A man rubs a lamp and a genie comes out and says, “I will grant you one wish, anything you ask for, whatever you can imagine, your wish is my command.”

The man shouts, “I want a dragon!”

The genie responds, “I’m sorry, but a dragon is just too much, it’s just not possible for that to exist. Can you think of something else?”

The man thinks for a minute and says, “Well, in that case, I guess I wish for the rich and powerful to face significant legal consequences within the existing system for the harm they do to regular people.”

The genie sighs and says, “What color did you want that dragon?”

Their methodology involves asking people a bunch of questions and then if they don’t get 100% correct they’re counted as believing misinformation. Putting aside the unreliability of online polls, that’s a pretty misleading way of framing it, if you ask me.

If you asked people 10 questions about just about anything, you’d probably find a substantial number of people who don’t get every one right. In fact, they did do this under the heading, “Disinformation Nation: Americans Widely Believe False Claims on a Range of Topics.” That’s probably why they found that, “Respondents identifying as Democrats were about as likely (82 percent) to believe at least one of the 10 false claims as those identifying as Republicans (81 percent).”

Many of the people responding to the poll may not have ever encountered the claims they were asked about. If you are first encountering a claim in that context, you pretty much just have to guess whether you think it’s true based on vibes. And you can easily set up misleading vibes, like, “Conservative initiative Project 2025 proposes cutting or eliminating Social Security” which is false because it’s not explicitly stated, but it does explicitly state a whole bunch of other horrible shit, so like, if you get got by that one it doesn’t really show that you believe in an inaccurate picture of the world, just that you got tripped up by details. But that claim dings you for “believing misinformation” just as much as " COVID-19 vaccines killed 15 million people worldwide."

So like it doesn’t really tell us very much about how far reaching disinformation really is, the results are more of a reflection of their methodology.

[Reposted from the last time this study was posted]

This is why Kamala Harris famously won the 2020 nomination and went on to become president, because she was polling in first place before the campaign process started.

Their methodology involves asking people a bunch of questions and then if they don’t get 100% correct they’re counted as believing misinformation. Putting aside the unreliability of online polls, that’s a pretty misleading way of framing it, if you ask me.

If you asked people 10 questions about just about anything, you’d probably find a substantial number of people who don’t get every one right. In fact, they did do this under the heading, “Disinformation Nation: Americans Widely Believe False Claims on a Range of Topics.” That’s probably why they found that, “Respondents identifying as Democrats were about as likely (82 percent) to believe at least one of the 10 false claims as those identifying as Republicans (81 percent).”

Many of the people responding to the poll may not have ever encountered the claims they were asked about. If you are first encountering a claim in that context, you pretty much just have to guess whether you think it’s true based on vibes. And you can easily set up misleading vibes, like, “Conservative initiative Project 2025 proposes cutting or eliminating Social Security” which is false because it’s not explicitly stated, but it does explicitly state a whole bunch of other horrible shit, so like, if you get got by that one it doesn’t really show that you believe in an inaccurate picture of the world, just that you got tripped up by details. But that claim dings you for “believing misinformation” just as much as " COVID-19 vaccines killed 15 million people worldwide."

So like it doesn’t really tell us very much about how far reaching disinformation really is, the results are more of a reflection of their methodology.

It is a very important distinction. I can’t even imagine the prime minister of my home country insisting on a military parade for his birthday.

It’s not even a real distinction because it’s also the Army’s 250th anniversary.

Even if that wasn’t the case, it’s a totally meaningless and purely aesthetic distinction. “Oh this kinda has the vibe of something bad people do,” that’s the only real objection to it that any of you have.

The legitimate reason to care is because it’s glamourizing the US military, which is an incredibly evil institution. Even so, of the things the military does, a parade is one of the most innocent and innoculous. But between glamorizing a shitty president or a shitty institution, why should anyone give a shit?

Insane that there’s people in this thread being like, “I should stop paying taxes.” Really, this is where you draw the line? Hundreds of thousands of civilians murdered in illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but Bush never had a parade to celebrate himself so I guess it’s fine! I’ll never understand liberals’ priorities.

Sounds like a very important distinction to you, for some reason.

Are we acting like this is the first time the US has had a military parade in history for some reason? Pretty much every country has military parades. If “only tinpot dictators have military parades,” then name a country that isn’t a tinpot dictatorship.

Don’t really have a problem with a $92,000,000 parade so much as I have a problem with the 1,000,000,000,000 military budget.

Edit: It appears I have offended the libs by trying to bring it back to a larger systemic issue rather than freaking out over aesthetics. My apologies.

Consumerism is a pox on the nation, this should fix this.

Leftism is when you fix consumerism by rendering common people too poor to buy shit. What a take.

