You're viewing part of a thread.
i think the administrations response to a labor action that threatens the infrastructure of the entire nation is the best thing to examine because it shows how the administration responds to labor power that opposes its aims and threatens it.
we could examine a bunch of other stuff, but that would largely only show how the administration behaves on its own terms. while there's an ocean of ink that could be spilled on that topic, i didn't bring it up because it doesn't matter for the purposes of answering the question of weather the administration is authoritarian.
if you wanna talk about that, youre welcome to, but i'm not gonna get embroiled in it. the administration was threatened by labor power and chose to suppress the strike then deliver a modicum of the demands through action it could control. the end result of that response is that the power of labor is reduced and labor and its supporters are compelled to align with the administration.
it's a response that seems like a perfect solution politically if your alignment is already democrat, but if you would rather labor have real power to exercise on its own terms then it's pretty clearly anti-worker.
the tiktok ban is the best example of media policy against that which is actively controlled by the united states government and power elite. For more on this topic the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent is a great start and not too out there to scare off liberals. if you want something a little bit more recent, look up stovepipeing, the intelligence apparatus' method for creating media buy in for the iraq war.
i think the administrations response to a labor action that threatens the infrastructure of the entire nation is the best thing to examine because it shows how the administration responds to labor power that opposes its aims and threatens it.
I disagree. I think the administration's response to a union action that threatens the infrastructure of the entire nation is probably going to be colored somewhat by their reaction to the infrastructure of the entire nation being threatened. It's probably the least reasonable situation to take, and then extrapolate out to form the conclusion "and that's why he just hates unions."
Especially since, and I don't know why this keeps being not notable to you, his administration kept working with the railroads after, until the workers got the sick days that were the whole thing they had decided to have the strike over.
the tiktok ban is the best example of media policy against that which is actively controlled by the united states government and power elite. For more on this topic the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent is a great start and not too out there to scare off liberals. if you want something a little bit more recent, look up stovepipeing, the intelligence apparatus' method for creating media buy in for the iraq war.
Yes, I have read Manufacturing Consent, and I was around for the Iraq War and the general media enthusiasm for it; I had arguments with family members about it because they were believing what they read in the papers. Not that it's relevant, but as far as I can tell stovepiping was something totally different related to that war.
And, none of that is recent or in any way related to what Biden's doing about US media right now.
I'm gonna take this as an indication that you have no other examples of media Biden wants to ban, even ones that are a lot more explicitly hostile to him than TikTok is, and just want to get condescending to maintain a posture of being the one who's explaining to the one who doesn't understand what's really going on. Good luck with that! I don't think it's going well, but you can keep trying.
i never said biden hates unions. the things i said are written out in text and i haven't made any edits to them. i don't like doing inline quotations, but you use that style of response, so when you see me say that biden hates unions please quote it directly.
Sick days were not the whole thing the rail unions had decided to strike over. biden broke the strike rather than bargain with the union. that represents much more clearly the administrations stance towards real labor power than anything else. when faced with a true threat, it chose to break the strike and give a fraction of the demands directly through executive action.
i was around for iraq 2 as well. good looking out on stovepiping, i haven't been looking up everything ive written so errors like that where i mix up the sending of unvetted intelligence information directly to decision makers with whatever the name for the unique combination of exerting soft and hard power on media outlets, badjacketing oppositional viewpoints and sending professionally trained media teams to express carefully crafted messages are inevitable.
I choose to not meticulously source and check stuff because it both makes people i'm responding to get hostile and feel like theyre being attacked or accused of being ignorant and because i feel it's better to treat people in text formats like this one as if you were speaking to them.
that last part is one of the reasons i don't like to quote. this is a conversation, we're just talking. no ones going to win and you will in no uncertain terms ever convince me to vote for biden.
why and how do you think the governments relationship to media has changed since the response to 9/11?
