PhilipTheBucket @ PhilipTheBucket @ponder.cat

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“I disagree with both the Republicans and the Democrats.”

And if the people OP is criticizing were saying that, then what you were saying wouldn't be a strawman.

But, they aren't, and he is drawing a very explicit picture of the behavior they're displaying which is very distinct (although I guess you could say that people who disagree with both R and D are part of a superset of which OP's described people are a tiny little specific subset with specific behaviors... although in practice they very rarely say anything about "both the Republicans". It's mostly heaping scorn on the Democrats exclusively and sometimes taking time out to say that the Republicans are better or equivalent on some issue on which they objectively are not).

And that's what makes what you are saying a strawman.

So now you’ve shifted from “you got them riled up”, to “there’s one specific person in these comments”.

...

Surely you can see there is not a contradiction between "there are elephants in this room" and "let's talk about one specific elephant in this room"?

“There are people in this room who are bad”

Dude, that's how I see it. Sorry if that upsets you. Not sure what else I can say about it.

OP is calling for people to exclude and block in order to box out political disagreements from being visible, not respond with attacking comments.

I'm not OP. I actually don't think blocking them is a good idea. I think disagreeing with them in a particular way, and talking about the problem in general to spread awareness, is the right answer.

As I keep repeating, the politics or the substance of the disagreement has nothing to do with it. It's to do with a particular argumentation style.

I actually think you could make certain rules for communities that had nothing to do with calling out propaganda accounts, that would do quite a lot to address this problem, simply because the accounts I'm thinking of depend so heavily on certain types of bad-faith behaviors that are problems regardless of who's doing them or why.

Would it make you more comfortable if I made a separate post calling out particular types of behavior that I think are a real problem, and then we could talk about that without needing to accuse anyone of doing it because they are propaganda? I can do that. That actually might be a better way to go, because there are surely non-propaganda accounts which would be in that category which we should be addressing, and then there is no risk of someone being "caught up in the net" so to speak when they are genuinely not doing propaganda.

What exactly that OP said did I misrepresent?

You said, more or less, that the issue is boxing out particular viewpoints. OP is clearly talking about behaviors and motivations (murky as that second one is to intuit), which is different. That's the core of the misrepresentation.

This is and clearly never was just talking about the problem in the abstract.

Sure it is. "There are people in these comments who are in the grouping I'm talking about" is quite similar to "there are people on Lemmy who are in the grouping I'm talking about." In both cases, we're talking about the problem without starting an unproductive and maybe-totally-wrong accusation against any single specific person.

none of their comments in here are doing the behaviors OP describes

Again, I don't really want to single out any specific person, since there's no way to be completely sure and there's so much overlap between someone who is doing propaganda and simply someone who is arguing in bad faith. And what's the point of starting the big argument that will surely ensue. I will say, though, that there is someone in these comments who I replied to who is exhibiting some of the behaviors OP described pretty much to a T.

That doesn’t look to me like “a very particular confluence of factors and ways of behaving”, it looks like you’re absolutely just using this as a broad net to attack people who disagree with you.

Look through my history. How many times (for whatever timeframe you have time and inclination for) have I disagreed with someone, and how many of those times have I chosen to "attack" them in this way?

I actually agree with some of the people who I believe are these accounts, on some things. They tend to be stridently pro-Palestinian for example, which I think is a way to give themselves cover. Actually one of the tells of those accounts is that they will sometimes accuse others of not being pro-Palestinian, and being rabidly pro-Israel, which as far as I can tell no one on Lemmy is. There are specific useful reasons why I think they are making that accusation, but if I were just doing this as a way of disagreeing with people, why would I take some person who is making a pro-Palestinian point which I completely agree with, and decide that they are a propaganda account just so I can "attack" the viewpoint I agree with? That doesn't make any sense. That's an example of what I'm talking about with "ways of behaving" that are separate from the viewpoint, without needing to accuse any specific person to explain myself.