Why are we opposed to exploitation and pollution here at home but are ok when China does it because it allows us to buy a year’s worth of clothes every week for the price of single ethically produced garment??

Well, first off, these tariffs aren’t focused on China. They’re hitting everyone, including countries with better labor laws and more environmental regulation than the US, such as the EU. Second, the tariffs aren’t conditional on countries making improvements, like if you want to argue we should have tariffs based on emissions per capita, that’s not an unreasonable position (although we’d have to tariff ourselves somehow), but that’s not what’s actually happening at all.

Turns out Trump may be a tankie after all.

No, he isn’t.

Vietnam. Decent enough government and standard of living, and they whooped America’s ass so bad that it’d be political suicide to go back there. I mean, what kind of timeline would we have to be on for someone to be stupid enough to… hmm.

Considering that fucking Greenland is caught up in it now, idk that anywhere is safe.

As much as we might criticize the whole, “End of History” idea, I feel like the 90’s was the last time Americans had anything like that kind of optimism. There was a feeling that we were entering a new age of international cooperation, and although I was only a child that was something I really believed in. But we soon found new conflicts to be embroiled in a the dream has died and was proven to be foolish and naive, and now everyone across the political spectrum is highly cynical.

I’m sure that there are many cynical people in China too, but I can hardly remember the last time I saw someone who wasn’t cynical when it comes to politics. Whether or not it’s naive, it hits me on an emotional level.

Tbh, I was shocked. Much as I’m sympathetic towards China, but I still usually look at it through a lens of realpolitik, like, “Of course they’re vying for dominance like everyone else, but at least they’re doing it through economic development instead of wars, and it’s better if there are two major powers instead of one.” Maybe that cynical perspective is more realistic, and maybe XHS users aren’t a representative sample of all Chinese people, but still, the fact that so many of the replies were so hopeful and internationalist was genuinely moving to me.

Link

Cruise ships sometimes have repositioning cruises where they go one way across an ocean to start operating in another region, and they can offer significant discounts. I’m sure there’s cheaper ways but it’s an option.

In the long term, yes. The bourgeoisie are rich and comfortable with no desire for a war that could jeopardize their position. However, they have lots of financial incentives for military spending because it’s rife with corruption. As such, they do a lot of saber-rattling to make WWIII seem like a genuine possibility, while also fighting in proxy wars around the globe.

But the problem is, they’re playing with forces beyond their control. If you have a generation raised on constant propaganda to genuinely hate other countries, then all it takes is a couple people in the wrong positions at the wrong time who aren’t in on the game. Right now, the rabid dog is on the leash of the bourgeoisie, but the gamble they’ve been making is that they can keep pumping steroids into it forever and never lose control.

Furthermore, wasting all this money on war and militarism has allowed China to emerge as a credible threat to their global hegemony. China is sitting back and focusing on domestic economic development, and they are winning the peace while the US burns itself out. What happens when the only area in which the US has an advantage is the military? Are people really going to accept becoming #2, or are they going to force a confrontation? Given that we’re talking about Americans, who are 1) Riled up on propaganda, 2) Preoccupied with being “#1,” and 3) Unused to experiencing the effects of fucking around firsthand, it seems almost inevitable. Ofc, it’s true that we somehow maintained a Cold War with the USSR for decades, but it’s different today because conditions are declining and the far-right is growing stronger every day.

I don’t understand why people think in these terms, “If you approve of violence being done by your side, you must also approve of violence done against your side.” I’m not taking a principled stand in favor of violence for violence’s sake. I support that which hurts the enemy and oppose that which hurts friendlies.

Stealing from the rich? Good. Stealing from the poor? Bad. Killing exploiters? Good. Killing the exploited? Bad. There’s no contradiction here because my stance is based on self-interest and the interest of my class, not on any sort of categorical moral claim about some particular form of action.

I’m also a realist, and know that biden bragging about hindering bibi wouldn’t have helped anything.

Yeah? How about not unconditionally sending Bibi a bunch of weapons and money that he used to commit genocide, you think that might have helped anything?

both sides want to fight for their invisible friends more

Ah, of course, the height of liberal analysis of the situation. I’m sure Israel being a settler-colonizer apartheid ethnostate making shit tons of money through exploitation and keeping the Palestinians in a permanent state of helplessness, poverty, and oppression has nothing whatsoever with why the Palestinians are fighting them, no, it’s all because those backwards savages aren’t as smart and rational as you are.

This is what happens when you perform absolutely zero material analysis of anything. You’re completely oblivious and ignorant of both what’s happening and why.

Nothing clownish about me acknowledging the objective reality of an active genocide which you deny being conducted by the “people” you support.

60% of the buildings in Gaza have already been destroyed, with Biden’s unconditional support. Stop doing genocide denial and pretending that your preferred psychopaths aren’t bathing themselves in the blood of Palestinian children every night.