I never said there were more media sources that the administration wants to ban. i said there was an active campaign to control media sources including the tiktok ban. who was the politician who admitted that the tiktok ban was at least partially motivated by how much anti genocide sentiment was on it? like i said, this is all off the dome, water cooler style.
i've been trying to keep things civil and not resort to insulting you either directly or indirectly through implication. please do the same.
i never said biden hates unions
Okay, sure. You said "labor demonstrations have been crushed just a few short years ago." That's a huge stretch, since multiple labor demonstrations have been materially assisted by Biden's revamped NLRB, and the one that was "crushed" was more complex than what you're implying.
Here's a story about some of the details of how the attendance policy specifically was the most proximate cause of the strike. Probably Wikipedia's article is the clearest overview -- in brief, negotiations broke down with workers getting wage increase but only 1 day of paid leave a year, as opposed to the 15 that they wanted. The law that broke the strike limited them to 1 day per year, which was kind of a "fuck you" to the unions.
Then, after that, the NLRB kept negotiations going with the railroads. E.g. as of March, they had 3-7 days per year. IDK, that's not as good as I thought it was, so maybe there's still an argument to be made that the workers got screwed.
Also, there are a ton of issues e.g. related to safety and wages. It's not just sick days. But, the sick days were the immediate proximate disagreement that led to the strike.
I choose to not meticulously source and check stuff because it both makes people i'm responding to get hostile and feel like theyre being attacked or accused of being ignorant
I am the exact opposite. I think it's important to have reasons for what you're saying and demonstrate that there's a reason and link to more information about it. I'm sometimes kinda condescending about it I guess but I think it's important to refer to what the reality is, instead of just taking turns talking at each other about our different opinions.
that last part is one of the reasons i don't like to quote
i've been trying to keep things civil and not resort to insulting you either directly or indirectly through implication. please do the same.
So this is just something about me: If someone starts saying things like "For more on this topic the 1988 book Manufacturing Consent is a great start and not too out there to scare off liberals" I get real offended, because I take that as that exact kind of accusing of being ignorant that you were talking about before. I think it's more about me, so maybe I shouldn't have reacted badly -- but yeah, if we were talking face to face and you said something like that to me I would get irritated by it. That's more why I got hostile with you. Like bro don't tell me what to read or imply that I might be scared off by it. I've read it, yes. If we're talking we can talk, and maybe I might be abrasive about some things and if so I apologize, but also don't try to take this you-maybe-haven't-heard-of-Noam-Chomsky tone with me. And in particular, don't try to change the subject from "hey here's my coherent argument for why banning TikTok is motivated by something other than censorship" by starting to imply that maybe I'm just clueless about the idea of US government interfering with media in general, and you need to help me by recommending some sources on it that I might not have heard of.
I never said there were more media sources that the administration wants to ban.
So it's just Tiktok? Is it relevant to you that there are other much more anti-administration sources that they aren't banning?
who was the politician who admitted that the tiktok ban was at least partially motivated by how much anti genocide sentiment was on it?
When did this happen?
it's not a stretch to say that labor demonstrations were crushed. multiple unions together composed the rail strike and their demonstrations were crushed by the administrations direct action.
if i were gonna encapsulate the demands of all the rail unions i'd basically say precision scheduled railroading was the cause of em, and it's bad. there was definitely more than sick days to it.
it's okay to meticulously source stuff and have a big wall of links ready to refute fake bullshit. that's a certified tankie banger and i mean that with love and respect while soviet anthem - bass boosted trap remix (10 hours) plays.
