It feels like Harris has to run a damn near flawless campaign just to BARELY beat this guy. Yeah you can bring up the current state of the country, but Trump mishandled COVID, there were over 200k deaths, BLM protest and was 2x impeached. And yet, Joe Biden BARELY beat him.
Trump is a convicted felon, liable sexual predator, caused an insurrection on the Capitol Hill, tried to steal the 2020 election (find me 11,000 votes), constantly kisses Russia’s ass, has more pending court cases and gets sentenced next month and overall has been the main driving factor in America’s division.
Yet, this race is STILL either 50/50 or a slight tilt (Harris leads the polling aggregate right now). Harris gets destroyed by the corporate media for almost anything, yet Trump is still lying and saying the most outlandish shit and nobody cares.
Why does it feel standards are much higher for Harris than Trump?
First election?
Seriously… A fucking toddler will be held to a higher standard than Trump and Republicans will hold that toddler to that standard while Trump could fart on the Queens grave and Republicans would just support his “strong thoughtful message”
Memba tan suit?
Because too many people treat politics like a sporting event. You root for your team no matter what, and against the other team. You have to do it this way, because if the other side wins that means your side loses.
So there are too many people who view Trump as “Their Guy”, and are “rooting” for him. Anything they hear that might portray Trump in a negative light (like a criminal trial, for instance) must be the Other Side trying to cheat to win unfairly.
I remind people that Roger Ailes was Nixon’s media consultant, and the lesson he learned from Watergate was that Nixon could have gotten away with it if the media was more sympathetic. He then went on to be the CEO of Fox News. That’s no accident. There is a direct line from Nixon to Trump, and Roger Ailes drew it.
the lesson he learned from Watergate was that Nixon could have gotten away with it if the media was more sympathetic.
Then we got Reagan, Bush, and Trump, and he proved it.
The media almost singlehandedly bringing Watergate to the average American’s attention was why Murdoch created Fox News. It was created specifically so they could force control of the narrative to their advantage.
And then we allowed every other media corporation to be bought and do the same once they saw it worked so well.
The media almost singlehandedly bringing Watergate to the average American’s attention
If you really get under the hood of Watergate, it had all the fingerprints of a soft coup. Nixon was a shit and made for an easy fall guy, but also Trumpian in his stubbornness and his refusal to go whole hog on the Cold War. Ford toed the line - installing Bush Sr to clean Kennedy’s liberals out of the CIA, promoting Greenspan and Rumsfield to the Republican inner circle, and tapping the breaks on our openness with China.
There was no real reason to break into the Watergate given that Nixon was beating McGovern in a landslide. But it did a lot of favors for the movement conservatives like Goldwater and Reagan to get Nixon’s ass out on the curb.
The WaPo (a hotbed of spooks even back then) played a big roll in that for a reason. Ffs, Woodward was an agency man going back to his time in Naval Intelligence. He broke Watergate less than a year after joining the paper.
Woodward going on to not reveal Trump’s admission that Trump knew exactly how dangerous COVID was and was purposefully downplaying it until Woodward published his book on Trump couldn’t be anymore revealing of capitulation to power while claiming to speak truth to power.
Now this a conspiracy I can get behind. Love it.
The problem isn’t that Harris is being held to a higher standard. The problem is that Americans think of elections the same way they think of a sporting match. It’s “my team is going to win!” not “I’m going to vote for the candidate that is best aligned with my beliefs.” A huge number of the people who are voting Republican are doing so because the Republican party is their “team,” and damn it, their team is going to win even if it kills them.
Many years ago, I was discussing politics with a coworker (always a bad idea, but whatever). It went something like this:
“So, you don’t think the less-fortunate should be able to afford medical care?” “No, of course not, everyone should be able to see a doctor.”
“You don’t think gay people should be allowed to marry?” “I’m not gay, but they can do whatever makes them happy.”
“You support the war in Iraq, then?” “I support our troops, but the war is kind of a waste.”
“We definitely should legalize weed, right?” “Um, I’d smoke it if I didn’t get drug tested.”
