this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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I'm talking about controlling the narrative a bit more. Dems are masters at speaking ineffectively and letting the media decide the narrative. And the media spends half its time reacting to whatever outlandish thing Trump said. And Trump says the outlandish stuff on purpose to control the narrative.
So 80% of the time we are in this cycle: Trump says something insane on purpose -> media reports it like it's half presidential and worth talking about -> Dems are asked to comment on it -> Dems try to ignore it or reply something sensible that gets buried.
The effect is this: Trump controls the narrative -> the whorish media is happy to repeat his BS and normalize him for clicks -> whatever Dems want to talk about doesn't matter. Low effort voters see Trump and his message everywhere courtesy of the whorish media. Trump remains a viable candidate.
I'm proposing that Dems could try to join the cycle at the input level instead of the tail end. If they say some aggressive or outlandish things about Trump, they'd be trend setters at the start of the cycle instead of irrelevant at the end of it. Like what happened with the "weird" thing, when seemingly by accident the Dems landed one narrative origination that left Trump on the receiving end unable to shake it.
My point is that this shouldn't happen by accident. The Dems should plan it as part of narrative control. Keep a schedule and say another big thing once per week. Give the media something big to talk about, keep an aggressive message on Trump and his prosecutions, crimes, terrible policies and so on. Anything that controls the narrative, puts Trump on the defensive, and makes the media spread the Dems message instead of giving Trump free publicity.
When the Dems choose not to do this, they are letting the media decide what narrative they want and the media will always prefer to go with sensationalized BS as much as possible, which usually means going over to Trump to say something insane so they have more fodder to normalize and talk about for clicks.
I’m not usually one to take this stance, but just because the Republicans are doing it does not mean the Democrats should too.
It seems to me that your main reason for your stance is that you feel the Republicans do these outlandish things, which makes them “newsworthy” and stand out in the crowd, while the Democrats are left sitting in the back mumbling like they’re Milton from Office Space. You think that if they start saying their own outlandish things, it’ll somehow balance the scales in the news media and get people back to paying attention to the Democrats and focusing on their real agenda.
The way I see it is that Republicans, while loud, are very much not well respected by most anybody that makes a difference to the Democrats. In other words, acting like Republicans to get attention would be counterproductive as it would greatly offend their base. You don’t win an argument by being louder than your opponent. You definitely don’t win when your answer is to model “I know you are, but what am I” responses.
If anything, no one wins an argument at all. What you want to do is to flip the narrative by remaining calm, focusing on the facts, and pointing out the flaws in your opponents arguments. You repeat what they’ve said, ask them to explain it further or that you don’t understand what they mean, and then hold them accountable for their responses.
It seems like we are talking about different things.
Also,
We know with well-tested confidence that that does nothing for half the electorate.
Or more than half of the electorate. There are dems on lemmy that want blood and conflict, who would rather see trump killed instead of being defeated in an election and being sent to prison. There are independents who will vote for whoever appears "stronger" on video as opposed to who is more likely to work for their interests. The position of president has been "who the american people (and remember, corporations are people) love from their media exposure to said candidate" far more than "who has the best policy" for a long time
just so we're clear and and the same page here, the reason why trump is in power at all, and is allowed to do this bullshit is BECAUSE of this rhetoric, if we don't engage with it at least a little bit we're going to keep losing to the worst part in existence right now, we do need to play dirty with them, but only enough to get one up on them.
I disagree with the idea that democrats need to play dirty, even just a little bit, to get one up on the republicans. Look at the whole “weird “ thing that riled up the R’s and excited the D’s — there was nothing dirty about it.
No, what the D’s need to do is keep up with intelligently pushing back. D’s don’t need to be louder or annoying or dirty. They do need to stop turning the other cheek, and ignoring the rhetoric from the R’s. They need people to stand up and say No to the R’s.
I saw a video where someone was saying that there is a difference between being peaceful and passive. That being peaceful does not make you weak. I believe that sentiment applies very well here: the D’s need to stop being passive.
ok so, this is what i mean by "dirty" in this context, previously dems have never really done this, as we've held this moral high ground. I'm not saying we should make shit up and lie, i'm just saying we should get into the mud and roll around a little bit,
Regardless, i will leave you with the idea that the only way to fight fascism is education... What do you do when fascism has already crept up? Good question.