He’s Schrödinger’s Brandon: Too strong and too weak at the same time. I wonder if there is an ideology that typically uses this tactic to define an opponent?
Fascism trait #8:
Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
Ur-Fascism by Umberto EcoThis whole piece is excellent, thanks for sharing
He’s Schrödinger’s Brandon: Too strong and too weak at the same time. I wonder if there is an ideology that typically uses this tactic to define an opponent?
There is, and the answer is as clear as the nose on your fascist.
Face! I meant face. Stupid autocorrect.
Oh sure, it’s clear to most, but today’s conservative minds need to carefully do some warm up stretches before they can absorb this truth, or they’ll tyranny ligament.
Not sure if this is sarcastic, so for thise who don’t know: It’s a common tatic of fascists.
It’s gotta be democracy because the Republicans are adamant they are defending it right?
I’m pretty sure the republicans recently explicitly said they don’t like democracy
Same as it ever was. The Nazis did the same thing with the groups they scapegoated, simultaneously an incompetent drain/liability and and a hyper-competent threat that cannot be ignored.
Critical thinking and reasoning must be taught, without that, people will follow their feelings anywhere, and those are easy to manipulate.
Starving public education into complete and utter ruins for half a century to cut rich sociopath’s taxes, and the rise of tens of millions of proudly counterfactual, willfully ignorant nitwits as a political force is not a coincidence.
Garbage in (refusing to pay to educate kids to critically scrutinize the information they take in), garbage out (The United States of duhhhhhhhhhhh).
Hell, Republicans have been doing this for decades. Remember all the lazy handout-demanding Mexicans who are stealing all our jobs?
The saddest part for them is, I’ve read about studies that say a better-educated populace is a more compassionate populace. Guess who will care for them when they are too old to care for themselves?
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
Edit: I guess I can’t bold in a quoted passage, so here it is: Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.
Umberto Eco
But my favorite piece is at the end. I remind everyone all the time and nauseum that facists are stupid:
Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
Also Sleepy Joe and over-caffeinated.
Democrats do the same thing to Republicans though, and people on Lemmy are even worse about it. I see posts all the time about how stupid Republicans are, right next to other posts about how serious of a threat they are to democracy or to _____ rights. These are games that politicians play and always have played because it solidifies and energizes their base. It allows the base to set aside differences between themselves to focus on a common enemy. Without a common enemy, they easily devolve to infighting. It’s one of the central tenets of Saul Alinskys Rules for Radicals, how to unify against a common enemy. And he was a Communist.
The comments from the article were surprisingly not bad. One made a good point:
The POTUS started his SotU speech with:
“Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the Union. And yes, my purpose tonight is to both wake up this Congress, and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either. Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today.”
I have watched a lot of state of the union addresses and I cannot remember one that began with this stark of warning.
Yet, all the articles being posted are about MTG and whether Biden looked/didn’t look old and who clapped and who didn’t.
That’s a 5-alarm fire bell he just rang, broadcasted out to the entire country and world, pay attention to what’s important
The majority of the USA is behind Ukraine, it’s the magats that are being dumb russian puppets.
Yes. Every other thing is rage bait to distract you.
I worry that at this point if people haven’t figured that out they’re never going to
People forget that the point of the speech is right in the title. It’s not about the health of the country or political ideals.
Once a year, the President delivers a speech on the stste of the union. It’s about how divided the country is and whether or not that division is a threat to the nation.
If the country went full-fascist without a struggle that wouldn’t threaten the Union. If the Republicans were voted out of existence and we became a socialist utopia that wouldn’t threaten the union.
What is happening now, with one party increasingly refusing to work with the other side and intentionally breaking the systems that make government work? Yeah - that’s a threat to the Union.
They always say it’s an “unprecedented moment”. Let’s not act like there’s actual American Nazis in the streets or riots. That has literally happened many times.
It’s actually been the norm for a lot of US history. We live in an unprecedented time of peace where it’s actually uncommon for this to happen. They just last year set aside the convictions of 110 black soldiers who were involved in a riot. None of the white police officers involved were ever punished.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_riot_of_1917
Edit: these cosplayers are nothing. Do you guys understand that this shit used to happen all the time?
That’s why this riot happened. The police were beating up black men who were soldiers in uniform for no reason. Torches? That’s nothing.
You seem to be forgetting the actual torch lit rally which ended with an innocent woman being killed by a neo-Nazi. Remeber Trump calling them ‘very fine people’?
And if January 6 wasn’t a political riot, what would you call it?
Donald Trump was found guilty of rape. Nothing about this year is ‘normal.’
Let’s not act like there’s actual American Nazis in the streets or riots.
How do you manage to avoid the pictures of actual American nazis in the streets and riots?
Damn. I know housing is in full on crisis mode but that rock you’re living under to save money is stunting your development as a seeing, thinking human being.
🙈
He’s too low-energy, he’s old! He’s too high-energy, he’s… uh… Whatever! Vote for the guy who wants to do away with voting!
These guys, I swear 🙄
The forklift moving the goalposts just broke the sound barrier.
