Cross posted from Discuit
I wonder if this has been substantiated in any way. If so, it would carry a great deal more meaning to everyone.
Either way, the whole DOGE experiment is nuts.
Is “MAGAtard” okay to say on Lemmy without getting banned? It’s not a slur against mentally challenged people FFS, it’s a slur against MAGA. I think MAGAt is a poor substitute.
If you have to ask, you probably already know the answer. You can insult them without playing off of a slur for another group.
I bet his flag is down just for selling purposes. He probably blames Joe Biden.
IU BLAME JOE DIDDN TOO
sad stuff… people voting against their interests
They vote as they dobecause they’re so impressionable. It’s also why there’s a huge overlap of religious nutjobs and Republicans.
/r/thathappened material
/r/nothingeverhappens
Trust me bro.
If they had just said “my Trump voting Neighbor just lost his job at the USDA. FAFO.” I’d be totally down to believe it. Tons of people are losing their jobs right now, that is reality. But the flag/house thing? Give me a fucking break
Loosing a job means no more mortgage payments, so that’s not too far fetched.
Most people don’t immediately sell their homes the moment they are laid off.
They do if they have no savings and the payments are more than any income they are getting. It’s better to quickly sell before the fees start for non payment. There are also options to put your home on forbearance while it’s on the market so the homeowner could have done that immediately to prevent the house being repossessed.
When you see moving to a smaller house is inevitable, it might not be worth it to delay for some additional months. Better preserve the savings so they last longer. When your economy goes south, better start more economical life right away.
I didn’t say it never happens. I’m saying most people don’t respond to layoffs by selling their home immediately. Trump hasn’t even been in office for 60 days. So this dude probably got laid off, assuming this happened, 4 to 6 weeks ago if we’re being generous.
You’re also not taking into account current interest rate/home prices. If this person has held their home for a long time, then even if they got a higher interest from the 90’s or 2000’s The home was so cheap back then that their bill is probably pretty reasonable. If they’ve had it for a couple of years, then they got incredible interest rates And to give that up for a higher interest rate upwards of 7-8% would be asinine. Not to mention it would be very hard to finance when you admit you were laid off and don’t have a job. The most likely outcome is an equal or even higher mortgage payment unless they truly uproot their lives. Again, all over a recent layoff.
The narrow lane of parameters for this story to be true makes it possible but highly unlikely. And the flag thing…come the fuck on.
Plenty of people are having their lives ruined. Some random person on the Internet telling this story is what we’re going to point to?
If you have a reason to believe you might be living off your savings for the next two years, you will want to maximize your savings. If you have paid enough of your house to buy the smaller and more remote one with cash, then that’s what you should do.
Maybe it’s real, maybe not, but it’s certainly plausible.
Of course it’s plausible. The point is that it’s most likely not true.
Plausibility is incredibly useful way to introduce falsehood.
I don’t understand why so many people are eager to (metaphorically) scream “FAKE!!!” at every story (that isn’t highly unlikely) told on the internet. Sure, maybe, but does it even matter? Odds are good something like this did happen somewhere.
odds are good something like this did happen somewhere
I heard very similar responses when conservatives were shown that Haitians were not eating dogs in Ohio.
So, basically we know it’s a falsehood because it’s plausible. Saying something plausible is precisely what a liar would do!
That is not even remotely what I said and you know it
No, I don’t.
Please elaborate.
Wrong site brother
No, that was very intentional lol
🤗
How the fuck did democrats go from the party that hates misinformation to the party that believes implausible posts on a platform known to be full nonsense because it fits a cute narrative?
How did getting laid off during cutbacks go from commonplace to implausible? Are you taking the wrong meds?
Considering how Lemmy feels about democrats and how everyone claims to be a true leftist…
Just because the Democrats are the most left leaning party available to Americans doesn’t make the democratic party a left leaning party. If anything the Democrats are centerists because their ultimate objective is to maintain the status quo. Lemmy reaches to far more countries that just the United States, places that have left leaning parties. Even left-wing extremists parties, although they’re definitely on the ropes lately.
The Democrats aren’t a progressive party, they’re a conservative party. It’s just with MAGA in the room the scale has moved so far to the right that the center (conservative) seems progressive.
