The conditional is right there

I’m sure Vance was lying, but if these were anything like the Presidential debates, there would definitely be a strong Democrat bias. You can’t possibly think that Walz didn’t get fact checked because he was a perfect little angel with flawlessly honest rhetoric, right?

Disclaimer: I didn’t watch very much of the debate because, as others said, it was boring, but Harris sure as shit lied in her debate.

It’s an understandable mistake regardless, but just for your reference, the “What is your story?” at the end informally indicates it only wants affirmative answers because that’s how you’d have a “story” to tell in this regard. There are often hints like that in a question like this.

Counterpoint: “Fact checkers” with an institutional bias are an excellent way to cover for lies promoted by those institutions

I rarely see it, but MBFC is an atrocious website that defines bias by distance from the center. It’s just nonsense.

I seem to remember a book where TVs watching people was a core element of the setting. Ah well

Well, you can look at it as the rags in question being more inclined to receive such claims with uncritical credulity if they say something like “CCP bad,” etc. They don’t need to lie, and in fact strategically shouldn’t (though some of them countenance an alarming amount of direct lying, here I am thinking of the NYT), they can just accept what they are told by the US government, which obviously dings itself by lying but a) with the source being anonymous, how will you pin it on them without the receiving journalist destroying their career by revealing an anonymous source? and b) they’re the US government, it’s already kind of understood that they have a record of lying, but their position of power nonetheless acts as a sort of font of credibility, especially to US citizens.

Are you suggesting the WSJ manufactured a quote by a senior US defense official?

That is probably not what they meant. Usually when a major paper reports a story hinging on a “tip from an anonymous US official” and the story is bunk, it’s not because the paper invented the source but because the source was lying according to instructions from the State Dept.

That’s just my understanding though, I’m not trying to say this with any authority. I furthermore have no opinion on this story and will wait for more substantial reporting on it.

Fight Club and the countless movies like it, which are character-driven and the character is driven by extremely maladjusted desires and behaviors.

“Alright, but isn’t that being ableist in Fight Club’s case?”

No, if both of the alters acted like normal people, you’d just have an especially weird buddy comedy with none of the conflict of the original movie.

OP said leftist

I found the smartest hasbara-spewer.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imperate

I don’t think they used it right (and they’re a Spanish speaker, see the little tag?) but the verb they used is a valid English verb.

Your heart is in the right place, but relying on what Wikipedia calls a fallacy and on implicit “natural rights” both undermine your argument severely. Your fourth paragraph is far and away the most valuable one.

christo-jihad

“What are we, a bunch of Muslims?”

In a country with many vocal boot lickers (“play stupid games . . .”) it seems like a fair term to have in your lexicon

It’s certainly true that politicians and the owning class oppose environmental action very strongly, but that doesn’t make it hopeless. We, the working class, are the basis of their power and wealth; we concretely have the power to force them to cooperate or topple them entirely. Clearly, the enviromental movements aren’t that strong yet, but they are getting stronger and the decaying environment will provide a basis for accelerating their growth as more people like you and I begin to take these issues seriously.

and there’s apparently nothing to be done to fix it in our lifetimes,

This really isn’t true, and treating it as true will lead to a much nastier future than “it feels really hot out most of the time”. It has implications for agriculture and ecological collapse, with entire societies being destroyed and some of the more privileged ones turning to eco-fascism. It’s a much darker future than you give it credit for, but also much less inevitable.

Having a rapist for a president is a joke.

I’ve got bad news for you

There might be another Capitol Riot-style clownshow, but like the first time, nothing of real significance will happen. A few zealots and or cops might die, but nothing rising to the level of a “blood bath”, let alone a “civil war”.

I don’t think Trump was being literal when he said bloodbath though. It’s a common English idiom.

Patents are not, at their core, a good thing. They are nice for an idealized and transient scenario, but the reality of capitalism is that the vast, vast majority of investment, production, etc. are done by a handful of large companies, and that includes R&D. Patents are, in reality, overwhelmingly one of the many tools large corporations have to shut out upstarts. In short, it entrenches the power of monopolies, trusts, and similar large businesses.

And that’s without even starting on how the law can be abused and, with the way our legal systems work, it is fundamentally more abusable for the side that has more money and can afford top corporate lawyers to concoct convenient arguments, leaving little Jimmy in the dust.