just, you know, i gotta be on best behavior here at .world. and in this particular instance it's not like the goal is to get people to read fucking history and critique of a black legend but instead to get liberals to realize that it's okay not to vote for biden. because i genuinely believe that no one under 50 can look back at their adult life and say "yeah, this is good, actually, i'm happy with this, it should be biden, not literally any other candidate. the democrats are really my ally and i should lend them my support". i mean, there's the butigeegs (I can't spell his name) of the world, but you know, like real people. anyway i'm not trying to convert people to anarchism or communism but just to meet people where they're at with the message that "things are bad and they're not gonna get better from one or the other ruling class party. reject their tickets and choose something else. organize in your communities and try to build resilliency"
I didn't mean to take the tone that you hadn't heard of chomsky, or to call you a lib, but instead to recommend something as a source and example that is generally respected and inoffensive. you'd be surprised how many people don't know manufacturing consent or got taught it in the most tepid way possible, sometimes even with chomsky's own walkbacks from the decades after 9/11.
i don't know what sources you know and don't know. i don't know if you have a critique of manufacturing consent or what your perception of the governments' relationship with mass media is. from manufacturing consent and the experience of the post 9/11 world its hard to imagine you having an understanding that doesn't include broad implicit and explicit media consent for the power that underlies the two party state.
what are the anti administration media that isn't getting banned? is any of it as outside the US political system (and i'm saying this with full awareness of how bytedance offered to route all US users through a datacenter in texas running oracle systems and what that implies in order to fend off trumps threat of a ban and how they then just started doing it in the hopes that it would be enough for the state department) and widespread as tiktok? I wouldn't call fox or something like that in the same category as tiktok.
goddamnit you got me to look something up. just this once and for you, it was blinken and romney speaking for the mccain institute.
I said: "Also, there are a ton of issues e.g. related to safety and wages. It's not just sick days." and then linked to some sources for why the sick days were the main flashpoint where things broke down.
Then you said: "there was definitely more than sick days to it." basically re-reexplained back to me what I had just got done saying, just changing the sourced statements into unsourced disagreements with those statements, based on your off the dome beliefs on it maybe.
I said: "just forgot about Mastodon, Twitter, Lemmy, and all the other sources where people can get anti-US news freely? (Or Fox News or Newsmax, which actually present an affirmative threat to his presidency and in an indirect way to his actual personal safety, and show some fairly legitimate reasons why someone could argue for shutting them down?)" (note: I edited it shortly after posting to add Fox News and Newsmax when I realized they should be included)
Then you said: "what are the anti administration media that isn't getting banned?"
It feels like you're not really listening, and just kind of have a set of points you want to make, and if I ask questions or make citations to disagree with it, you just rewind to the start and push play on the set of points you want to make.
Also:
to get liberals to realize that it's okay not to vote for biden
Not really, dude. I mean in a technical sense, you can do whatever you want to do, but if your house is burning down and someone's saying hey it's okay if we don't put out the fire, because I heard some bad things about the firefighters and anyway the back stairs weren't up to code, that person is objectively wrong. Put out the fucking fire. Trump is the fire.
because i genuinely believe that no one under 50 can look back at their adult life and say "yeah, this is good, actually, i'm happy with this, it should be biden, not literally any other candidate. the democrats are really my ally and i should lend them my support". i mean, there's the butigeegs (I can't spell his name) of the world, but you know, like real people. anyway i'm not trying to convert people to anarchism or communism but just to meet people where they're at with the message that "things are bad and they're not gonna get better from one or the other ruling class party. reject their tickets and choose something else. organize in your communities and try to build resilliency"
I would support you in doing all of those things. If it ever sounded like I was against the idea of improving the Democrats or replacing them with something better, or against organizing in your community, or anything like that, I'm not. But in this election, it's Trump vs Biden, and all of those things will get 10 times harder to do if Trump wins and shuts down community organizing and unions and protest movements and starts throwing anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan in political prison or if they're in congress killing them.
I'm not saying any disagreement with any of what you said up there; a good bit of my support for voting for Biden is based on the alternative being the end of the fuckin world. But sure, improving the system outside voting for Biden is also 100% necessary, yes. On that we definitely agree.
Uhm…let me be clear: I said what I said about the sick days not being everything because the point I was making was that Biden broke the strike and it’s important to examine it due to the circumstances illustrating how the administration deals with labor power in opposition to its goals, not labor power in opposition to some other party the administration can align itself away from or trade some favor for.
