genocide Joe” trolls?
yes I think the bigger problem here is right wing propagandists masquerading as lefties.
Oh you mean ml?
My honest interpretation is that there are actually very few right wing propagandists masquerading as lefties, but they are very effective at bringing hapless idiot lefties to their narrative.
yeah, some mix of that too for sure.
They’ve all but vanished after Biden dropped out of the race.
you’ve stopped seeing comments about Biden once he became irrelevant?
No, I stopped seeing”genocide Joe” comments. People still discuss Biden, he’s sill President.
until he fucks off soon. the whole point of genocide Joe comments is that people don’t want four more years of him.
but of course thankfully Harris says she’ll help the genocide too so we’ll see how that goes.
They’re popping back up again recently, attacking Harris of course
Too difficult to come up with something for Harris that rolls off the tongue as easily as “Genocide Joe.”
Careful with that troll word, there are mods that will ban you for saying it. They tell you to report trolls to them, so I did (a very obvious troll) and I got banned. Pretty neat you can’t appeal, and you can’t find out which mod did it either.
Modlogs?
Just show mod. Not which mod.
Doesn’t show what mod did it.
Use the photon UI on desktop.
Just tried it, still doesn’t show which mod is banning or deleting.
Mine didn’t show that. Interesting
You can only see which mod did it if you’re an admin
What are you taking about? Lemmy.world loves to ban those pointing out genocide supporters. Cause totally every one who wishes Israel to stop the genocide is a dirty republican. At least that’s how the mods treat them
Because it’s a bad faith argument.
There’s no candidate that opposes Israel’s actions.
It’s certainly okay, even preferable, to be critical of our administration, but it serves no point to bring it up in a discussion of the election, because it serves only to de-rail the conversation when any candidate who matters supports the genocide.
I like it this way. It’s not an “echo chamber” because we do have some interesting liberal vs leftist discussions. I think I’ve already heard quite enough conservative nonsense though; they aren’t entitled to my consideration forever.
Decentralized network designed to stand up to big tech by gay trans furries. Not much appeal for those folks round these parts.
They absolutely exist. But in general, I think most people here are informed and choose a wide variety of information to consume. That is exactly the opposite of most Trump supporters.
Trump supporters tend to hang out in the /modlog community. Try there first.
There is a conservative comm on lemm.ee
It’s a shit hole though as expected
Remember when they banned the word “fascist?”
Self-awarenes doesn’t seem to be their strength.
Is there? Damn I just kinda picked an instance randomly before I really understood what that meant. Now I’m sad.
There are a couple masquerading as Green Party supporters, and you do see blatently pro-Trump posters occasionally, but most of them are lurkers who, if they comment, hide behind criticizing Democrats rather than voicing pro-Trump sentiments.
Look for the people who were smashing Biden for the debate behavior while ignoring Trump’s Alzheimer’s symptoms. The people being nitpicking Harris or Walz, while being silent about the Couch-Fucker and Orange Stalin. Those are the pro-Trump lurkers. There aren’t many, though, because they don’t thrive outside of an echo chamber.
Lemmy’s an echo chamber as well, but you’ll find plenty of people who criticize both parties, and while a lot of people like Kamala, very few claim she’s perfect, or worship her. And there’s plenty of legitimate criticism of the Democratic party, and strong sentiment about a need for change in US politics. This is the sort of discussion and debate which would not be sanctioned in most conservative forums, and could easily get you banned. So I think it’s fair to say Lemmy is far less echo-y than most.
I think that your metrics for picking covert Trumpers based upon that appaling debate is incorrect and simplistic. I watched every second of that shit show and believed that we were doomed for another 4 years of the orange turd.
Trump lied during the debate. Some estimates were that he lied upwards of 250 times in his 45 minutes at the mic. Those numbers seems off, but who knows? I don’t know the true figure, but it was insane. However, it is also not the fucking point. Trump is a serial liar. He lies to his family, he lies to the people, he lies to the courts, he lies non-stop. He would have lied if Biden performed outstandingly in the debate. He would have lied if Biden put in a middling performance. And, he lied when Biden performed badly. Are we supposed to be clutching our pearls in shock that Trump lied?
So, we can’t judge Biden’s terrible performance by the ‘other guy’. We need to judge whether Biden could win in November. And if you had of watched all 90 minutes, like I did, there was zero confidence that he could. The GOP campaign would have portrayed Biden’s lost moments a million times, over and over and over again. And they’d be stupid not to. And yes, Trump lied in the debate. Let’s try and turn the broken bus around on the seemingly new information that a serial liar lied on stage.
The proof of this was the instant jump in the polls once Harris became the candidate and the growing support since. Is the argument that all these covert GOP critics suddenly turned Dems? Or, perhaps, changing to Haris was the sensible thing to do, and perhaps, just might keep the orange turd out of the white house.
