Top Trump officials said their strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites were limited, but they don’t have much control over the knock-on effects in the Middle East and their party.
Donald Trump’s top national security officials spent much of Sunday insisting his administration doesn’t want to bring about the end of Iran’s government, only its nuclear program. Then Trump left the door open for exactly that.
“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
While Trump did not call for the ouster of the regime, or say that the U.S. would play any role in overthrowing the Iranian government, his words undercut what had appeared to be a coordinated message from his top advisers. JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth each insisted Sunday that the U.S. was only interested in dismantling Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
Ok, I agree. But isn’t us saying “they’re all brainwashed idiots” also a part of the shared talking point and us being in lock step?
Like where is that line drawn between theirs is crazy manipulation and ours is greater and good.
This is kind of my point and why I don’t like a lot of the way we approach things on the left. Saying “they’re all brainwashed”, “they’re racist”, “they’re X, Y or Z” act like these conversation stoppers. Like reading between the lines, it basically is us saying well it is what it is no need to look further into this, they’re just evil for these reasons and that’s that.
For me, I don’t think they’re evil or racist or anything they often get accused of. I find they’re actually more informed and their reasoning does have some logic to it. I keep getting frustrated on things because it seems to me like the left is losing because they really are less informed and reality based. Lately it seems more about a focus on how morally aligned something is rather than really figuring out why something is happening. Like saying how ICE covers their face because they don’t want to be doxxed. Ok but why don’t they want to be doxxed. Maybe there is something more there. I’ve heard it suggests these could not be actual ICE but some type of private contractor situation. Kind of a big deal to identify these officers if they are hell bent on not being identified. But instead as a whole it’s like we can’t investigate that because they wear masks because they’re racist. Simple answer. Put that to bed.
This gets repeated over and over again. Go on any post here on Lemmy in politics and see a hundred comments saying the same lock step unoriginal uninformative “they’re racist” “they’re bad”. Go on a right wing post on Reddit and top comments are people linking to other articles giving context and latest updates. I’m just getting tired of hearing the people who seem to be more informed and on top of things get called stupid when I’m starting to think it’s the other way around and it’s just a frustrating situation to constantly see.
You need to take a step back and consider your sources, because you’re starting to sound like you’re falling for the propaganda yourself.
“Reality-based” has a meaning and it walks a close line near “evidence-based”. Evidence-based scientific studies have repeatedly confirmed that right-wing media consumers are less informed about reality than those that consume no media.
Sure, right-wing media consumers might have a better idea in the current moment what Trump might do next because in some cases it’s difficult to tell if Fox is working for Trump or Trump is working for Fox. But that has nothing to do with Trump or his policies being reality-based. It has to do with consistency within their talking points and propaganda.
Reality is still reality, and the reality is that Trump attacked a sovereign nation without authorization from Congress. The reality is that we’ve been in a constitutional crisis for months now, and that the Republicans in Congress are abdicating their duty of oversight on the executive branch. I guarantee they aren’t covering that on Fox News.
When the tariffs first started up a few months ago, I heard multiple conservatives who had never met each claim that ‘yeah these tariffs hurt, but it’s about respect, and the world needs to learn to respect us again.’ So no, I do not think they are more informed than me, just that they learn talking points through rote memorization and repetition (the only thing taught by our US education system these days).
Does it get oversimplified, sure. But most of that is because I don’t feel like writing an entire essay explaining the nuance of how these people think that they are actually saving our economy by removing all of these ‘freeloaders and jobstealers’ while in reality they are being fucking racists.
Those top comments linking to posts are the talking points being disseminated. That’s the response you’ll get whenever you try to push against their narrative. If you look into most of them, they are just grievance politics and often rely on partial information to force the wrong conclusion. If you ever manage to get past these talking points with real people, that’s when the conversation ends.
These people cannot be changed. I am tired of engaging with them or about them as n the premise that ‘we just need to figure out where they are coming from.’ They may not realize they are bigots, but that sure as fuck is what motivates them.