I can’t help but view centering the demand the administration granted workers after denying them a strike as carrying water for it. Considering the myriad issues surrounding the strike action and stemming from precision scheduled railroading that are unresolved it’s hard to see the administrations actions as being in good faith or representing solidarity with workers in their demands to reform the railroad industry.
When workers stood up and there was only recognition or opposition, Biden pounded them down. That action is so much more important than all the little fiddly things the administration does on its own because of what I just said: it shows explicitly what will happen when you take effective strike action in Bidens America.
So naturally I restated what you said in my own words.
Like I said, I’m not digging up a wall of links. When I say something that agrees with what you say, we agree.
Now the thing about anti administration media kinda gets to something I’ll talk about at the end, but I didn’t ask something you already answered. I asked if there was any other example of something as far reaching and outside the American media power structure as TikTok in response to your question about all the examples of unbanned media sources.
A question you did not answer. I don’t believe there is such a media source, but I’m open to being wrong.
The examples you gave of media in opposition to the administration that are unbanned are either small, shrinking, controllable or represent the opposition platform under the two party system. Why would they be banned? When the New York Times prints Zionist propaganda unquestioned, why would it merit a ban?
I do employ the tactic of cutting the fat and staying on topic. We both have lots of comments and I’ve seen and read many of yours. Often you will ask a bunch of questions or bring up a bunch of points and the only way to keep someone who has a style like that on topic is to go back to five paragraphs and restate the topic. I’m not criticizing or making fun of the way you write, just explaining why I tend to bring it back to the points I’m trying to make.
So you brought up trump and made a metaphor to explain how voting for Biden is necessary (one that minimized a genocide!) so let’s talk about trump. Do you truly believe that he’s an existential threat to America? What do you think will happen if trump is declared the loser? Is there a red line Biden could cross that would make you abandon voting for him against trump and instead vote for the third party you actually believe in?
I said I would talk about your response to my question about media sources at the end and here we are. The part you quoted is a great example of a technique you deploy in this conversation with me and in many conversations with other people: cut out the nuance when you quote something and respond to that.
I’m not accusing you of speaking in bad faith and I’m saying this having already fielded your criticism of my own style of response. With that said I think it doesn’t really add to discussion and techniques like that are another reason I keep rewinding and pushing play, because often times people don’t actually answer the question that was asked, but instead answer a slightly different question.
I do employ the tactic of cutting the fat and staying on topic. We both have lots of comments and I’ve seen and read many of yours. Often you will ask a bunch of questions or bring up a bunch of points and the only way to keep someone who has a style like that on topic is to go back to five paragraphs and restate the topic. I’m not criticizing or making fun of the way you write, just explaining why I tend to bring it back to the points I’m trying to make.
Honestly, I don't even know why I'm in this conversation anymore. I'm not trying to be discouraging to you by saying this, but it seems like I keep saying things or asking questions and what comes back is not productive. Sorry.
I understand your viewpoint, I think. You don't have to go back and "bring it back" to the points you're trying to make. I am asking specific questions because to me that's a relevant way to engage in the debate -- you can sort of poke holes in the other person's viewpoint, or else learn more about it and so there are parts that will make sense or parts that don't make sense.
I'll make it simple, and just ask some questions. You can assume that I already understand your main viewpoint, and you don't need to restate it or "stay on topic," and just answer the questions. I'm not trying to be overwhelming or anything or pin you down or "debatebro" or whatever, but to me this is part of the dialogue. If you want to engage, cool, I'm curious to know what you think about these things. If not, then cheers. To me it's super dispiriting for someone to say e.g. Biden is censoring all the non establishment media but also refuse to identify what other media Biden is censoring, just sort of vaguely say all of it that's anti establishment. Maybe that is reasonable in your debate-world but in my world it is a weird and evasive way for you to behave.
important to examine it due to the circumstances illustrating how the administration deals with labor power
Do you think it's important to examine how the administration dealt with the UAW election or regulations on strikes / bargaining and union election guidelines in general? Or the writer's strike or the Starbucks or Amazon unionization drives?
it shows explicitly what will happen when you take effective strike action in Bidens America.