Which is wild because forklifts really can’t go much faster than a brisk jogging pace. Not unless you strap a rocket to it. Coincidentally Rocket Propelled Forklift is my new band name
The forklifts at the sawmill I worked at went much faster than jogging pace usually, maybe 30km/h while loaded? Unloaded they of course can go quicker but safety and all. I think at jogging pace things would back up quickly at a decent sized sawmill.
That may not have been a forklift, but a piece of industrial equipment that looks and acts much like a forklift while not technically fulfilling all of the forklift checkboxes
Did you just move the goalposts on the definition of a forklift that moves goalposts?
Well done.
I actually laughed at that and had to explain this to my bewildered wife.
But there actually is a difference between forklifts and other powered industrial equipment that you also forks on. Logging and sawmill operations usually need more versatility than a forklift can offer and their forked equipment is usually closer to farm equipment than anything else.
Ha. Yeah, I went for the joke, but I actually used to work for a construction equipment rental company, and one of our common items was material handlers (i.e. boom forklifts). All that to say, I’ve driven one before!
But I stand by the joke. Glad you enjoyed it. Hope your wife did too.
Huh I didn’t realize that was a thing but after some googling it appears forklifts rarely go over 18mph. I’m guessing it was more on the industrial equipment side since they were only for moving the piles of cut lumber around, but they may have only gone up to 30kph in the yard too and I just never realized. Thanks for helping me learn something new.
The qons have installed wheels on the goalposts long ago.
Ah, those times when reality reads like an onion article.
Fox News was ready to criticize Biden about his energy levels - they realized sleepy Joe wouldn’t land so they had to pivot. This is honestly feeling like 1984 satire, I expect to see footage from rallies were Trump supporters are quoted as saying “Biden is so angry and sporadic, I’m voting for Trump because he’s much more calm and composed” and the one guy that didn’t get the memo that they’ve always been at war with East Asia will hold up a “Sleepy Joe” sign before being shunned and photoshopped out of the rally.
I laughed because I thought it was an Onion article at first glance. Holy shit.
SLEEPY JOE HAS AWOKEN.
“Too woke! More sleepy please”
Republicans will complain about literally anything to make anyone who opposes them look worse.
We should only listen to Republicans in order to decipher (it ain’t hard, they aren’t subtle) what new atrocities they are going to be attempting next.
Not complain, they will attack literally anything.
And if they ever run out of things to attack, they will create things to attack. Remember that recession that was going to happen?
Migrant caravan and bears oh my!
The “he was too partisan” comments annoyed the shit out of me. Republicans are nothing if not hypocritical snowflakes.
That’s why i stopped giving their words any weight. They’ll complain no matter what, so fuck em
They were always going to find something to complain about.
Yeah, imagine if he had a tan suit or used mustard?
mustard is fine as long as it comes in a plastic squeeze bottle.
“JOE BIDEN IS TOO (insert current thing Joe has done well)”
“Intelligible!”
“Knowledgeable!”
“Sane!”
“Capable of completing a thought!”
He doesn’t piss his stinky diaper as good as trump tho!
Not to brag, but I happen to be famous and one great thing about being famous is you can walk up to dumbass politicians and grab them right in the stinky diaper.
Republican media has convinced their viewers that Biden is basically constantly confused and just slackjawed and drooling constantly. They set expectations for him so low, when reality didn’t bare out their caracicture they had to pivot. I think the implication they are going for is Biden was dosed with something to make him seem coherent, basically the weekend at Bernie’s president. Dumb, but so are Fox News viewers, so I’m sure it’ll go over just fine with them.
That said, it did seem like Biden was yelling a lot. The few moments where he slowed down to talk about some somber topic came as a relief to me. To put a metric to it, I saw in Politico that the written version of his speech contained 80 more explanation marks than last year’s speech.
Their viewers aren’t watching the raw state of the address. They’re watching the sound bites, so the conservative media can sell it whatever way they want
I was watching it on C-Span and they said the previous SOTU speech by him had 0 exclamation marks
Well, what did you expect him to do when the other side is yelling stupidities all the time? When did a presidential debater had to tell the other side “will you shut up, man?” and call him “this clown”? When they run out of patience when trying to play by the rules, and the other side doesn’t.
Then, you see that a segment of the population is still sleepwalking into fascism. Not some “maybe” danger, actual danger (the contender tried to keep power by force, and yet he’s the main contender?!) Venezuela went through this. Look up the Hugo Chavez story.
The first two minutes of the speech was practically him saying “WAKE UP, AMERICA!! See what’s happening!”
It was about time.
The other side is a constant “NU-UH! NO U!!!” noise, and you felt “relieved” when Biden was speaking calmly?
I say, he should have used 80 more exclamation marks.
(Autocorrect turned your exclamation into explanation)
Fucking Goldilocks over here.
best comment of the day
Gotta love these idiots’ logic.
GOP: “SLEEPY JOE!!!”
Dems inject him with Adderall or whatever juice to get him going.
GOP: “HE’S TOO POWERFUL!!!”
Biden: “muahahaha!”
honestly I hope he did take stimulants- by all accounts a river of lab grade amphetimines and benzodiazepines flowed through the trump whitehouse. gotta level the playing field
So many Americans on so many prescription drugs, if they need to pump up Biden, so be it!
LOL.