“So why are you voting Republican, then?” “My family is Republican; we always do.”
“So why are you voting Republican, then?” “My family is Republican; we always do.”
Republican politicians would eat this person and their family if it ever came to it
Sadly, they would probably volunteer to be eaten so they could “own the libs”
After raping them all first.
Then denying any abortion.
As an outsider looking in, I’ve seen a lot of footage of rallies and events (on both sides) that are just absolutely crazy to me. Almost dystopian. People with painted faces, all kinds of merch, hollering and shouting and cheering like it’s the X Factor or a rock concert or something. You see people being interviewed outside the events and it’s like a festival in the background. It’s really, really bizarre. We have problems with our politics here too but not like that. I can’t believe that all of those people are ACTUALLY that passionate about any policies themselves, it’s just vague culture wars nonsense with a bizarre personality contest as a proxy for it.
As I say, I’m not trying to act superior. My country has its share of problems too, just a very different sort.
You have to understand, you are seeing people of VERY low intelligence. I know that’s tough to accept, but demographics are really frightening in America. Millions of voters with intelligence not very much higher than outright mental retardation. And so, the system learned long ago, you don’t bother trying to get them to think you’re right for the job, you don’t want them thinking at all. So you just get them to ally with you as a tribe, and that way they’re yours even if you’re doing the opposite of what they want.
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We call this indoctrination. Cult. And fucking sheep. Lmao
Here in Canada I’ve seen much the same behaviour for both Liberal and Conservative voters. “I vote Liberal because I’ve always voted Liberal” is a surprisingly common statement especially among the older generations, and to a small extent even the Green party has a few loyalists in BC.
Always voting the same way no matter what happens is just giving your vote away for free.
It’s the same when it comes to any other countries. The right always gets away with corruption because it’s expected. Whereas the left has a higher moral standpoint so it is being accused of hypocrisy and things get blown out proportion even if small scale corruption occurs. For example in UK the previous government were giving jobs and contracts to friends and family all the time and nobody cried about it. It became accepted. The new left of centre government comes in and gives a temporary pass to a donor and suddenly it’s a huge scandal…
It’s the same if you care for the environment and ever took a taxi somewhere, or a vegetarian or vegan and have shoes made out of leather. Sure you are doing better than everyone else to help but you are still the devil and worse than everyone else somehow…
vegetarian or vegan and have shoes made out of leather.
I’m certainly not going to throw away perfectly good shoes until they are no longer repairable. Or the leather belt my sister sent me from New Zealand in the late 70s.
Some people will give me stick for that though, all the time living their disposable lives.
P.S. My last two pairs of boots came from Wills Vegan Shoes 😉
1: She’s a woman of color so she has to be 75% better than average for anyone to pay attention.
2: Executed moral standards are more important to the left than the right. Declared moral standards are more important to the right.
A nice illustration is Republican media operatives are trying to attack Harris with “we checked with McDonald’s corporate and they have no record of her working there!”. For one, McD’s is franchisees and I doubt corporate tracks every burger flipper. Next, of course they’re trying to claim she’s dishonest, but what about the greater question: Did fuckin Trump ever come anywhere near McDonald’s? No, he inherited about $400 million, has misconstrued it it repeatedly (‘a small loan of a million dollars’, as if that is relatable either) and has never had any sort of normal job that required discipline or labor, ever.
I think he’s famously at least eaten a lot of McDonalds.
Probably $400 million worth.
I’ll take racism, sexism, propaganda and capitalism for 500 Alex.
They’ve got pretty firm control of the business sectors through tax cut agenda. They’ve got pretty firm control of the farmers for the same. Through fear and propaganda they’ve got pretty strong control of the poor and some of the educated middle class in the rural areas. A lot of the red states are doing everything they can to impede their education systems. If you keep people from becoming educated there’s less competition at the top and a lot more red voters.
All you’ve got to fight them are the poor and the middle class in the cities and suburbs and the occasional upper class that isn’t so self-serving that they’re willing to stand on everyone else.
you’re asking why fascists and leftists have different standards and morals?