Same question
The examples you gave of media in opposition to the administration that are unbanned are either small, shrinking, controllable or represent the opposition platform under the two party system.
What are establishment unfriendly media that are being banned? Besides Tiktok? I keep asking this question. You said, more or less, all of them. That's not an answer. Which ones? What's all of them?
What do you think Romney meant by that?
(Answering this one, as it's surely a fair question to ask me)
I think he meant that the coverage on TikTok is slanted, as a way of amplifying Blinken's point that the entire format makes it basically impossible for TikTok to function as an informative type of news, and he brought up coverage of the Palestinians as an example.
I do agree with what Blinken said (basically, that is also my view on TikTok, in addition to the problem that it's controlled by the Chinese government). I don't agree with Romney's viewpoint -- I think it's fine if any social media wants to weight its coverage however the people who operate it and the people who have accounts there want to do it, and in particular I definitely don't think there's anything wrong with emphasizing the suffering of the Gazans in a way that's probably offensive to the people who are sending the IDF the weapons they're using to inflict that suffering.
I can't assume you understand my viewpoint because you selectively quote my words to change their meaning, put words in my mouth and dodge questions i ask (just like youre accusing me of here!).
I never said that all the establishment unfriendly media was getting banned. I said that there's an active campaign to control media that includes a tiktok ban. I asked you what establishment unfriendly media isn't getting banned in order to look at those examples, their reach, their position and alignment relative to the american political system and their level of consent or hand in glove cooperation with the american political system.
the point of that is to illustrate how there is cooperation between the american political system and media, how there is control exerted by the political system on that media and when those two are not present, that media is not allowed when it cannot be minimized or silenced.
compared to how the regime responded to the rail strike, it's unimportant how it responded to other labor actions that didn't threaten it.
the rail strike was an action that opposed and threatened the biden administration. the other labor actions you bring up were not an imminent danger to the regime. at best that could be interpreted in the words of the reverend doctor as a desire for the absence of conflict over the presence of justice.
a more realistic outlook might be that the biden administration cynically viewed a powerful labor action as something to be crushed when it's in opposition to that administration as opposed to representative of a core value or even a necessary constituency.
what is the greater measure of a mans values, how he responds to something when given time and resources and under no imminent pressure or how he responds when threatened? what is the greater measure of an organization made up of many men?
how can you possibly get mad at me for implying you haven't read a book as milquetoast as manufacturing consent when you take blinken at face value and agree with him that tiktok is too emotional to be treated like other "informative" sources when those "informative" sources express IDF actions in the passive voice?
i'll end by combining our two great tastes, restating myself, selectively quoting myself, and asking some questions:
you brought up trump and made a metaphor to explain how voting for Biden is necessary (one that minimized a genocide!) so let’s talk about trump. Do you truly believe that he’s an existential threat to America? What do you think will happen if trump is declared the loser? Is there a red line Biden could cross that would make you abandon voting for him against trump and instead vote for the third party you actually believe in?
Oh, and since I missed it: So Biden didn't say anything about how many anti genocide sentiment was on Tiktok, actually it was Blinken, oh wait, he didn't say that at all, he said "You have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion—the impact of images—dominates." I would 100% agree with that. That's of the problems in my experience with talking with people who get their picture of the world from TikTok. There are other anti-establishment news sources which lend themselves a lot better to depth of understanding in addition to, yes, seeing the imagery and emotion which for something like Gaza is an important part to include.
Then, Romney said, "Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians relative to other social media sites—it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts." Which is at least vaguely adjacent to what you said, but also is (1) just someone who's not in the executive branch who's just kind of guessing (2) not at all the same as "how much anti genocide sentiment was on it".
What do you think Romney meant by that?