Other bad events can happen, you don’t need to keep downplaying everything else.

  • Sharkticon@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    They are both right and wrong is the rub. They’re not trying to distract from the Epstein files they’re trying to do all the things at once. Flood the zone. Which means everything is essentially a distraction from everything else. That’s the strategy. So yeah they’re trying to hide Epstein file awareness, but it doesn’t mean they’re doing the other stuff just to hide it. They were always trying to do all this stuff. They’re doing all the bad things all the same exact time constantly.

    • Delphia@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Dont even acknowledge the criticisms of the last thing you did, just do the next thing and then ignore those criticisms too.

    • Tiresia@slrpnk.net
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      3 days ago

      True, but that makes the critique fundamentally correct. “This is a distraction from the Epstein files” means “I choose to see this as unimportant because of the Epstein files” which means they’re playing right into the fascists’ hands.

      Their concept of the US government’s villainy maxes out at individuals being bad people to be purged from a liberal democratic system they don’t call into question, which prevents them from escalating beyond liberal democratic forms of opposition.

      Because, ultimately, what distinguishes “flooding the zone” from the normal torrent of news is that everything keeps being a shock. And what distinguishes shocks from curiosities is whether they make sense in your worldview.

      The non-shocked version will sound something like “Of course the fascist empire does fascist and/or imperial shit. Does this affect my plans? Or is it something I’m curious about? Or is it boring?”

      But to no longer be shocked by US atrocities means not just reckoning with their current fascism, but with how liberalism and fascism are two sides of the same coin. The pattern that extends to the first liberal democratic regimes saying all men are created equal while enslaving and genociding men.

      There are non-liberal forms of oppression that may be called fascism, but fascist ideology has always been about getting liberal states to shrink the whitelist of people they deem human that they already maintain.

      Understand this, and the news gets unsurprising. Alex Pretti got executed like he was black. Trump threatened Greenland like it’s a caribbean nation. US citizen Latinos are getting deported like foreign brown people. Trans people are getting experimented on like mental patients. Young girls are treated like embarrassing sex toys.

      The specifics of how and when the circle shrinks are like the battles of a war. There is useful analysis to be done, for sure, but you can just go “yeah i know they’re fascists” and move on with your life.

      (Though personally I do still spend time in these threads because I like explaining how fascists are fascists and it’s recruitment praxis).