Truly a brain-dead take.

No. They saw a virtual candidate in Joe Biden, someone who didn’t leave his bunker and had abysmal attendance at his rallies, but got the most votes of any president ever. That’s the problem: you pretend Trump convinced everyone, but really they’re just watching your malfeasance. — NOS4A2

Remarkably, you’re using some of the Big Lie words verbatim, that Joe never left his bunker, had poor attendance at his rallies, and yet got the most votes in history. This strongly indicates that you believe these words have influential power. And you’re right, they’ve proven to be effective.

I personally didn’t attend any of Biden’s rallies. Does that somehow disqualify my vote for him? I simply chose what I thought was the much lesser of two evils.

I personally didn’t attend any of Biden’s rallies. — praxis

Why would anyone attend a political rally? It's so weird. Just watch whatever they have to say on TV. It's much more comfortable.

certainly lowers the risk of contracting that form of insanity from the basket of deplorables that do attend these things.

Why would anyone attend a political rally? It's so weird. — Michael

I guess it’s a cult thing.

I was just thinking how meaningless a life must be to flock around a creep like Trump as though he were the second coming of Christ. And indeed many of them claim he was chosen by God, whatever that means.

Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest? — Michael

Hah, Jack Smith even quoted this in a recent court filing.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cadc.40232/gov.uscourts.cadc.40232.1208570955.0.pdf

As the court explained, targeted disparagement of this sort poses a danger even when it does not explicitly call for harassment or violence, as repeated attacks are often understood as a signal to act—just as King Henry II’s remark, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” resulted in Thomas à Becket’s murder. JA.183, 202; see, e.g., United States v. Smallwood, 365 F. Supp. 2d 689, 696 n.14 (E.D. Va. 2005) (discussing idiom). Such risks are far from speculative here, the court found, given uncontradicted evidence showing that when the defendant “has singled out certain people in public statements in the past,” it has “led to them being threatened and harassed.” JA.209.

Big Lie, capital letters, exactly as written by political operatives. Everything is decided for you. Your only duty (and ability) is to repeat it. You cannot do otherwise. But your sorcery theory of words suggests you’d blame them and not yourself for being their parrot.

Big Lie, capital letters, exactly as written by political operatives. Everything is decided for you. Your only duty (and ability) is to repeat it. — NOS4A2

The same could be said about your rhetoric. You got it from the same well your fellows drink from. What have you decided for yourself?

And do you have limits upon what rhetoric you will apologize for? Are you on board with Trump's call to root out his opponents like vermin as he expressed during his Veterans Day speech?

do you not see yourself repeating propaganda you've been told? Do you consider the possibility that there's any irony in you posting that?

On the one hand I'd implore you tell me in your own words what was wrong with Trump's speech, but on the other hand I don't need you to because I know what you're going to say.

And do you have limits upon what rhetoric you will apologize for? Are you on board with Trump's call to root out his opponents like vermin as he expressed during his Veterans Day speech? — Paine

NOS, how would you not see this as unhinged, echoing well-trodden fascist rhetoric for political opponents? Trump is saying all the stuff upfront, political opponents are going to be “rooted out”. This is literally fascist dictator playbook 101. And references to vermin cannot be just coincidence to fascist rhetoric…insane.

NOS, how would you not see this as unhinged, echoing well-trodden fascist rhetoric for political opponents? Trump is saying all the stuff upfront, political opponents are going to be “rooted out”. This is literally fascist dictator playbook 101.

Perhaps you can quote him and we can analyze his "echoing" of "fascist rhetoric", words that are plucked directly from the headlines that report on it.

Big Lie, capital letters, exactly as written by political operatives. Everything is decided for you. Your only duty (and ability) is to repeat it. You cannot do otherwise. But your sorcery theory of words suggests you’d blame them and not yourself for being their parrot. — NOS4A2

A big lie about a big lie written by political operatives? :chin: :snicker:

A big lie is a gross distortion or misrepresentation of the truth primarily used as a political propaganda technique. The German expression was first used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf (1925) to describe how people could be induced to believe so colossal a lie because they would not believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously". Goebbels said that if you tell "a lie big enough" and regularly repeat it [by someone viewed as an authority], "people will eventually come to believe it."



Anyway, if you’re saying that the Big Lie is a big lie then that seems to mean that you believe the Big Lie and that Trump’s propaganda has succeeded in shaping your beliefs.

Hitler claimed the jews were using the big lie to deceive Germans. Praxis claims Trump is using the Big Lie to deceive Americans.

Correct. :up:

I guess your mind-numbing conclusion is that I’m a nazi.

You’re literally thinking like Hitler now.

Well, I don’t seem to be convincing you that the Big Lie is actually a lie so I gotta work on my Hitler thinking.

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections, “They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.” - Trump, Vermin Speech

Okay, it sounds like you have no problems with the speech. Seeing as how you believe the election was stolen, do you agree with Trumps stated agenda? Or do you consider the eliminationist rhetoric another instance of poetic license?

You dodged the question of how your rhetoric is less manufactured than the ones you oppose.

A fascist dictator campaigning on rooting out fascists? Pretty wild.