Can’t believe you are asking this now. In the 70s, I don’t believe any of these yokels would have been elected. Lauren Beaubert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Trump, they’ve all done things and said things that are so far over the line, it isn’t even funny. Nixon? Please, he would be small potatoes today.
Why? Gerrymandering. Social Media. Lack of critical thinking skills. A sense of hopelessness. Apathy. Billionaire brainwashing. The list goes on. The strange thing is, conservatives want to go back to the way things were. For them that means when women had to go to back alleys to get abortions, when gays were stoned, when blacks weren’t allowed to vote. For me it means when people didn’t justify these ridiculous notions, but instead just said, “No!”
conservatives aren’t conservative any more. they are radically backwards. the things they want are so far back, they don’t even want democracy any more. i don’t really have a say in that, but maybe the time has come to stop calling them conservative.
It’s wild that Trump has done things far worse than watergate, and still got the nomination.
Kamala proposed a corporate tax hike. They will be pulling out literally All. The. Stops.
Because the media is heavily conservative and advertising driven.
Giving republicans new things to throw at Kamala is the #1 priority of the news right now because they need a close race to sell ads.
Years of ownership by conservative billionaires and pundits has also saturated the media environment with a broad conservative tilt. This is why you don’t see a lot of articles about why like immigration went up under trump etc.
Indeed. Notice, too, that the concerns about Biden’s cognitive abilities have instantly stopped? He’s still the President, and still in charge of the nukes. But no more news stories.
Meanwhile, the other guy has recently developed a habit of swearing at rallies, and there are a few articles about his wife asking him to knock it off, but nothing pointing out that a sudden increase in swearing is a symptom of dementia. At a town hall in La Crosse, WI the other day, he didn’t know why he was there at first. Still radio silence from the news media.
Funny, isn’t it?
they’re not voting trump they’re voting against the democrat party
All those things you said against Trump are actually working in his favor. His base sees it as persecution of their chosen one.
Trump is an outrage machine, and we have a media that deals in an economy of outrage.
Trump gets outrage. Outrage gets clicks. Clicks get money. It’s a pretty simple chain to follow.
We need to wake up and realize that a profit-driven instantaneous news system that leverages strong emotions is not good for anybody. Truth is subjective nowadays, (always has been, really, but it’s especially evident in the current media climate) and all that matters is getting information and narratives (not necessarily facts) out and people consuming it (and all the ads embedded with it) there, first, and right now.
I am shocked to see this pseudofascist apologia so highly upvoted.
It’s not the media’s coverage of the fascism that’s the problem.
You would rather deflect blame to the media than point the finger at the fascism. Shame on you.
I don’t think the fascism would exist if it wasn’t profitable to give it a platform.
It’s like My 600lb Life.
Trump is the bedridden 800lb lump of a human. And the news cycle that brings him hamburgers by the pallet is the enabler spouse.
I don’t think the fascism would exist if it wasn’t profitable to give it a platform.
fascism is enabled by those who delude themselves into believing they can control it. see: 1930s germany.
they knew hitler was a nutbag. but too many people and too many industries were ready for the profits militarism brought - see krupps, ibm etc.
Hitler wouldn’t have been shit if he wasn’t celebrated by German media during the Beer Hall Putsch trials. And he would’ve faded to obscurity pretty quick if not for Goebbels.
Fascists are bad. But they only get dangerous when they’re given a platform.
I don’t think the fascism would exist if it wasn’t profitable to give it a platform.
That’s stupid!
Because a cult leader is automatically the purest one can be and needs no scrutiny.
I understand the MAGA cult, but do moderates not see this?
There the opposite is true. They already know that the other guy is a villain. Their candidate will have to prove themselves not to be.
Moderates are conservatives with a sense of shame.
“Moderates” are a fiction. They’re just an excuse Democrats make for pandering to corporate donors while giving only the barest scraps to their leftist base.
That only explains the cultists, and I doubt the entire media industry is in the cult.
Trump gets views. That’s why they love him.
