Yeah, I didn’t mean to imply we all love Harris. We all think Trump is an insane combination cruel, stupid, rash, dishonest, dangerous, greedy, criminal, and once again trying to become the dictator of America.
However, the fact that we overwhelmingly despise him so much, while the rest of America thinks he is just fucking swell suggests to me that we are an echo-chamber. Even if all we are echoing is the truth.
I have thought about this a lot over the last 15 years.
I always saw a potentially huge downside in the US of the growing religious idiocracy. At a certain point they would reach a critical mass, which would then interact with populism and political polarisation to give the US a terrible political leader*
My answer is still the same:
Facts based on evidence and reason matter more than political expediency.
So yes, sticking to the factual truth is the optimal choice, even if this results in a smaller echo chamber.
*I will admit that I never imagined the US would come up with someone as bad as Trump though. This caught me a bit by surprise and I am revisiting my priors on the US and its future trajectory.
I think Americans like the idea of Trump, like symbolically. The fact that a clown like that can become rich and powerful is part of the American dream. Someone asked him “what’s white trash?” and he replied “they’re people like me but just poor”. That’s why he will always appeal to a significant number of americans, no matter what he does or says. It’s a mind virus of sorts. Nothing you can do about it.
Can you show an example of external sources corroborating Hamas’ Health Ministry death counts? Most every source I read has said they are unable to independently corroborate the death counts because of the war going on.
Sure. This has been looked at by various entities.
Prothero, M
Israeli Intelligence has deemed Hamas-run health ministry’s death toll figures generally accurate
Date: 2024
Date accessed: May 2, 2024
Huynh, BQ ∙ Chin, ET ∙ Spiegel, PB
No evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health
Lancet. 2024; 403 :23-24
Jamaluddine, Z ∙ Checchi, F ∙ Campbell, OMR
Excess mortality in Gaza: Oct 7–26, 2023
Lancet. 2023; 402 :2189-2190
Links in the below journal:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext
Aarghh..posting images and PDFs from the Lancet is horrible.
But the linked journal (footnotes) has links to the images and results.
What a joke. They compared data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health with data from UNRWA. UNRWA has been shown to be nothing more than another branch of Hamas. Comparing 2 untrustworthy data sources doesn’t make the data believable.
trumps father was a multimillionaire slum lord.
he was handed whatever he has
Thanks for the lancet link. The strongest statement that i think can be fairly made, if assumptions in the article regarding method of assigning id numbers, including catch-up issuances are correct, is the ids don’t show russian voting patterns. The patterns don’t corroborate the magnitude, but they aren’t indicative of fraud either.
I know why Hamas doesn’t give data about the number of fighters killed, but it also makes me less trusting of the totals.
The IDF and Hamas have generally agreed on the death toll, at least to a good approximation.
They disagree on the split between civilians and fighters, though.
Stuff like this is precisely why Israel will end up exactly like apartheid South Africa. A pariah state.
The settler extremists now control the military.
Don’t you mean apartheid like Gaza? There are zero Jews living in Gaza. If a Jew mistakenly goes into Gaza, he will likely be lynched, and need to be rescued by the military. I’ve yet to hear a Palestinian say that Jews would be allowed to live in an independent Palestinian state.
The Palestinians want an apartheid state far more than Israelis do.
Both sides are so awful to each other it’s pretty understandable not wanting to live near a member of the other.
Israel has Arab members of the parliament and an Arab population.
Gaza does not have Israeli members of any political party nor any Israeli residents.
Explain this one away then:
They are now actively trying to starve people in Gaza to get them to agree to Trump’s demands. Israel isn’t a country that has rule of law anymore. Its one rule for the majority, and another for the minority.
The whole purpose of Democracy is to avoid the tyranny of the majority. This has clearly failed in Israel.
This is also why having a crazy person in the white house who acts more like a thug than a statesman is a problem. It then becomes open season for everybody else to behave in the same dysfunctional way.
The US Govt is gutting many aid programs and federal spending, but seems to still have time for stuff like this:
They are not even pretending anymore. The whole thing is basically devolving into a criminal enterprise masquerading as a Govt.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/world/middleeast/israel-cease-fire-proposal.html?smid=url-share
No, that’s a well-known problem with democracy… not its purpose.
Protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority is the purpose of things like a Constitution and Bill of Rights.
So let me get this straight: you want Israel to provide food and services to their enemy, who has sworn to destroy them, who has said they plan to carry out more attacks like those on October 7th, with nothing being gained in return?
Why should Israel give them anything?
Gaza has a border with Egypt. Let Egypt allow passage of food into Gaza.
Until Hamas is destroyed, Israel shouldn’t be giving anything to Gaza.
Repeat after me nice and slow:
This is a war crime. Starving civilians is a war crime.
Not sure why this needs to be repeated to you dozens of times.
You act like Gaza has control of the situation as if they were a fully independent state.