I’m sure Xi is beyond having his feelings hurt by Biden, but just look at Bilken’s reaction lmao.
Inviting a head of state to your country to publicly insult them is unacceptable anywhere, so this is only going to further tarnish the shitty reputation of American diplomacy.
speaking of that, even though the US has openly admitted that the balloon wasn’t a surveillance device and didn’t collect any data, just yesterday my local news station was still calling it a “spy balloon” lol
Yeah I’ve noticed that here too. It seems like the final stage of disinfo is for people to repeat the lie on their own without any outside influence. It’s the same deal with the Uyghur thing - official government sources dropped the narrative ages ago, but you’ll still hear it repeated as if it were historical fact from journalists, influencers, redditors, etc.
Russiagate was comprehensively debunked by years of bipartisan congressional investigations, and yet the idea that Vladimir Putin personally overthrew the United States government and will again unless militarily removed from power is still hegemonic among American liberals. 25 years of celebrating peaceful coexistence with the “triumph of liberal democracy” in Russia and overnight they’re all Joe McCarthy swearing an eternal crusade against the hated Muscovite.
Rather than instant and comprehensive systems of brainwashing, I think this is better understood as licensing American settlers to unleash their preexisting white supremacist worldview onto a politically acceptable target. "Correcting the disinformation " doesn’t eliminate the bigotry, because the disinformation didn’t put it there. The “disinformation”, even when they know it’s bullshit, is just a social signal that they’ll no longer be stigmatized for saying what they’ve always wanted to believe.
I couldn’t agree more with that second paragraph. I think you’ll enjoy this article very much https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/. All this propaganda just gives the settlers a veil to spew their hate from behind. Chuds don’t really need it because they’re chuds, but it gives the liberals an excuse to be just as disgusting - only they’ll dress it up in smug, condescending language.
That article is what I’m shamelessly regurgitating here. It really resonated with me, and now I see it everywhere.
Ya I don’t think libs are brainwashed either. I read that red sails essay too and I agree with it but idk what better word there is to describe this. Bigotry permit? Hate pass?
What do you think is lacking from the term used in the essay, “licensing”?
I can’t see it catching on. I mean, have you ever seen anyone here use the term (other than to define it)?
“The US is running a licensing campaign against Russia.”
“These people have all been licensed.”
“Dude shut it with the Uyghur shit, you’re super licensed.”
It just doesn’t fit right in anything other than an academic context.
Accusing someone of being “brainwashed” isn’t, as far as I have seen, so rhetorically effective that I think we need a drop-in replacement like “hate-passed.” If “you’re super licensed” sounds silly it’s because “you’re super brainwashed” is also silly.
What about:
“Do you actually believe that nonsense or does it just give you license to discount the incredible social progress China has made?”
I think the post earlier in this thread used it well. They’re not defining the term, they’re explaining the phenomenon. Because it uses a familiar term, it is easy to understand and doesn’t read jargony:
Rejecting the term “brainwashing” means not only improving our understanding of how propaganda works but also improving our rhetoric.
People call each other brainwashed all the time though? I’ve heard people say another person is “so/super/incredibly brainwashed” irl. It gets the message across pretty well I think
I’ll admit licensing does sound natural in those sentences but I guess I just want a pithier way of saying something similar. It still comes off as academic, like someone saying “contradiction” instead of disagreement.
The red scare ended because all Americans became McCarthyists
Fuuuuuck I wish
lived to see this era of politics
We would’ve without a doubt gotten some bangers
Even the articles that came out confirming it was just a weather balloon referred to it as a “spy balloon” lmao.
they’re spying on our weather!
If I remember the articles correctly, they never denied it being a surveillance device, just that it transmitted (collected?) any data. So the running media story was “spy balloon that wasn’t actively spying”. That raises the question of “why?”, but libs never seemed to bother with that one.
yeah same… i pointed that out to my partner who was unaware they previously confirmed it wasn’t a spy balloon