Fair question. Yes I was considering arms suppliers specifically. I'm not sure we can simply include every company that works with the military in any way though, it makes more sense to consider companies that get the majority of their profits from the military-affiliated work.

I would not count Kraft as part of the MIC for instance.

Yeah, that's an evolution from his earlier style. Note that he often subtly flips it to something personal though. Just pay attention to how often he talks about "you" and "them". He seldom addresses facts or arguments, instead he addresses people. Individuals and groups.

What frustrates me is there is enough trolling on social media already, we should not be condoning it by simply allowing it here, in what is usually a more mature Lemmy space. We don't need more internet-ey behavior on the internet, there's already plenty everywhere.

Regardless of his intentions, it's very aggravating how many of his clearly combative comments stay up despite "no trolling" being in rule 4.

I frankly do not understand why we have the rule if it is never going to be enforced. Is there question among our mod team about what constitutes trolling?

Looking through the modlog though, the only rule 4 enforcement seems to be low-effort stuff. High-effort trolling appears to be completely welcome in this community, which I just do not understand. But I'm contemplating beginning to take advantage of it. I can piss people off with subtle, passive-aggressive personal digs and logical fallacies while maintaining a veneer of civility too. It's been a lot of years, but I'm sure it'll come right back to me.

Anyone genuinely dedicated to a socialist or environmental cause would pretty clearly see the danger posed by a Trump presidency.

People with no training who care about their health, looking at internet posts and using their own judgement is the exact thing fueling the antivax movement...

Should back those up on punch cards, just to be extra safe. As a bonus, they even make good coasters.

They think it's "smart people's" fault, and those college educated, holier-than-thou smarty pants folks with their big words and fancy wine-sippin' need to be punished. I think a lot of them know they're being misled, they just don't really care.

They know we hate Trump, and so that's a good enough indication that he must be the solution. Very simple-minded stuff.

"If I have to create stories so that ~~the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people~~ we win, then that's what I'm going to do."

Yea, we already knew that JD, thanks.

Very significant. Their coalition is no different from ours, formed of many different factions that don't agree on a whole lot. They're just better at taking marching orders and falling in line behind their candidate.

We do have an opportunity to peel away people that aren't so fond of overt fascism and add to our election tally though, so, I'm not complaining. Even when its a neocon defecting.

In addition to peeling off people that aren't so eager for dictatorship, we also have an opportunity to peel off genuinely religious people, who actually try to follow Jesus' message. While most religious people do it more as a club membership, the genuinely devout can be reminded what their lord and savior actually instructed them to do.

I imagine they're popping out of the woodwork to help their boy during a weak point in his campaign.

A person can find legit criticisms, but a 50k tax credit for small businesses is not serving corporations. Neither really is expanding the child tax credit or down payment assistance for first time homebuyers.

If you're going to criticize someone, make it factual, eh?

You've been fed a picture of a past that you did not live in, where men apparently were much better off. You should question that picture, make sure somebody isn't just blowing smoke up your ass, whether because of rose-colored glasses or something more malicious.

WW1, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, WW2, Vietnam... it's hasn't always been that great for a man. These are real things, they all happened in addition to any storybook pictures you might have in your head. Remember what our forefathers had to go through to get us here, it wasn't all good things. It's only fair then that we, too, have our hard times that we must face. We don't need to tear other people down to overcome them.