An American security contractor and a Chinese embassy employee are at a bar. The American says, "I gotta say, your propaganda is impressive. You sure know how to keep your people in line."
"Oh, you're too gracious," the embassy worker says. "And besides, it's nothing compared to American propaganda."
The contractor chokes on his drink and gives his friend a bewildered look.
"What are you talking about? There's no propaganda in America."
I wish I was persuasive
I didn't realize the anti-immigrant sentiment had gotten to this level in so much of the population
I think the causation is backwards here, a lot of low engagement voters just assume that the best policies are somewhere to the left of whatever the GOP wants and to right of whatever the Dems are pushing for, but they keep thinking that even as the Dems move to the right.
Dems were thinking if independents saw that they'd respect the Dems willingness to compromise or whatever, but Indies saw that and just decided "Oh, I guess immigration really is a problem like the Republicans were saying all along, even the Democratic party thinks we need a border wall now."
e; an attempt at better phrasing
Survey methodology is described in detail here - https://www.prri.org/research/challenges-to-democracy-the-2024-election-in-focus-findings-from-the-2024-american-values-survey/#page-section-12 (archived at https://ghostarchive.org/archive/FtPGJ)
this particular hatred
History has repeatedly shown us they'll just move on to a new target for their bigotry because that's the only way they can come close to getting a majority of voters to back their economic plans that only serve a wealthy few. Like, trans people right now are just what gay people were for their party 10-20 years ago.
Founded in 2006 as a division of the Russian media holding RBC Group (abbreviation for "RosBusinessConsulting"), but in 2010, the agency "RBC-Ukraine" left the composition of the Russian holding, and in 2015, it completely came under the control of Ukrainian media businessman Yosyp Pintus. On January 29, 2016, the Russian holding "RBC" tried to challenge the use of the "RBC" brand in court, but lost the case
[Bolding added]
Good to know, thank you! Relatedly, I feel like a dummy for not thinking to check Wikipedia first
Huh, does this RBC Ukraine publication have any connection to RBC.ru? My disinformation senses are starting to tingle (although it seems like basically all the factual claims they're making have been backed up by other reporting).
e; turns out they broke away over a decade ago and had to fight their former owners in court, so they seem pretty independent of RBC .ru
I feel like a cap on how much campaigns are allowed to spend would be easier to enforce
Those 20 people were removed from the state’s voter rolls – which total 8.2 million – and have been referred to local law enforcement, he said
[Ital. added]
So none of this has been proven in a court of law, we're just going off of what Raffensberger said and treating it like fact
Because of the criminal investigation, the secretary of state’s office said it could not dislose when those nine people voted.
That is just nonsense, you've already got paper records and the elections in question are already passed, how could anyone involved destroy any evidence or corrupt any investigation at this point? He just wants to leave blank space for the anti-democracy voices to imagine the worst into.
Lots of great nightmares fuel here, but I can't believe nobody's mentioned The Lottery yet. The end of that story still makes me feel absolutely nauseous.
MARTIN: It's interesting, 'cause I covered the White House in the administration of George H. W. Bush, and I knew about it. But then when I've talked to colleagues about it, they didn't know about it, and people are continually surprised.
Maybe because news publishers like NPR and CNN never put that detail in the headlines of their stories that brush up against this open secret
TBH I don't want have to change at all, I'm just saying in the magic genie scenario I'd wish that people agreed with me