Bernie v Joe, Who do you like?

[crazy canuck]

Sheilbh is much more patient than I.

More than pretty much all of us

[DGuller]

I watched a couple of The Daily Show videos on Youtube, and then read the comments.  Holy crap, forget coronavirus, the groupthink of Bernie bots in the comments section makes me shit my pants.  I probably said this many times before, but it keeps making an impression on me as to how potently echo chambers can warp peoples' sense of reality.  They regard everyone voting for someone other than Sanders as zombies that need to be saved from themselves and their poor decision-making.  The social media unleashed a deadly poison on us all with their algorithms.

[Admiral Yi]

More than zombies, I'd say it's closer to The Enemy.

[DGuller]

More than zombies, I'd say it's closer to The Enemy.

The Enemy is the establishment.  The Biden voters are just zombies who do what they're told, because they just don't care to inform or enlighten themselves.

[Admiral Yi]

The Enemy is the establishment.  The Biden voters are just zombies who do what they're told, because they just don't care to inform or enlighten themselves.

Disagree.  Their student loans are paid off so they don't give a shit.  Already have company provided health insurance, so don't give a shit.  Selfish, self-interested, uncaring.  The Enemy.

[Oexmelin]

We should never let YouTube comments shape so much of our political sensibilities

[DGuller]

The Enemy is the establishment.  The Biden voters are just zombies who do what they're told, because they just don't care to inform or enlighten themselves.

Disagree.  Their student loans are paid off so they don't give a shit.  Already have company provided health insurance, so don't give a shit.  Selfish, self-interested, uncaring.  The Enemy.

I guess we may be reading different echo chambers, or same echo chambers but in different times.  The one I read was for the Super Tuesday video, so the prevailing mood was "how can they be so fucking stupid?"

[Oexmelin]

Oh, you mean the permanent Languish mood.

[frunk]

Well, yeah.  This is all sort of pointless.  So long as Trump uses the Justice Department against his foes nobody can win.

Yeah, because that's how Trump won in 2016--by using the DoJ against his opponents.

Well not the DoJ but the FBI certainly was a significant factor.  The DoJ will just make it easier, and I think Trump has already checked that Barr is personally loyal to Trump.

You do remember that Trump wasn't President, and therefore not in charge of the DoJ or FBI during the 2016 election, right?

He did use the investigation against his opponent, whether he was in charge of it or not.  It isn't better now that he can start the investigations on his own.

[Razgovory]

Damage per Second statement doesn't make much sense.  I never said that Trump required the DOJ to help him to win.  I just said that Democrats can't win while Trump abuses his power in the DOJ.  Trump has been pretty open about using the DOJ to help him destroy political rivals.  He believes he has the "Absolute Right" to do so.

Compare this to Obama who did not forbid criminal investigation into Clinton (as Barr seems to have done with Trump).  Obama knew about an ongoing counter intelligence operation regarding the Trump campaign but was careful to not announce it out of fear it would delegitimize the election.

[Josquius]

But the gap for all women is the same as in 2017 (+4 and -2), which is fairly small and those are two of the only three elections in a century where women were more likely than men to vote Labour.

2017 and 2019 are also the first election when C2DE voters mainly voted Tory. So it's like just looking at those two and saying the working class are more likely to vote right-wing than the rich.

Both could be a big re-alignment, or they could be blips.

Certainly, its too early to start calling it a definite rule of politics or anything like that.
But I'd say there definitely does seem to be a trend developing.
Their overall share of the vote was much smaller so it'd harder to see but there is also a male slant in those going to the far right extreme and supporting the brexit party.
We are living in an age of education yet the culture of toxic masculinity is out there actively telling men not to educate themselves, not to care about others, etc...  Girls have no such pressures.
I've read about similar developments elsewhere in the world too. Poland is one where its quite stark.
It's perfectly possible it could all be a blip and means nothing. But looking at everything around it as well it does seem society is going through some huge changes.

[Sheilbh]

I agree it exists in some parts of the world - like the US and Poland - but I wonder how much of that is because of abortion which is a big issue in those countries, but not really a political issue here.

It's why I distinctly remember loads of articles during 2012 and Mitt Romney's "binder full of women" moment about how Cameron had a "women's problem". But from the polling and elections, there was no evidence of that. It was just reading across from a very, very different political context.

It's a bit old but apparently historically women lean right in the UK, Australia and Italy (I'm sure there's others) and lean left in Germany, Spain, Portugal and the US. No idea what the factors are in each country - I'm 90% sure abortion is a big part of it in the US, but no idea why Australia, Italy (the Church?) or Germany etc

[Valmy]

The Enemy is the establishment.  The Biden voters are just zombies who do what they're told, because they just don't care to inform or enlighten themselves.

Disagree.  Their student loans are paid off so they don't give a shit.  Already have company provided health insurance, so don't give a shit.  Selfish, self-interested, uncaring.  The Enemy.

I guess we may be reading different echo chambers, or same echo chambers but in different times.  The one I read was for the Super Tuesday video, so the prevailing mood was "how can they be so fucking stupid?"

Demonizing your political enemies is pretty easy when they stand in your way. I mean listening to some of the anti-Bernie people you would think they are the new Red Guard or some shit.

Chris Matthews was on National TV comparing them to Nazis invading France and claiming there would be executions in Central Park. That is a major network.

So trying to pain this as entirely one way is just dishonest.

I prefer when people point out how unworkable his ideas are, but for many that is insufficiently oppositional.

[DGuller]

I want to be clear that my horror has little to do with Bernie or his politics, and more to do with how ill-equipped humans in 2020 are to expose themselves to social networks without falling into one rabbit hole or another.

[Legbiter]

I want to be clear that my horror has little to do with Bernie or his politics, and more to do with how ill-equipped humans in 2020 are to expose themselves to social networks without falling into one rabbit hole or another.

The sometimes over-the-top Bernie freakout is pretty funny I gotta say.