I can't make you agree with OP, and of course you are not required to. But you seem to be extremely persistent, here, in interpreting something OP is saying which has some widespread agreement as obviously that they are saying some other, different thing.

Archive link: https://12ft.io/https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/05/michael-waltz-resign-trump/682658/

Take that, you strawman! And that!

I mean I am sure they are being monitored by the Russians. It would be insane for them not to try to, and we’ve demolished most of the systems that would be able to stop them.

If the post contained any actual examples of comments that OP believes are either bots or trolls, it might be possible to actually analyze whether their assumptions and claims have validity.

We don’t need people starting witch hunts here to “root out the fake Leftists”

These are contradictory statements.

I won’t identify anyone who is claimed to be an example, specifically because of the valid concern raised in the second quote. I will say that the two examples that come most clearly to mind for the proof requested in the first quote are two people who are in that category of “talks CONSTANTLY about how voting for Democrats would be a terrible thing that no self-respecting leftist would EVER do for any reason”, who also claimed to be American, who also made mistakes that no American would make. One of them used non-American characters to punctuate a number, and then when it was pointed out they got confused and didn’t understand what people were pointing out that was weird about their number. Another claimed that they employed a bunch of people and paid them all $250k per year (and, again, seemed not to understand that this was a wild thing to claim when people pointed it out ).

Is that proof positive that those people are working for the Russians? No, not really. Is it “beyond a reasonable doubt” that they are working for someone? Yes, to me. Certainly in conjunction with all the other circumstantial evidence about the way they behave. You use the standard straw man of “anyone who disagrees with you” being put in this category, but that is not at all what’s happening here. I disagree with people on Lemmy constantly and I very rarely think that this is what’s going on. However when I run into a very particular confluence of factors and ways of behaving, I start to think that the person might be a paid propaganda account.

But regardless of that, talking about the problem in general is surely okay. Your implicit threat to have the mods shut us all down is a waste of time. Talk to the mods (I am sure that some people have), tell them about the post, let them do what they’re doing to do. This is 100% an active and important problem on the Fediverse and talking about it is no kind of bad faith. I do actually, halfway, agree that singling out any particular user to accuse, could be a problem even if you’re extremely sure. But that’s not what this is.

I am highly curious to know what's really going on there. Maybe it's like 3 really influential accounts that are all very confident in themselves, and 50 other people who are looking for that all started imitating them, and at this point it's mostly self-sustaining just from confused leftists. Maybe it's a little team of 5 people all assigned to Lemmy, and they take shifts but only 1-2 of them are active at a time. Maybe it's just one guy. Maybe it's two whole separate teams, one for China and one for Russia, and they coexist with each other without being bothered or trying to coordinate all that much. Maybe it's all in my head. Maybe some of them are American? That seems unlikely, I don't think any GOP operation is this in-depth at this stage and some of them periodically make slip-ups that reveal that they're not from the US even though they're claiming to be, but who knows.

I really would like to know the answer. I think I never will find out, but it would be fascinating.

Doctrine of "I got mine, mother fucker."

They all speak sort of similarly to each other, too.

I came back to the post, and boy, did you get them riled up lol

Why do you say his cock doesn't work? Mans has been producing children like EA produces substandard games.

straw man: cuckoos are really eager to put words into your mouth, and try to force you to defend claims you never did in first place

This one is a really key tell. The people who spend most of their message emphasizing what it is that their opponents believe, and only in passing deal with what they believe (which tends to be along the lines of "well they all want to kill Palestinian babies but I don't want that, so clearly you can see the difference"), and immediately start telling anyone who talks with them what they believe also... that's an important signal.

I think it is so popular because it is substantially lower-effort than engaging with anything the person is actually saying, and also it works on anything. You don't have to be on the right side of the argument, you can just assign your opponent some awful crazy shit, and then get to work disagreeing with that.

