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Things Donald Trump says he will do on this first day in office (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
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[–] 55 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Yeah sure, but keep in mind that the absolute dumbest, most counterproductive thing people did in his last term to call him out was telling him he still hadn't built his wall.

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  • [–] 49 points 2 years ago*

    This is something i think about often. One of the most common criticisms from the democrats was the fact that he was not being as fash as he had promised, which ended up with Biden and Kamala going scorched earth on the border, and Kamala promising everything short of building the wall, but "properly, in a respectful manner". Suddenly the default of all mainstream political discourse is that there are too many undesirables, and the disagreement is on how do you want to brutalize them. Things like that make me lose any hope i have on any american people to actually do better.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Can you explain why that was dumb and counterproductive? (Genuine question)

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago

    For starters, it doesn't work very well to call right wingers out on not being right wing enough. Because they tend to just not care about ideological consistency or honesty, you're not really getting a hook into them with this. What you are doing instead is accepting the premises they've set, even if it's just as a hypothetical. You allow them to set the agenda and to frame the conversation. That's exactly what they want, and all you're getting out of it if you succeed in pointing out their "flaws" is that they aren't as Hitlerist as they could be, which is a W for them with anybody outside of the most hardcore nazi crowd that's so unhinged they do not even care about being strategically mask-on where it is opportunate, which is a fairly small subset of their base. All their less zealous supporters can go "look, he isn't as bad as you make him out to be, you lefties just call everyone you disagree with a nazi". On an argumentative level, you're entirely playing into their hands when you come after them like that.

    This also means that you forego pushback against the policy you're debating because you are only discussing its execution, not that it exists in the first place. In the case of immigration and militarizing the border, we've observed a constant rightward shift over the last couple of decades. Being anti-immigration is now a bipartisan issue in the US (and a multi-partisan one in the EU). Thousands of deaths at the border are not something that worries "moderates" any longer, being seen as weak on securing the border is. I'm not blaming that on failed rhethoric strategies, but i do see these strategies as a reaction to a previous rightward shift on the issue amongst liberal parties. They know that imperialism and climate change will lead to increasing migration, they also know that this gets racists riled up and they know that under capitalism, they will never be able to end imperialist war or mitigate human impact on the climate. So their reaction is higher fences, more drones, more internment and deportation to keep refugees out.

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