I sincerely have no idea what he's saying here. Police have a kind of immunity. The Church insulates priests from consequences which is also functions as a kind of immunity. These things are widely recognized to be a problem. They are "justified" by the stature and supposed level of responsibility required to do these jobs. The justification is thin and our efforts to dissolve immunity are righteous.
It’s tricky - here’s my read.
The premise is that “they” (the woke ones) change the system to solve the problem of bad cops. But (according to the premise) they are weakening the system so that it is no longer effective. This allows crime to run rampant.
@futurebird do not forget MAGA only hears "rogue cop... catch so... it can't happen... everyone else is allowed to commit crimes, murders at levels that we've never seen before" and deduce "crime is up and Democrats are catching cops instead of murderers". The "they" is never "us", it's always "the others" like some kind of bad, against MAGA and "Law and Order", collective entity.
For people who never learned how to think, projection and assertion and whining on behalf of authority doesn't sound bad, it sounds like the kind of debate club they're already a member of.
Try reading it out loud. Try.
How has this man ever been taken seriously?
To "understand" what he's saying you need to already know and agree. This isn't communication through language... it's just stimulating emotions and vague concepts and feelings.
It's like expressionist painting, but for bad vibes, racism, fetishization of power and every base human impulse. And if you don't share the kink it's gibberish.
And, I've just had a horrible realization. Given that Trump's people understand him, the way that they understand him may also be the way that they understand everyone. So, if you are making a logical argument, someone listening to you in this manner won't hear any of the statements or notice how they are supported by facts, instead there is just an impression of who you are, what buzz words you say and how those words make them feel.
@futurebird Oh yeah. I grew up with these people; buzzwords (especially stolen/co-opted from progressives) are all for signaling conformity, their meanings—if they have any at all—mutable according to the outrage du jour. What’s important is showing oneself in lockstep, and the cruelty.
@futurebird there’s no understanding with fascists the way we think of it. It’s spectacle and image. That’s why a slow talking stutterer with a policy plan and history of relatively decent governance struggles to compete with someone who is merely loud but acts like an entitled monarch.
@futurebird That's because logic deteriorates. And that's because truth erodes, as a consequence of social media controlled by predators, liars, and otherwise sociopathic natures.
First, there are people who, rather than really diving into issues, will choose a person to trust, and then believe them on the issue.
This is often fine.
But that first group can be divided and some people will choose who to trust, not based on how much they are telling the truth, but rather on how much they are telling them what they want to hear.
This is why they are so busily redefining language into those buzzwords, to take ‘woke’ or ‘antifa’ and twist them into in-group special meanings, as in:
“I heard you say ‘systemic’ which means you’re ‘woke’ so now I don’t hear anything else you say, because every word you say is coloured by the ‘woke filter’ I have just applied to you”
It’s a matter of pride to be able to pigeonhole you quickly so I don’t actually need to listen you what you say.
@futurebird authoritarians truly believe that might makes right, and by extension think that anything you might believe in is just a charade to support your guy. There's no logic here. "You want to control me, or deny me control over you, so you must be bad and wrong, and everything you say are just lies because you want that power".
@futurebird We all are less swayed by logical arguments and more swayed on vibes than we’d like to admit. That’s why logical fallacies exist. What’s truly awful about Trump and the world we’re in now is that he has dispensed with logic entirely, and he will not be held accountable to it.
If Trump said tomorrow he supported abortions for everyone, his supporters would chuck the previous decision down the memory hole and retcon the new thought, because clearly there’s a deeper plan.
@futurebird
I watched a YouTube video about the show Invincible where the creator complained how unfair the show was to Mark (the protagonist) in his relationship with his girlfriend Amber. The guy argued "Mark did nothing wrong! Why does the show make him look like the bad guy?"
And the thing is...the show does NOT make him look like a bad guy. It's extremely sympathetic towards him, including in the relationship
It felt like this guy watched the show and only saw what he expected to see.
@futurebird that's why all cults love thought terminating cliches. It's a very standard pattern for organizing an in group against the out group.
You are special because you have special knowledge that allows you to exclude this person and defend yourself from their words, and you should feel good about succeeding at that.
@futurebird Trying to read Trump verbatim always makes me feel like I'm having a stroke.
Like, everything he says is grammatically broken nonsense full of non-sequiturs where he just leaves partial sentences unfinished and goes on to the next thing.
Only way to read him without losing your sanity is just collecting all the dogwhistles he throws in to see which particular group/sentiment he tries to appease.
@futurebird
You can't read it. You've got to kind of unfocus your brain, and let your preconceptions fill in the gaps. That's what "seriously, not literally" always meant.
This also has the effect, if you're inclined, of making the perceived meaning closer to whatever you, personally, believe. People think they agree with him because they are active participants in deciding what the hell he's saying.
That is correct. I will not. Because, it's not hard to find. But would you be kind, if you do understand what he is saying here and answer the questions in this post?
@futurebird Yeah I've had the thought that Trump is operating almost exclusively on simulacrum level 3, just spouting nonsense for signalling to his ingroup.
@futurebird
Yeah. I have a fair amount of experience reading transcripts, so I can tell you that everyone reads like an idiot in a transcript unless they're reading a prepared speech. So I'll forgive a lot when it comes to stuttering, weirdly placed corrections, etc. But Trump? Trump's transcripts are incoherent. They're word salad.
Yes, that's exactly right. It's completely emotional. He just needs to point to some group he needs to crush to whip up the tribe so that everyone can get behind him in crushing them.
The people just want a strong man to come fix their problems. All he has to do is say he'll do that.
This is not designed to rationally convince, but merely to appeal to some feelings of his followers. His judges (he and his donors own them) will translate this gibberish into legally binding terms, as we have seen.
Many decades ago, in my country Germany, the Nazis were merely laughing about how their opponents trusted in, and kept on with rational and traditional discourse, and even passed on power to Hitler to watch him fail and "demystify" himself, whereupon they'd take back the government, for sure.
Between Hitler being proclaimed chancellor and the opening of Dachau, the first concentration camp: merely 51 days.
playing devils advocate, for a moment - i think the subtext is “everybody sux. cops suk. priests suk. therefore a president must be allowed to suk. otherwise you wouldn’t be able to have a president. you know what? government sux. what would america be like without cops that suk, priests that suk, and presidents that suk? unrecognisable. get rid of government. make me president so i can do that. yeah. [is this the bit where i hold up the can of beans? oh, we’re doing the bible today? how do you know which way is up?…]
@futurebird The first half is an argument against immunity. And then he just proceeds to say, presidents have to have immunity. Of course it doesn't make sense.
@futurebird according to public statistics cops kill about as many people as 9/11 every 3 years or so and injured about 250,000. ~1/6 interactions with police end in violence in the US. WTF that guy means "rogue cops are rare." ACAB
@futurebird Because he's appealing to the people who believe cops should be allowed to shoot suspected (brown) people and that priests should have the right to do whatever, even if it's awful abuse of children, because God. It's not meant to be an argument, it's a plea for his base to keep supporting him.