I’m not really sure what you’re responding to here. I’m just saying this person is assuming the poster isn’t a leftist on a site that more dominated by leftists than true blue democrats.
It’s a classic “anyone who does something wrong must be on a different team.”
ask any millenial what all our parents were telling us until they got on facebook.
Ah, the classic anything I don’t agree with is fake news.
- On Twitter, the site known for random misinformation
- OP knows their neighbor well enough to know where they work, despite that not being nearly as common these days and OP not seeming like the kind of guy that would befriend Trump supporters
- OP’s neighbor is one of the minority of federal workers who are probationary employees, because that’s the only group Elon has been able to really fire right now
- OP’s neighbor simultaneously being a homeowner with a previously-stable job, but being in such dire financial straits that simply missing two paychecks results in a complete crashout.
- OP’s neighbor then selling the house instead of taking advantage of the large number of hardship programs that would be available for someone with issues paying their mortgage, at least temporarily.
Like is this possible? Yes. However it’s highly implausible, and conveniently matches the whole “stupid Drunpf supporters regret their decision” narrative that both Lemmy and reddit absolutely adore. To take this at any sort of face value without any genuine shred of concrete evidence is insane.
OP’s neighbor is one of the minority of federal workers who are probationary employees, because that’s the only group Elon has been able to really fire right now
This part isn’t true. At this point, probably over half of the fired workers were permanent, from agencies that are closing or are implementing RIFs. Most are still drawing paychecks, but budgeting does (and should) change once someone is informed that they’ll be out of a job in the next month or two.
For many agencies, these satellite offices often have monopsony power over workers of certain job skills. NOAA and the National Weather Service employ a lot of people who have job functions not really available from another employer, especially without moving. The same is true of NIH and CDC. HHS just announced the closure of several lawyer offices, and those specialists are going to have a bit of a rough time finding replacement jobs. USDA is a big organization, and have a ton of economists and scientists who would basically have to take a big pay cut if they’re laid off in this environment.
You’re downplaying just how devastating some of these job losses are, by ignoring that many of these people moved to these cities in reliance on the job stability they expected, and downplaying the number of people affected and the length of tenure these people have.
I don’t have a strong view of whether this story is literally true of this specific account’s neighbor. But I can tell you that versions of this story have happened to thousands already, and will happen to tens of thousands more.
If OP’s neighbor got a promotion within the last 2 years he is a probationary employee.
Everyone is assuming he lost the house. Maybe he got a better job and is moving to a new and better house, closer to the new job
Ah, the classic “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” is more like it. That’s half the reason we’re in the mess.
So anyways I started shit posting…
Good and screw the neo-Nazi who found the fuck out.
how can you be happy on someone’s failure… this is disguising.
No matter what, we have to remember always to be humans with each others
gr8 b8 m8 i r8 8/8
There’s nothing wrong with a little schadenfreude for people who actively try to harm others…
that actually makes sense
I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. It’s kind of the whole point of this community
Trump promised to cut federal spending (which includes federal jobs), and federal workers still voted for him anyway.
Why would I feel bad for someone who got exactly what they asked for?
Want to know what’s actually disgusting? The fact that that a 3rd of the country voted for the fat little orange rapist Nazi. You should be more upset over that.
when you put it like that it makes sense
Failure? This is consequence.
I don’t see a failure? This individual got exactly what they voted for.
being fired is a failure no matter who you voted for and he should’ve been helped by his neighbor to find a new job
Trump was never on your side, now you’re finding out the hard way :|
I wonder sometimes if it is self defeating to brow beat, say “I told you so”, or rub someone’s face in it. Enjoyable as it may be.
Crisises like this is the opening to recruit the hitherto reactionary proletariat. Opinions are most often fickle anyways amongst the poorly educated. But damn its hard to not to feel gleeful for the suffering of hatefull fools.
You have to ridicule them a little in person: “What exactly were you expecting, did you think people were overreacting?”
The problem is you’re never going to be able to stop the internet from over indulging on mockery.
No you can’t change the internet’s mind, but how do people react to when ridiculed? How do you? I guess it all depends on what the end game is
Some people only learn when something bad happens to them.