Edit: Just for some examples. Here are things people have told me today:

your attitude that good people who would absolutely give you their last meal for days or literally stand in front of you to take a bullet that you may or not deserve are disposable lives

(Literally no idea what this is about)

I don’t think it’s unconscionable that the police are minimally held to that expectation

(I, also, think that the police should be held to the expectation they're talking about, and said so repeatedly)

you were unnecessarily bringing race into this discussion

(I wasn't, I did bring BLM into a discussion about the police)

Your saying things like “don’t refuse to give ID” or “Just talk with them. Tell them what you know, help them figure out the situation.” as a blanket suggestion

(I said the exact opposite of that)

I don’t mean to condescend to liberals – shouldn’t have used “libs” I guess – but I think of them, in the US, as primarily just trying to get the democrats back into power and then mostly disengage. The most outspoken of them tend to have much more energy to fight universal healthcare and other the social democratic reforms of a Bernie Sanders rather than actually take aim at the capitalist, state, and other hierarchies making our lives worse.

(I wasn't explicitly included in this grouping, but this person was explicitly talking to and about me when they said this. Obviously none of this has anything to do with anything I think or want. This is a form of indirect strawman "You are group X and all group X people think Y and Z" that is particularly hopeless to ever have any kind of success in disagreeing with)

So kindly fuck off with your genocidal apology nonsense

(I pointed out with alarm that there is literally 0 food in Gaza currently and people are likely to start to starve on a mass scale this month)

And so on

Lol I think the useful part of this conversation is at an end. Even if it was someone else, arguing about that wasn't the main point of anything I was saying.

And your attitude that good people who would absolutely give you their last meal for days or literally stand in front of you to take a bullet that you may or not deserve are disposable lives

Literally no idea what you're talking about here.

One of my neighbor’s lives is worth a million of yours, because we know_compassion_.

Were you the one saying that it's okay if everyone in Gaza dies this month because of Trump coming to power and making things way worse for them, because it's all the Democrats' fault for not being good enough to vote for and that's what's really important? Or was that someone else? Maybe it was someone else.

Eta: let me see you throw those fat, juicy watermelons up on a truck in 100+ f heat. Without water until next 10 minute break

I've had early stage heat exhaustion from working outside. I've gotten bleach in my eye cleaning up and still finished my shift. I've worked a lot of different jobs. You don't know anything about me.

Oh no! I better stop being a D voter. You convinced me. It's super dangerous.

"I would have overthrown the bourgeoisie, but I couldn't find a ride."

I don’t mean to condescend to liberals – shouldn’t have used “libs” I guess – but I think of them, in the US, as primarily just trying to get the democrats back into power and then mostly disengage. The most outspoken of them tend to have much more energy to fight universal healthcare and other the social democratic reforms of a Bernie Sanders rather than actually take aim at the capitalist, state, and other hierarchies making our lives worse. As a result, I don’t believe they can be effective against right wing and fascist elements in the US and feel the need to recruit them to the socialist and anarchist cause.

Okay, now I imagine that I went off a little digression just like that one, but talking about socialists or anarchists.

See how unproductive that would be? Even when you're using the fact that it was aimed at a "friendly" audience which would surely agree about how shit these people are is factored in? Dude, just stop doing that. Categorizing people and deciding that obviously these people on the other side all believe X, and that's a bunch of shit because they are stupid et cetera and they're always attacking us, is just a really bad use of time. I can't tell you the number of times someone on Lemmy has told me all about what I believe (which, just like everything you just said in the quoted part, has absolutely nothing to do with anything I actually believe) and then insisted against my opposition that I must believe that, because they already know I am in the category?

Dude just say what you're saying. Believe what you're believing. If someone pipes up with a different point of view, hear what their point of view is before you start mocking it and deciding that they must believe absurd dangerous things and are stupid. Most people have some level of sense to what they say, a lot of times they come from a different world and so the problems and the realities they're aware of are different than yours. Maybe one or the other of you is right or wrong, maybe they both have some truth, but this whole "everyone on the other side is in a particular category with a particular name and let me tell you all about the stupid things they believe" method of argumentation just needs to cease. That's part of why I had a negative response to this OP article, it was partly your presentation but also partly just that this kind of "let me tell you why my enemies are stupid" construction is almost always being made with some level of dishonesty to it.