I think that your metrics for picking covert Trumpers based upon that appaling debate is incorrect and simplistic.
Well, yeah, it’s simplistic. I’m generalizing.
I watched every second of that shit show and believed that we were doomed for another 4 years of the orange turd.
I agree. Biden had a bad night (and, it appears in retrospect, had been declining for a while). Trump has been a deranged narcissistic sociopath since day 1; Biden was held to a higher standard than Trump. Biden performs poorly, and the heart sunk out of the Democratic faithful. Trump performs poorly, and that’s just par for the course, because all Trumpers care about is hurting liberals.
However, I admit I don’t know what you’re arguing; I think we agree on most of this. The Harris bump was because (as I said) it gave liberals hope that they could win. The bump came from undecideds who suddenly saw an energized, engaged, and competent viable candidate as an option; or people who before saw only two decrepit old white men (The Patriarchy) feebly flailing for control, and suddenly one of the candidates was strong, under 60, female, and a minority!
We’re answering OP’s question why there aren’t more Trumpers on Lemmy. There are; they’re just hidden, and how they respond to the debate outs them. The debate was just an example:
- Non-Trumper: If Joe had a cold, it looks like a staffer gave him Nyquil instead of amphetamines. He’d have paid for the uppers the next day, but it if ever there was a time to push yourself and pay the price later, this debate was it. He was horrible. Trump was his usual lying self, rambling nonsense, and looked like his usual re-animated corpse.
- Trumper: Biden was awful; he’s obviously going senile, unable to answer questions, losing his train of thought, weak.
Democrats are far more critical of their own candidate than Republicans are of their’s, and that’s how you identify the conservative lurkers. They’re there, and they’re not hard to recognize.
This subsequent post of yours is more substantial in explaining your position and I generally agree with all of your points.
My post was with the absurdist position that critiquing the Biden performance around the time of the last debate made you an enemy of progressive politics. Joe had fired his last good shot in 2016. He’s a good man, a heroic fighter for his age but Trump was always going to steamroll him this time. It doesn’t matter that Joe had a cold, or that he sometimes made excellent policy points, the optics were that he was meandering and frail. It wasn’t that the debate done him in by itself - Obama sometimes had a bad debate (particularly his first one) it was that his performance on the night confirmed what was evident for months. By the time Joe started arguing with Trump about who could beat who in golf the jig was up.
Despite Trump’s own senior moments, despite his atrocious behaviour, despite his obvious lies, the feeling was Joe is doomed. And so was the most important election since last time, and that says a lot. The fact that it is not impossible that he still won’t get in again is beyond worrying. But with Harris there is a decent chance.
I hope that clears up my position? It was more a vent against all those who insisted that we ride the Joe bus over the cliff and disbelieve our own eyes while we did it.
Yeah, I think we’re on the same page. The Biden administration did good, but we’d come to a depressingly low point in politics.
I’m encouraged that more conservatives are feeling it’s safe to pop their heads out and criticize Trump, and the radical right who’ve been able to hijack the party thanks largely to party policies started during Ronald Fucking Regan’s administration. But if they do it on Lemmy, they’re assumed to be liberals which may increase the perception of there being few conservatives on Lemmy.
Lemmy is still more generally politically Left than American Left, which is, after all, pretty centrist compared to western Europe. This feeds even more into OP’s question about why there aren’t more conservatives on Lemmy: if you look at Lemmy as a European, the pro- Trumpers are neo-Nazis, not conservatives; the center is so far right, anything more right is essentially legally banned in Germany.
Thats a pretty sophisticated bit of analysis, particularly for Lemmy.
I still find it amazing that the vote will be as close as it undoubtedly will become. I mean, Trump is not only for himself, but he is also plainly destructive. He’s now touting the low-information ‘Joe Rogan vote’. Young white guys who haven’t been following anything.
Oh ffs, it’s non-binary. I can support certain policies while standing 10 down against others. I can look for alternative candidates without being Nazi, shill or troll. I’m fact, that mentality is from the GW Bush playbook, “if you’re not for us, you’re against us!” Which to be fair, I’m against politicians who rake in corporate, PAC and billionaire dollars, mainly because they’re proud corporate and against we regular people.
But isn’t that exactly what they were saying? If you go on X, for example, you can literally be banned for using the word “cisgender”. Musk considers it a slur. Here, you can voice any opinion.
However there’s a different between agreeing with some right-wing policies and being a full-on MAGA fascist. Full-on MAGA fascists shrivel up and die when exposed to any discourse that hasn’t been heavily censored and editorialized in their favor. So naturally they’ll avoid places where different opinions are shared. This alone is enough reason to call this place an echo chamber, because a (sadly) very prevalent set of opinions isn’t represented here.
And I can, for example, get away with referring to MAGA fascists as MAGA fascists knowing full well that not a single one of those Trump-fellating pussies will say anything against me for it, and even if one does, the community will not have their back.