Politicians use inflammatory metaphors and dysphemism. Trump’s rhetoric is closer to that of Winston Churchill, for example, who described Bolsheviks as “swarms of typhus-bearing vermin” and said they were “like troops of ferocious baboons amid the ruins of cities and the corpses of their victims”. His threat to root out both “communists” and “fascists” suggests a closer parallel to Churchill (who opposed both in war) than to any fascist dictator. At any rate, making such parallels is clearly a poor exercise in guilt by association. Trump is a business man, nothing like the Austrian artist, the Italian journalist, or the British writer, who have higher social, ideological, linguistic, and spiritual affinities to Trump’s critics than to a man of Trump’s standing.

https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour-extras/the-creeds-of-the-devil-churchill-between-the-two-totalitarianisms-1917-1945-1-of-3/

So you are comparing Churchill’s behind the scene writings, who was born in 1874, and known for his notoriously anti-communism to the point of frothing fury, as that article points out, and who participated in the hate rhetoric at the time, right after a cataclysmic world war, where the Russians all pulled out of the Eastern front in 1918 under the Soviets, and which the article pointed out had an even more pointed hatred at “Leftist Jews” to Trumps modern day speech said to the public at a rally, fascist dictator style (like Hitler and Mussolini), and knowing with the knowledge of history that this style rhetoric lead to extreme fascism in both Italy and Germany in the 30s and 40s where political minorities and ethnic minorities were stripped of their rights and lives brutally imprisoned and killed?Get outta here.

I think the personality comparison is quite apt. Churchill was a privileged rabid factional racist obsessed with his own destiny in a declining empire of world exploitation. And Churchill was petty much a spent force, marginalised as the out-dated bigot he was until WW2 gave him an enemy to suit his rhetoric. Unlike Trump, mind, he was an actual soldier with combat experience.

The difference is that both Trump the US are fighting fantasy 'enemies within', and that is what puts them on the fascict side on this occasion. Identifying the real enemy is the crucial step that is lacking (hint: think oil).

I was trying to illustrate how fallacious such comparisons are. You’re comparing rhetoric; it’s like saying they’re all fascists because they swear. It’s dumb.

Been perusing some of Churchill's racist quotes. They do sound like the sort of thing Trump would say. Therefore, racism is fine, I guess. The useful thing is that we can apply this method of making bad things good to pretty much anything by simply finding an admired historical figure who was also an arsehole. Thank you, @NOS4A2 :up:

“They do sound like the sort of thing Trump would say. Therefore, racism is fine, I guess.” We’ll have to name this fallacy Badenism!

The difference between public and private declarations of agendas can be seen in figures like Senator Joe McCarthy, who propelled investigations into "un-Americans" infiltrating government and society. A similar effort to go beyond rhetoric to shaping institutions can be found in Trump's executive order, issued on October 21, 2020: Executive Order on Creating Schedule F In The Excepted Service.

The order chips away at the civil services means to resist the power of patronage to fill the ranks of government. That is attractive to Trump's unipolar view of personal loyalty but also appeals to a conservative movement he fawns upon but does not actually represent. Consider the Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. Their mission statement is as follows:

1. Restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect
our children.
2. Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the
American people.
3. Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.
4. Secure our God-given individual rights to live freely—what our Constitution
calls “the Blessings of Liberty.”

This intrepid band of Culture Warriors are a vital component of the coalition supporting Trump but does not represent the animus of those willing to break the law. The "stand back but stand by" rhetoric is still alive in Trump's speaking of pardoning January 6 participants.

The rhetoric being used is a tug of war between two camps. The poo-pooing of alarmed Liberals as suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome is straight from the Fox News normalization of MAGA. But the language of being completely dominated by an ideological regime has that Confederate tang you want in an energy drink.

NOSism - fat-shaming someone by noting their similarities to Churchill.

New York judge lifts the gag order that barred Trump from maligning court staff in fraud trial

Judge David Friedman, of the state’s intermediate appeals court, issued what’s known a stay — suspending the gag order and allowing Trump to freely comment about court staff while a longer appeals process plays out. Friedman’s ruling also applies to Trump’s lawyers and others involved in the case.

The trial judge, Arthur Engoron, imposed the gag order on Trump after the former president made a disparaging social media post about Engoron’s court clerk on trial’s second day, Oct. 2. Engoron later fined Trump $15,000 for violations and expanded the order to include his lawyers after they questioned the clerk’s prominent role in the courtroom.

Friedman questioned Engoron’s authority to police Trump’s speech outside the courtroom — such as his frequent gripes about the case on social media and in comments to TV cameras in the courthouse hallway. He acknowledged that judges often issue gag orders, but said they’re mostly used in criminal cases where there’s a fear that comments about the case could influence the jury.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-letitia-james-fraud-trial-gag-order-c25e51a094dbcdeffbf67589b1c07f37

I’m surprised there are still some adults in the system, to be honest.

I’m surprised there are still some adults in the system, to be honest. — NOS4A2

Same, can't believe trump didn't get rid of em all.

Biden fired them all. He went after Trump appointees and filled the positions with his loyalists.