Look at yourself. You are literally crossing out what I said then inserting your own words into your quote of me. Then you announce triumphantly that I’m wrong, due to this fictional quote that you just made up.
Do you think that when I said "you can't say 'the majority,'" I meant that you couldn't say it in completely unrelated contexts?
No, you can't say "the majority" in the context we were actually discussing. Because if you replaced "en masse" with "the majority of" you would be very objectively wrong. So yes, "en masse" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, as I said.
Right. So you’re talking about the voting habits of Americans, and I’m talking about the voting habits of Americans, yet we are still somehow talking about “completely unrelated” topics. Okie dokie then
Nice try. But this “goalpost” was introduced by you when you decided to take issue with my use of the term “en masse”. At no point did I ever assert that a literal majority of Americans voted for Trump. The actual goalpost I was forwarding (that Americans bear responsibility for the current state of their leadership) is something that you seem to be trying to divert attention away from, probably because you’ve realized that any argument against that position is going to sound silly
The actual goalpost I was forwarding (that Americans bear responsibility for the current state of their leadership)
Show me where I disputed that claim, ever.
The only claim that's in dispute is you repeatedly trying to defend the American system as democratic, because you've bought into to American propaganda.
You don't get to decide which of your positions I'm challenging.
Tell me then: if America is not democratic, then why do Americans bear responsibility for the state of their leadership? Compare: I don’t blame Chinese citizens for Xi Jinping because the Chinese people literally have no control over his tenure in power. So if America is, like China, not a democracy, then why should I not give the American people the same grace?
If a driver doesn't press the brakes because he was on his phone, but also the brake lines had been cut so it would not have mattered if he had, then would you say the driver is completely innocent?
Give Americans an actually democratic system and there's a good chance we'd still fuck it up. The fact that we suck is a separate fact from the fact that our political system is a sham. As I explained to you in my first reply.
To speak in your language, it's kind of like how over 90% of Chinese people say they approve of their government in anonymous polls conducted by Western institutions. I would say that those people do, in fact, carry some culpablity for their government's actions, regardless of whether the government is democratic or not.
If a driver doesn’t press the brakes because he was on his phone, but also the brake lines had been cut so it would not have mattered if he had, then would you say the driver is completely innocent?
Right. So your position is that the American people didn’t vote for Trump (even though there was no mass voter fraud, and they had another candidate they could have voted for) but they still would have voted for Trump even if they could have.
That's all that matters if you're looking at culpability. It's not all that matters if you're looking at whether the system is democratic.
You literally just tried to argue that Americans wouldn't be culpable if the system isn't democratic. You keep trying to equate these two separate questions. I keep trying to tell you that the system is undemocratic and Americans are culpable.
There is such a thing as an undemocratic election. If you vote for a bad person in an undemocratic election, you are morally culpable for their actions. That fact doesn't somehow imply that the undemocratic election is somehow a democratic election.
Like Ive said numerous times before, I don’t care if the system meets your standards of purity. All I care about is if the election was democratic enough to hold the American people responsible. And that doesn’t even seem to be something you are disagreeing with at this point. You’re just getting your panties in a twist because “America” and “democracy” seems to be some sort of tankie trigger word for you
The first thing you said that was false was that the US is democratic. Now you're trying to imply that the poll I mentioned was not objective or based on reality.
The poll does not break things down by ethnicity, as far as I'm aware. But you're once again trying to move the goalposts because I never claimed it did. Uighurs make up less than 1% of their population, so a "sampling bias" that excluded them wouldn't move the needle much, even if it existed.
Look at yourself. You are literally crossing out what I said then inserting your own words into your quote of me. Then you announce triumphantly that I’m wrong, due to this fictional quote that you just made up.
Maybe its time to put the phone down bud.
Do you think that when I said "you can't say 'the majority,'" I meant that you couldn't say it in completely unrelated contexts?
No, you can't say "the majority" in the context we were actually discussing. Because if you replaced "en masse" with "the majority of" you would be very objectively wrong. So yes, "en masse" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, as I said.
