this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 22 hours ago

He's a sucker. And his news media knows it.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 day ago

I would like to ask them what happens when taffis are increased to 100%? Does that mean producers are giving stuff for free?

And then what happen when the tarris are at 200%? Do they have to send stuff for free and pay on top of that?

One more thing - don't tell them they are wrong. Tell them they were lied to

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago (3 children)

"Doing your own research" means watching one or two YouTube videos or Facebook posts as far as these people are concerned. No thought for themselves, just parrot what you hear.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I don't understand why this even needs to be researched. I'm no economist and I don't know much about tariffs, but: costs more to get product to me for any reason = product costs me more. When has that ever not been the case? What am I missing?

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I wrote a comment explaining Tariffs on a Fox News YouTube video a few weeks back, and the entire reply chain was people arguing with eachother about how tariffs work because "Trump said it's a tax on other countries, so that's how they work"

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You’re doing god’s work in the hellish trenches

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It’s the problem that reality is more complicated than the simplified version trump gives his followers.

If you don’t know how something works and someone very confidently tells you how it works and it sorta maps onto familiar concepts, boy is that catnip.

Maybe all the countries are just sitting around like people and Canada is like a guy buying our stuff and we are just making that guy pay a tax. I’m a guy, I pay taxes, sucks to be that guy but probably rules to be the guy getting the tax revenue, and now trump made that us, awesome!!!

Transmitting this wrong idea is fast because it maps onto their lived experiences. It’s easy for them to conceptualize Canada as a single monolithic entity that is buying shit and having to pay a tax. So in one stroke they get a double dopamine hit.

  • I’m not dumb, I get how this all works, and it was pretty easy!
  • we get to collect these taxes instead of having to pay them, awesome!!!

So here you come to explain, “that’s not how any of this works” Canada isn’t one entity, it’s many. Sure the tariff is on their stuff, but it’s paid by the person buying it, us. And you can go on about all the ways they are wrong but you are threatening the fact that they are not dumb and they already understand this and their understanding means they are winning. So you want them to admit they are dumb and getting fucked and that’s a hard sale.

This is the real danger of hypernormalization, it allows people like trump to replace the complexity of reality with a fake but simpler version. And it’s so dangerous because the people that buy in to that fake but simpler version have this weird insane incentive to defend it.

[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 day ago (9 children)

I recently learned that almost 1 in 5 Americans are illiterate.

How many Americans do you think are reasonably well educated, so that they would understand somewhat complex issues like tariffs? Or could seek out information if they didn't understand?

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"He was told the other countries pay the tariffs", by a bunch of liars and he believed the liars.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Real answer is in the last line there. If 60% of people we're capable of doing their own research (and arriving at the correct answer) then we wouldn't have anti-vaxers, flat-earthers and non-billionaire/non-bigot/non-christian nationalist republicans.

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[–] [email protected] 195 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Or, we can hold the fucking media accountable for telling blatant lies about the impacts of tariffs.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fox News got around that by claiming they're entertainment, not news.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Per their own arguments in court, no reasonable person would consider Fox News to be factual.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 day ago

Ignorance is not an excuse. Fire all MAGAs for taxifs.

[–] [email protected] 123 points 1 day ago (7 children)

The OP is battling against what Faux Newz, Dipshit Donnie, and other right-wing propagandist shitrags are telling his employee, all which the employee takes as indesputable truth. If he can override that much brainwashing he can convince anyone of anything.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"The Big Lie" is what Sanders is calling it.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Omg. We’ve come full circle now that smart people are telling idiots to do your own research…

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Man, this isn't even "doing your research" it's just knowing what very basic words mean.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 day ago (12 children)

I bet a coworker $20 that "tariff" and "tax" were synonyms. Motherfucker refused to pay up, calling merriam-webster.com, thesauraus.com, wikipedia etc. "fake news".

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago

Your mistake was referencing a woketionary.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That’s actually a huge problem I’ve had with a right winger.

Even though he was relatively reasonable, we got stuck because we could not agree on what fascism means.

I was good to use a dictionary or better yet Wikipedia. He said it can only mean what Mussolini meant when he came up with the term.

What was annoying is that all I wanted to do was say, group X does Y things, Y things are fascism and fascism is bad.

It’s just mental gymnastics because it doesn’t matter what we call it, group X is still doing bad things, but instead we got stuck on details.

Imo this is pretty much all right wing’s only play, dismantle the tools of logic so the conversation doesn’t even happen in the first place.

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 1 day ago (3 children)

and every one of the millions who ~~were~~are just as dumb, will forget the lessons learned well before the next election and vote for it all over again.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

I tell people that if they think other countries pay the tariffs they probably believe Mexico is paying for a wall

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

Plot twist: the person writing this is President Musk and the employee he's referring to is Trump.

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