Perhaps in private, but not if you remind them.
Consider this. Your asshole detestable uncle loses his house. On the one hand you can text him and say you deserve what you get you piece of shit.
Or invite him over to watch a baseball game. Avoid politics. Quietly remind him not everyone is a piece of shit.
Which do you think will more likely change his mind? Or which one will he double down on, write it off as an accident, and go deeper down the hole. I took one for the team.
Both of those require interacting with people in real life, which I avoid because humans are the most dangerous animals on the planet
That’s the mosquito
Humans kill billions, maybe trillions, of animals and millions of their own every year.
Mosquitos need to get on our level.
In terms of humans killed, mosquitoes have us 2 to 1:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_animals_to_humans
That statistic is specist
The fact that this guy posts this on X with a paid-for blue checkmark tells you everything about why Trump won and why he’ll keep winning. The left has made almost no effort to win the information space. They just lose and then celebrate when some of the harm falls back on MAGA.
How about his for a change: Win. Try to win. Stop kowtowing to right wing information propaganda spaces that stifle the left like X, Fox News, and Rogan. Fight them like the right fights the left in the information space. True, you won’t get to celebrate when your neighbor suffers from Trump, but it’ll be because he didn’t vote Trump in the first place.
good lord, its always the dems fault! ‘why oh why didn’t we run a racist rapist who promises to ban an entire religion! someone who has bankrupted casinos! someone who cant run a charity for cancer kids!? a fraud university!? clearly its the dems fault ! they didn’t excite me enough! i demand perfection!’
two different standards and yet americans are still blaming democrats.
its the citizens.
No, it’s (1) proximity to massive online psyop campaigns put forth by BRICS (BIGGEST FACTOR) (2) profound loneliness and social isolation and (3) low information/bad internet hygiene
i actually have no idea what the fuck you are talking about, but im willing to listen and hear you out. explain it to me like to a child.
Bricks is Brasil, Russia, India, China and one other. Their goal is to dethrone G7. The other points are sociological and about digital propaganda.
Senile genocidaire = almost perfect.
next time we’ll get it right and run a senile genocidarie who’s also a failed businessman who cheats on his wives.
clearly the winning card.
But will it be able to beat 50 year old ex guantanamo bay guard crusader wannabe?
only if its racist enough and enlists unelected billionaires!
gosh why cant the dems learn to run these types!
I saw the “Dems are the Uvalde cops Magas are the shooters.” And goddamn it salpped ever since. You guys need to get a real 3rd party that is real grassroots socialist.
that would be me. sucks im too poor to run a campaign though lmao.
I’ve been watching people go on and on about a Socialist revolution since I read about Gene Debs in high school.
I haven’t seen them actually do anything yet.
Easy to say, hard to do.
Need to finish that Elden Ring dlc first.
This is a liberal account, he’s not a leftist. Leftists have been in the streets, while liberals remain in the tweets.
It’s amazing how everyone doing everything right is a leftist and everyone they disagree with/who isn’t doing things right is a liberal. That’s why leftists are in position of power!
Remind me again, are the democrats currently in power?
Most of the country is governed or represented by democrats yes.
Right, those are the same democrats actively helping Trump. Hey, good job on those performative sit downs in congress, you guys are really fighting the good fight! I’ve always said that nothing beats fascism like a not-too-strongly worded letter. At the rate things are going, it practically doesn’t matter that you ushered in a red wave and lost the House, Senate, Presidency, and Supreme Court, and probably destroyed democracy.
Now run along back to brunch before the wine is gone!
You expect a “both sides” maga to know that? Seeing all these “it’s the dem’s fault for not telling us how shit trump would treat us” folks is crazy. Everyone want to blame the dems for the lepords.
The democrats ran the same candidate against Trump and lost two out of the three times they tried. Do you happen to know the definition of insanity?
This fuckin slaps
Thanks, I literally thought it up when I typed “in the streets”.
put that on a bumper sticker
Nice rhyme, might steal it
I don’t believe in intellectual property, so you can’t. It’s yours as much as mine.