That’s a good point. None of them seemed to understand tariffs, but honestly, neither did I. I’m still just a casual observer. What I want to know is where’s the data? We’re months into tariffs, and I’ve yet to see any real analysis, just feel-good stories about Canadians boycotting the U.S. or U.S. towns begging for forgiveness. But what are the actual numbers?
This lack of follow-up, of concrete outcomes, leaves me pessimistic. So many leftist apparently, are any of them in economics? Are they not posting online? If they are, are we not sharing that?
We should be acting like relays in an information network. That’s what the right did so well in 2016. I watched them build networks like a slime mold. Fake accounts collecting random users and then connecting those into bigger ones like Charlie Kirk, Bannon, or Bongino.
On the left we did the opposite. Voices who weren’t even that political, scientists, educators, got torn down by our own side. I saw it: people mocking Neil deGrasse Tyson, attacking Bill Nye, even Bill Gates. Anyone targeted by Libs of TikTok should’ve had a wall of support drowning that crap out. Instead, we told each other “don’t wrestle with pigs.
Just look at our methods to engage. Don’t tell me there’s the biggest turn out for a protest and then turn around and tell me those mother fuckers will show up in the heat under threat of arrest and still cannot be bothered to create or share content to shut Charlie Kirk up. I’m nothing but pissed off at every protester because it shows how willing people are to just show up and go home for what? What did that protest do?
Libsotiktok a single Twitter account targeted educators across the country and harassed teachers for having rainbows in their class. Fuck those protesters for drawing all this energy up into a single moment that does fucking nothing. Fuck every single one of those protestors for showing up and failing to build a single network that can match that libs of tiktok bullshit. It’s like when Democrats made their little signs and held them up. I have the same frustration towards that as I do towards these “protests” lately.
That mindset, that it’s beneath us to engage, is the problem. Disengagement isn’t noble. It’s surrender. We gave up the space. And they took it.
I’m definitely pessimistic about all of this as well. I think we’re on the same page on a lot of things, or at least in the same chapter. The tearing down is absolutely an issue, and one I am afraid is never going to be solved. I think some of that stems from the fact that the democratic party is comprised of two groups that really don’t want the same thing. So while they both agree that they are against what the conservatives are doing, they are constantly taking potshots at each other.
This gets exacerbated by the fact that the upper levels of the DNC are fully removed from even the liberal side of the party, and are fully captured by the moneyed interests. This means that while the Republican party can move forward as a monolith, on the other side you never get a true fortified position on anything. Which is further degraded because there are always enough captured dems to reach across the aisle when it serves the moneyed interests. This also works the other way, and stops any real progressive momentum so that even if the left succeeds, they will be hamstrung by their own party. Look for this to happen to Zoran Mamdani if NYC succeeds in electing him.
It all gets amplified by the media, who are fully corporate here. Kind of going back to your point in the first post about liberals also being an echo chamber, I definitely see it as well. You’ll get your ‘watch this space’ folks who fall into the same trap, an example to me is all this TACO nonsense. He doesn’t chicken out, he’s a bullshitter and there is a huge difference. And when you call a narcissist a chicken while he’s deciding whether or not he should start an international conflict for now reason, well maybe you are part of the problem. (Obviously not you haha, just the general ‘you’). I do believe that this group is a big reason we can’t have nice things though, because they are also the one’s who will see that Bill Clinton endorsed Cuomo and somehow thing all of that is a good thing.
As for the ‘joe rogan of the left’ I keep hearing about, that’s a pass for me. My problem with him is not that he is conservative. It’s that he is a piece of shit that will push anything to make a dollar. And the money will absolutely pay a POS to spread their propaganda. Anyone on the left doing so will absolutely fall into that trap, it just may take longer for everyone to catch on. And to get to that level of market saturation, you absolutely need the money to be pushing you.
So, where do we go from here? Personally, I’m a doomer. I do my best not to tear things down or spread ‘thought-terminating cliches’ when all of this horror shows up, but I honestly don’t see a way forward from this. More and more I’m coming to realize this is what people want. Obviously not all of them, but like with the brainwashing thing, these people are doing it to themselves. While options may be limited, no one is actually forcing anyone to consume all of this. So why do we do it? (Hopefully all of that didn’t bounce around too much)