The U.S. will mark the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection on Saturday, a milestone that will confer upon the reality-dwelling citizenry a grim reminder of the potency of propaganda and how quickly it can warp perception when introduced into the public square.

Just three years ago, most of the country watched with dismay and horror as a violent MAGA mob beat back authorities and stormed the country’s citadel of democracy. The Donald Trump-incited crush of disillusioned rioters, fueled by a stream of fantastical lies, believed that the 2020 election had been stolen by sinister forces working to undermine the democratic election.

Of course, not only was their belief flatly incorrect, but evidence later emerged indicating that it was Trump who, in fact, had tried to subvert democracy.

Facts, however, have little bearing on the sentiment inside the Republican Party, which has been fed a steady diet of lies and half-truths by Fox News and the rest of the sprawling right-wing media machine. To wit, the false notion that Joe Biden nefariously stole the 2020 election is now widely shared inside the GOP. A CNN poll conducted over the summer found that nearly 70% of Republicans believe Biden’s win was not legitimate, a number that has continued to tick up.

  • @Socsa
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    6 months ago

    My point is that you claim to want secular democracy, and then you hold a double standard when it comes to Palestinian Arabs explicitly rejecting your solution. If you can convince Hamas to agree to secular unification then they will give you the Nobel Peace prize every day for the next 100 years. But this is not some big brain moment. Democratic unification has been tried. Democratic partition has been tried.

    • Diva (she/her)
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      -66 months ago

      Sounds like you’ve talked yourself into supporting genocide. I support the people fighting to end the genocide with any means at their disposal.

      • @Socsa
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        6 months ago

        You mean the side which chooses mass rape over secular democracy? You express support for secular democracy, so I can only infer your feelings on mass rape based on that.

          • @Socsa
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            36 months ago

            Like you, I agree that secular unification is the obvious solution to this conflict. However, I am unwilling to ignore the role that religious extremism has historically played in preventing that outcome. It actually saddens me to once again see leftists abandon their first principles in favor of brain dead revolutionary fan service.

            Israel is absolutely an apartheid state which has brutalized Gaza far beyond what is necessary for security, retribution or deterrence. They should be condemned and sanctioned soundly for this. However, if you espouse support for secular unification, then you must also acknowledge that the Islamic opposition to Jewish co-governance is a major force preventing this outcome, and it has been that way since before the state of Israel has existed.

            • Diva (she/her)
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              -66 months ago

              At this point I don’t care about your concern trolling, excuses and hypotheticals when there’s actual shit going down now. The US should really stop supporting Israel if they want any credibility in the rest of the world going forward.

              • @Socsa
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                6 months ago

                “Excuses and Hypotheticals” being history of the conflict you didn’t know about until now?

                You are the one who proposed hypothetical unification.

                • Diva (she/her)
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                  -46 months ago

                  Your position is that when the apartheid government ends, the barbaric savages who have been getting kept at bay by the glorious liberal “democracy” it has (for the right types of citizens who qualify) will take revenge in a way just as brutal and exterminationist as the zionist colony.

                  That’s just chauvinism, and you’re just repeating discredited hasbara and acting like a scholar which is fucking hilarious.

                  we have a real-world example of what happens when an apartheid government ends- was there a genocide of white people in south africa?

                  • @Socsa
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                    36 months ago

                    I am not making any statement which is not the formal position of Hamas. But you didn’t state that you would write in the Palestinian Authority.