Please remember it is important to not gloat or “I told you so”. This person, for a reason of which does not matter, has decided to exit the cult. This person needs support and praise for their bravery. I don’t care if it is for a selfish reason… ultimately they made it out, their mind is free! That is cause for celebration.
What do you think this community is for, exactly?
Is there any evidence they decided to exit the cult? People will paint the walls beige when selling a house, and that doesn’t mean they don’t still like whatever red and green Christmas themed house they had to start with. Pulling down a flag while selling the house you can’t afford doesn’t actually mean you wouldn’t still vote for him.
Heres the problem. We kept the gloating and “I told you so” to a minimum after Trump round 1 and the Civil war.
Hammer it home. They need to know Every. Fucking. Minute. Of every. Fucking. Day. That the choices they made got them fired, took their job, and ruined their country. Almost everyone knew it was going to happen and warned them, and they just dug deeper with their knee-jerk “nuh-uh” fake news 3rd grade playground bully logic. They need to know beyond a doubt that they are stupid, short-sighted, easily manipulated bigots. Why? Because the only way they can change it and do better is if they fucking know it, believe it, and see that they need to change it.
I think the “I treat people like shit and expect them to change their view because of it” is harmful.
This is not how you change a mind. This is how to get sombody to double down on their bullshit who where ready to change their views.
Right, because telling people “they’re special and nice and it’s not their fault that the orange dictator is ruining the country” has historically never ever worked once.
You can point out the issue without being a dick to them.
Nobody has ever left the alt-right cult by being insulted and belittled, in fact that’s how they usually get recruited in the cult.
You know? Honestly, telling them they lost their job, house and country because they joined a political cult led by a spray-tanned \wish.com hitler wannabe, isn’t really the “being an asshole” thing that you think it is, and more along the lines of just telling them to truth to their faces.
It depends.
When the group hurts you through its own incompetence, you can land in hard times and still believe the ideals of that group. The ability for people to rationalize things is incredibly powerful.
Now let’s say that the trump supporter is ready to no longer support trump now that they’ve been personally victimized. Where they end up can be a massive spectrum. Cult followers tend to idolize and forge parasocial relationships with their cult leader.
You might think that you are seeing them reject trumpism and all it stands for, when in reality it’s much closer to someone feeling betrayed by someone they believed they had a close personal relationship with. Their rejection of the cult has nothing to do with what the cult believes, but comes from a reaction to a feeling of betrayal by the beloved cult figure.
In that case the fertile ground to win hearts and minds isn’t there. There are excellent case studies of this “embrace to change minds” strategy working.Daryl Davis converting 200 Ku klux klanmen is an inspiring story, and one that many point to to support the idea of embracing people instead of punishing them.
The problem is that this isn’t the same situation. Daryl Davis was willing to spend years talking with, and building relationships with people that actively hated him. He didn’t go to people who had a tiff with their local klan leader and tell them “it’s ok buddy, let’s be friends now, I forgive you.” Instead he put in a tremendous amount of effort to build relationships which made it impossible for these guys to continue to hold on to their bigoted beliefs
So what’s the danger in not treating these people like shit? Even if it were ineffective, isn’t it better to just be nice to them anyways? We have a contemporary example to draw from, reconstruction.
After the us civil war there was a difference of opinion much the same as the one we argue today. And we tried the gentler approach
As it became clear that the war would end in a Union victory, Congress debated the process for the readmission of the seceded states. Radicaland moderate Republicans disagreed over the nature of secession, the conditions for readmission, and the desirability of social reforms as a consequence of the Confederate defeat. Lincoln favored the “ten percent plan” and vetoed the radical Wade–Davis Bill, which proposed strict conditions for readmission.
Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, just as fighting was drawing to a close. He was replaced by President Andrew Johnson. Johnson vetoed numerous Radical Republican bills, he pardoned thousands of Confederate leaders, and he allowed Southern states to pass draconian Black Codesthat restricted the rights of freedmen. His actions outraged many Northerners and stoked fears that the Southern elite would regain its political power. Radical Republican candidates swept to power in the 1866 midterm elections, gaining large majorities in both houses of Congress.
Many argue that the confederacy and its ideals never truly died. The light touch, left many holding regressive ideals in places of power. They had not given up their ideals, they just couldn’t be a part of the group anymore.