Right. So you’re talking about the voting habits of Americans, and I’m talking about the voting habits of Americans, yet we are still somehow talking about “completely unrelated” topics. Okie dokie then
Keep carrying that goalpost right over the heads of a third of Americans.
Nice try. But this “goalpost” was introduced by you when you decided to take issue with my use of the term “en masse”. At no point did I ever assert that a literal majority of Americans voted for Trump. The actual goalpost I was forwarding (that Americans bear responsibility for the current state of their leadership) is something that you seem to be trying to divert attention away from, probably because you’ve realized that any argument against that position is going to sound silly
Show me where I disputed that claim, ever.
The only claim that's in dispute is you repeatedly trying to defend the American system as democratic, because you've bought into to American propaganda.
You don't get to decide which of your positions I'm challenging.
Okay, so you agree. Great.
Tell me then: if America is not democratic, then why do Americans bear responsibility for the state of their leadership? Compare: I don’t blame Chinese citizens for Xi Jinping because the Chinese people literally have no control over his tenure in power. So if America is, like China, not a democracy, then why should I not give the American people the same grace?
If a driver doesn't press the brakes because he was on his phone, but also the brake lines had been cut so it would not have mattered if he had, then would you say the driver is completely innocent?
Give Americans an actually democratic system and there's a good chance we'd still fuck it up. The fact that we suck is a separate fact from the fact that our political system is a sham. As I explained to you in my first reply.
To speak in your language, it's kind of like how over 90% of Chinese people say they approve of their government in anonymous polls conducted by Western institutions. I would say that those people do, in fact, carry some culpablity for their government's actions, regardless of whether the government is democratic or not.
Right. So your position is that the American people didn’t vote for Trump (even though there was no mass voter fraud, and they had another candidate they could have voted for) but they still would have voted for Trump even if they could have.
Gotchu.
I have absolutely no idea how you got any of that from what I said.
The majority of voters did vote for Trump in our undemocratic elections, the second time. Nearly half did the first time too.
You seem to be confusing "being able to vote for Trump" with "the system being democratic."
Well, that makes it democratic enough for them to have not voted for Trump and, like I’ve said repeatedly, that’s all that matters in this context
That's all that matters if you're looking at culpability. It's not all that matters if you're looking at whether the system is democratic.
You literally just tried to argue that Americans wouldn't be culpable if the system isn't democratic. You keep trying to equate these two separate questions. I keep trying to tell you that the system is undemocratic and Americans are culpable.
There is such a thing as an undemocratic election. If you vote for a bad person in an undemocratic election, you are morally culpable for their actions. That fact doesn't somehow imply that the undemocratic election is somehow a democratic election.
Like Ive said numerous times before, I don’t care if the system meets your standards of purity. All I care about is if the election was democratic enough to hold the American people responsible. And that doesn’t even seem to be something you are disagreeing with at this point. You’re just getting your panties in a twist because “America” and “democracy” seems to be some sort of tankie trigger word for you
I guess I don't understand what you're doing in a "fuck the USA" comm if criticizing the American political system makes me a "tankie" in your eyes.
No, I just inferred you were a tankie by your lemmy.ml account and your defense of China
All I did is state objective facts about China. Sorry if reality has a tankie bias.
Sure thing bud. Maybe for your next objective reality-based poll you could poll some Uyghurs
Are you suggesting that Harvard University is involved in some secret communist plot?
Oh you’re just fucking exhausting aren’t you
To people who say things that are false, yeah, I am.
What did I say was wrong? Were the Uyghurs included in this poll or not? (Note that not every sampling bias is evidence of a communist plot)
The first thing you said that was false was that the US is democratic. Now you're trying to imply that the poll I mentioned was not objective or based on reality.
The poll does not break things down by ethnicity, as far as I'm aware. But you're once again trying to move the goalposts because I never claimed it did. Uighurs make up less than 1% of their population, so a "sampling bias" that excluded them wouldn't move the needle much, even if it existed.
You’re so literal-minded it hurts