How long ago was that? If you did that to someone younger now, who hasn’t heard of it, they would probably believe you without asking if it was real. The fact Iran-Contra is real is neither here nor there. What’s changed is how people engage with conspiracy theories. We should want people to think critically and ask for evidence.

People already dismissed conspiracy theories in general. I’m old enough to remember a time when conspiracism was a fringe belief system back in the 90’s and 2000’s when I was a kid.

The right-wing infosphere has normalized conspiracism. Fox News got people to believe there was a conspiracy where there was none so the Republicans could enact the equivalent of a conspiracy in broad daylight. TDS, Trump derangement syndrome, is the go to accusation for the MAGA movement against their opposition. Calling people conspiracy theorists would probably cause a bit of cognitive dissonance for Republican voters.

Some conspiracies do exist, and those who are part of them ALWAYS deny them.

All kinds of people deny conspiracy theories usually because of the lack of evidence and attempts at grifting. Trump never denies involvement in Jan 6th, he mostly lies about the nature of the attack on the capital. He intentionally mischaracterizes the attack as peaceful despite the deaths.

We still need to do the more substantive arguments for our positions, such as progressive and socialist positions, and refutations of neoliberal and fascist positions. But once the sound-bite reaches saturation in the population it will, in theory anyway, have done the desired damage.

To some conservative people, a man not wearing a black suit to a funeral is effectively taboo. It effectively is to some of the users, without respect to their political positions, in this comment section apparently. It’s something some of his voters will have to rationalize to defend him. If we do enough of these trivial ad hominem attacks eventually some people will be less motivated to vote Republican.

People who do not care about suit color will considered this topic to be a trivial non-issue and move on with their day. They aren’t the target audience. And the people who do care will be really bothered by it. What bothers a person is different for everyone. People probably should be bothered by the more serious life or death stuff, but not everyone is. To some people climate change is a trivial non-issue and by talking about that we’re grasping at straws according to them.

Has Putin lost any support for all the defenestration and underwear poisoning? People used to think dictators would lose support if dictators killed people in the street. The truth is if you control the narrative you can get away with killing people and if you don’t you can’t get away with doing nothing wrong.

Sounds good.

but everyone else found it ridiculous and made them skeptical of conservative media.

I found it ridiculous too and it made me very skeptical of conservative media. I wasn’t the target audience. And with this blue suit attack line, I’m not the target audience either. It’s not for me or most of the people on social media delivering the sound bite. Like the tan suit controversy before it, it’s for conservatives.

When you are inundated nearly daily with real terrible stuff, boo need to undermine credibility by latching into this sort of fluff.

Conservatives either don’t believe, don’t care, or like that terrible stuff. We should boo that too, and continue to cover it, but we need to take the short amount of time it takes to knock the fluff out of the park. Our issue hasn’t been making fun of Trump for the wrong things, it’s not making fun of him enough. We haven’t been aggressive enough and Democratic politicians definitely haven’t been aggressive enough.

I bought into Jon Stewart’s line that we need to focus on more substantive criticisms. Then in it turned out Trump voters like him because of the economy and the price of eggs? No, we needed to make MAGA’s ‘strongman’ look weak in the eyes of his supporters. Septimaeus covered this concept comprehensively so review that comment if you haven’t already.

If all we talk about is fluff that would be a mistake, but refusing to engage with the fluff at all is also a mistake.

I’m going to fast forward through the fact that the entirety of the above comment was full of nothing but baseless conspiracy theories pretending that they aren’t conspiracy theories and that some other conspiracy theories are the actual conspiracy theories. Own it.

I’m fast forwarding because the comment has completely missed my argument’s actual point.

So I live in a world where the rich and the powerful can commit whatever crimes they want and be elected world leaders.

My argument’s position is not that governments couldn’t do this in theory. My argument’s position is that they have no reason to do this in practice. They don’t need to make our deaths look like suicides to kill us. They can kill us.

They can kill us and lose no support whatsoever in a fair and free election. And it’s way easier than covering it up, because they can use the investigations as a talking point in their rallies without the downside of consequences because there are no consequences. The people still think it’s true because they are trapped in information silos. And they all accuse everyone else of having TDS, Trump derangement syndrome. edit: typos

this is the language of the powerful this is how they communicate to us not to resist and blow the whistle.

So I live in a world where the rich and the powerful can commit whatever crimes they want and be elected world leaders.

They could have this person killed and claim credit for it and still get elected. Trump publicly ordered a mob to descend on the capital and they killed cops. Now he’s president again.

Critical thinking is a skill. Anyone can learn it. We can measure a person’s ability by giving them tests and throwing a wide array of problems at them.

Trump isn’t just being facetious when he says could get away with shooting someone in public and not lose a single supporter. He is largely correct. The bulk of his supporters are people in the MAGA cult who blindly believe in any conspiracy theory they see on facebook. They would either not believe he did it or if he did that it was justified.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-fifth-avenue-comment/

So let’s continue to engage in some critical thinking.

What are the rich and powerful communicating by jumping through these extra hoops? That they can have us killed but only if they make it look like a suicide?

how many more of them are you going to watch die before you rise from your chair?

If it turns out that this person or a revelation that all the people who conspiracy theorists assert were murdered were to come to light tomorrow do you think anything would change? We know who Trump is. We know who many of these powerful people are. We keep electing them. There has been no up rising despite knowing about their connection to Epstein and other criminal activities.

