Things is, you’re totally within your rights to loathe someone who was “before your time,” such as Reagan or Thatcher or Jackson or Jefferson

The pivotal argument for "I hated him" is always "He hated me back first". Which is this unfalsifiable nothingburger of a critique to begin with. It's racist, but it's also this mush-brained apolitical critique bound up in Feelings over Facts & Logic.

this individual had strong emotional opinions about politics before they even hit puberty, which as anyone who has even met a child before can attest is utter nonsense.

Children absolutely have strong emotions about things they don't comprehend. My toddler son will throw howling tantrums for the most baffling reasons (he had a meltdown this morning because he looked out a window and didn't see a cat).

But much like with my grumpy little wiggler, all I can say to this guy is "What do you want me to do about it?" I can't control if you've invented a Barack Obama to be angry at, because you decided he gave you the stink-eye through the TV.

So much of the MAGA Movement is bound up in this perpetual sense of imagined martyrdom. And that martyrdom comes out of this endless font of national media full of demagogues screaming "They hate you! They hate you! They hate you!" If liberals ever want to retake this country from the fascist chud battalions, they really need to set aside their starry eyed fetish for Constitutional Principles and SHUT THESE VENUES DOWN.

Call'm monopolies and break them up. Pull their broadcasting licenses. Press charges on all their owners and managers for any of the litany of crimes they commit with impunity on a daily basis. Block their websites. Shutter their studios. Smash their printing presses. Outlaw their churches. Roll-em up and kick-em out.

Otherwise, you're going to be dealing with this shit for another generation. And another after that. Until the fascists are fully in control or someone comes along with the balls to do what you can't.

Yeah, this is a really trash argument that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. The conclusion is correct, but the means to arrive at it is comically flimsy, and it's a shame to see Lemmy endorsing garbage.

If an 18-year-old wants to praise Obama's administration (fairly or otherwise), I don't resort to ageism.

If an 18-year-old wants to go talking about how Obama dragged his feet on LGBT rights until Biden roped him in, the litany of war crimes, his love affair with natural gas, etc. I don't resort to ageism.

And if an 18-year-old wants to go talking about how Obama was a Muslim socialist who raped children while wearing a tan suit and only Donald Trump, master of all four elements, could stop him, I don't resort to ageism, because it's a shitty argument, and I actually have some fucking intellectual honesty.

Ehh idk I knew Al Gore was a better candidate than Bush in 4th grade 4th grade