As applied to this particular comments thread and this particular OP article, pretty much no one believes that the constitution is a perfect document or that it will protect us all on its own. I'll speak only for myself, but I think that a lot of what it talks about is valuable: Listing out specific freedoms which a government's attempt to infringe on would categorize it as a dangerous tyranny, and then the power and name recognition it has to sway people's loyalty when they might otherwise be loyal to the tyrannical government instead. That's it. That's the main value right now. I actually don't think you would need to destroy the constitution to address any of the massive problems predating Trump, any more than they needed to in order to get rid of slavery or give women the vote, but it's sure not going to save us if we don't save ourselves. And we need saving way beyond anything that is written down there, again even before Trump came along.

Furthermore, I think a lot of the problems of corporate corruption in the United States can chug along fine and dandy without the constitution. Like I said before:

What this country actually needs is a massive people movement to get the crooks and tyrants out of government. Trump didn’t invent any of that or even close to, but if him trying to have the government kill everybody who looks at him funny or gets in his way is what it takes to get that going, let’s fucking take advantage and accomplish some things, lord knows we need it.

There’s nothing inherent to libertarian socialism that makes it especially vulnerable to military opposition. It was just a fact of that particular political/military moment that multiple well-armed and well-financed enemies were highly motivated to destroy them.

Is it your impression that there are not multiple well-armed and financed enemies highly motivated to destroy the United States right now? Or the EU? I think that if Russia or Iran had the ability to crush the US in similar fashion, they would. Currently they can't. That's a reality of geopolitics and it's important.

My point is, more or less, that once countries grow to a certain level of size and power they start to face a whole new class of problems once the crooks start to move in and try to take over all their levers. Right now our answer is to build massive states and then try to shield the levers of power so that the assholes can't take them over, and I think it's fair to say that it's been an abject failure. I don't think that means the whole endeavor is doomed but I honestly don't really know what the answer is. I want to say that better media, better education, workers organized into unions and wielding political power that way to enforce better representation in government, and reforms to a lot of these decrepit systems that are supposed to make "politics" represent the will of the people, is the answer, but I feel like nothing you can set up is going to last unless people are fighting to maintain it, and I feel like they aren't going to fight to maintain it once it's set up and they're comfortable.

Maybe the answer is states of limited size. The EU countries seem like they're more civilized than the US and the US just has these insurmountable problems to face in keeping corruption at bay.

I don't feel like getting rid of state power is sustainable. If that's what you're talking about, I haven't looked over your materials. It is fine if you want to say that life will be happier if we can live in a much more stateless society where we just don't have to deal with any of these issues, but my argument would be that without something to enforce the removal of entities of power from the outside which will trample all over the paradise, it's just not going to last that long. You can get rid of power, or you can try to safeguard power, but if you get rid of it then don't be surprised when you find yourself powerless against the outside sometimes.

If you want a global revolution such that we don't need a powerful state anymore, because no chemical company can build a plant next door, no hostile nation can invade or sponsor your enemies to violence against you, I feel like that could be the answer but it seems even more unrealistic than reforming the US to something sensible. And that already seems nigh insurmountable. IDK, maybe I am wrong, maybe this whole nightmare will be the catalyst for American people to try to fight to make something decent again.

So run for office or find a candidate who might and help them get to that position.

This is literally 100% the answer. It could be within the Democratic party, it could be outside it, the details are details.

The point is that someone who comes up to you saying "I'm not voting for a DEMOCRAT, how could that ever help?" and also "I'm not voting! That will help, that's the answer, you should too." is definitely either lying or badly confused.

Like, yes, our system is corrupt and a lot of Democrats are a huge part of the problem. That won't go away if you refuse to engage with it. It will get worse.