You are serving their agenda by sowing doubt.

I’m arguing in favor of the current official narrative so if anything I’m sowing trust, but I digress. What are they gaining they don’t already have by me arguing this? If a government did this they won’t be able to keep it a secret for long, see the recent Signal chats, and they won’t face the blow back they deserve, see the last decade of history.

What’s happened here is that reality is outpacing the conspiracy’s capacity to be disconcerting and distressing. Conspiracy takes after narrative. This idea that powerful elites need to hide their crimes to maintain power is almost comforting. There’s a way for good to defeat evil that elites have to respect or face consequences. Unlike in narrative where the revealing of a truth is met by public outcry and backlash, in reality the truth is met with a doubling down on candidates and deeply held beliefs no matter how awful they are.

First, hypocrisy is not a worthwhile criteria for an idea. We should judges ideas independently of the people espousing them. People who practice what they preach can practice awful, harmful, and useless ideas and people who don’t practice what they preach can preach great, helpful, and useful ideas.

Second, plenty of things change votes. And I guess anything, even hypocrisy might change someone’s vote on something. But it clearly didn’t with this case about the blue suit with Republicans.

But making fun of Trump might make him seem that much less based to some of the people who casually vote for candidates and if that translates into some fractional change in votes against Republicans it will have been worth it.

So I live in a world where the rich and the powerful can commit whatever crimes they want and be elected world leaders.

Conspiracy theorists live in a world where the rich and powerful can commit whatever crimes they want and be elected world leaders and then vengefully kill their accusers, but make it look like a suicide for some reason.

Seems like the same thing with extra steps. Why do people think they would want or need to do the extra steps?

Yeah, so I sure as fuck don’t want people telling anyone nice enough to come to my funeral that they wore the wrong color suit. Make fun of Trump and the fascists whose voters hopefully will be as annoyed at this. But don’t trouble the rest of us about it.

Liberals as in Neoliberals do. Neocons and fascists definitely don’t, but will claim they do. Progressives have thankfully figured out they can be mean. The fact most Democrat politicians are useless neoliberals doesn’t mean we have to be.

No one cares about hypocrisy enough to change their vote. Besides Obama’s tan suit didn’t matter then, Fox News needed their daily sound bite, and Trump’s blue suit doesn’t matter now, we need a sound bite today. But if anyone is being hypocritical it’s Fox for not being outraged over Trump. And of course the Republicans and MAGA do not care. It was always about having another controversy to use as a wedge against Obama to gain political power.

Trump knows criticism of any kind is bad for him. That’s why he references the Tds, Trump derangement syndrome, in his rallies. When he runs out of things to blame Obama and Biden for he can just blame the people who don’t vote for him. He knows it keeps his base happy, makes him look good to Republican voters, and that he was never getting Democrats or leftists to vote for him. The Democrats really need to learn that last one, but about Republicans.

More like reality show tv police. They had Dr Phil on an ICE raid. Their goal is to scare people. But they are very close to getting to anyone, not just immigrants. And it’s been all kinds of immigrants not just Latinx. They been detaining pro-Palestinian students on student visas and tourists from European countries.

Also, so far they are outsourcing the death camps, to El Salvador, but I think they are probably going to start using American prisons and maybe even military bases. Trump signed an executive order for getting lethal injection drugs to the states. I think firing squad might be the method of choice still but we’ll see I guess.

I use my real name and face on BlueSky where I’m openly trans. The only reason I used my account name here is because it seemed like Reddit and the I only did that on Reddit is because the site recommend it.

I would link to my BlueSky but I doubt you people would benefit from that site and vice versa. You all mean well, but I think BlueSky would lose its mind over Lemmy and I know people here don’t like BlueSky so I’m keeping you separate for your own good.

But push me on it and I’ll do it. I’ll link to my BlueSky. I’ve been openly Jewish and atheist since elementary school and openly socialist since high school. I suppressed I was trans for the majority of my life and I would rather die than keep doing that.

Also social media radicalist? I think that’s the furthest left of liberal on the political spectrum I’ve been labeled on this site by another user so thanks for that.

Lol =)

In the last fifteen years, Republicans have been on the attack for everything Democrats do. They don’t pick and choose their battles. They are perpetually aggressive and now they have all three branches of government. No one has to care what suit Trump wears, but any excuse to make fun of him means your side is on the attack.

I think it’s some cultural thing where you wear black to funerals and no one but the bride wears white to weddings. Rules people made up to get mad at other people are bizarre and awful but I’ll use them to attack fascists any day of the week. edit: typo

One day I hope no one cares what people wear to a funeral, only that they show up. In the meantime if making fun of Trump this way contributes to Republicans losing elections I’m all for it.

It takes two seconds to make fun of him for it today. It’s just to exhaust his base of non-MAGA Republicans. Republicans have shown you can be on the attack for everything a person does, for the last fifteen years. Either be vocal or die in silence.

It’s not about shaming Trump. Like you say, he has no shame. It’s about exhausting his base. It takes a second to make fun of him for it.

It’s purely to be on the attack. Republicans showed for the last fifteen years if you’re performatively aggressive against the opposition eventually you get what you want.

You don’t have to hate Trump or his suit color. Just love democracy and socialism and the working class. If this gets some apolitical conservative people to not vote for the Republicans then awesome.