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A passenger on the titanic had a better experience. (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 days ago* by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 child)

"but using that photograph as evidence that Trump somehow left the U.S. military looking like this is misleading."

It is not misleading. It is factual. The current administration's decision to extend the deployment directly lead to the state of the ship.

"Those are substantive criticisms that deserve discussion."

This meme is what lead to you saying this. Mission accomplished!?

"Instead, we get this stupid little meme that takes a completely legitimate photograph, strips away all of its context, and presents it as though it is evidence of something it does not actually demonstrate."

This is straight nonsensical. It is also disingenuous, dismissive, and deceptive. The photo is the context that proves Trump is not rebuilding the military. He is using and abusing it as demonstrated by this picture. Your inability to see this is staggering to say the least.

"That's the problem I keep seeing on Lemmy: a legitimate political point gets wrapped in misinformation because the misinformation makes the meme more effective."

There was no misinformation, this is just an excuse for you to talk shit and it really makes you look like a fucking idiot.

"People then repeat it because it supports a conclusion they already agree with."

You certainly repeat yourself a lot in this post.

"I don't think that's acceptable simply because the target is Trump."

Nonsense.

"We shouldn't respond to that by adopting the same tactics."

Yes, we should because it works on the low information "feels people" Trump is manipulating. Obviously the fact that Trump is a rapist and charlatan isn't convincing them. Making fun of Trump does work because it hurts his image and the feels of his followers. If they think Trump is uncool he is done.

"You can criticize Trump's claims about "rebuilding the military."

This meme did that effectively.

"You can criticize defense spending, procurement failures, maintenance problems, military readiness, the defense industrial complex, or the extraordinary deployment demands being placed on the Navy. There are plenty of legitimate arguments to make."

Once again, a picture is worth a thousand words.

"We don't need to manufacture evidence to make those arguments."

You have failed to prove this and restating it over and over again is the same stupid tactic Trump uses. At this point you are not using facts and are using feelings. Pretty sus.

"If our standard becomes "misinformation is acceptable when it hurts the people we dislike," then we've abandoned the very standard we're supposedly defending."

Repeat ad nauseum. Also what you are saying has been dubunked time and time again. Trump voters are not swayed by facts.

https://youtu.be/S8DQ2kseTWw?is=qxuWhKmhA-qwsVcq

"Worse, we've made ourselves vulnerable to exactly the same rhetorical tactics when they're used against us."

This straight laughable. First, what you said was not even true to begin with. Your opinion isn't supported by anything other than your own hangups and failure to understand how politics are currently working.

"Being better than Trump and his political movement means more than disagreeing with them. It means refusing to become comfortable with the methods we condemn when they're politically convenient."

Let me fix this for you. There is no being better and even if there was it wouldn't win in the current climate. Winning is what matters and being factual is not winning. The only way to win is to turn these same tactics against Trump. Ridicule is what gets under this regime's skin and it is what changes public opinion.

So you are wrong on multiple levels hence my complete disappointment and realization that you are fucking rambling at this point using the exact same tactics (repeating untruths over and over again) this administration uses.

If you think the only way to beat Trump is to convince people like you have convinced me...well let's just say you are missing the mark. A lot.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 hours ago (1 child)

    This is straight nonsensical. It is also disingenuous, dismissive, and deceptive. The photo is the context that proves Trump is not rebuilding the military. He is using and abusing it as demonstrated by this picture. Your inability to see this is staggering to say the least.

    This is the only thing really worth responding to in what you wrote above. Everything else is irrelevant in its entirety. You are accusing me of being dismissive and nonsensical when I have clearly shown that the meme is intentionally misleading.

    I will once again reiterate my point: the meme shows what appears to be a naval vessel with rust along its exterior hull. Above there is text saying that President Donald Trump put additional money, amounting to trillions of dollars, into the military.

    It does not say that this is the Abraham Lincoln. It does not say that it is returning from a long deployment. It does not say that the rust is normal for this kind of deployment. It does not say that the rust is superficial or that it has no meaningful impact on the readiness or operational capability of the ship.

    Instead, it creates the implication that, despite Trump putting additional money into the military, the military's ships still look like this. There is no meaningful context in the meme itself.

    Your disappointment is completely irrelevant. I don't care how you feel about it. You didn't have to read my comment, and you didn't have to respond to it.

    Even the context provided in the post is extremely vague and still implies essentially the same thing.

    We cannot use the same tactics against Trump and his followers that created the environment we are dealing with in the first place. They will not produce the outcome you want. Do you not understand this?

