orclev

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 hours ago

He was very popular which made him that much more dangerous. His trickle down economics lie has done more to destroy the US economy than just about anything else. To this day there's still people who feel it's a viable model despite nearly half a century now of showing it doesn't work. He and Nancy Reagan are also responsible for continuing the culture war against minorities that Nixon started.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 hours ago

Little of both. Ronald Reagan tilled the soil, and the later Republicans fertilized it. Why wouldn't foreign disinformation groups sow seeds in such perfect fields?

A big chunk of the problem in US politics is the two party system enforced by first past the post. Very few people actually agree with 100% of either party's policies, so the deciding factor for most people becomes either which party do I agree with more of their policies, or in some cases which policies do I feel are most critical and therefore drive the overall decision. This has been made even worse by Republicans strategically picking policies to try to drive a wedge in between them and Democrats particularly around certain hot button issues like abortion, gun control, and religion.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago

This is why the GOP has been working hard for decades to destroy public education in the US. They want to make sure that only the rich are educated because the uneducated can be easily tricked into voting against their own interests. Unfortunately it's working.

It's mandatory in a functioning democracy for the public to be educated and well informed or it doesn't work. Unfortunately it's highly debatable whether the US still qualifies as educated, and the likes of Fox News and Sinclair are hard at work destroying the informed part.

All that said the ease with which misinformation spreads these days does need some kind of counter, otherwise we open ourselves up to Soviet style disinformation campaigns where the goal isn't so much to drive a particular narrative as it is to sow confusion and make people distrust all information. They drown the signal in noise, so everyone just makes decisions based on their gut instead of facts. Social media has given a false equivalence where any random person on Facebook is treated as just as reliable a source of news and information as actual reporters are. This is incredibly dangerous.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Ah yes, it's...

checks notes

the US fault that Russia invaded Ukraine. Right, makes perfect sense, carry on.

The only involvement the US or even most of the NATO countries have had in this complete shitshow has been to sell obsolete military hardware to Ukraine at a steep discount. It was probably cheaper to ship the stuff in bulk to Ukraine than it would cost to properly decommission it so might even have saved some money doing that.

Russia desperately wants to make this a fight with NATO or even better the US so they look like less of a laughing stock for losing this badly.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 day ago

... you know that didn't even occur to me, but it's just dumb enough it might be true. Then again, that's probably giving Trump more credit than he deserves, he just regurgitates whatever stupid bullshit is making the rounds on the alt-right portions of Facebook/Twitter that week.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Great, now do the Senate and President as well. FPTP needs to die.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I uh... hmm... I got nothing, you're probably right unfortunately.

 
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