#funny
Let me tell you what I think is weird about USians. Everyone knows they're ruled by a pedophile cabal who's above the law, yet everyone believes what they say about their enemies.
Everyone knows the pedophile cabal profits by causing death and destruction on a global scale, yet the people have unshakeable reverence for the murder squads.
Everyone knows they're a nation built on genocide and exploitation, and they're largely proud of the American Ideal
They will literally still repeat CIA propaganda that CIA themselves have admitted are false or there are de-classified documents that prove this. And if shown this they will not engage with it. Liberals are genuinely unsalvageable sometimes....
it makes me think that cognitive dissonance can be a self perpetuating thing forever.
Sure, cognitive dissonance can be self-perpetuating if it’s self-serving, otherwise it requires continued maintenance.
The worse things get under late capitalism, the less self-serving it becomes for the labor aristocracy, the more maintenance will be required.
Over the last five years especially, I've noticed that the baseline squishy 'leftist' position on a bunch of topics has quietly, begrudgingly inched closer to what communists have always been saying, while many of the people themselves still take every opportunity to rail against communists. It's starting to feel like the Life of Brian "what have the romans ever done for us" bit. "Other than (this, that, a litany of events past and present)...when have the communists ever been right about anything?"
Or like you said, it's a crazy tankie conspiracy theory right up until it isn't.
Indeed.
Tribalism means that individuals will convince themselves that the group they feel that they belong to are "the good guys" and that the "leaders" of that group are the best kind of leader and doing the right things. This in turn reinforces their feeling of satisfaction with being a member of the group they think they're a member of.
It's a self-sustainable positive feedback cycle.
However, if for some reason people lose the feeling of belonging to that tribe and start feeling that "I'm not like these people", all that starts to unwind.
It makes perfect sense when the people subconsciously know they benefit from the profits of imperialism even if it's just barely. Settlers opened my eyes to this.
Part of why this is falling apart is because the negative impacts of US imperialism are starting to outweigh the benefits. They may be working class, but they also benefit from imperial superprofits unlike working people in the colonized countries.
the worst part is that people still won't believe the government is still doing these things, or that new conspiracies are in motion.
It really is amazing when you present people with all the horrible stuff that's been revealed, and they go oh yeah that all happened, but that was in the past. Like you have the same government with the same interests, same social and economic structures, but somehow think that the same type of society somehow produces different results today than it did previously. Just absolute brain worms.
It don't even have to be 20 years, some US propaganda stories were unraveled in mere days but this still didn't shaken libs at all.
It’s a krazy tankie konspiracy until it isn’t, over and over again.
and nobody ever learns anything in the process
A limited hangout or partial hangout is a tactic used in media relations, perception management, politics, and information management. The tactic originated as a technique in the espionage trade.
According to Victor Marchetti, a former special assistant to the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a limited hangout is "spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further".
The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further".
Eh? Doesn't getting intrigued mean you want to know more?
It means you want to consume the finer details of the limited hangout.
That makes sense, thanks
They measure things with body parts and random units. Eating industrial waste, believing it's food.
My feet are always with me. Do you carry a meter stick everywhere you go? I thought not.
Ok, if it is allowed to remove your shoe to measure a furniture, i.e. only if your foot actually measures exactly one foot
My guy, every foot measures exactly one foot.
my foot or your foot ?
Yes.
On your ass? I don't mind which foot 😂😎
Yes, and 1 pound is everywhere 1 pound, even on the Moon. The US don't have even a different unit for weight and mass. because when the imperial system was invented they thought that it was the same.
Uh... But a pound IS a pound on the moon, it's a unit of force/weight not mass (I wish we [the US] used metric, just being annoyingly pedantic for fun)
Edit: Aaaand apparently my brain didn't read your whole comment, you already addressed the weight/mass thing. Long day, laying in bed w headache, can't read
You say it, a Pound is a Pound weight on earth, but weight depends on gravity, so a Pound is only 1/6 Pound on the Moon Imperial system is obsolet crap, maybe enough for a farmer, but in tecnology, science, where you need to work with measures of μ, feet and inches are as usefull like roman numbers for integrals.
A pound is still a pound on the moon, since it's a unit of force not mass. It just requires more mass for a scale to measure that force. I'm an engineer that works on spacecraft, I know units, and hate the imperial system and all the conversions I have to do
Edit: and it's still useful to differentiate between mass and weight/force, just depends on the context. A doctor would want to know an astronaut's mass to accurately track health. But writing up a fitness plan to maintain muscle mass and bone density, force/weight is more relevant because squatting 100 kilograms on the moon isn't as useful a metric as setting it to a specific force in pounds/newtons
The concentration camps. We have concentration camps now. Those things.
Are we really doing Assadism in 2026
2, every 2 years or so. They are 20 years old, but throughput is 0.5/year.
and every time the answer is , nothing !
Why do they declassify them at all? It would be much easier if they just kept them classified.
This is correct. By exposing some but not all of the picture, they get to manage the story, and steer it in acceptable directions.
If its a full leak that's out of their control, then heads start rolling.
Yup, and another side of it is that having these disclosures lets defenders of the system say that there is transparency, and and that's why, despite the flaw, the system really does work overall. Sure, all these terrible things happen, but there is accountability, and disclosure, so really it's all fine.
Thanks
This makes me think of some discussions I’ve seen on hete before about how hypocrisy (or rather the illuminating thereof) is a useless rhetorical cudgel insofar as the juice ain’t worth the squeeze. I guess it’s better to just focus on admonishing the bad thing itself rather than musddying the water with debatebro-like gotchas 🤔