I know a lot of us don’t read the news, so here’s a meme. The Republican Speaker of the House has begun an impeachment inquiry on U.S. President Biden.
Context: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/12/why-biden-impeachment-inquiry/
To see McCarthy calling for an impeachment, despite a law the republicans themselves made to stop trump from getting impeached during his term, is comical. Literally elementary school logic.
Do not think they do not recognize their own hypocrisy. It is a demonstration of power: “See, I can get away with it. Because I am in power.”
This. To anyone who thinks this is the Republicans being hypocritical: They know. They do not care. They are lying to your face. Pointing out the hypocrisy does literally nothing because they. Do. Not. Care.
Ugh. It’s time to post this Sartre quote again. I hate that it’s still relevant:
“Never believe that [they] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. [They] have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
How does one deal with people that act like this?
Call them out on a lie that undermines either a core part of their case or that damages their credibility in the eyes of anyone else listening.
Your goal isn’t really to convince them to stop doing anything but to completely destroy their credibility, which takes away their ability to use rhetoric to get what they want.
Addressing their motives works too.
You have to be very, very hard-nosed about it and be willing to wield that banhammer on sight, or, in the real world, be willing to exercise power to drive them away, but if you can or if you can convince someone else in the audience with that kind of power to do so, you’ll usually be straight.
I do this shit all the time with dickheads here on Lemmy. You’d be surprised how effective calling them out on a lie is.
But hasn’t this been done… all the time? Like with Trump?
Not the obvious ones. You need to reveal the lies that reveal their true intentions for it is uncovering their true intentions they do everything possible to avoid.
Like with the Trump Chumps, their end goal is genocide of anyone different than them but they know no one has actual hard evidence this is what they’re trying to orchestrate. If anyone could trip them up in debate and trick them into admitting such, or uncover actual evidence and reveal it to the public, it would probably be enough of a driving force to convince the left to shake off the provocateurs and shills holding them back and to finally fight back with fists and bullets, even if only to collectively save themselves.
Granted, the people I do this to are kind of different than the Trump cult, many are on the left, so YMMV in terms of results, but I know from experience it does work.
You don’t
I find the last sentence of that quote particularly interesting. Any example of this tactic recently?
Agreed, it’s never been about ideological consistency or evidence-based governance. It’s about, “hurting the right people,” to appeal to the masses, and plutocracy to appeal to their donors.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
For millennia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.
-Frank WilhoitI mean, they do care. It’s a fundamental part of how fascism works, so they can’t leave hypocrisy out.
Literally elementary school logic.
the GOP hurt itself in its confusion
I don’t think this will certainly hurt the GOP representatives. Regardless of nationwide voters’ opinion on their stupidity and assholery, the main thing that matters to each individual representative is if their specific district will re-elect them. Since each one of them is pandering to their district, they’re fine. So no matter how much I despise McCarthy or MTG, it has almost absolutely no impact on their power.
I didn’t mean to imply that it would hurt the GOP. Nothing hurts the GOP with their base, except being weak like Jesus.
And the Senate gop already said they’ll kill it
GOP members are skeptical of it too.
They can’t even agree if they have a case or not! What a weak hand.
Mom said it’s my turn on the impeachment machine!
Good let’s get all of them locked it up! Fuck these politicians.
I would agree with you, but:
- Impeachment doesn’t lead to jail, if it did, trump already would have two sentences
- Despite it being a while ago and they claiming they have evidence, so far nothing was presented showing Biden in bad light (his 50+ year old son is not him)
It is unlikely that this investigation will show up Biden doing anything legal in that matter. They are hoping to find something else (like it was with Clinton) and in any case also normalize impeachment and show impeaching trump doesn’t mean anything, because they impeached Biden.
Yeah I said that way because Trump Supporters think that we the people that want to see Trump behind bars , would defend Biden if he is ever found with something. And I’m like fuck if he has done something wrong lock him up too I care about justice and not people.
I mean. I’m pretty sure both presidents are sex offenders so I’m not too upset about this
but the hypocrisy is kind of funny
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Or maybe… just maybe… both Trump & Biden are evil.
Well yes. But that’s not why they’re trying to impeach him.
Right? We’re not asking whether they’re evil, we’re asking if they made an impeachable offense.
Let’s keep this discussion on track.
Yeah they’re totally the same
cannot tell if sarcastic or not
yEaH tHeY’rE tOtAlLy ThE sAmE 🤡
They both deserve to be impeached and executed for killing and disabling millions with their covid policies
What
I’m also wondering what, they could be bitching in either direction.
Hexbear, it’s likely from repeated head injury.
Hexbear sounds so harmless until you see a member of theirs start talking for the first time. What you said though ^ encapsulates all y’all need to know.
*Repeated self-inflicted head injury
FTFY
Tbf I did think that. Very true.
Umm you got the wrong person for that. Get it right 90% of Covid policies were enacted by trump, Biden didn’t come in until the damage was already done.
It’s funny how everyone looked up to trump for pushing the vaccination as fast as he did, only to condemn Biden for following through with it.
Because of that condemnation, the right-wingers refuse to take the vaccine they were so happy to take when trump was in office. So tell me, who’s the idiots now? Sure isn’t the dems.
I don’t remember Trump ever supporting the vaccine, and I don’t remember his followers ever getting it.
They never did, but trump was behind pushing for the vaccine after big pharma said they may have it. He claims that operation warp speed was his doing.
Biden didn’t come in until after the damage was done, but rather than try to fix that damage he declared covid over and continued that damage. Did you never stop to think about how weird it is that people need to take covid tests to be around Biden while regular Americans are forced into workplaces that have banned covid safety measures with the full support of the federal government?
Nope and I don’t care. I have no reason to go around any potus, no matter who they are. Besides, the Covid testing thing is really no different in any other country that wants to protect their leaders.
The thing is Biden was working on fixing it, it’s just there was so much damage by the time he got in office, there was no quick fix. Remember governance doesn’t fix everything immediately or overnight upon changing of the guard.
Everyone expected an overnight miracle which is impossible to achieve. They aren’t god or Jesus as depicted in the book of fairy tales called the Bible.
Biden actively took away what little there was in terms of protections. He absolutely could have continued the public health emergency, now we have less testing (since tests are no longer covered by insurance), less reliable reporting, and more pressure to live and work in cramped, poorly ventilated places. But maybe it’s not importa-- oh hey what is this?
Newer covid strains are significantly less deadly than the initial ones.
The COVID-19 IFR [infection-fatality ratio] declined from 0.67% in 2020 to 0.10% in 2022, and the IHR [infection-hospitalization ratio] fell from 2.60% to 0.76% over the same period.
Why is a graph of “Population - With a Disability, 16 Years and over” relevant?
But Biden said the pandemic was over! (LOL)
Fucking THANK YOU. Can’t believe people aren’t more irritated with Biden’s handling of the pandemic post-Trump. Well I can believe it but I’m still upset about it.