In most cases the argument is somewhat moot. The most likely scenario is that my relationship (and most peoples relationship) with some random trump supporter that gets kicked in the nuts by trump will be the same as before, no relationship at all. In the rare situation that this person is someone you do plan to forge a relationship with (either net new or reestablishing some previous relationship) I think it is neither wise to “treat them like shit” nor “let them off the hook”
Instead it should be a careful assessment of what they actually believe. Do they still blame immigrants and trans people for everything that’s wrong in their life but just don’t like that trump fired then, then they can kindly go fuck themselves. They haven’t learned any lesson, they just don’t like that they had something bad happen to them. Sure give them a chance, don’t immediately piss all over them, but if the only problem they have is that it finally directly impacted them, they are no ally.
If it’s a catalyst for true and lasting change, sure nurture that.
No, MAGAts revel in the misery they cause … thay love “owning the libs” and literally want nothing else in life. Nothing. They are fueled by an insane level of hatred and cruelty. It is all they understand. When you point and laugh at them for the “face eating” … they actually get it. MAGAts do not leave their cult, they just get displaced until the next cult that let’s them be hateful racists comes around.
But we can try
Dudes a sucker. He’ll get roped back in right away.
Idk seems like that decision was made FOR him and not by him
A not-insignificant portion of Trump’s base will be in this boat, if they aren’t already. We should be ready with messaging to pull them out of the cult, so that they don’t fall back in.
All my Trump neighbors are rental tenants so they get shuffled in and out every year by their landlords. A few MAGA banner fliers as well as a few families with small kids all got kicked out my neighborhood this last year for Sale signs to go up.
They were tricked by a propaganda machine. They may have been willing participants but had they known everything they never would have voted against their own interests. Yet every country in the western hemisphere, South America, Africa, Asia, and well everywhere doesn’t have anti propaganda laws. If you’re rich you can buy influence in any neo liberal country. Why is that?
How do you construct anti-propaganda laws that can’t be used by bad actors to silence dissent? Genuine question if you have an answer but I don’t think anyone actually does. The only actual counter to propaganda is quality education, which is where the US has been failing dramatically.
So far all anti propaganda laws were passed in totalitarian states to suppress dissidents. But I think a good start would be to look at pre-existing limitations on free speech. Can you shout “fire” in a crowded theater just for funsies? No? Then we’ve already got a public safety caveat in our right to free speech. So you can’t say something that will kill people IF IT IS A LIE. There are also time place and manner restrictions on free speech. So we agree there is a time and place where you can criticize the state. So we sort of believe that during public emergencies, such as during a pandemic, you cannot spread lies about the pandemic.
There are ways to prove lies.
You have to target entities that knowingly lie and portray themselves as serious. Anti fraud laws with teeth.
The comment says anti-propaganda laws. I’m 100% in favor of anti-fraud laws, but propaganda is special that it’s not always direct (read as: legally enforcable) lies.
A lot of them are. I think one could argue the news always saying “crime go up” is an easily provable misrepresentation and if the anti fraud laws were strong enough that a city might be able to sue large companies for such a misrepresentation, it could heavily damage the propaganda value.
Another instance: if people saying a “nobody was arrested for BLM”. Then somebody arrested during BLM should have the right to sue a big outlet like fox news if they repeat the lie.
That’s still not directly anti-propaganda laws. I’m very much in favor of holding media that lies accountable, beyond just civil law.
I’m talking about propaganda as a whole, which very much includes things that aren’t lies. For example, during the 2024 US election, I was bombarded with ads that used anecdotal evidence and indirect language to create a subtextual message of immigrants=criminals. The best counter to this imo, and propaganda as a whole, is education because proper education in critical thinking (which even the best US schools seem to avoid, wonder why…) would let people have the tools to know that you can’t create a conclusion that big from anecdotes.
Strong anti-fraud laws encompass far more than propaganda and are a low hanging fruit of creating a just society, which is why I’m focusing on anti-propaganda specifically and how someone would avoid creating a perfect tool for abuse by a bad actor. I’m not doing this to be facetious or anything, I want to know if anyone has already come up with an approach to this problem
Thots and pears.