    The only way to change the system for the better is to educate the people within that system. The fact that so many people are poorly informed about how the system currently works is part of why tactics like this are effective in the first place.

    We are not going to change Trump, and we are unlikely to change the minds of his most committed followers. What we can do is replace those who perpetuate these tactics with people who are better informed and more capable of engaging with the system rationally.

    And this is precisely the problem. This is why the system continues to function the way it does: you believe that using the same tactics Trump uses will somehow produce different results when they're used in your favor. They won't.

    And yes, I am repeating myself because you still have not established or proven that I am wrong. Your interpretation of the meme relies on the additional context that I provided, because there is no other way to glean that context from the meme itself.

    If you are claiming otherwise, then you are lying. You are arguing against a context that I already provided and then pretending that the context was inherent to the meme itself. It wasn't.

    I genuinely don't understand why you're continuing to argue this point. Do you simply refuse to acknowledge when you're wrong, or do you genuinely not understand the distinction I'm making?

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  • [–] 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 child)

    You have not proven the meme is misleading, let alone contains misinformation. I have stated this clearly and the fact that you choose to ignore it is on you. A meme will never contain the context you expect here and I will be frank. You are absolutely acting ridiculous in your expectations. It is a meme not a novel.

    I already gave you another reasonable explanation that Trump is abusing the military. He is not building it up. To think increased funding leading to vanity projects such as a battleship are building it up is farcical. He has done more damage to the military, its leaders, its culture, and operational capacity than any President in a long time.

    We have lost so many bases in the Middle East in the last few months it isn't funny and this is why the carrier was out of supplies. Rather than admit there was a logistical problem, Pete hid this reality from everyone. This isn't strength, this is weakness.

    You don't know how to fight Trumpism, this is clear. You are the problem with his opposition. You are clueless to reality and offer no real solutions and instead fall back to what lost the election in the first place. Focusing on facts over feelings. It isn't working. Get a clue.

    You have once again disappointed me with your response. The fact that you want me to acknowledge I am wrong just shows how completely out of fucking touch you are. I have pointed out the distinction you made is garbage and all this amounts to is you whining about memes in general and complaining about the community rather than anything remotely substantial.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 hours ago (1 child)

    Once again, I could absolutely care less how disappointed you are. I don't even understand why you think that's relevant. Are you expecting me to provide you with some kind of euphoria through my responses? I'm not here to cater to your whims or entertain you. I wasn't trying to please you, and I wasn't trying to disappoint you. Frankly, I don't care what your disposition is.

    And you still haven't provided any valid counterpoints. It is objectively true that the meme itself provides no meaningful context. It implies that the additional money allocated to the military under Trump has somehow failed to improve the condition of the military, while using a photograph that is completely unrelated to that claim. A ship returning to port after a long deployment can reasonably be expected to show some surface corrosion from prolonged exposure to seawater. That photograph, by itself, does not demonstrate that military funding has been wasted or that the Navy is being neglected.

    That's precisely why I called the meme misleading. I explained to you, point by point, how using the same kind of rhetorical manipulation and decontextualization that you criticize Trump for using is not going to accomplish what you claim to want. Instead of addressing those arguments, you've repeatedly dismissed them.

    Your entire response has essentially boiled down to, "I'm disappointed," as though your approval is something I am seeking or something that has value to me. It doesn't. You're arguing as though my purpose here is to satisfy you personally rather than to point out what I believe is factually wrong with the argument you're presenting.

    You were wrong about the substance of the meme, and rather than addressing the points I've raised, you've attempted to manufacture additional arguments to defend a position that doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

    So, once again: the meme is objectively misleading. It uses an out-of-context photograph and presents it in a way that encourages the viewer to draw a conclusion that the photograph itself does not support. That is precisely the kind of manipulative rhetoric that you are criticizing in Trump.

    If your objective is to persuade people who support Trump to reconsider their position, then employing the same rhetorical tactics you criticize is counterproductive. It doesn't expose manipulation, it replicates it. And if you cannot understand why that approach can undermine your own argument, I strongly suggest reading more history and studying how propaganda and political rhetoric actually work.

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

    I am tired of you repeating yourself. It gets really old and I already debunked everything you said. You are really not that far from Trump with how you repeat garbage over and over again hoping it will stick. It is kind of sad really. I feel bad for you.

    The last little bit about propaganda just shows you have no clue what your are talking about. You are a shinning example of why Trump won. Your opposition plays directly into his hands. Why don't you try and fact check Trump some more to see what good it will do. Trying the same failed strategy is the definition of defeat and it is clear you have been defeated.

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